6.

The Stooges – Fun House

The first Stooges album came and went, it was a band finding its feet, learning how to play, being part of a scene, being influenced by the MC5, and it’s really amazing. But Fun House… just listen to the difference between the two records. You have to wonder what happened in between; was it mind-bending psychedelic drugs? That’s what you’d think, isn’t it? It’s psychedelic, there’s jazz in there, it’s an unfathomable album and it’s been very influential. It was produced by Don Gallucci from The Kingsmen, which seems like a really weird combination. They had real problems recording it, which is why there are so many different versions you can get of it. And nothing was working so they ended up stripping everything out of the studio and just doing it as a gig. So it’s Iggy with a handheld mic and the band are just amped up and really going for it. And there are real punk songs on there like ‘Down On The Street’. That is prototype punk: like the blueprint for punk. It’s a benchmark album, and the fact that they produced it in 1970 is even more amazing. Imagine being a kid in 1970 when that landed… it didn’t sound like anything else on Earth.