The End of Happiness

The Stooges - I Wanna Be Your Dog



From the self-titled 1969 album, this is the song that Danny Fields, who knows a thing or two about punk, described as the greatest punk song of all time. This, of course, means that in 40 years, punk hasn't moved forward at all, because I Wanna Be Your Dog also happens to be one of the first real punk songs ever recorded. That's no bad thing, of course, as the song is magnificent - it's the scalding, apocalyptic clarion call for the end of the love generation.

The hippies and their fatuous ideals died with Iggy screaming "Come ownnnnnnnnnnnnnn" and the contingent ugliness of the 1970s was ushered in - heroin, depression and the death of hope and innocence. And how better to express it than the via the howls, grunts, thumps and rattles of the ultimate misanthrope and his cadre of barely-literate, violence-obsessed thugs? This song has everything. Well, everything except sophistication. Built on a simple 3 chord guitar riff, bass playing courtesy of what sounds like a tempo-incapable drunk and simple, violent percussion, Velvet Underground guitarist John Cale's production touches, such as sleigh bells and single-note piano lines, augment the simplicity of the song to a degree that shouldn't be possible. The result is a wall of noise over which Mr Pop can vent all of the rage and frustration and fury and deviance that he had built up over the previous 22 years. And vent he does, in one of the purest, most visceral songs ever made.

This is a song that couldn't be made by anyone other than true, thuggish believers - the effect would seem watered down if it wasn't entirely honest and nihilistic. This is the music that the Manson family would have made if they had had any talent and were better able to skilfully manipulate their audience. As out of control as Iggy may have been, he knew what he was doing, and through a sense of performance heavily modelled on Jim Morrison and early blues singers, he simply took it to the next level through utter fearlessness and a willingness to inflict pain, both on his audience and himself.

It's a magnificent statement of nihilistic frustration and angst. Is it as good as Search and Destroy? It feels more adolescent and less artful, so I'd pick Search and Destroy as the Stooges song I would listen to for the rest of my life, but it's still better than almost anything I've ever heard.

Verdict: God-like

Tomorrow: Elvis Presley - Love Me Tender