The Stooges - The Stooges [1969]

The Stooges - The Stooges [1969]

Band: Americana

Producer: John Cale, Jac Holzman, Don Galluci and Iggy Pop

Band Lineup: Iggy Pop – Dave Alexander – Ron Asheton – Scott Asheton

Billboard Position: Not Found

60's Hotel: Stooges is a strange band to talk about. Or rather, not so much: they could be called an electric abortion. They were as indifferent on stage as the audience that came to see them, so much so that they transformed their first performances into political and humorously incorrect happenings, reaching the quintessence of bizarreness in their moments of exhibitionism, suicidal dives into the middle of the audience and eccentric rituals of self-flagellation - on Mr. Iggy's part. They were discovered by an executive from Elektra Records, Denny Fields, who went to Detroit in search of the MC5 and, after being impressed by their performance, ended up inviting Iggy Pop's gang to record an album for the label.

The first problem: for an album, they only had five songs - which, by the way, was the band's entire repertoire.

The second: having to compose four more. Iggy tried in vain to convince the producer, John Cale (yes, that's right), Lou Reed's partner on the best Velvet Underground albums, to record the songs, the true epitome of noisy, garage and elementary rock (I Wanna Be Your Dog and its four chords) of the best (worst?) kind - which would become the greatest characteristic of Punk Rock - with the same live performance, but they were promptly rejected.

With no other option, in record time they composed, rehearsed and recorded "Real Cool Time", "Not Right" and "Little Doll". Cale mixed the album, and the record company was not at all pleased with the result. It was up to Iggy, together with the label owner, Jac Holzman, to save that damned, abject, stinking and snotty fetus and release it. Result: the album went unnoticed. Just like its successor, Fun House. And that's what happened.

At the time, no one heard it, no one commented; it literally went unnoticed. In other words, it was an abortion that had every chance of failing, right? Wrong. It would only be about four years later that anyone would stop to listen to bangers like "No Fun", "Ann" and the super-ultra-cool "Not Right". But time took care of undoing such injustice. As everyone knows, years later they would be considered the creators of punk avant le lettre. The Stoogian wah wahs showed that the dying and worn-out flower power was already on its last legs (the last straw would be in Altamont), only those who didn't want to see it didn't see it.

Tough luck for the purists: the truth is that the Stooges were right all along, and for those who listen to this album today they can say that, of course, they are simple songs with few chords, lots of distortions, crazy performances, but we cannot forget that we are talking about 1969, a year in which bands went through all the virtuosity and madness of psychedelia, and the Super Stooges, of course along with other bands in my opinion, were projecting something that almost ten years later would take hold and would be the primordial transformation and cultural and musical revolution in history - Punk Rock.

_-_