The Stooges - Fun House: The Album Review

What is Iggy Pop? Why is Iggy Pop?

Iggy Pop: vocals

Ron Asheton: guitar

Dave Alexander: bass

Scott Asheton: drums

Steve Mackay: saxophone

Produced by Don Galluci

Author’s Note: This post corresponds to the Fun House episode of Vinyl Monday, originally posted 4/29/2024. Save for audio/editing jokes that cannot be included in a text format, this is a faithful adaptation of the review chapter. To watch the full episode, scroll to the bottom of this post or visit my YouTube channel here.

Going in: man. Following up Nick Drake’s Pink Moon with...this...was certainly Something!

So why did I choose to start my Stooges adventure here and not with the 1969 self-titled record? Simply because Fun House makes most sense for me musically. I’m not sure if it’s the rawness or the sloppiness, the onslaught of sound, the generally crunchy recording fidelity via these groups playing ungodly loud, or the simple fact that hearing The Sonics’ “Have Love Will Travel” at age 13 ruined me forever. But the hodgepodge of groups we call “proto-punk” are, for lack of a better term, my jam.

The stories from the Stooges’ fabled gig at Ungano’s in New York are just incredible. And not just because the whole of Fun House was on the set list save for “LA Blues.” (Justice for “LA Blues!!”) This quote by Scott Kempner of the Dictators says it all:

“I was terrified watching the Stooges at Ungano’s.”

Alternately, Alan Vega of Suicide said:

“It was one of the greatest shows I’ve ever seen in my life.”

(Legs McNeil and Gillain McCain, “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk” [1996])

Pictured: Iggy, in full form at Ungano's. Legend has it Patti Smith is somewhere in this photo but I've never been able to see her.

Ah, the duality of man.

The night began with Iggy – in earnest – approaching Elektra bigwig Bill Harvey asking for drugs as compensation for playing 4 nights in a row. Miles Davis was there, hanging out backstage, just chilling as the guys are doing ungodly amounts of cocaine...and all that was before the show even started.

As for the gig itself? Iggy’s running around in red underwear, he got way too fucked up and pukes on stage. Runs through the audience. Tackles Johnny Winter. Grabs Geri Miller at some point? And the grande finale: whipping out his junk and slamming it on top of the amp. This man is the human embodiment of letting the intrusive thoughts win!

As bonkers as the shows were, the Stooges were careening towards destruction. Bassist Dave Alexander was replaced by a roadie who was replaced by James Williamson. The band gets hooked on heroin. According to Please Kill Me folklore, Iggy even entered the biz with Wayne Kramer of the MC5? One guy wound up in federal prison for 2 years, the other released Raw Power.

It took until October of 1970 for Rolling Stone to get around to reviewing Fun House and...this is the most unhinged review of anything I’ve ever read. How the hell did THIS get published in Rolling Stone? It’s...sexual depravity and madness and hardly talks about the record at all! All it really does is implore the reader to fuck around and find out.

“Do you long to have your mind blown open so wide that it will take weeks for you to pick up the little, bitty pieces? Do you yearn for the oh-mind? Do you ache to feel alright? Then by all means, you simply must come visit us at the Stooges’ Fun House. I know the boys would look forward to seeing you. In fact, they’d be simply delighted.”

 (Charles Burton, “Fun House” 10/29/1970)

Melody Maker called it the worst album of the year. That’s all!

But what about Creem, the publication that actually matters when talking about Detroit? I happen to own the Lester Bangs 75th birthday issue, which part 1 of “Of Pop and Pies and Fun” was republished in. Here’sjust a little of what my man Les had to say about Fun House. Which was a lot. You think I can talk? Just read “Where Were You When Elvis Died”!

About the star of the show: “You’re goddamn right Iggy Stooge is a damn fool. He does a lot better job of making a fool of himself on stage and vinyl than almost any other performer I’ve seen...What we need are more rock ‘stars’ willing to make fools of themselves...” Later, “It’s your stage as well as his and if you can take it away from him, why, welcome to it.”

Basically, this idiot is necessary. Because then the pomp and circumstance of rock-and-roll will die, and for creation of something old-new and real, there must be destruction. And Les was right! This thing (Fun House) and this thing (Iggy Pop) were 2 of the battering rams that busted the door down for punk! About the rudimentary nature of their music: “The Stooges also carry a strong element of sickness in their music, a crazed quaking uncertainty and errant foolishness that effectively mirrors the absurdity and desperation of the times…”

By part 2 he finally starts to talk about the music, because it took a few weeks for him to “get” it. But Fun House battered away until the wall was broken down. “Eventually I apprehended that the music on Fun House is neither sloppy (insert rant about Deep Purple here)...nor inept. It is as loose and raw an album as we’ve ever had, but every song possesses...immediacy and propriety that most heavy groups lack. Everything is flying frenziedly around, but as you begin to pick up the specific lines and often buried riffs from the furious torrent, you also notice that no sore thumbs stick out, no gestures half-realized...” (Creem Magazine, 12/1970) “Each side is like a suite rising in intensity and energy until something just has to give.”

Famous Fun House fans include Duff McKagan of Guns N Roses, Mike Watt of the Minutemen (and later a reunited Stooges!) Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, love of my life Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth. But by far the great purveyor of Fun House has been and probably always will be Henry Rollins of Black Flag. In 1985 he wrote a column in Spin Magazine (that for the life of me I cannot find and I’m so mad about it because he’s one of my favorite music writers! It’s Les, David Fricke, Jessica Hopper, and him!!) Whatever this review said, it must’ve been good because it drummed up enough interest in Fun House to get it reissued in the late ’80s. He wrote about it again for Rolling Stone in 2020. I’m literally so mad I didn’t come up with this first:

“When I heard Fun House, I don’t think I made a single sound. It’s like discovering carbon. It’s like the first time you go, ‘What’s that?’ ‘It’s called rain.’ ‘What’s this?’ ‘Water, drink it.’ You come upon a truth that’s so large…”

 (Charles Burton, “Fun House” Rolling Stone Magazine, 10/29/1970)

In perhaps the most unhinged move Rhino Records has ever made, Fun House got a 15 LP box set for its 50th anniversary. For reference: the original Fun House is a single LP, 7 songs. 7 HOURS. It was originally released on CD back in 1999, but still!

It’s every take the Stooges did. Every single one. All 16-some-odd takes of “Loose,” it’s right there! And all the banter in between! It’s like you’re showing up at the studio every day with the guys. From what Iggy indicated in a SiriusXM interview in 2019, no matter how hard the guys fudged a take, they’d finish the song. They brought every song to completion. So the ~16 takes of “Loose” are mostly full run-throughs. (If any of you readers were crazy enough to buy that box set: please enlighten me as to which take of “Loose” is best.)

Who plugged this insane box set? Henry Rollins, of course! Man, the music has evaded me, but Kim Gordon’s earrings and Henry obsessing over this album the way I obsess over Kick Out The Jams just might get me to check Black Flag out.

Do I prefer Fun House over Kick Out The Jams? Nah. Do I prefer it over Back In The USA? I think so. Do I prefer this over Stooges self-titled? Absolutely.

I originally had Fun House in the schedule, but swapped it out forself-titled on principle. It’s the record with “I Wanna Be Your Dog”! Everyone’s gonna wanna see that! ThenI listened back and was like, “Huh. This album is a lot...stiffer? Than I remember?” So I swapped it out again for Fun House. Boy am I glad I did. This review is one of my greatest hits for a reason - not withstanding the peanut butter cold open.

For the life of me I cannot wrap my head around why Fun House is the unloved middle child of the Stooges discography. Sure, there’s no hooks like “1969” or “I Wanna Be Your Dog” or later “Search And Destroy.”

But there’s not an ounce of fat on Fun House. It’s all killer and no filler. By my 4th listen, I could tell it was gonna be murder trying to pick personal favorites because there are no half-baked ideas. All these songs are worth their space on the disc. Yes, even “LA Blues,” more on that later. Fun House is a picture of 1970. Flower child innocence corrupted, peace and love is cold and dead. What it boils down to is this: if this record were a person and I met this guy, I would not want to piss him off! This thing means business, right from the jump.

Down On The Street: As much as Danny Fields and the Stooges themselves poo-pooed the Jim Morrison comparisons, he was the first person I thought of when I heard these Iggy Pop yelps. I think it was Bruce Botnik in the Doors’ episode of VH1 Classic Albums who said the “Back Door Man” were how Jim would warm himself up. Get into whatever character the song embodied. This is Iggy assuming the character of Iggy. As much as supreme overlord Lester Bangs would be horrified by this comparison (rock-and-roll writer gods please don’t smite me!) but Iggy matching Ron’s ad-lib makes me think of the call-and-response thing Page and Plantie would do on stuff like “You Shook Me.” Guitarist Ron Asheton plays a gallop with a red-hot sneer. This thing makes me want to rev up a Pontiac GTO and GO! His overdubbed solo is fantastic; one of the few studio-born works on the record. It’s all burning rubber and screeching tires. As much as a studio can polish things up, it can’t apply band chemistry where there isn’t. It’s static electricity you feel when you listen to a record back. With a band like the Stooges, you get it in these rubber-banding motions. Surges forward, then a lull. “Down On The Street”’s energetic variation gives some variation to what the guys are playing, because otherwise there just wouldn’t be much. Nevertheless, I’m thoroughly satisfied by this opener.

“I’ll stick it deep inside. I’ll stick it deep inside. Cause I’m loose. Always.”

Loose: It’s is a song about being slutty. Doesn’t get much more rock-and-roll than that!

There’s a bit of a stumble before “Loose” gets its bearings. The cogs have to speed up or slow down to get the machine going, it’s a very authentic moment. Once everyone’s on the same page, Scott Asheton bashing away at the drums, Ron and Dave Alexander chugging away on...where have I heard this riff before? It’s mean. This is where a touch of the studio comes in: there’s a subtle fade to make room for Ron’s searing solo. I like that producer Don Galluci (him and ex-bandmates the Kingsmen got in trouble with the feds for “Louie Louie” but that’s a story for another day!) and engineer Bryan Ross-Myring used a light hand, because everything else is pretty-heavy handed.

See: “I took a rAAAAAAAHcord” and “I feel FAAAAAAANE.” Insert the quote about Iggy making a fool of himself. Just stick it deep inside this section! What even WAS this voice he was using? By the end Iggy’s hooting and hollering, clipping out his mic gloriously. On self-titled, Iggy hadn’t quite become Iggy yet. He’s still gestating inside the fucked-up mind of Jimmy Osterberg. That’s Jimmy singing. By Fun House, Iggy Pop is fully-formed and in full form. We listened to him wake from his slumber on DOTS, stretched his legs on Loose, and finally on track 3 he comes crashing into this world. With the bellow heard round the world:

LORRRRRRRRD!!

TV Eye: Iggy’s backed by this boss-ass riff and before we can register what’s going on, we’re slung into “TV Eye.”

A note from day 1 of my listening: “Do any of us know what the fuck a TV eye is? Who cares? Iggy’s making us dig it. He’s playing with different voices on this record, like Jekyll and Hyde.”

Another note from Day 9: “I now know what a TV eye is,” (it was code Kathy Asheton and her girlfriends used to let each other know when a guy was checking them out, or had the “twat eye.”) “But my point about the voices still stands.”

Iggy sounds like a bat out of hell. A little gruffer, a la noted influence Howlin Wolf. He’s purring, he’s whooping. What even are these sounds? Appropriately primal. And the coughing after a bong rip, heard clear as day, is just hilarious. This man is under duress! Another in-the-moment snap of energy I love: there’s a brief pause after “Right on!” where I imagine the guys looked at each other like “you wanna keep this going? Yeah? Let’s keep it going!” And Ron comes back in, slightly fast. No metronomes or click tracks here! I kinda wish this had been the single instead of “Down On The Street.” “TV Eye” stands toe-to-toe with “Search And Destroy” in my book.

Dirt: “Dirt” is driven through the mud and “immaculate murk” by our rhythm section. It’s stoned and it’s sleazy. I love how the drum pattern starts at the top of the circle. It flips the whole song on its head. Again, not unlike a fun house mirror. Ron’s interjections are the sandpaper that grits up Dave’s slithering bassline. The guitar solo is dirty water, it all feels like something slimy crawling up your leg.

This is the ultimate Stooges attitude: “I’m dirt and I don’t care.” “I’ve been hurt and I don’t care” “I’m burning inside”? (It’s not supposed to hurt when you pee, man!) Either way, this is the soundtrack to a man slicing himself up in front of you to let out whatever poison is within, then humping my leg.

1970: On to the song that’s been stuck in my head the longest, thanks to that Dave bassline...the obligatory sequel song. You’ve heard of “1969,” now get ready for “1970!” It was ludicrous really that the guys ever said 1969 was another year with nothing to do. My brothers in Christ, you’re from Detroit. There was THE MOST to do there in 1968 and ’69!

“Out of my mind on Saturday night, 1970 rollin in sight. Radio burnin up above, beautiful baby, feed my love all night”

We’ve gone from “another year with nothin to do” to “we have something to do and we’re up to no good.” You know as much as people rag on the Stooges for not being able to play their instruments (see the lateMC5 drummer Dennis Thompson’s inexplicable one-sided beef with these guys) they sure knew how to bring a song to completion. Nothing leaves me wanting, especially not “1970.” From the central motif to Ron’s solo and back again, and finally Steve Mackay’s sax, no idea was left half-baked and it all fits together. All the while, Dave keeps it locked down.

We’re 2/3 of the way through the record and Steve finally makes his grand entrance with a grimy honk, Iggy egging him on with impassioned cries of “BLOWWWW!” It’s a little avant-garde, a little coked-out hard bop. I see why Miles Davis dug these guys. And I love how this thing absolutely crashes and burns. Saxophone wails, drum crashes. Bravo boys!

Fun House: On to the title track. I sense a little funk influence here not so much in rhythm but in the way it meanders. The bassline has its heels stuck in the dirt. This is where the atmosphere of the record shines; he thundering bass rattles the drums, Steve gets the reed wet with a delightfully awful squawk, someone (probably Iggy) claps time. Steve’s performance isn’t quite as fiery as it was on “1970” – you can’t roll in guns blazing twice – but he provides a nice counter to Ron. Ron’s absolutely the MVP of this tune, playing circles around everyone.

2 minutes and 21 seconds in Iggy lets the big bad wolf out. Lays on the sleaze with his snarl of “Little baby girlie, little baby boy,” and “I came to play!” This demon goes both ways and he will not play nice. But again, what on earth is this? (Just...pull up this song and skip to 5:54 in. There are no words in the English language to describe what’s going on here.) “Fun House” is nearly 8 minutes of moving parts, a formidable display of endurance by the guys before tumbling down.

LA Blues: A record with this much kinetic energy has to collapse in on itself at some point. The pressure builds up and up and up, going faster and faster until it hits critical mass and BLAAAAH! That’s “LA Blues.”

Listen, not everyone is gonna get “LA Blues.” But if you’re like me and you unironically enjoy “Starship,” you’ll appreciate “LA Blues.” When I heard Iggy do this absolutely animalistic deep-heaving screech? I laughed out loud. We ran the machine too hot and it’s time for the meltdown. I wouldn’t listen to this casually the way I do with “Starship.” But in some fucked-up way, this sonic ball of molten steel is the perfect closer.

What have I learned from Fun House? Detroit was on some other shit!! The decay of one of the capitals of American industry was a kind of pressure-cooker for the roughest, rawest, realest groups of the ’60s. Tomorrow was no guarantee, and that attitude bore stuff that’s still exciting to this day.

When you strip away all the glitter and feathers, what do you get? Rock-and-roll at its most basic, primal purpose. “Life sucks, so let’s fuck.” When you gut the thing of all the padding, there’s a chance it could suck. With Fun House, the Stooges had the guts to take that risk, and it worked. For these guys, the motor citywas equal parts post-apocalyptic playground and the 3rd panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights. Welcome to hell, here’s the Stooges! It’s destitute, it’s nihilistic, it’s hedonistic, it’s indulgent. Fun House feels good being bad.

Personal favorites: “Down On The Street,” “TV Eye,” “Dirt,” “1970”

– AD ☆

Watch the full episode above!