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When Belinda Carlisle scored a number one single in the UK and US in 1987 with Heaven Is A Place On Earth the vast majority of those who bought her record had no idea that, a decade earlier she was a member of one of America’s most infamous and influential punk rock bands. Although she never recorded or performed with the group, Carlisle – using the pseudonym Dottie Danger – was an original member of LA punks the Germs, playing drums alongside her best friend Teresa Ryan (aka Lorna Doom), vocalist Paul Beahm (aka Darby Crash) and guitarist Georg Albert Ruthenberg (aka future Nirvana/Foo Fighters guitarist Pat Smear).
For the teenage Belinda Carlisle, Iggy and The Stooges’ 1973 album Raw Power was the gateway into punk rock.
“I was in high school, and music at that time on the radio was kind of laid-back California, like Seals and Crofts, and the Eagles and The Doobie Brothers, things that I didn’t really appreciate at the time but I appreciate now,” the singer told ASX TV’s Stranded programme. “So when I saw that cover, I was like, Oh my god! It was horrifying and beautiful at the same time. I bought the album because of the artwork and then I listened to it, and was turned on to a completely different type of music that I really had no idea existed, because it wasn’t being played on the radio. If it wasn’t for Iggy I don’t know if I’d be doing what I do, because he introduced me to a whole new genre of music.”
Carlisle went into further detail about her love for Raw Power in another interview.
“Time stopped as I lifted the album from the bin and stared at the cover, a photo of a pale, painfully thin, shirtless guy staring off into the distance,” she said. “He was hanging onto a standup microphone as if it was preventing him from falling over. The effect was ghoulish, dangerous, frightening, and about a thousand other things all at the same time. I thought, What is this?
“Someone brought the album to art class and I got to hear Gimme Danger, Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell, Penetration, Search and Destroy, and Death Trip. I looked around and saw that most of the other kids in class were reacting like me: grinning as the raw, sludgy loud music shook the floor, the walls, our desks, our chairs, and our brains.”
On the other side of the Atlantic, future Smiths’ guitarist Johnny Marr also had his life changed by Raw Power.
“The cover alone made me want to buy the record,” he told The Quietus in 2015.
“It was an opening into a world of rock & roll, sleaze, sexuality, drugs, violence and danger. That’s a hard combination to beat.
“When you inevitably are asked about your favourite record, you can scratch your head and go through a list, because your taste changes from year-to-year or through different periods of your life. However, I have always been able to say that Raw Power is my favourite from the moment I first heard it, and I don’t think it has been equalled since.”
