How a punk legend had his life changed by musicals

Mon 16 June 2025 23:00, UK

As much as I love both of them, you need to look very closely indeed to find any link at all between the worlds of punk rock and musical theatre. On the surface, they’re two almost entirely separate worlds that don’t seem like they’d have or even want much to do with each other. At their core, though, both of them are (or at least should be) safe havens for outcasts and misfits to express themselves and feel like they have a support network not possible anywhere else.

Perhaps that was why Fat Mike, NOFX frontman and certified punk rock legend, talked about two musical theatre albums in an interview with Spin about the five albums that changed his life. After all, the man born Michael Burkett in Newton, Massachusetts, has always had a much broader vision of what punk rock is than simple three-chord songs played as loud and as fast as possible.

As much as it’s had him branded a sell-out at best and a grifter at worst by the more closed-minded members of his community, the man has always tried to push what punk rock is capable of achieving. He wasn’t content with fronting NOFX, a band that has a very real shout at being the most legitimate punk band to ever get close to mainstream success. He wanted to push the boat out to strange new places, then push it a little further.

I’m not talking about his work in Fat Wreck Chords either, though setting up one of the most famous indie labels in the world is an achievement in and of itself. Mike has also made music as his deeply distressing side project Cokie the Clown, far more a work of experimental theatre of cruelty than any music project. He also has his own musical project, Home Street Home, that was set to open in New York before Covid-19 happened.

What musicals inspired a punk rocker like Fat Mike?

This is clearly a man with a sweeping creative vision, and it makes sense when you see the two musicals that changed his life. One time when he was a kid, and then, long after NOFX became arguably the biggest cult band in the world. Neither of them are what you would call “traditional musicals”. No fleets of high-kicking showgirls or belted 11 o’clock numbers to be found here. No, fittingly, the two musicals that Fat Mike gravitated towards are the two best examples of the fusion between rock ‘n’ roll and musical theatre.

The first is Richard O’Brien’s masterpiece The Rocky Horror Picture Show. With Mike being a devotee of everything from high energy rock ‘n’ roll to BDSM, it would be truly baffling if he hadn’t done ‘The Time Warp’ again and again and again. In the article, he says the show was “The first cassette I ever owned, but I didn’t buy it. When I was eight years old, I had the Z Channel on my TV. They would play Rocky Horror after 22:00. So, I took my cassette recorder and recorded it from the TV. I listened to it for years, and I still listen to it all the time.”

The other is a more modern phenomenon, and one that led directly to Mike writing and producing Home Street Home. Stephen Trask and John Cameron Mitchell’s Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Of the show, Mike says, “I listen to this album pretty much after every show. I’ve seen the musical four times, and it makes me cry every time. John Cameron Mitchell has become a good friend, too!”

A reminder that musical theatre is a medium, not a genre. If the most famous examples of it don’t appeal, then just look a little deeper. There’s a whole world of inspirational work waiting for you, even if you’re the man who made Punk in Drublic.

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