Johnny Legend died at the start of the year, and with it, the wrestling world got a little less strange.

Legend’s sister shared the news via his Facebook page on Jan. 2, saying he passed away from “complications of a stroke and heart failure” in his home in Newport, Oregon. He was 77.

Some might wonder—wait, Johnny Legend? The piano guy? He’s dead. And those people would be wrong, but understandably confused.

No, we’re talking Johnny Legend, the “Rasputin of Rockabilly,” the zany, far-out freaknik of the underground who carved his place in the halls of wrestling history by working with Andy “I’m From Hollywood” Kaufman and co-writing “Classy” Freddie Blassie’s iconic novelty song, “Pencil Neck Geek.”

Born Martin Margulies on Oct. 3, 1949, in San Fernando, California, the future Johnny Legend was part of the first generation of  Monster Kids—those demented youths who warped their minds on celluloid horrors, got hopped up on rock n’ roll, and went wild for monsters inside the squared circle.

“I grew up as a fan of different things–horror movies, comic books, rock ‘n’ roll–and wrestling was part of it,” Legend said in a 2007 interview with WWeek. “I came to wrestling in the era between the glory days of the early ’50s and the sort of Hulk Hogan stuff that’s made it totally ridiculous again.”

“I was following wrestling when it was very regional, when it was in its very pure form, and the audiences were these strange people who really believed,” he added. “Freddie Blassie came into town like this huge, Jerry Lee Lewis-like presence and really just changed the lives of all of us who got to see him.”

Legend likely grew up watching WWA (Worldwide Wrestling Associates), the promotion that featured Mil Mascaras, Rikidozan and The Destroyer. It was also where Fred Blassie “ruled the scene,” according to PWI. But Legend’s primary passion–music–took him away from the ring and onto the stage.

“I’ve been kind of a half-assed rock-‘n’-roll star since ’66,” Legend told East Bay Express in 2012. After a few early bands, Legend formed Rollin’ Rock Rebels with “The King of Rockabilly” Ray Campi and Billy Zoom (before he joined punk band X).

In 1975, Legend and Zoom would recruit Jay Phillips (guitar) and Steve Clark (drums) to record two songs for “Classy” Freddie Blassie: “Blassie, King of Men” and the future Dr. Demento staple, “Pencil Neck Geek.”

The song transformed one of Blassie’s trademark insults into a western ditty, a warning against all “Pencil Neck Geeks” out there.

This wouldn’t be Blassie and Legend’s only collaboration: Johnny would produce Blassie’s 1983 album, I Bite The Songs, and write, produce, and co-direct Andy Kaufman’s My Dinner with Andre spoof, My Breakfast with Blassie.

Kaufman and Legend struck up a friendship and working partnership. And they were practically family at one point: Kaufmann dated Johnny’s sister, Lynn Marguiles, whom Courtney Love portrayed in the Kaufman biopic, Man on the Moon (Legend appears in the movie as a wild-haired guru).

Seems that sometime in the late 70s, Johnny Legend linked up with Rhino Records, which first began as a label issuing compilations of novelty songs and lost ‘50s gems. In the 1980s, Rhino became a full entertainment company, giving Legend an outlet for his gonzo film tastes. He made

A producer, writer, and pop-culture historian, he “helped conceptualize and assemble novelty releases that drew on wrestling’s theatrical and musical crossover appeal,” per the PWI obituary. His work also included several Rhino Home Video pro-wrestling compilations, and the 1985 compilation, Wrestling Rocks (which includes both Blassie’s “Pencil Neck Geek” and “King of Men” as well as “Exotic” Adrian Street’s “Imagines What I Could DoTo You,” Jerry “The King” Lawler’s “Trouble,” and Johnny Legend doing his song, “I Like To Hurt People.”)

Legend’s passion culminated in the creation of San Francisco’s Incredibly Strange Wrestling.

Rising from a 1990 show that mixed outlandish films, lucha libre, and live music, ISW was a subversive wrestling Lollapalooza. Though it valued schlock over skill, it had talent in the ring: Konnan would appear at ISW, and a teenage Rey Mysterio Jr. wrestled as “Giant Killer.”

Looking at clips of ISW, we can see its renegade spirit in other promotions like Mystery Wrestling, Hoodslam/Slamtown, Inter-Species Wrestling (another ISW!) and Joey Janella’s Spring Break. You could say that ISW was ahead of its time, but it was perfectly of its time. It was edgy, like late-90s wrestling, with characters like the leather-masked El Cruiser, Mexican Viking (not Vikingo), and the Scientology-themed boy band, 69 Degrees.

“We just did an event with nine bands in two rooms, squeezing the matches in between the bands,” Legend boasted to WWeek. “I can fit so many wrestling matches into the amount of time it takes a typical rock band to set up its gear, you wouldn’t believe it.”

Perhaps that’s the joy of Johnny Legend: he never stopped being that kid who loved wrestling, horror movies, comic books, and rock ‘n’ roll. His IMDb is full of releases of trashy films that would otherwise be lost to time. You can see Legend’s love of these films when he appeared on MTV’s short-lived The Jon Stewart Show, promoting the revival of Spider Baby and Psycho Santa while just being his charming oddball self.

And he never stopped performing. You can see him credited as Martin “Johnny Legend” Margulies on the 1976 compilation, Rollin’ The Rock Vol. 1. He released Johnny Legend and the Rock ‘N’ Roll Combo in ‘79, Bitchin’ in ‘98 and his final album, I Itch, in 2014. All the while, Legend continued to rock, playing shows and festivals like the Ponderosa Stomp.

In his latter years, the “Rockabilly Rasputin” made his home in the Pacific Northwest, playing shows and reportedly working on a three-volume autobiography. I hope it sees the light of day. Johnny Legend was a true wrestling oddity who channeled the magic of this spectacle and sport into a life on the fringes of society.

“I simply stuck with the program, kept the faith, and never wavered,” he told East Bay Express. “I just never actually grew up, or ‘came to my senses,’ or whatever the hell it is that most people do to become ‘adults.’”