First time you heard the Stooges

I bought the compilation "No Fun" with the first two albums (selected songs) maybe in the late 70's (not sure of the year).

I was in love with punk rock and I was aware of bands like the New York Dolls (had the 2 l.p. comp of their 2 records) The Velvets (Live 69) and was in the middle of having my life changed by bands like the Clash, Dead Boys, Ramones, Stranglers, etc.

I bought No Fun and brought it home. I was just looking at the cover with Iggy and the silver gloves on the bus back home from Good Vibrations record store. I was 16 years old, living in Miami, Florida. I only knew one other person there who was open to any kind of new music besides myself. I should add, only because I forced it on him. I invited Dave over to my house to meet me when I got back there. We smoked some grass and then I put the first side on. I'll never forget the sound of Ron's wah wah pedal, the muted-bent bass note from Dave and Scotts kick drum. Iggy's voice just felt like something I needed to hear my whole life-Well alright-so simple , young, Like it could be any kid who believed completely in what he was saying/doing. When the song kicked in, I was confronted with a tune so beautiful that I fell istantly in love with what I was hearing.

The Stooges then became my long-time favorite punk band. None of my friends got it. Thought it was stupid, simpleminded trash. I felt special somehow that I could connect to the pure genius of what they were doing. I think that's what the very best music should do for a person- make them feel like perhaps they are the only one that understands. The Stooges I believe have always been the ultimate rock band in this sense. Only made for the few, hated by those who just can't get it. Perfect.

I listened to the whole L.P. 5,6,7 maybe 8 times. I went to bed that night changed forever-just by a record. Just how it should be with great music.

I saw the Stooges at there 2nd show in 2004. Still one of the best things I've ever seen. I was 41 and had seen 100's maybe over 1000 shows up to that point. I had no expectations-I didn't want to be disappointed. Just seeing them was enough. They were unbelievably great. I can only think of Neil Young as another person of a certain age who is still real and should be doing rock music. Iggy, Ron, Scott and Mike were still finding their way on the 2nd gig, but they were fantastic.

I will do my best to see them with James Williamson. The circle will be complete.

kaiserken wrote:

. I only knew one other person there who was open to any kind of new music besides myself. I should add, only because I forced it on him..

LOL..

Nice to read your post kaiserken. I've related the way I first heard the Stooges plenty of times on here, but I can never resist repeating myself as it's a matter of such supreme importance to me...the first thing I heard of them was the opening notes of the first album and like you, I just fell TOTALLY for it and I've never been able to escape the spell of it since. Don't want to either. The Stooges' first album, with its simply unbelievable droning, trance-like, hypnotic, beguiling quality, represents the pinnacle of musical achievement for me, and Fun House ain't far behind.

Nadja, thanks for your response. I posted this as an opportunity to say what the band means to me. Afterwards, I looked back at older posts to see if this had already been done. I hope fans like you who,ve shared the first time experience will do so again on this thread. Sometime I find it hard to believe that The Stooges are actualy still here in my life. Seeing them in 2004 and having a chance to see them with James just blows my mind.....

I think I was like 12 or 13 years old. I had moved from a really populated area just north of Atlanta only a year or two earlier to this little town (back then it was a little town) another 30 miles northwest of Atlanta. It wasn't long before I started hanging out with guys that were a few years older than me. There were a couple of brothers that lived across the street. They were different from everyone else around there because they had moved down from Massachusetts several years before my family moved into the neighborhood. The older brother had a copy of Metallic KO and what I thought was the nicest stereo system I had ever seen. It was the wildest thing I had ever heard. The picture on the back cover of Iggy, Ron, Scott and James made me wonder who these guys were. They looked like the people with whom I hung out. They definitely didn't look anything like the "rock stars" of the time. We used to hand out for hour and hours in the older brothers basement bedroom doing what teenagers of that time did and jamming on that Stooges album, among other great albums of that time. Those older guys turned me on to a lot of great music that if not for them I might have never discovered. The sad part is those guys probably haven't listened to the Stooges in 20 or 30 years. They grew up and let life beat them down to the point that they began to think they were just too old to listen to "such noisy stuff." The younger brother is still my friend and I often turn him on to my latest Stooges find, but I seriously don't think he ever listens to it. The older brother, the one with the copy of Metallic KO became some sort of right-wing conservative/libertarian or whatever. I wonder if he still has that album?

Anyway, I am trying to pass the legacy on to my son. He hasn't fully gotten into it yet, but I bet he could tell you more about the Stooges than just about any other kid his age in Georgia. I bought him a red Stooges 1969 tee-shirt and he wore it to school for the first time the other day. I asked him if anyone had commented on his shirt and he said some kid thought it was the Beatles. He quickly corrected him by telling the kid that they were kind of the Anti-Beatles. He's been to more concerts with me in the last two years than I went to my whole time in high school. I just hope the Stooges tour the southeast so I can take him to what will be the most intense concert he and I will probably ever experience.

If I had kids, I would hope they were as sharp as yours. The anti-Beatles-fits the Stooges pretty tight I think.
When I was 15 years old,
I spent the summer of 1978 with my Dad in Seabrook N.H.
The Pistol's were on the news alot and I followed their U.S. tour through television and newspaper. Two artists/hippies/punks lived across the hall and loaned me 2 records at a time. Sort of a punk rock library. All of a sudden, the Stones and Led Zeppelin didn't seem so cool to me. I know Mike and (forget the other guys name) prepared my mind and ears for a band like the Stooges.

kaiserken wrote:

If I had kids, I would hope they were as sharp as yours. The anti-Beatles-fits the Stooges pretty tight I think.
When I was 15 years old,
I spent the summer of 1978 with my Dad in Seabrook N.H.
The Pistol's were on the news alot and I followed their U.S. tour through television and newspaper. Two artists/hippies/punks lived across the hall and loaned me 2 records at a time. Sort of a punk rock library. All of a sudden, the Stones and Led Zeppelin didn't seem so cool to me. I know Mike and (forget the other guys name) prepared my mind and ears for a band like the Stooges.

The Stooges music is far more accessible to a 14 year old kid who might want to try and start a band than the Beatles. I'm not knocking the Beatles, but how is some bunch of kids ever going to pull off Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds at a house party. If you have ever seen the Ramones documentary End Of The Century, Johnny explains how they looked at these bands like Zeppelin and Emerson, Lake and Palmer and thought "it would take us years to be able to learn to play like that." But, when they would listen to and go see bands like the Stooges and the New York Dolls it gave them confidence to not worry so much about being virtuoso musician, but to just get out there and give it all you got. Or something to that affect.

kaiserken wrote:

The Stooges then became my long-time favorite punk band. None of my friends got it. Thought it was stupid, simpleminded trash. .

Nothing amazes me so much on this earth as those people who profess to be 'music' fans and yet can dismiss The Stooges along these lines. I'm not saying this from any sense of snobbery (I hope!), it just genuinely puzzles me more and more. And I'm fed up trying to explain it away in terms of 'oh people have different tastes, preferences, different experiences to bring to music,' or whatever...I assume most people who say they're interested in music have their listening apparatus in fairly good working order..so...how can they NOT respond positively to the blitzing sound, energy, groove that this band produced? What do these people want from music? Actually, I don't want to think about that.
Ok, got another rant out of the way..I've just been listening to the first record again..

i honestly can't remember what song or what the situation was when i first heard the stooges but about a year ago when i bought the remastered versions of the first two lps i sent my original cd copy to a friend in another city and in the letter i wrote i put something along the lines of.... 'wow i can't believe i've had this cd since i was 13. it's 10 years old. listen close and learn!!'... this topic just reminded me of that.

"Nothing amazes me so much on this earth as those people who profess to be 'music' fans and yet can dismiss The Stooges along these lines."

Couldn't agree more! For years, especially when I worked in a vintage guitar shop, I've had to deal with tedious "professional" guitar players who thought Ron "couldn't play"?! I remember one particular individual who I made sit through No Fun, his final appraisal after the solo? "That was terrible!". I'm pretty sure what he actually meant to say was ... "I didn't spend year after year wearing my fingers to the bone, practicing all the most 'tasteful' and 'impressive' licks from other 'impressive' peoples playing, to have some kid with very little technical dexterity but a heart and a mind as big as the sky show me up for the uncreative, imaginationless, parrot that I am!". Or similar. Ron was a super tasteful, creative, delicate player, with a fantastic ear for tone and precision, and that should be clear to anyone who's listening with an open mind. Same goes for Dave and Scott, you can't compare them to other players because they're only trying to be themselves, and it's hard to give someone who wasn't trying to imitate anyone in the first place a "C-" for failing to play what someone else would have played in their place. James is a different issue, because he does clearly owe a lot to Keith for the chording and Jeff Beck for the leads, and had no problems with belonging to the rock'n'roll guitar slinger tradition. But the reason he's still a Stooge, in the full sense, to me at least, is that he plays it with an attitude and a bite all his own, that has never been matched, and more importantly no-one can tell me that for the second solo in Death Trip alone his playing isn't savagely "avant" when he wants it to be.

Slightly more "on topic". I first heard a Stooges song, No Fun, on the b-side of the Pretty Vacant single, I first heard The Stooges in the early eighties, age around 14/15, when I came across a second hand copy of the 1st album in the local record shop, and discovered the major musical influence of the rest of my life. There was no doubt then, and no doubt now, Ron knows exactly how I feel.

Popular culture is never built to last.

From Paul Trynka's book Open Up And Bleed:

Iggy himself recalls how his attitude to the audience differed from that of his bandmates: "I remember once in the Prime Movers, we were on a break, we were playing in a bar, and the [Erlewine] brothers were going on and on about how fat and ugly the two girls in the front row were. I just told them , Are you guys crazy? You have two fans! I don't give a damn what they look like, this is a treasure, you have two people paying attention to you! You know?"

If all aspiring musician had that same respect for their fans they would probably be as cool as the Stooges. Not necessarily the audience, but their fans. Sometimes everyone in the audience aren't necessarily "fans," as Iggy has often openly expressed his disdain for people who are just there to try to give the band a hard time at the expense of the real fans.

I have NO idea when I first heard the Stooges! I have a feeling the first song I heard was No Fun, but it might have been I Wanna Be Your Dog! The first album I bought of theirs was Raw Power.

I don't remember the EXACT time I first heard The Stooges but it would have been late 1970 just after Funhouse was released. I was 13 years old.

My core friends and I had been reading about the band and the antics of their front man for about a year in Creem, Circus and Rolling Stone magazines and were very interested in what they sounded like. Then we read the August 1970 Rolling Stone review of Funhouse and knew we had to get it.

Late Summer or early Autumn, my mother was going shopping one day in Toledo. I asked her to find me a copy of Funhouse. I had been telling her about all the things I had been reading about them and, considering that, I'm surprised she didn't try to deter me from it. But my parents never discouraged me from any music I chose. Anyway, she said she'd look for a copy.

I anxiously awaited her return and can still vividly remember watching her walk from the car into the house. She had a red album in her arms!!! I rushed to meet her at the door.

This is the exact album my mother carried into the house that day.


I'm sure I immediately went to my room to play it but I'm surprised I don't specifically remember that first listen. I do remember the effect it had on me. I quickly called my friend, Mike. In fact, I have a hazy memory of him and I listening to it together. Within a short time, all my friends had the album along with the first album. We all thought it was the greatest thing we had ever heard and maintained that opinion for years. Mike and I maintained that opinion forever.

Here's a pic I took of my friend, Mike, in January 1971 with his copy of Funhouse.


The next Spring (1971), The Stooges was my first concert (again, compliments of my mother who drove us). All the core friends went. Mike and I maintained an avid interest throughout our lives (Mike passed away last year). I suppose the other two friends still like the original albums but I don't think they continued any real interest after Raw Power. I lost regular contact with them years ago.

Man, that was like at quick trip in a time machine. Great recollections. Too bad your friend Mike isn't here to reminisce, but at least he had the Stooges with him till the end of his journey.


Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day,
Rage, rage against the dying light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Dylan Thomas

That is a great story, Chazz!

ElRoi wrote:

Too bad your friend Mike isn't here to reminisce, but at least he had the Stooges with him till the end of his journey.

He was a TRUE life-long Stooges fan. He had all official releases and a nice batch of bootlegs along with a batch of literature. He was with me at all the Stooges/Iggy shows I've seen except a couple. As soon as I got a video of the Coachella show we sat amazed at what we were seeing. He was with me when I met Iggy twice and he even had the chance to hang out and have some beers with Dark Carnival when they did the Stiv Bators memorial show in Cleveland.

Mike was a hangin'-out sort of guy. It wouldn't surprise me if he was out there somewhere with Ron, Dave, Stiv, D. Boon and all others talkin' tunes.

Petrie Terrace wrote:

"! For years, especially when I worked in a vintage guitar shop, I've had to deal with tedious "professional" guitar players who thought Ron "couldn't play"?! l.

that would've driven me crazy!

And Chazz, nice poster!!

I can't forget also what an inspiration Ron's playing was on me.
Here was a guy who was making sounds that were so unique, yet within the relm of comprehension to a young guitarist like myself.
I can't count the times I played along to that first record. By the time I got Funhouse a year later, I was ready to learn more. I bought my first cry baby wah wah because of Ron Asheton.

I may have become a much different stylist on the instrument, but his influence is always with me.

http://www.myspace.com/dreddfooleandthedin
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