Credit: Anthony Bourdain Instagram
Sat 22 August 2026 21:30, UK
“As a red-blooded American child, I always wanted to be a criminal,” the late chef, author, and TV presenter Anthony Bourdain wrote in his 2007 essay collection, The Nasty Bits: Collected Varietal Cuts, Usable Trim, Scraps, and Bones.
He continued, “My heroes… These were guys who did what they wanted, when they wanted, said whatever the fuck they felt like saying, and, in general, avoided the restrictions of societal convention—attractive qualities to a young kid weaned on the MC5 and The Stooges.”
Bourdain gradually saw his romantic ideals of the criminal life tested when, as a cocaine and heroin addict in the 1980s, he was forced to dabble in low-level criminality himself, and found that it actually required a lot more discipline than all those cowboy and mafia movies had suggested. In the end, he set aside his heroes from the underworld and stuck to the bands that had once provided his imagined life a soundtrack.
Despite his New York City roots, it was the dangerous Detroit sound that had the biggest impact on him. The feral and ferocious music of the MC5 and Iggy and The Stooges were already foundational pieces of his teenage record collection when, in 1973, a 17-year-old Bourdain was able to flag down tickets to a rather unique New Year’s Eve gig in Greenwich Village.
As he recalled in a 2010 interview with the CBC’s George Stroumboulopoulos, the show would go down as the “best concert I ever attended: Iggy and the Stooges at the Paramount Theatre, 1973, with Blue Öyster Cult, Teenage Lust, and a little band called Kiss; they were the bottom act!”
Bourdain misremembered the name of the venue; the show in question actually took place at the Academy of Music on 14th Street and Third Avenue, and the Stooges weren’t the headliners either, that was Blue Öyster Cult.
Credit: Eric Meola / Columbia Records
The details of this rather star-studded concert bill were otherwise correct, however, as the ascending BÖC, still a few years away from ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’, joined forces with a nearly spent Stooges and a couple brand new NYC glam outfits in the form of Teenage Lust (who were named after an MC5 song) and the fully costumed Kiss, playing one of their first major shows.
If the chef and his friends had gotten there early that night, they would have seen Kiss trying out what would become their familiar blend of standard blues-rock riffs and pyrotechnic effects. As a reviewer for Melody Maker, Chris Charlesworth, later reported, the band’s opening set ended with bassist Gene Simmons swallowing some fire, only to let loose a few stray fireballs into the audience, one of which apparently sent a random spectator to the ground; the youngster was seen getting carried out by staff, holding his face in his hands. Seems like a great start to a memorable night!
Melody Maker‘s man on the scene might well have bumped into a young Bourdain at some point inside the 3,000 capacity venue, but the writer didn’t seem to sense he was in the presence of future stars in the crowd that night.
“The audience are of the more bizarre category,” he wrote, “some dressed as flashily as the bands and others resembling down-and-outs seeking a warm retreat for a few hours away from the cold outside. Within two minutes of arriving, a sallow-looking youth has inquired whether I have any acid to sell.”
That probably wasn’t Bourdain, but who knows?
In any case, Charlesworth ultimately found the Stooges’ performance tedious and didn’t even hang around for Blue Öyster Cult, choosing to leave early and check out an even less interesting band, Mountain, at the Felt Forum down the road. Meanwhile, a young Anthony Bourdain was absolutely mesmerised and blown away by seeing Iggy and the Stooges within arm’s reach. Not merely a fan of the punk pioneers, he was something of a convert to their very specific tribe.
Credit: Far Out / Elektra Entertainment
“It said something about you in high school if you suddenly showed up with a Stooges album,” he told Stroumboulopoulos, “It meant you’ve really broken with decent society, all your friends; you know, only like meth heads and car freaks really liked the Stooges back then. But, to me, it just spoke to me… I was not a Loggins and Messina fan, as should come as no surprise.”
Over 40 years after witnessing the greatest gig of his life, Anthony Bourdain got the opportunity to share a room with childhood hero Iggy Pop once again. Only this time, they’d be sitting across from one another for a meal during a 2015 episode of Bourdain’s CNN food programme, Parts Unknown.
“I wouldn’t have thought back then in my dorm room, all those years later, I’d be eating healthy with Iggy Pop,” the host said in a voiceover during the episode, “Barbecue shrimp for the ‘Godfather of Punk’; I get wild and crazy with some roast pork. A little white wine: our only tilt toward the debauches of past lives.”
During their conversation at a restaurant in Miami, Bourdain called Pop a “template for other rock stars” and wondered, after a lifetime full of incredible experiences and adventures, what still “thrills” the former Stooge, to which the frontman responded, “The nicest stuff right now, and this is very embarrassing, but it’s being loved, and actually appreciating the people who are giving that to me”.
Those words feel considerably more profound with the knowledge that just three years later, Anthony Bourdain would take his own life at the age of 61. Iggy Pop, now 79, the madman who’d inspired Bourdain as a kid, ultimately found peace and contentment in his life that one of his biggest fans, sadly, never quite could.
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