Ultimate Battles: Fun House vs. Paranoid

Which was MORE influential INITIALLY?

"Paranoid" was a BIBLE album, as I recall. By the late 70s, when I was about 8 years old, everyone I knew had and still listened to this record.

Was "Fun House" the same way? I knew kids who had "Raw Power", but that was the first I knew of Iggy Pop.

Also, by the late 70s/early 80s, metal was much more popular than punk in the US.....

A very plausible argument could be made for inclusion of Fun House in metal's pantheon.

Funny thing about the influence question, though - while Black Sabbath were incredibly more popular and sold a truckload more albums than the Stooges could ever have hoped to, I really don't see a ton of obvious Sabbath-worship in metal bands 'til the stoner thing took off quite some time later. I mean, bands'll have a riff here, a song there, but the oozing, crushing wall of night - who else was doing that in the 70s? Seems like Zep was way more initially influential than Sabbath, cuz Sabbath were just too singular.

Neither album "dropped". That shit didn't start happening until the fucking 90's. These albums were released. Like once caged animals.

Blame hip-hop, which I don't even really listen to, for that slip.

But good point!

Very true.

and duh. they all would have killed me.

http://www.creemmagazine.com/BeatGoesOn/BlackSabbath/BringYourMotherPt001.html

Yeah, but beyond sartorial/tonsorial influences, I don't hear a lot of "Glam" (i.e. Bolan/Bowie etc.) in Poison. I hear a lot of Kiss, I suppose (arguable glam affiliation), but not much proper Glam.

Tough question. If we're talking literally, I think the Stooges would be too strung out to fight properly and Sabbath would kick ass.

Johnny Ramone was a fan. Henry Rollins was a huge fan. Oddly, Andy Partridge of XTC claims to be a huge fan too.

Stooges would bring switchblades and maybe a .38 caliber.

Sabbath would bring flails and broadswords.

Both bands wouldn't even realize they'd been stabbed or shot or clubbed until most of the blood was spilled and gone anyway....

And maybe my bong.

Lots more people have covered Black Sabbath. There's no comparison actually.

And at the time "Paranoid" was released, backyard bands did definitely take notice. I was in one of them, playing in the school district and wherever we could cadge gigs, and Black Sabbath tone was gripping. We immediately tried to imitate it for parts of sets, turning things like "Sandman" by America into Sabbath-dirge. In fact, I saw a number of bands take that approach and run with it.

Of course, Uriah Heep was also influential sonically but that didn't stick at all past the 'eap's heyday.

"Paranoid" racked and charted in the US pretty quick upon initial release. Saunders was discussing this on an interior mailing list the other day for an upcoming VH-1 "history of metal" update that he was being interviewed for. He was writing for a bunch of pubs at the time, but may not have actually got to review "Paranoid." Could have been "Master of Reality," I'd have to check, but "Paranoid" definitely had an immediate commercial impact in the US.

"Funhouse" did not. Nary a ripple even when compared to other major label hard rock and metal releases that have since passed into history. As far as sheer rawness was concerned, early Grand Funk was far more influential early on at the garage band and grass roots level, too. That band sold in huge numbers and the "red" album and "black" live album are every bit as uncommercial and burned sounding as the Stooges were. It worked immediately for them.

The Stooges "Funhouse" didn't reach anywhere near enough people.

And "Funhouse" pretty much killed the label's interest in the band. It literally took a couple decades of critics and fan zinedom writing about the Stooges for its "influence," however broadly you wish to define it, to become significant.

Sabbath spawned hosts of imitators, even upon the publishing of "Paranoid." Before, actually, with the immediate resonance of the tri-tone riff off the first album. You don't know of any these bands now because hardly any were successful. If they made it to a second or third record by '72-'74, they would have been lucky.

I liked the Stooges a lot. But when people write frequently, now, that a band sounds "like" the Stooges and I'm stupid enough to go find the CD, they never actually sound -like- the Stooges.

Actually, I described it this way about five years ago:

-It's gotten so it is almost impossible to turn around without reading how some band of people not alive in 1970 have made a record that sounds like the Stooges. If it sounds like bad altie hard rock that you should buy anyway because bad altie hard rock is better than whoever is the current favorite critics' scapegoat, it will be claimed to sound like the Stooges. And if it doesn't sound like anything, if it is so glum and nondescript that all that can be determined from it is that people are playing guitars, beating a drum, and shouting loudly, it will be said ... to sound like the Stooges.-

And a lot of glam metal bands did not sound like the Stooges. They particularly did not sound like Ron Asheton-guitar Stooges -- with its very distinctive primitive ripping fuzztone guitar -- and they definitely did not sound anything remotely like James Williamson "Raw Power" Stooges, a record with a totally different from "Funhouse"
and very unique guitar sound that just has never been duplicated. They may have -looked- like Iggy in his lame trousers from the front of "Raw Power" and may cop to having been inspired by that, but as for actual rock action similarity, forget it. They were likely to have come out of straight bar band hard rock and metal and Kiss or AC/DC, and those tones are all over glam metal records.

Iommi, on the other hand, also had a distinctive guitar tone for "Paranoid," one that is now a benchmark.

I still don't hear many bands that get the Stooges sound right, if even they're trying to even as promo for them professes to be aiming at "Funhouse" Stooge-land. Let's see, this year? Cheeseburger for a song or two on their EP, maybe.

Both have become easy placehooks for marketing purposes. "Sounds like...," "influenced by..." etc, etc.

Or like "Penetration" has a celeste playing on that line, that's a kind of touch. You wouldn't have found that with Black Sabbath, who are a fine band, but you wouldn't have found them using a celeste on that line. And that's the difference between my conception for that record and what was going on at the time.

(Which seems a little funny, thinking about it now, since Sabbath probably ended up using more overt classical elements.)

I'm going with Paranoid, and "Planet Caravan" is what puts it over the edge. No other song I know of pulls off that outer-space-stoned-spaceship vibe as well as that one does--it's very singular and when placed in between the mega riffs of "Paranoid" and "Iron Man" it's all the more special. Plus I bought it when I was twelve! I didn't hear Funhouse until my twenties (the SHAME).

That said, Funhouse is still a total motherfucker and it destroys everything in its path, even Paranoid on some days. Just not today.

Yeah, "War Pigs," "Hand of Doom," "Iron Man" and "Fairies Wear Boots" sure are skittery. Next.

you people disappoint me sometimes

Did Funhouse ever inspire this, after all:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOAzuqngOYo

That's terrifying. Weren't those two used on the sleeve of an early Sonic Youth single?

Cutting to the yawning dog during the solo was classy.

Never saw this thread before. Count me as a superdelegate for Paranoid.

Great clip by the way.

Funhouse, 'cuz it's meant more to me over the long haul, though I'm more likely to spin Paranoid these days.

Thread started out full of Funhouse love, but eventually tilted towards Paranoid. Wonder if the thread would run quite differently if it'd been started today.

http://hardrockheavymetal.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/reissue-report-black-sabbath-paranoid-1970-to-be-reissued-by-universal-music-on-double-vinyl-3-cd-deluxe-edition-on-september-29th/

* Disc 1: the album you know and love
* Disc 2: quad mix
* Disc 3: karaoke

I'd hoped for unused songs or early run-throughs of Master of Reality from the Paranoid sessions, but if they exist, they're not here. But then it's amazing to see any expanded reissues from a band (I'm talking 1969-1982) that has no studio outtakes in circulation, even on bootleg that I know of. The quad mix is probably the real selling point.

DIRT is more perfect than any one song on Paranoid.
― Ian John50n (orion), Monday, August 22, 2005 2:55 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark

This is the true Ultimate Battle: Dirt v. War Pigs.

Paranoid is classic (esp. Fairies, War Pigs, and Planet Caravan) but overplayed. Fun House is inexhaustible. The fight is a mite bit unfair, since as said before, Sabbath isn't quite represented by their best (Vol. 4, though I haven't listened to all of the albums) but...Fun House destroys that as well.

One more thing:

Sabb's influence on punk = Black Flag (also stated before)
Stooges' influence on metal = Motorhead

Iggy still wins.