Fun House is the second studio album by American rock band the Stooges. It was released on July 7, 1970, by Elektra Records. Though initially commercially unsuccessful, Fun House developed a strong cult following. Like its predecessor (1969's The Stooges) and its successor (1973's Raw Power), it is generally considered integral in the development of punk rock.
Recording sessions
In 1969, Elektra Records had released the Stooges' debut album to mixed reviews and mediocre commercial success (peaking at number 106 on the Billboard charts). Company head Jac Holzman believed that MC5, another Michigan-based band, had more potential of success 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 said it didn't matter because he had already reserved recording time in Los Angeles. The album was recorded at Elektra Sound Recorders in Los Angeles, California, from May 11 to 25, 1970. Gallucci's plan as a producer was to use each day to record about a dozen takes of a particular song and then pick the one that would appear on the album. The first day consisted of sound checking and run-throughs of all songs with heavy use of baffles between the amps and drums while singer Iggy Pop sang his vocals through a studio-style microphone on a boom stand.
The result was terrible in the band's opinion. They took exception to the atmosphere inside the studio with soundproof padding and isolators. To achieve their vision, the Stooges and Gallucci stripped the entire studio of its usual gear to emulate their live performances as closely as possible. According to Gallucci, they set up the band in the way they normally play at a concert. For example, Pop was singing through a handheld microphone, and the guitar and bass amps were placed side by side. The results were very raw when compared to many 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.
Pop indicated that iconic 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 for "Loose" to be the album's first track; Elektra, however, felt that "Down on the Street" would be the stronger opener.
An alternate version of "Down on the Street", featuring a Doors-style organ overdubbed by Gallucci, was pulled from the album and released as a single. It was released the same month as Fun House, and fared slightly better on the charts.
Music and lyrics
At the time of its release, Billboard magazine regarded Fun House as being a hard rock album with elements of musical improvisation. Music critic Robert Christgau of The Village Voice has characterized the album as "genuinely 'avant-garde' rock" because of the music's apt "repetitiveness", "solitary new-thing saxophone", and "L.A. Blues", which showcases the "old avant-garde fallacy ... trying to make art about chaos by reproducing same." Author Greg Kot has called Fun House "the Stooges' punk jazz opus".
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", as evoked by looser song structures, Steve Mackay's freeform 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 Magazines 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."