Stooges Reopen "House"

Expanded versions of the Stooges' howling, hard-rocking first two albums are headed for record stores on August 16th. Rhino Records' double-CD deluxe editions of 1969's The Stooges and 1970's Fun House will feature the original album plus a bonus CD of demos and rarities.

The bonus disc of the Stooges' eponymous debut contains alternate takes and mixes of classics like "I Wanna Be Your Dog," while its Fun House counterpart also includes two songs, "Lost in the Future" and "Slide (Slidin' the Blues)," that did not appear on the original release.

Formed in 1967, the Stooges were Detroit's gritty response to what singer Iggy Pop calls the "wockety-wickety-wackety-woo" of the hippie movement. "It didn't even rock," he told Rolling Stone in 2003 of the flowery soundtrack to the Summer of Love. "I mean, 'Marrakesh Express?' It may be the worst song ever written."

The Stooges' noisy anthems resonated with fans looking for a different sound, and later influenced generations of punk and post-punk musicians, such as fellow Detroit denizen Jack White, who wore the digital dots off of his Fun House cassette when he was growing up.

"I played the hell out of [that tape], like someone was gonna break in and take my tape deck while I was driving," the White Stripes frontman writes in the Fun House (Deluxe Edition) liner notes. "I remember screaming in my head, 'This is Detroit!' And that's what Fun House is to me, the very definition of Detroit rock & roll, and by proxy the definitive rock album of America. The record's passion, attitude, power, emotion and destruction are incalculable."

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Song Stories

“1999”

Prince | 1982

“I don’t consider myself a great poet,” Prince told Rolling Stone. “I just know I’m here to say what’s on my mind.” In the case of the apocalyptic party anthem “1999,” he was worried about then-president Ronald Reagan’s foreign policies. The song’s melody is based on a riff borrowed from the Mamas and Papas’ “Monday, Monday,” and Prince originally envisioned the first verse with three-part harmony but later split the vocals between himself and members of the Revolution. Because Warner Bros., with whom Prince was locked in a contractual battle, owned the original’s masters, Prince rerecorded the song and appropriately released that version in 1999.

More Song Stories entries »

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