Nineteen Seventy Rollin’ In Sight

Out of my mind on Saturday night
Nineteen-seventy rollin' in sight
Radio burnin' up above
Beautiful baby, feed my love all night

Your humble correspondent is surfing that dark edge between nihilism and unchecked, untrammelled hedonism here, out of my mind on Sunday night. Roll up, roll up and welcome goons, dealers, junkies, petty sadists, dolls, punks and rockers all to The Stooges Fun House.

Fun House is sometimes the best LP I own, will ever own, could ever own. This is a primal, prowling, knuckle-dragging album of deliberate primitivism and surly sophistication. Anyone drawn to the seamier side of music owes Fun House as this is the fucking urtext for any unguarded musical celebration of all the self-destructive, lustful, non-conformist, bestial behaviour lurking in our psyches.

A transmission beamed in straight from the Id.

---

I took a ride with the pretty music
I went down and baby you can tell
I took a ride with the pretty music
Now I'm putting it to you straight from hell

Fun House found me around the age of 19, I had a C90 with The Stooges on one side and Fun House on the other; music doesn’t get much more potent than that. I used to love listening to it full blast walking through the city at night, it made me feel so electric, so very alive.

The first side of Fun House is the easy one. Three all-time proto-punk bangers lined up on the bomb rack ready to go, ‘Down On The Street’, ‘Loose’ and ‘TV Eye’. The tunes are all so great, so danceable and the combo of Iggy’s curdled tomcat yowl and Ron Asheton’s mighty guitar lines send even these gutter tales stratospheric. Quite simply the Stooges had their influences* but nobody had ever sounded remotely like this, as negative and energised; just listen to ‘Loose’, the intro to ‘Down On The Street’ or the cut-out section on ‘TV Eye’.

Last track on the first side is ‘Dirt’ it’s a trip; ‘Ooh, I been dirt/ And I don’t care’. What legions of imitators never understood is that to be Iggy Pop you don’t just have to ape his ‘tude and yowl, it requires a total disregard for yourself, for your ego, for your safety, more than that, it requires a negation of yourself, a debasement and a subjugation to the moment and the music. All those red-blooded males miss that bit**. ‘Dirt’ with its slow groove and astonishing solo from Ron Asheton embodies this.

Fun House really turns the screws on side two. Saxophonist Steve Mackay is let loose at last and really cranks up the jeopardy. ‘1970’ has one of my fave openings in music, once that beat lurches towards you, you’re hooked on that ‘radio burnin up above‘^ and the sheer futility of being so young, so wired and so vital in such a disappointing world. Iggy sounds like a creature by the end, snarling lower as Mackay blows high and that beat churns on.

That was the easy bit, ‘Fun House’ slows the tempo again to inject more menace. It is really easy just to follow Mackay and Iggy on this cut, but listen, I mean really listen to Ron Asheton’s playing, mixed down low here, talk about way out. The freak out that closes the track is as dead-eyed and raucous as you could wish.

‘L.A Blues’ is an almost totally freeform, what? ‘song’ doesn’t seem to cover it. Depending on your sensitivities/mood/endurance it can be a) an avant-rock jazz piece depicting a total mind/societal collapse b) an unholy din c) both. I see it is an exercise in pure frustration at the barriers of musical ability and form, lyrics even, to get everything the band felt out there, to exorcise themselves.

---

However you slice it you have to appreciate the fact that Elektra released Fun House at all, it was such an anathema to everything else around it in 1970. They were looking for hits and sales, hence drafting in Don Gallucci to produce (he was the Kingsmen’s keys player), for the record I think he did a brilliant job at turning them loose and recording the damage. How enthusiastically Elektra reacted to a mix of proto-punk slashing and barely-contained white-out jams, I can’t imagine.

Throughout everything here the two Stooges I haven’t mentioned yet, the iron cross wearing Dave Alexander and drummer Scott Asheton form a perfect rhythm section for this LP. They play it both simple and subtly flexible by turns, but always loud.

Fun House is a monolithic LP, a totem for a certain constituency of the musical population, of which I am one. It stands there, blazing away flame red, drawing the eye and attracting all the sins and vices and energy of the world to it. It is played with utter conviction and a lack of artifice which is a touch disturbing, they don’t just mean it man, this is them.

You don’t play at being the Stooges in 1970, you had to live it which is why this LP still burns white-hot through the gloom, every second of it mattering; no staged rebellion, no look, no sloganeering, no fun, just no. Yet this is not a negative album, the Stooges find a queasy beauty in the ruins, they get to groove down on their own lusts and hey, at least you can warm your hands on the fires that are burning down civilisation while you dance to the 3-minute warning.

I’ll hit it and quit it before my prose gets deeper and purpler than anyone would care to read. Fun House is an album that means a lot to me and like the promiscuous tomcat it is you can find its DNA throughout so many other LPs I cherish. Dig it, ‘down on the street where the faces shine’.

---

My copy of Fun House is a late 80’s reissue, no frills, thin vinyl and it is absolutely perfect for the contents. I just don’t see it working on 200g vinyl, in a hand-carved elm presentation box, with sleeve notes by Gore Vidal and Jane Austen, Fun House needs a cheap trash element to truly be itself.

1267 Down (on the street).

*Iggy specifically mentions Howlin’ Wolf for his vocals here and there is always the power of Little Richard and all manner of grimy rock and roll to cite.

**live I was surprised that there was absolutely nothing remotely macho about the muscley little man at all, his movement was feline and feminine, quite bewitching. He got his cock out of course.

^a certain Aussie group misheard this line and Radio Birdman were born and named.