Fun House (1970)

Fun House is the second studio album by the American rock band the Stooges. It was released on July 7, 1970, by Elektra Records. Though initially commercially unsuccessful, Fun House has since developed a strong cult following. Like its predecessor (their 1969 self-titled debut album) and successor (1973's Raw Power), it is considered an integral work in the development of punk rock.

Recording sessions

In 1969, Elektra Records had released the Stooges' debut album to mixed reviews and limited commercial success. Elektra head Jac Holzman believed that the MC5, another Michigan-based band, had more commercial potential than the Stooges. Holzman asked former Kingsmen keyboardist Don Gallucci to produce the Stooges' second 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, however, had already reserved recording time for him with the band in Los Angeles. The album was recorded at Elektra Sound Recorders in Los Angeles from May 11 to 25 of 1970. The band stayed at the nearby Tropicana Motel.

Gallucci's plan was to record about a dozen takes of a particular song each day, and then to pick the one that would appear on the album. The first day consisted of soundchecks and run-throughs of all songs, with baffles between the amplifiers and drums and Iggy Pop singing through a studio-style microphone on a boom stand.

The band was not pleased with the resulting sound, and subsequently they and Gallucci stripped the entire studio of its usual equipment and soundproofing to emulate their live performances as closely as possible. Gallucci arranged the band in studio in the way they normally played at a concert, with Pop singing through a handheld dynamic microphone and no baffles between the amplifiers. The results were very raw when compared to contemporary records; for example, without the normal isolation baffles the vibrations from the bass amplifier cause audible rattling of the snare drum on several songs.

"We couldn't play unless it was loud – our limited ability demanded it. The recording was pretty quick: we did a track a day, in the order they appeared on the album, and I don't think we ever did more than four takes of anything. It was pretty extreme for the time and I was proud of it. But I didn't think of it being a loud record. It was just us, and we were loud." – Ron Asheton

Pop declared that blues singer Howlin' Wolf "was really pertinent for me on Fun House. "That stuff is Wolfy, at least as I could do it."

The Stooges intended "Loose" to be the first track, but Elektra felt "Down on the Street" would be the stronger opener. An alternate version of "Down on the Street", featuring a Doors-style organ overdub by Gallucci, was released as a single.

Music and lyrics

At the time of its release, Billboard magazine regarded Fun House as being a hard rock album. Music critic Robert Christgau of The Village Voice characterized the album as "genuinely 'avant-garde' rock" because of the music's apt "repetitiveness", "solitary new-thing saxophone", and the closing track, "L.A. Blues", "trying to make art about chaos by reproducing same." Author Greg Kot has called Fun House a "punk jazz opus," and Tyler Kane of Paste Magazine characterized the album's sound by its "gritty, warts-and-all intensity." In 2020, Jordan Blum of Consequence assessed that the album "largely eschewed the more psychedelic and poppy elements of The Stooges in favor of a harsher, darker, and more investigative mindset (complete with bits of jazz)."

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" on the second side, as evoked by looser song structures, Steve Mackay's 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 they—from nothing, from nowhere—managed to create." Kane said this track "sounds like Iggy and the boys crying out for help on the way to the loony bin—only this time, they’re using shrieking guitars; harsh, stick-splintering drums; and Pop’s unmistakable wail."