Funhouse Turns 50

I’ve already written at great length about the album in question on this silly blog, but Funhouse by the Stooges turned 50 years old this week (it was released on July 7, 1970) and it’s worth evangelizing the FACT that it’s the single greatest rock album of all goddamn time, full stop. Here’s what I wrote about it back in 2005…

Expressing my love for the second album by the Stooges doesn't exactly put me out on any precarious limbs; its status as a genre-defining, legitimately seminal benchmark has been laboriously extolled by every credible rock journalist, elitist music snob and dubious hack to ever submit an opinion. It's simply a bona fide classic. Henry Rollins once cited it in a column for SPIN Magazine as one of his top two favorite albums of all time (the other was White Light White Heat by the Velvet Underground). Mark E. Smith of the Fall told Mojo Magazine that it was an album that "changed his life." It sold poorly upon its 1970 release. It doesn't contain any singles you're likely to hear on a commercial radio station. You'd be hard pressed to find it in your local sports bar's jukebox. While it managed to log in at #191 on Rolling Stone Magazine's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" (its more user-friendly predecessor, The Stooges, ranked at #185), your average passive rock fan probably has no idea of its brilliance, let alone its existence. But ask your typical vinyl-hoarding, unshaven and bleary-eyed music geek to part with his or her copy of it, and you can expect tears and pugilism.

I first layed undeserving ears on the album during my freshman year of college in 1985, as it came blasting out of my scowly friend Jay's dorm room in unintentionally girl-scaring, hourly rotations. I'd heard Iggy Pop before, but I knew precious little about his pre-70's incarnation. Quickly indoctrinated into the faith via Jay's relentless airings, I immersed myself in this savage artifact. Despite rearing their heads towards the tail end of the hippy dippy 60's, the Stooges were the very antithesis of peace-espousing love mongers (unless the love being mongered was of a purely physical kind). They were rude, filthy, scary, sleazy, sexy, druggy and loud (in other words, they were perfect). Stripping rock music down to its raw rudiments years before the Ramones and the `Pistols, the Stooges were the definition of proto-Punk. Had their notorious predilections for hedonism overtaken them prior to recording Funhouse, I'd suggest that rock music would sound very different today.

I was going to launch into the predictable track-by-track description, painstakingly detailing every barbed nuance of this album's seven tracks, but whole battalions of learned rock scribes have done that more eloquently than I can probably muster (though somewhat surprisingly, Continuum books' 33 1/3 Book series has yet to attempt to tackle Funhouse). Suffice it to say, if you can listen to the first three tracks ("Down on the Street", "Loose" and "T.V. Eye") without adopting a pronounced swagger to your stride or if you can hear "1970" without wanting to leap around like a tight-trousered hellion, then you should probably go buy yourself a Judy Collins record and start collecting ornamental doilies. If you don't appreciate Funhouse by the Stooges, then you simply don't enjoy hearing rock'n'roll played properly, dammit.

Happy Birthday, Funhouse, you were and remain a life-changer.

Comments

[r malce]

Yes.

[Gojira]

I saw The Stooges in August 1973 on the Raw Power tour when they opened for Dr. John's Medicine Show (seriously) in Tempe, AZ. My friends and I were heavily into glitter rock (what they called it then rather than glam rock), and were literally the only people in this 2,300-seat plus auditorium there to see them. We had front row seats, and they played the entire concert directly to us, ignoring the boos, catcalls and occasional hurled projectiles, because we were screaming and singing along to everything. At one point Iggy actually leaped off the stage, sat on my lap (!!!), put his arm around my neck, and commanded me to sing "Gimme Danger" with him. Still one of the high points of my life. Love Raw Power, but yeah, agree that Funhouse is the more superior of the two.

[[email protected]]

In 2020 it's weird to glorify an album where the singer is a pedophile. He even has lyrics about fucking a 13 year old. Shame.

[Alex in NYC]

For those playing along at home, Paul is alluding to Iggy’s invocation of self-styled “Queen of the Groupie Scene” Sable Starr on “Look Away,” a track off Iggy’s 1996 solo album, NAUGHTY LITTLE DOGGIE, in which case Paul probably also has a hard time appreciating he merits of David Bowie, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, The New York Dolls, and many others.