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There are a hundred bands working today that sound like the Stooges, right? The Strokes, Mooney Suzuki, Mudhoney, Mondo Topless, The Flaming Sideburns -- it's almost a cliché that every garage band out there is aping these four proto-punks from Detroit. Anytime you want to describe a band that plays loud songs, simple songs, with battered equipment and charismatic front-men, it's a shortcut to reference The Stooges. But actually, when you put on the band's self-titled debut -- one of just three albums the band produced in its short career -- it becomes clear that no one really sounds like the Stooges. Not in the ways that count, anyway. Sure, you can copy the guitar licks, you can play so loud it hurts, you can even cut yourself bloody with the mike stand if that's your thing, but no one has successfully captured the wild, weird soul set the Stooges apart, and no one ever will.
In 1968, the Stooges -- then Iggy Pop, Ron Asheton, Dave Alexander and Scott Asheton -- were opening for MC5, whose Wayne Kramer described them as his "little brother band". After a concert at Michigan State's Student Union in September of 1968, Danny Fields of Elektra Records signed both bands -- the Stooges for $5000. The band then went into the studio with John Cale to record their first record, eight songs and 34:35 minutes that were different than anything most people had ever heard.
The album starts off with "1969" built on Ron Asheton's three-note guitar lick, his brother Scott's pounding drums, and oddly, handclaps. It's probably one of the unhappiest birthday songs ever, oozing tension and frustration through ever pore of its rocking skin. Iggy is at his spooky half-wildman/half-innocent best at "22 with nothing to do", and the freaky wah-wah mid-track rips out of the beat like a frustrated teenager on a shooting spree. It leads right into the amazing "I Wanna Be Your Dog", with its downward sloping guitar opening melting into the jaw-slackening amalgam of fuzzy guitars, repetitive keyboards and sleigh bells. With its innuendos and hypnotically repetitive melody, this is the kind of song that pisses off all the people you want to piss off -- people who are afraid of sex and punk and vulnerability. It is, quite possibly, the best song ever for blasting out of car windows, drawing smiles from people who know and frowns from people who will never understand. When The Wall Street Journal recently published an outraged protest at Iggy's induction into as a French Officer of Arts and Letters ("Region of Fawners: Europe Dignifies Trashy US Celebs" 6/24/03), they felt that all they had to do was publish the lyrics to this song.
Bands who "sound like the Stooges" typically get through their tunes in three minutes or less, so it's kind of a wake-up call to come across ten-minute "We Will Fall", a droning, mesmerizing, Eastern-flavored dirge that your average guitar-band ruffians wouldn't touch with a long pole. It's one of the few songs on the album that reminds you exactly when this record was made, shortly after the Summer of Love when the Beatles were running around in Nehru jackets, and it bears as much VU influence (via producer John Cale) as anything on the disc. The vocals are as much intoned as sung, floating on a dark pool of wah-wah guitars with slow clacking drumsticks as the only rhythmic background. It gives way to the raunchy, crunchy bu-dum-dum-dum-duuum guitar line that defines "No Fun", Iggy's voice weaving in and out moaning and growling about his uptight girl and how it's "no fun to be alone". Two minutes in, Asheton's soaring guitar solo, obviously overdubbed as the basic riff continues, literally burns a hole through the sound, pushing everything else down to a whisper.
"Real Cool Time" is made out of the same stuff as "I Wanna Be Your Dog", with the same down-falling guitar riff, but it is louder and rougher and closer to live, almost muddy, with the parts blending together as they haven't up to this point on the album. It runs into the hauntingly weird "Ann", a freakish love ballad that has Iggy crooning like a lost soul over the barest accompaniment of slow drums and shimmering guitar notes. It's the track that makes you realize how little the actual Stooges sound has to do with bands that people describe as "sounding like the Stooges". These bands may capture the swagger and copy the riffs, but they leave out the soulfulness that nearly breaks your heart.
The two remaining songs aren't as strong. "Not Right" never really gets out of its rut, and "Little Doll" would be a great song if it hadn't already basically been done in "1969".
The Stooges went on to make the incredible but less accessible Funhouse the following year, then released their final Bowie-produced Raw Power before calling it quits in 1973. Never big sellers, they have, probably, more fans today than they did in their heyday. They have a lot of people who think they're fans, too, who love a clichéd approximation of the Stooges' sound that bears no resemblance to reality.
-- Jennifer Kelly
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