Wiki
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Release Date
5 August 1969
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Length
8 tracks
The Stooges is the self-titled debut studio album by American rock band The Stooges. It was released in August 1969 on Elektra Records. Two songs, "I Wanna Be Your Dog" and "1969", were released as singles and the album peaked at number 106 on the Billboard album charts. It is widely considered one of the best Garage Rock albums. With Ron Asheton's walls of distortion, and distorted wah wah solos, textures and power chord riffs it is also considered to have had an impact on Hard Rock.
For their first album, The Stooges had intended to record five songs: "I Wanna Be Your Dog", "No Fun", "1969", "Ann" and "We Will Fall". The five songs were staples of—and essentially the basis of—The Stooges' live set at the time. A typical Stooges song of the period would involve two minutes of composed song followed by several minutes of improvisation. Presuming that the five songs as normally performed would cover requirements for the album, the Stooges were told by Elektra that they needed more material. According to Iggy Pop, "We handed (the five-song version of the album) in and they refused it. They said, 'There aren't enough songs!' So we lied and said, 'That's OK, we've got lots more songs.'" (liner notes of 2005 reissue, p. 9)
In reality, the Stooges were about a day ahead of themselves when Iggy made that statement to Elektra; overnight, the group wrote three more songs, "Real Cool Time", "Not Right" and "Little Doll", and played them for the first time in the studio.
An initial mix by producer John Cale, apparently resembling ex-Velvet Underground bandmate Lou Reed's "closet mix" of that band's eponymous third album of the same year, was rejected by Elektra. The mix as heard on the final product was done by Iggy Pop and Elektra Records president Jac Holzman. Four of Cale's original mixes would later appear on the bonus disc of a 2005 re-issued version, with pitch correction applied to them. Five years later, all Cale mixes were released unaltered on the first disc of a 2010 collector's edition release of the album.
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