“It was a dream come true”: the album Anthony Bourdain called an anti-social masterpiece
“Musically speaking, the years 1969 and 1970 were not good years for me,” Anthony Bourdain admitted in what might, to some, be a controversial statement. Even though the heyday of the 1960s was wrapping up, it went out with a bang as the year of Abbey Road, Let It Bleed, Led Zeppelin II, and more. But to Bourdain, it was a dead period, only saved by one gripping release.
Bourdain’s explanation for his disappointment was simple; he thought everyone was getting boring. “Raised on the Yardbirds, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Big Brother and Blue Cheer, I watched in mute horror as my friends and fellow enthusiasts melted away into the more melodic, thoughtful, easy-listening arms of Poco, Gram Parsons, and Steely Dan, as well as various monsters of prog rock,” he said. His tastes always moved towards the experimental or the extremes. He wanted thrills, but instead, he said, “You could barely attend a musical event without enduring an extended bluegrass solo or 35 minutes of some jerk in a cape noodling away on a Mellotron.”
However, one saviour emerged that year to shake up the scene and keep Bourdain from boredom. As their debut album landed and they kicked down the doors to the music industry, The Stooges were born.
Really, the birth of The Stooges with their self-titled debut in 1969 was the ultimate mark that the next era was beginning. In the 1960s, there had been Jim Morrison and Mick Jagger and all the other somewhat wild frontmen swaggering around on stage. But with Iggy Pop, it all kicked up a gear. His wild on-stage antics were paired with music that matched. The two together made for a high-octane spectacle that swiftly made the band and their leader a phenomenon.
For Bourdain, it was exactly what he wanted and needed: something new, fresh and exciting to prove that the end of the decade wasn’t the end of an era but simply the start of a different one. “The Stooges’ first album, an anti-social masterpiece of do-it-yourself aggression and raw, nasty, dirty rock and roll, came as a welcome emetic,” he wrote. Containing the huge single, ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’, the band marked the early entry of punk, and as a kind who hated the sprawling sound of easy-listening odes, the genre was exactly what Bourdain had been waiting for.
But like all new things, The Stooges came along with risk or uncertainty. “In those dying days of the ’60s, when you showed up at school actually carrying a vinyl album under your arm — to advertise the fact that you thought the Allman Brothers were awesome (they weren’t), or that you knew every note of Flying Burrito Brothers, or that you had the good taste and discerning nature to appreciate the works of Fairport Convention, carrying a Stooges album under your arm set you apart,” Bourdain said, “And not in good way.”
With their leather-clad chaos, The Stooges were pushing limits. For a schoolboy, that was exciting but not often accepted. When they broke out, Iggy Pop’s troupe made music for “tormented loners. Guys about whom there were terrible rumours,” and while Bourdain loved the music, he was cautious about the reputation. “To side with the Stooges at that time, to announce to your high school friends that you liked — no, loved— The Stooges pretty much put one publicly on the road to The Velvet Underground, The New York Dolls, early New York punk rock … and heroin,” he said.
Despite his social fears, he held The Stooges record close, clinging to it as a sign that even though the 1960s were ending, the music would still be exciting and vibrant, and he would still be engaged with it. It followed through on the promise as not only did the band open up the world to wilder sounds, heralding in the punk age and moving music in darker directions. But Iggy Pop would endure as one of music’s best-known frontmen and a total force of nature in the music world.
For Bourdain, he was an idol. To love The Stooges was to slowly stop caring about what the kids at school thought and start meandering down his own path. Iggy Pop taught him a vital lesson of simply doing what you want, how you want it and doing it with energy, which could easily be translated as the chef’s own ethos.
As an adult, after he’d secured his own legacy, Bourdain met the leader of the pack for an episode of Parts Unknown. “Of all the people I’ve met, I’ve never been more intimidated, more anxious, more star-struck than when I met Iggy Pop,” he admitted. “It was a dream come true to actually hang out with my hero and (for better or worse) early role model.”
