Tell me what your fascination with Iggy/Stooges is all about

Just would like to know what your fascination/obsession with Iggy/Stooges is?

The sound of Ron Asheton's guitar, mainly.

Yeah an answer distilled down to it's purest form. I can't disagree with you there. If I could have one record to listen to for the rest of my life it would be The Stooges "Fun House". Just because Ron Fucking Ashton's guitar work is BRUTAL! The opening riff to "Down On The Street" makes the hairs on my neck stand up every time. My snobby neighbors love me for cranking it up on a regular basis. Awesome!! Thanks.

Besides the mind-blowing sound of Ron's guitar I really think that We Will Fall is what hooked me in back in the 70s. So unexpected, so uncompromising, so relentless and so weirdly entrancing. Intoxicating even. The first album is the true work of genius, a lot of credit to John Cale. I think Fun House is a masterpiece but it's the first album which is properly ground-breaking and that was what hooked me. We Will Fall pointed to a whole other kind of world of mystery.

The first Stooges song I ever heard was "I Got A Right" on a Bomp Records compilation in the late '70's. I bought every other record soon after.

My intro was Raw Power. Bought the record in probably 1975, I think I was 14 or 15. Bought it just for the cover alone. I just thought who is this strange guy on the cover with all this make up? He just looked so fucking cool. And the photos on the back were even more interesting. And I hadn't even listened to the music yet!

The danger

pop Stuge sums it up the first time I heard Iggy was Funhouse leant by a friends older brother at the age of 14. The Stooges were inspirational to my life

I was lucky enough to see five Stooges shows with Ron Asheton on guitar (2005–2008) and three Stooges shows with James Williamson on guitar (2010). Some of the best shows I have ever seen by any artist.

After the show in Paris in 2006 Iggy left the venue shortly after the show and on the way out signed all our stuff and posed for photos while sitting in a limousine. After that most fans left, but I and two other fans stayed and waited in the rain and the cold for about another hour hoping to meet the rest of the band. Finally a van left the premises and got ready to speed away. In the van we could see the Asheton brothers and Mike Watt. When they saw us, they made the driver stop the van and rolled down a window. We handed them stuff to sign. I'll never forget the sight of the Asheton brothers in the backseat of the van making sure they had signed everything.

The Stooges were born and raised on the edge of the great lakes and they went out into the world to battle the demons of the night armed with just a voice, stringed instruments and by beating sticks on skins. True warriors, true heroes, true originals.

They did not just play songs, they performed on the razor's edge, they took an ancient art form and made it new. Not just new, but real. They lived the life, they talked the talk, they walked the walk. They put their life on the line in order to bring joy into this world.

The Stooges were one of the last adventures of our times, one of the last truths that an audience could hope to experience. They always hit the mark, they never budged an inch. They made the world listen. Listen through centuries and into the future.

It is very hard or very easy to acknowledge true greatness. The Stooges were greatness, are greatness, unfamiliar in a world of mediocrity and perfection.

Stooges, I salute you!

I love Ron's guitar, but got into Raw Power more first.

So I can't claim it's one sound, one member...I was thinking well Iggy, as both Ron's and James' different styles both do it for me in different ways (for a long time I felt James Williamson was the best lead guitar play...now?...I probably still do but despite loving guitar based music I never thought that much overall about styles of lead guitar playing).

So...I guess it's down to this - they are rock as it should be.

Much as I love some of the songs by other bands such as The Kinks, the Stones, the Beatles etc, their bows towards commerce, music hall you name it, means that the Stooges are up there above all the rest for me, much of the time.

In a nutshell, for me it was that they played the most intense and enthralling rock music of all time. In that respect nobody has surpassed them. Plus they made their music really swing.

johnnylove wrote:

My intro was Raw Power. Bought the record in probably 1975, I think I was 14 or 15. Bought it just for the cover alone. I just thought who is this strange guy on the cover with all this make up? He just looked so fucking cool.

Iggy supposedly hated the album cover when he first saw it, though he came to love it eventually. But it is a classic. On the cover he was this luminous/glassy eyed, emaciated freak. I first saw the cover while trolling through the Rolling Stone issue of the 100 Greatest Albums Of The Last
Twenty Years (1987). Other punk bands made the list, but the Stooges stood out because they were so far ahead of their time. They were definitely the most scary band on the list. They were the originators of rock n' roll nihilism - they were not following any trend.

In contrast I thought that Iggy looked like a pretentious clown on the cover of The Idiot. Johnny Thunders called Iggy a "David Bowie Puppet" about this period and I cannot disagree. The Idiot had some good songs on it, but techno just was not Iggy's bag. Lester Bangs said that Iggy sounded like a "dead man" on this album, which pretty much sums it up.

But given Iggy's desperation at this time for any success, you cannot really blame him for following Bowie's lead. Especially in light of Bowie's recent track record of commercial success.

Rawness, coolness, truth. The energy of it. I finally saw the Stooges in 2012 in Hungary. But sadly without any of the Ashton brothers, as Scott was already ill at the time. Still, James' guitar almost made my ears fuckin bleed. It was so raw and so pure at the same time. Do you guys think those shows count as true Stooges performance? It was a life-defining event for me.

My intro was through David Bowie... I saw pictures and mentions of Iggy travelling with Bowie on the 1976 Station to Station tour, which piqued my interest. Iggy was also interviewed by a Swedish newspaper at that time, late April 1976. Then I bought The Idiot, circa March 1977, and read up on all things Iggy. Bought Raw Power but didn't immediately fall for it. Then saw Iggy on the Lust For Life tour, 20 September 1977, which probably is the single most memorable show I've ever seen. Lust For Life had not been released at the time of the gig, but I got that a week or two later and thought (and still think) it was amazing! So by 1977 I was a hardcore Iggy follower. Saw him next time in May 1978, when he toured with Fred Sonic Smith's Rendezvous Band. And so forth.

In contrast I thought that Iggy looked like a pretentious clown on the cover of The Idiot. Johnny Thunders called Iggy a "David Bowie Puppet" about this period and I cannot disagree. The Idiot had some good songs on it, but techno just was not Iggy's bag. Lester Bangs said that Iggy sounded like a "dead man" on this album, which pretty much sums it up.

I saw Johnny Thunders shooting up in the bathroom of the old Living Room club in Providence R.I. back in the 80's. Punk rock...

johnnylove wrote:

Just would like to know what your fascination/obsession with Iggy/Stooges is?

In 1982 when I was 11 I heard the Pistols version of No Fun. It immediately became my favourite song of theirs, along with New York. When someone explained it was in fact a song by a band called The Stooges, I went straight out and bought the first thing I could find with it on. Sitting transfixed on the bus home, staring at Iggy’s spaceman elbow length silver gloves, before looking out the bus window only to be met by thatchered Scottish glares…looks like it’s just you and me Spaceman…Talk about meant to be…I arrived home to an empty house presenting an extreme volume opportunity. If Bon Scott and Jonny Rotten had already threatened the hegemony of the - be seen and not heard - paradigm; The Stooges ripped it to shreds. Game over - sonic youth had won. Spitting slashing snarling wah wah fills the room like a razor cut as Scott keeps on the one before the seeker simply asks…Alright? - as all hell funk breaks loose - sounds like heaven to me.

The Stooges - a band powerfully able to transport a three bar fired living space into a giant riff.

I'm so old, I saw The Stooges for the first time in 1970 at the Electric Circus, and subsequently, many times after that in their Iggy & The Stooges incarnation. Back in the day, before FM radio sucked, their debut album was played frequently on one particular New York City station. After years of The Rolling Stones, and other (in hindsight) crappy 60s bands, The Stooges were a world apart. It was utterly unique in 1968 and beyond... nothing remotely like it other than the MC5. After the MC5's Kick Out The Jams album, what came after was good, but ho-hum by comparison. On the other hand, The Stooges only got better with Fun House being an all-time, point-blank masterpiece, and a personal desert island selection. To this day, when I hear those albums, something indescribable happens to my inner core. I still feel the chill run down my spine as I did when I first heard those albums. Their riffs and segues blew the doors off of anything else being released in the 1960s. In fact, it changed my music listening habits forever.

While I know this isn't going to be a popular comment, I wasn't too happy with the reformed band. Trotting out the oldies over and over and over again reminded me of nostalgia bands (like pathetic Steppenwolf), and new material was few and far in-between... only two albums over the course of a decade. I wish they thought to record many more new albums (and put more effort into them) than they did over the course of that time while they had the opportunity to do so. I think of bands like Wire who still actively create new material and albums to this day, and are therefore still vital. All that said, it doesn't diminish my love for those original albums (and all of the shitty-sounding bootlegs from that era). I've heard and read people who coronate The Velvet Underground (my all-time favorite band), The Fugs, and many other bands as the "Godfathers of Punk" ...nonsense! The Stooges were in the truest sense of the word... raw, garage band rock and roll at its finest. There was hardly a mid-70s punk band who weren't influenced by The Stooges.

I agree about the reformation, but here's the deal: although Iggy was dead set against it for years he realized that Ron and Scott were destitute. He helped them live in some sense of wealth till their all too soon deaths. I think every once in a while (especially early on) they cooked, like the Lokerse Festival August 2005, but most of the reformed Stooges shows were painful to watch/listen to. I was just a couple of years too young or I would have seen the Stooges at Richards in Atlanta, and I am like you, I have listened to those old records since 1975 and still find them thrilling.

Rock in it's purest form.

The 1969 line up is the epitome of cool (in terms of both music and looks) and the 1970 lineup is just completely off the rails.

I've never heard a record that pushed the boundaries as much as Fun House did and succeeded.