“This was the real thing”: The band who changed music for Anthony Bourdain
Throughout his celebrated career as a chef and documentarian, Anthony Bourdain routinely sought to explore the fringes of society. His travels took him all across the globe, but he would typically explore the underground of each city, town, and village, rather than the main street. Adhering to the manifesto of Edwin Starr’s ‘Back Street’, the chef uncovered the vibrant underbelly of global subcultures and cities, so it makes sense that his music taste reflected those interests.
As a native of New York City, Bourdain was destined to have an incredible musical education. After all, New York during the 1970s was the epicentre of the world’s greatest underground music scene. Thanks to the squats of the East Village, along with venues like CBGBs and Max’s Kansas City, the city became the home of punk rock. Bourdain, as an adolescent misfit, was a natural disciple of this punk scene, finding solace in the abrasive tones of Richard Hell, Patti Smith, and Johnny Thunders.
Although he was already eyeing up a career as a chef, music always remained an incredibly important aspect of Bourdain’s existence. Indeed, Parts Unknown often placed a focus on local musicians, and punk rock became a recurring theme throughout the documentary series. His attitude and individualism seemed to perfectly reflect the aims and attitudes of the punk age, so it should come as no surprise that he remained a lifelong devotee of punk rock.
Bourdain certainly had his favourites when it came to the world of punk, holding a particular admiration for the likes of Elvis Costello, Bad Brains, The Clash, and The New York Dolls, to name only a few. However, the chef also maintained a healthy love for the genre’s progenitors, with The Stooges being a notable highlight of his record collection.
Detroit’s premier garage rock outfit, The Stooges were absolutely instrumental in the development and popularisation of punk rock. Frontman Iggy Pop perfectly captured the energy, abrasion, and defiance of the movement, and the band’s extensive discography of powerful tracks turned an entire generation from peace and love hippies to down and dirty punk rockers – Bourdain included.
“It really said something about a person if you showed up with a Stooges album,” the chef once shared in an interview with KCRW. “You turned your back on Eric Clapton, you were over Hendrix, you were over everything you were listening to before. You were in a different, slightly dangerous and untrustworthy place.” Iggy and The Stooges certainly represented an alternative to the rest of the rock scene during the late 1960s, creating bold new sounds armed with distortion and defiance.
Continuing in his appreciation of Pop’s outfit, Bourdain shared, “Stooges fans were not the cream of society, and I identified with that closely right away, I responded very powerfully to this record [Fun House].” Arguably one of the greatest punk records of all time, the band’s 1970 release seemed to change the chef’s life indefinitely. “It was, for me, the antidote to everything that was going on around me,” he affirmed. “To me, it made The Doors look like self-indulgent hippies. This was the real thing.”
Bourdain’s feeling towards The Stooges were shared by music fans across the United States, who viewed Pop’s anarchic performance style and powerful abrasion as an inspiring alternative to the far-out psychedelia of the hippie age. It was that inspiration which paved the way for the punk rock boom of the mid-1970s, which captivated the New York chef.
