The first day consisted of soundchecks and run-throughs of all songs, with baffles between the amplifiers and drums and Iggy Pop singing his vocals through a studio-style microphone on a boom stand.

[10] The band was not pleased with the resulting sound, and subsequently they and Gallucci stripped the entire studio of its usual equipment and soundproofing to emulate their live performances as closely as possible.

Gallucci arranged the band in studio in the way they normally played at a concert, with Pop singing through a handheld dynamic microphone and no baffles between the amplifiers.

The results were very raw when compared to contemporary records; for example, without the normal isolation baffles the vibrations from the bass amplifier cause audible rattling of the snare drum on several songs.

[15] In 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die (2005), music journalist Stevie Chick wrote that the sleazy tales of hedonism and reckless abandon on the album's first half are followed by "the comedown" on the second side, as evoked by looser song structures, Steve Mackay's saxophone, and "Iggy sounding like a scared, lost child, warning from bitter experience that 'The Fun House will steal your heart away.

'"[16] "L.A. Blues" concludes the album with a flurry of noise and disoriented dual drumming, which Stylus Magazine's Patrick McNally interpreted as the Stooges being "lost culturally and spiritually in the smoke and riots and confusion of Detroit and America at the dawn of the seventies, but also in the overwhelming squall and clatter of the sound that they—from nothing, from nowhere—managed to create.

"[17] In contemporaneous reviews, Charles Burton from Rolling Stone found Fun House to be "much more sophisticated" than the Stooges' debut album, writing that they sounded "so exquisitely horrible and down and out that they are the ultimate psychedelic rock band in 1970".

[28] Robert Christgau wrote in his original review for The Village Voice that the Stooges' successful use of repetition and incorporation of saxophone had intellectual appeal, but questioned whether it was healthy as a listener for "[me] to have to be in a certain mood of desperate abandon before I can get on with them musically".

[30]In a retrospective review, AllMusic's Mark Deming hailed Fun House as "the ideal document of the Stooges at their raw, sweaty, howling peak", and wrote that it features better songs than their debut, significant improvement from each member, and Don Gallucci's energetic and immediate production.

[38] Lenny Kaye, writing for eMusic, called it a "rock and roll classic" and "one of the most frontal, aggressive, and joyously manic records ever".

Eye" for the compilation Rubáiyát: Elektra's 40th Anniversary: the same song was also covered for the 1998 film Velvet Goldmine by a supergroup featuring Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, members of Sonic Youth, and Ewan McGregor.

Rage Against the Machine recorded "Down on the Street" for their 2000 covers album Renegades, and the main riff from their song "Sleep Now in the Fire" was inspired by the one in "T.V.

Joey Ramone, Mark E. Smith, Jack White, Nick Cave, Michael Gira, Buzz Osborne, Aaron North, Henry Rollins[41] and Steve Albini.

Contributing a quote to Pop biographer Paul Trynka's liner notes for the reissue, Jack White dubbed Fun House "by proxy the definitive rock album of America".

[citation needed] In 2005, the Stooges performed the album live in its entirety as part of the All Tomorrow's Parties-curated Don't Look Back series.