Fun House (The Stooges album)

Fun House is the second

studio album by American
rock band The Stooges. It
was released on July 7,
1970 by Elektra Records.
Though initially
commercially
unsuccessful, Fun House
developed a strong cult
following and, like its
successor (1973's Raw
Power), is generally
considered integral in the
development of punk rock.

Fun House

Studio album by The Stooges

Released

July 7, 1970

Recorded

May 11-25, 1970

Studio

Elektra Sound Recorders in Los

Angeles

Genre

Hard rock, avant-garde rock,

proto-punk, punk jazz

Recording sessions

Even though Elektra

Length
36:35
Records' Jac Holzman
Label
Elektra
believed that MC5 had
more potential than The
Producer Don Gallucci
Stooges, he made the
The Stooges chronology
crucial intervention to ask
former Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci to produce the 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 May 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
baes 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 baes the vibrations from the bass
amplifier cause audible rattling of the snare drum on several songs.
Pop indicated that iconic blues singer Howlin' Wolf "was really pertinent
for me on Fun House. That stu 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.

Music and lyrics

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 theyfrom nothing,
from nowheremanaged 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' competent
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. He also stated:
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".
In 2003, Rolling Stone ranked Fun House number 191 on their list of the
500 greatest albums of all time. 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
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.[citation needed]
John Zorn covered "T.V. Eye" for Rubiyt: 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
8182. 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. 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 in to the studio exactly 40 years after the
recording of "Fun House" 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).
[citation needed]

Numerous other musical artists have cited Fun House as their favorite
album, including Joey Ramone, Mark E. Smith, Jack White, Nick Cave,
Michael Gira, Henry Rollins (along with The Velvet Underground's White
Light/White Heat), Buzz Osborne from the Melvins, Aaron North, Maciej
Cielak from the Polish band cianka, and musician/engineer Steve
Albini.[citation needed]
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) on disc two. 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".[citation needed]
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.[citation needed]

"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, and "1970" appeared in Tony Hawk's Underground 2 the same
year.

Track listing
All tracks written by The Stooges (Dave Alexander, Ron Asheton, Scott
Asheton, and Iggy Pop).
Side one
No.

Title

Length

1.

"Down on the Street"

3:42

2.

"Loose"

3:33

3.

"T.V. Eye"

4:17

4.

"Dirt"

7:00
Side two

No.

Title

Length

5.

"1970" (also known as "I Feel Alright")

5:14

6.

"Fun House"

7:45

7.

"L.A. Blues"

4:52

2005 reissue: Disc two

No.

Title

Length

8.

"T.V. Eye (Takes 7 & 8)"

6:01

9.

"Loose (Demo)"

1:16

10.

"Loose (Take 2)"

3:42

11.

"Loose (Take 22)"

3:42

12.

"Lost in the Future (Take 1)"

5:50

13.

"Down on the Street (Take 1)"

2:22

14.

"Down on the Street (Take 8)"

4:10

15.

"Dirt (Take 4)"

7:09

16.

"Slide (Slidin' the Blues) (Take 1)"

4:38

17.

"1970 (Take 3)"

7:29

18.

"Fun House (Take 2)"

9:30

19.

"Fun House (Take 3)"

11:29

20.

"Down on the Street (Single mix)"

2:43

21.

"1970 (Single mix)"

3:21

Personnel
Iggy Pop vocals
Ron Asheton guitar
Dave Alexander bass guitar
Scott Asheton drums
Steve Mackay saxophone
Don Gallucci production, organ overdubs
Brian Ross-Myring remastering, engineer
Tom Hummer - assistant engineer

See also
1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions

References
1. ^ Funhouse 2005 Deluxe Edition booklet, pages 1314.
2. ^ Eric Rudolph (June 1, 2000). "Rocking in the Studio With The
Stooges: Inside "The Complete Fun House Sessions"". Mix.
Retrieved February 8, 2012.
3. ^ "Iggy Pop: Chicago Blues". Rolling Stone (1119): 59. December 9,
2010.
4. ^ a b Liner notes of 1970: The Complete Fun House Sessions.
5. ^ "Album Reviews". Billboard: 36. September 19, 1970. Retrieved
June 27, 2013.
6. ^ a b c Christgau 1981, p. 376.
7. ^ Kot, Greg (October 21, 2005). "Gris Gris takes garage rock on a
rocket ride". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved June 27, 2013.
8. ^ Chick 2010, p. 214.

9. ^ a b McNally, Patrick (August 18, 2005). "The Stooges The

Stooges / Fun House Review". Stylus Magazine. Retrieved June 27,
2013.
10. ^ a b Deming, Mark. "Fun House The Stooges". AllMusic. Retrieved
June 27, 2013.
11. ^ a b Kaye, Lenny (January 11, 2010). "Stooges, Funhouse [Deluxe
Edition]". eMusic. Retrieved June 27, 2013.
12. ^ a b Ross, Dalton (April 2007). "Then and Now". Entertainment
Weekly. New York: 66.
13. ^ a b "Fun House CD". Rakuten.com. Muze. Archived from the
original on June 27, 2013. Retrieved June 27, 2013.
14. ^ a b Tangari, Joe (August 17, 2005). "The Stooges: The Stooges /
Fun House". Pitchfork Media. Retrieved June 27, 2013.
15. ^ "Review: Fun House". Q. London: 119. January 1991.
16. ^ a b Seward et al. 2004, p. 786.
17. ^ Burton, Charles (October 29, 1970). "Funhouse". Rolling Stone.
New York. Retrieved June 27, 2013.
18. ^ Hollingworth, Roy (December 26, 1970). "The Stooges: Fun House
(Elektra)". Melody Maker. London.
19. ^ Christgau, Robert (November 19, 1970). "Consumer Guide (14)".
The Village Voice. New York. Retrieved June 27, 2013.
20. ^ Christgau 1981, p. 5.
21. ^ Hoskyns 2009, p. 271.
22. ^ "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. New York:
136. December 11, 2003.
23. ^ Melody Maker. London: 34. February 19, 1994. Missing or empty
|title= (help)
24. ^ "Gibson.com's Top 50 Guitar Solos of All Time 50-41".
Gibson.com. 20 September 2010. Retrieved February 8, 2012.

Bibliography
Chick, Stevie (2010). "Fun House". In Dimery, Robert; Lydon,
Michael. 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Universe.
ISBN 0789320746.

Christgau, Robert (1981). Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of

the Seventies. Ticknor & Fields. ISBN 0899190251.
Hoskyns, Barney (2009). Waiting for the Sun: A Rock 'n' Roll History
of Los Angeles. Hal Leonard Corporation. ISBN 0879309431.
Seward, Scott; et al. (2004). Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian, eds.
The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster.
ISBN 0-7432-0169-8.

External links
Listen to the album online on Radio3Net, a radio channel of
Romanian Radio Broadcasting Company.
Fun House at Discogs (list of releases)