The Stooges: The Stooges (opaque gold-brown vinyl) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This limited Rhino pressing comes on opaque gold-brown vinyl. Rolling Stone ranked the album on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, and put "1969" at No. 35 on its 100 Greatest Guitar Songs.

This edition

• Opaque gold-brown vinyl
• Limited edition

About the album

The Stooges walked into The Hit Factory with seven songs and the assumption that this would be plenty. Elektra boss Jac Holzman asked if that was all they had; Ron Asheton said there was more where that came from; Holzman gave them five days. They wrote "We Will Fall," "Real Cool Time" and "Not Right" on the spot, and Iggy Pop dusted off "Ann," his very first Stooges song, when producer John Cale asked for one more. Iggy's chants, howls and yelps were lifted from improvised jam recordings and edited into the finished songs.

Cale, fresh out of the Velvet Underground, plays viola on the droning "We Will Fall" and keeps the band raw. Ron Asheton's guitar riff on "I Wanna Be Your Dog" borrowed its spark from Hendrix's "Highway Chile," "No Fun" took a cue from Johnny Cash, and "1969" opens the record with a bored teenage shrug set to a stomp. "Little Doll" grew out of the band's early live jams.

It's now considered a cornerstone of proto-punk, and generations of bands have learned to play from it. Most of them took slightly longer than five days.

Also at Kops: more The Stooges on vinyl · browse Punk

Tracklist

Listen

On Elektra / Rhino, a reissue of the 1969 album.