While
the Stooges had a few obvious points of influence -- the swagger of the early
Rolling Stones, the horny pound of
the Troggs, the fuzztone sneer of a thousand teenage garage bands, and
the Velvet Underground's experimental eagerness to leap into the void -- they didn't really sound like anyone else around when their first album hit the streets in 1969. It's hard to say if
Ron Asheton,
Scott Asheton,
Dave Alexander, and the man then known as
Iggy Stooge were capable of making anything more sophisticated than this, but if they were, they weren't letting on, and the best moments of this record document the blithering inarticulate fury of the post-adolescent id.
Ron Asheton's guitar runs (fortified with bracing use of fuzztone and wah-wah) are so brutal and concise they achieve a naïve genius, while
Scott Asheton's proto-
Bo Diddley drums and
Dave Alexander's solid bass stomp these tunes into submission with a force that inspires awe. And
Iggy's vividly blank vocals fill the "so what?" shrug of a thousand teenagers with a wealth of palpable arrogance and wondrous confusion. One of the problems with being a trailblazing pioneer is making yourself understood to others, and while
John Cale seemed sympathetic to what the band was doing, he didn't appear to quite get it, and as a result he made a physically powerful band sound a bit sluggish on tape. But "1969," "I Wanna Be Your Dog," "Real Cool Time," "No Fun," and other classic rippers are on board, and one listen reveals why they became clarion calls in the punk rock revolution. Part of the fun of
The Stooges is, then as now, the band managed the difficult feat of sounding ahead of their time and entirely out of their time, all at once.