Punk Rock Has Michigan Roots — Meet the MC5 and the Stooges

Before anyone called it “punk,” two Michigan bands were already playing it: louder, faster, and rawer than almost anything on the radio. Today they’re often called the grandfathers of punk rock.

The first was the MC5 — short for Motor City Five — out of the Detroit area. They were the house band at the Grande Ballroom and made their name with ferocious, high-energy shows and a scorching live debut album recorded there in 1968.

The second was the Stooges, formed in Ann Arbor in 1967. The band was built around brothers Ron and Scott Asheton, bassist Dave Alexander, and a wild young frontman named James Osterberg — who’d picked up the nickname “Iggy” from his earlier band, the Iguanas, and became known to the world as Iggy Pop. The Stooges’ early records didn’t sell much at the time, but their primal sound and Iggy’s unhinged, confrontational performances became the stuff of legend.

What makes these two bands so important is what came after them. Their stripped-down, full-throttle attack pointed straight toward the punk explosion of the 1970s. The Sex Pistols covered a Stooges song; the Ramones and countless others took inspiration from them. Critics at the time often didn’t know what to make of either band, but musicians did — and the influence kept growing for decades.

So when you hear punk’s three-chord roar anywhere in the world, part of its DNA was forged in Detroit and Ann Arbor.