The Stooges — Fun House

intothewellsabyss
Jul 7, 2023
7 min read

𝐅𝐑𝐎𝐌 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐑𝐘𝐏𝐓𝐒 - 𝐂𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐁𝐑𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐍𝐆 𝐏𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐀𝐋𝐁𝐔𝐌 𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐄𝐀𝐒𝐄𝐒 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐇𝐈𝐒𝐓𝐎𝐑𝐘 𝐨𝐟 𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃 𝐑𝐎𝐂𝐊 & 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐘 𝐌𝐄𝐓𝐀𝐋…

53 years ago this month, The Stooges took us to the “Fun House”!

On July 7, 1970, The Stooges released their second full-length studio album, “Fun House” via Elektra Records.

Though initially commercially unsuccessful, “Fun House” developed a strong cult following. Like its predecessor (1969's The Stooges) and its successor (1973's Raw Power), it is generally considered integral in the development of Punk Rock.

Background:

In 1969, Elektra Records had released the Stooges' debut album to mixed reviews and mediocre commercial success (peaking at number 106 on the Billboard charts). Company head Jac Holzman believed that MC5, another Michigan-based band, had more potential of success than The Stooges. Holzman asked former Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci to produce The Stooges' second album.

Having seen the group live, Gallucci told Holzman that The Stooges were an "interesting group, but I don't think you can get this feeling on tape". Holzman said it didn't matter because he had already reserved recording time in L.A. The album was recorded at Elektra Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, California, from May 11 to 25, 1970. Gallucci's plan as a producer was to use each day to record about a dozen takes of a particular song and then pick the one that would appear on the album. The first day consisted of sound checking and run-throughs of all songs. The entire band used headphones with the bass and drums isolated by baffles while singer Iggy Pop sang his vocals through a condenser microphone on a boom.

The result was terrible in the band's opinion. They took exception to the atmosphere inside the studio with soundproof padding and isolators. To achieve their vision, The Stooges and Gallucci stripped the entire studio of its usual gear to emulate their live performances as closely as possible. According to Gallucci, they set up the band in the way they normally play at a concert. For example, Pop was singing through a handheld microphone, and the guitar and bass amps were placed side by side. The results were very raw when compared to many contemporary records; for example, without the normal isolation baffles the vibrations from the bass amplifier cause audible rattling of the snare drum on several songs.

Iggy Pop indicated that iconic Blues singer Howlin' Wolf "was really pertinent for me on “Fun House”. That stuff is Wolfy, at least as I could do it."

The Stooges intended for "Loose" to be the album's first track; Elektra, however, felt that "Down on the Street" would be the stronger opener.

An alternate version of "Down on the Street", featuring a Doors-style organ overdubbed by Gallucci, was pulled from the album and released as a single. It was released the same month as “Fun House”, and fared slightly better on the charts.

According to Billboard magazine, “Fun House” is set in Hard Rock and improvisation. Music critic Robert Christgau characterized the album as "genuinely 'Avant-garde' Rock" because of the music's apt "repetitiveness", "solitary new-thing saxophone", and "L.A. Blues", which showcases the "old avant-garde fallacy ... trying to make art about chaos by reproducing same." Greg Kot called “Fun House” "The Stooges' Punk Jazz opus".

In “1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” (2005), music journalist Stevie Chick wrote that the sleazy tales of hedonism and reckless abandon on the album's first half are followed by "the comedown", as evoked by looser song structures, Steve Mackay's freeform saxophone, and "Iggy sounding like a scared, lost child, warning from bitter experience that 'The Fun House will steal your heart away.'" "L.A. Blues" concludes the album with a flurry of noise and disoriented dual drumming, which Stylus Magazine's Patrick McNally interpreted as the Stooges being "lost culturally and spiritually in the smoke and riots and confusion of Detroit and America at the dawn of the seventies, but also in the overwhelming squall and clatter of the sound that they—from nothing, from nowhere—managed to create."

Critical Reception:

In a contemporary review, Charles Burton from Rolling Stone found “Fun House” to be "much more sophisticated" than The Stooges' debut album, writing that they sounded "so exquisitely horrible and down and out that they are the ultimate Psychedelic Rock band in 1970".

Roy Hollingworth of Melody Maker was unimpressed however, calling it the worst record of the year and "a muddy load of sluggish, unimaginative rubbish heavily disguised by electricity and called American Rock".

Christgau wrote in his original review for The Village Voice that The Stooges' successful use of monotony and incorporation of saxophone had intellectual appeal, but questioned whether it was healthy as a listener for "[me] to have to be in a certain mood of desperate abandon before I can get on with them musically". He later said his criticism had been based on the album's "inaccessibility" as popular music, and wrote in “Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies” (1981);

“Now I regret all the times I've used words like 'power' and 'energy' to describe Rock and Roll, because this is what such rhetoric should have been saved for. Shall I compare it to an atom bomb? a wrecker's ball? a hydroelectric plant? Language wasn't designed for the job.”

In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Mark Deming hailed “Fun House” as "the ideal document of the Stooges at their raw, sweaty, howling peak", and wrote that it features better songs than their debut, significant improvement from each member, and Don Gallucci's energetic and immediate production.

Dalton Ross of Entertainment Weekly wrote that the "radical" album sounded "primal, unpredictable, dangerous".

Pitchfork critic Joe Tangari felt that the music's aggression has rarely been matched. He recommended it to "any Rock fan with a sense of history" and asserted that, along with the Stooges' debut, “Fun House” is one of the most important predecessors to the Punk Rock movement.

Barney Hoskyns called it a "Proto-Punk classic", and Jon Young of SPIN hailed it as a "Proto-Punk landmark" that possessed a "magnificent chaos".

According to Cleveland.com writer Troy L. Smith, "What was once dismissed as something too raw and primal, now sits as a work of unparalleled Hard-Rock genius", while music historian Simon Reynolds says "it clearly stands out as the most powerful Hard-Rock album of all time."

In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked “Fun House” number 191 on their list of “500 Greatest Albums of All Time”, maintaining the rating in a 2012 revision, and moving it up to number 94 in the 2020 reboot of the list.

Melody Maker said that it is, "no contest, the greatest rock n' roll album of all time".

Lenny Kaye, writing for eMusic, called it a "rock and roll classic" and "one of the most frontal, aggressive, and joyously manic records ever".

In The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), Scott Seward claimed that, although saying so "risks hyperbole", “Fun House” is "one of the greatest rock & roll records of all time" and that, "as great as they were, the Stones never went so deep, the Beatles never sounded so alive, and anyone would have a hard time matching Iggy Pop's ferocity as a vocalist."

Influence & Legacy:

Australian band Radio Birdman chose their name based on mishearing the line "radio burnin' up above" in the song "1970". They also named their Oxford Street performance venue The Oxford Funhouse and covered "TV Eye" on their 1977 album Radios Appear.

John Zorn covered "T.V. Eye" for “Rubáiyát: Elektra's 40th Anniversary”; the same song was also covered for the Glam Rock film Velvet Goldmine by a supergroup featuring original Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton and members of Sonic Youth, with actor Ewan McGregor on vocals.

The Birthday Party covered "Loose" on their 1982 live album “Drunk on the Pope's Blood” and, also live, the song "Funhouse"; a version with sax played by J.G. Thirlwell appears on the 1999 CD “The Birthday Party Live 81–82”.

The Damned's 1977 debut album, “Damned Damned Damned”, features a cover of "1970", entitled "I Feel Alright".

Depeche Mode covered "Dirt" on their “I Feel Loved” single.

Hanoi Rocks cover "1970" (titled "I Feel Alright") on their 1984 live album “All Those Wasted Years”.

Spacemen 3 adapted "T.V. Eye" into the near-cover "OD Catastrophe" on their debut album “Sound of Confusion”.

Michael Monroe also covered the song for his “Another Night in the Sun” live album in 2010.

In 1989 indie rock band Blake Babies covered "Loose" for their album “Earwig”. They sampled Pop's voice into the song.

Rage Against The Machine recorded a cover of "Down on the Street" on their 2000 covers album “Renegades”, and the main riff from their song "Sleep Now in the Fire" was inspired by the riff in "T.V. Eye."

A cover of "Dirt" appears on disc one of Screeching Weasel's 1999 double CD compilation "Thank You Very Little".

In 2010, the Nigerian songwriter Billy Bao and his band went into the studio exactly 40 years after the recording of the album and recorded their album "Buildings from Bilbao" using all titles and song times for their own songs (except "1970", which is updated as "2010", and "L.A. Blues", which is called "LAGOS Blues").

"Down on the Street" briefly appears on the song "Maggot Death (Live at Brighton)" off of the Throbbing Gristle album “The Second Annual Report”, as a field recording of a club playing the song over the P.A. system.

Numerous other musical artists have cited “Fun House” as their favorite album, including Joey Ramone, Mark E. Smith, Jack White, Nick Cave, Michael Gira, Buzz Osborne, Aaron North, Henry Rollins and Steve Albini.

In 1999, Rhino Records released a limited edition box set, “1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions”, featuring every take of every song from every day of the recording sessions, plus the single versions of "Down on the Street" and "1970". On August 16, 2005, the album was reissued by Elektra and Rhino as a two-CD set featuring a newly remastered version of the album on disc one and a variety of outtakes (essentially highlights from the “Complete Fun House Sessions” box set.

Jack White contributed a quote to Pop biographer Paul Trynka's liner notes to the reissue, in which White dubbed “Fun House” "by proxy the definitive rock album of America".

In 2005, The Stooges performed the album live in its entirety as part of the “All Tomorrow's Parties”-curated “Don't Look Back” series.

"Dirt" was ranked number 46 on Gibson's "Top 50 Guitar Solos" list in 2010.

The title track was on the soundtrack to the 2004 video game MTX: Mototrax, "1970" appeared in Tony Hawk Underground 2 the same year and "Down on the Street" appeared in Battlefield: Hardline in 2015.

The album had sold 89,000 copies through March 2000.

Links to Artists, Albums, and Music Videos:

Click this link to listen to “Fun House” via Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/funhouse/843836692

Click this link to listen to “Fun House” via Spotify: Funhouse https://open.spotify.com/album/5qhXaVIC5BdE4a5Kq1FMZG

Click this link to follow Iggy & The Stooges on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/iggyandthestooges

Note: The reviews shared here are for historical reference. The views and opinions expressed within are not always supported (in full or in part) by Into the Wells. — E.N. Wells

The Stooges — Fun House

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Influence & Legacy:

Links to Artists, Albums, and Music Videos:

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