1. The StoogesThe Stooges
It’s hard for me to choose between The Stooges and Fun House even though they’re very different. I probably bought them within weeks of each other in 1980 when I was at college and I loved them both equally, you know? The first record has some of Ron Asheton’s greatest guitar leads. The guitar sound is fantastic. It’s occasionally got tribal drums which Fun House doesn’t have. There’s a whole different feel and Iggy’s vocals are sort of detached. The Stooges opens up with ‘1969’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, but then there’s this mellow thing that lasts nine minutes or something… Oh man! I kind of love ‘We Will Fall’ for its weirdness
We did the Big Day Out in Australia in 1993 and that had us, Iggy, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, The Beasts Of Bourbon and a few other people on that bill, and we all got on stage to do ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ and had a ball.
There’s something primal about all of the Stooges. Fun House almost feels like a live set. It’s got the show opener ‘Down On The Street’, it builds up a bit more with another couple of songs and then you flip it over and all of a sudden the saxophone kicks in. The song ‘Fun House’ in particular is kind of what jazz rock fusion should have been instead of Al Di Meola and shit like that. There’s a jazz element but with a totally rocking rhythm section. I suppose I have chosen a lot of records with the sax on, I’m not opposed to the saxophone!
