HONEY, THAT AIN’T NO ROMANCE — NO. 1 (JANUARY 1976), IGGY POP FAN CLUB FANZINE, FIRST ISSUE

Published by: Europe's Only Iggy Pop Fan Club, Hagenring 21, Braunschweig, West Germany
Year: January 1976
Editor: Harald Inhülsen
Issue: No. 1 — First of three issues
Dimensions: 30.7 × 21 cm
Language: English
Format: Staple-bound, unpaginated, typewritten and photocopied
Condition: Good — showing visible water and liquid marks throughout the paper, consistent with the age and history of the copy. These traces of use and deterioration have become part of its physical character, giving the publication the worn, lived-in quality of an underground artifact and preserving it as a genuine relic of its period.

The first issue of Honey, That Ain't No Romance was published in Braunschweig, West Germany, in January 1976 by Harald Inhülsen, founder and editor of “Europe's Only Iggy Pop Fan Club.” Produced entirely outside the established music press, the publication was typed, photocopied, and circulated as a direct expression of European devotion to Iggy Pop and The Stooges. The magazine would run for only three issues, with the final number appearing in early 1977.

Inhülsen's opening editorial reads less like the introduction to a conventional fan magazine than a declaration of allegiance. Rejecting the prevailing culture of “glitter-zwitter-pipper-garten” and dismissing the idea of an intellectual editorial staff, he states: “we always are better fighters than writers.” The objective is direct: listen to The Stooges, Fun House, and Raw Power; believe that this music can change your life and dreams; and make Iggy Pop known across Europe.

The dedication list provides an extraordinary map of the underground network surrounding The Stooges at the time. James Williamson, Ron and Scott Asheton, The Deviants, Michel Esteban, Lester Bangs, Nick Kent, Brian Hogg, Cyril Jordan, OZ magazine, and Ton Steine Scherben are all acknowledged, placing the publication within a transatlantic and European network of musicians, writers, artists, publishers, and underground cultural figures.

The issue promises photographs of Iggy Pop, The Stooges, and New Order, Ron Asheton's post-Stooges band. Its timing is particularly significant: this was published in January 1976, before punk had fully broken internationally and at a moment when The Stooges' influence was still largely circulating through records, live performance, imported press, and small networks of obsessive listeners.

It also predates one of the most important periods in Iggy Pop's career. Only months later, Iggy would relocate to Berlin with David Bowie, beginning the collaboration that would lead to The Idiot and Lust for Life. Honey, That Ain't No Romance therefore captures Iggy Pop at a crucial threshold — after The Stooges, but before his transformation into the international figure he would become.

As the first of only three issues, this publication is an exceptionally early document of organized Iggy Pop fandom in Europe. Its importance lies not only in its scarcity, but in the immediacy of its production: a homemade, typewritten fan publication created while the mythology surrounding Iggy and The Stooges was still being formed. It documents the moment when a small group of European devotees were actively building an audience around an artist who had not yet entered the mainstream.

The physical condition further reinforces its character as an underground artifact. The water and liquid marks across the paper are visible traces of the copy's passage through time rather than later damage imposed on an otherwise pristine object. Together with its typewritten pages, photocopied construction, and fragile original binding, they preserve the material evidence of a publication that was made to circulate rather than to survive as a collectible.

A remarkable first issue and an important primary document in the history of Iggy Pop fandom, The Stooges, and the European underground music press of the mid-1970s.