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The True Godfathers Of Punk: Part 9 - Of Course We Had His Music In The Ear Before…Iggy
There have been quite a few artists, or at least their publicists, claiming to have had some sort of influence on the punk movement of the 70s, hence the phrase that’s become a cliché and keyword, Godfather Of Punk.
However, there was (and is) a 60s-70s artist who didn’t need a publicist or a rock critic to proclaim him as a Punk forefather. In fact, if you were walking around the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco early before the show and between acts, the music they played over the PA system rarely included rock acts from the 60s and 70s. San Francisco was a city that had rock legends like the Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Grateful Dead and others, none of whom were played over the PA along with all the rising stars of the first wave of Punk.
I remember the stage manager who was, I guess you could call him a wiseass tough rock and roller type. But when this 60s legend’s music came over the PA system, he immediately became respectful as if hearing the word of God and would shout “I f——-g Love Iggy Pop.”
Iggy Pop was already influential from his work with the Stooges, whose music often came over the house music system. In 1977, he came out with his second solo album in collaboration with David Bowie, and not only produced one of the greatest singles of any genre of that decade but an album that was the perfect link between the Stooges’ “Fun House,” punk and what became “Post Punk” (the more melodic branch aside from Public Image).
The album wasn’t necessarily seen that way at the time, among those I talked with about the music in 1977, it was also seen as an album with two fantastic singles with a lot of stuff that was hard to categorize, though those who liked XTC, Wire and later period David Bowie would’ve found it familiar territory.
When one talks about the album, it has a title cut, “Lust For Life,” that opens with the loudest pounding drum beat since “Wipe Out” and was so powerful that Iggy didn’t come with the vocal in right away; like the rest of us, he just rode that drum for a while, enjoying the groove that he knew was powering a punk masterpiece.
I remember at the time there were some people who really would’ve preferred that he come out with another Stooges type album but he had been collaborating with David Bowie for a while, and it was inevitable that Bowie was going to, perhaps not guide him so much as impress upon him that as a solo artist, he had the room to explore a different things, and he certainly did.
The voice that growled “ No Fun,” turned out to also be one that could sing the Bowie’ish-Kinks “Dead End Street” influenced “The Passenger,” and on the rest of the cuts, a punk, art rock and post punk tour de force that even 50 years down the line still amazes.
I’m not sure how Iggy stood in the general rock scene in 1977. He was certainly respected, but I’m not sure how big a force he may have been to the then established 60s icons and the 70s wave of metal artists. However, in 1977 in that punk club in San Francisco and in similar clubs elsewhere around the world, Iggy stood pretty tall and we all were playing music under that man’s very big shadow and listening to yet another of his albums that was way ahead of us.
Al Handa
July 22, 2026
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