THE STOOGES

The Stooges were not listed in the original two editions of The Rolling Stone Record Guide.  Here's how it should have read.  Reprinted without permission from "Iggy Pop: Open Up and Bleed" by Paul Trynka:

***** The Stooges / Elektra (1969)
***** Fun House / Elektra (1970)
***** Raw Power / CBS (1973)

Rock music stripped down to its most vital essentials, The Stooges still sounds fresher and more extreme than most of the punk and alternative material it has inspired over the decades.  The lyrics reject intellectualism for a documentary depiction of boredom and anomie, delivered deadpan over an imposing, monumental backing.  It sounds simple, but each element of the monolithic structure has been hoisted into place with painstaking care, most notably Ron Asheton's precise, memorable riffs on songs like "No Fun," "1969," "I Wanna Be Your Dog," and "Not Right."

For their second release, Asheton's guitar playing progressed from charming primitivism to something much more powerful and concise.  Thanks to inspired production from onetime "Louie Louie" organist Don Gallucci, who decreed that the band would perform their customary set as if playing live, Fun House captured all the elemental power of The Stooges in full flow.  Yet while the album revels in exquisitely dumb riffs -- "Loose," "1970" -- there's a confident, sophisticated swagger to the sound too.  When Steve MacKay weighs in on saxophone five songs in, on "1970," the aural onslaught is as thrilling as rock`n'roll ever gets.

Raw Power is a desperate, final assault on a music industry that had proved impervious to The Stooges charms, a last gasp that, the lyrics told us, was irrevocably doomed.  On a cranked-up Les Paul, bad-boy guitarist James Williamson brought a new Detroit aggression to the sound, sounding more manic, if more conventional, than his predecessor. Ron Asheton, demoted to bass, became one of the instruments greatest exponents, even if his comrades cared so little about the rhythm section that they didn't bother to record them properly.  The album followed a strict structure suggested by manager Tony DeFries.  Despire DeFries' efforts, the album was a mess, with guitar piled on guitar, screamed, semi-coherent lyrics, and those inaudible drums.  But it was a magnificent, inspiring mess, its confusion the perfect metaphor for its makers increasingly deranged state.  In 1996, Iggy remixed the album.

(Note: as far as I'm concerned, Robert Christgau summed up the remix best: Strict constructionists and lo-fi snobs charge indignantly that by remixing his own album Iggy has made a mockery of history and done irreparable damage to a priceless work of art. This is really stupid. Before it was anointed the Platonic idea of rock and roll by desperate young men who didn't have much else to choose from, first-generation Iggyphiles charged just as indignantly that David Bowie had mixed the real thing way too thin--as Iggy observes, this classic-by-comparison always sounded "weedy" (although, not to insult a valued colleague, "David's" version was also "very creative"). So the pumped bass and vocals Iggy has uncovered on the original tapes, which were supposed to coexist with their high-end screech to begin with, are a quantum improvement. Plus you can finally hear the celeste on "Penetration"--sounds great! Only the slow ones, which like all of Iggy's slow ones are not as good as his fast ones, stand between a statement of principle and a priceless work of art. A-)

Essential Listening:

(see links above)

The Stooges wiki
The Stooges Allmusic
Stooges Allmusic discography
Official Site
Iggy Pop the Rock Iguana
Rock Action (Scott's Website)
James Williamson's Website
Stooges Forum
Cool Stooges Article