My All-Timers: 35. The Stooges — Fun House
The hilarious jerks at the old music-crank website called Buddyhead once wrote, “Anyone who says The Ramones invented punk rock needs to have a Stooges record dropped in their lap and then shut up.” Now, everyone knows how I worship The Ramones, and I do believe that if you want to get technical about things, you could go either way on this argument. The Ramones shaped punk into being a package that lasted three-minutes and relied on quick tempos and down-stroked guitars. This point is indisputable. But if you want to look at who created the original chaos of punk rock, the sneer and the swagger necessary to differentiate it from the garage rock of the 60’s, then you might have a good case for The Stooges.
I like their self-titled debut, but it’s a bit too primitive and simplistic. I like Raw Power quite a lot, but…well, there really isn’t a “but” statement I can make about it. That record rules. It just doesn’t rule as hard as Fun House.
What makes Fun House so great? You can start by appreciating the howling craziness of one Ignatowski “Iggy” Pop Music “Pop.” Fun House is his most inspired performance of all the Stooges’ records. On opener “Down on the Street,” he is a cheetah on the prowl, crooning and swaying until BAM, he unleashes his fury and lets you know what you’ll be dealing with for the rest of this record. When he’s not singing like a greaser angel he is positively unhinged, a detail I noticed when I was sitting on the deck with my baby listening to Iggy scream like a maniac, leading me to fear judgment from my neighbors in their backyard who might think I’m purposely polluting my daughter’s mind with traumatic music. But those neighbors have motorcycles, so their opinion on literally anything in life is null and void.
Iggy’s yelps and squeals come between lyrics that boast of his strengths and inadequacies as a lover and as a human being. He might brag about being “Loose,” and he sees pretty things “Down on the Street.” He also spends seven minutes telling us he’s been “Dirt,” but he doesn’t care. It’s no accident that he sounds much more believable when he runs himself down as opposed to when he’s building himself up. There’s too much eagerness in his proclamations of grandeur, it’s like he’s over-compensating. The Stooges were dirtbags in an era when being a dirtbag didn’t sell records. The big rock bands in 1970 were larger than life, or at the very least appeared to have their shit together. Even the Stones were less ragged than this.
The rest of the band pounds out careening feedback and menacing rhythms that don’t go far to soften the blow of Iggy’s wildness. They mostly favor insistent rhythms like “T.V. Eye,” where Scott Asheton just never stops hitting the snare, or “Loose,” which rumbles forward with no mercy. Only on “Dirt” do they bring things down in a jam that is decidedly not punk, but does tap into a feeling of alienation most punk bands could only dream of imitating. Bassist Dave Alexander is absolutely essential to the success of this record, as his basslines provide the melodic foundation upon which everyone else just goes nuts. The title track is a jam and a half, but that bassline is key. By the time they get to album closer “L.A. Blues,” everything has fallen apart and no one wants to play together anymore. It’s five minutes of unorganized chaos, and even if it’s not the most listenable track in the world, it acts as a funny final statement: we can only be nice for so long until we explode.
Iggy turned 70 last week, which is almost unfathomable because despite his weathered face and road-worn voice, Iggy does not appear to be even a legally-qualifying senior citizen of 55. He still moves and grooves like a much younger man, as proven last year when touring on his really good solo record Post Pop Depression. He is a superhuman entity in music, and Fun House stands as a documentation of that superhuman when he had just discovered his powers and was still flailing around trying to figure out how to use them. It’s a record of reckless puberty and forced adulthood, which makes it an essential listen for anyone who is alive.
