Copyright © 2016 by John Nommensen and Tom DeSavia All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address Da Capo Press, 44 Farnsworth Street, 3rd Floor, Boston, MA 02210. Designed by Trish Wilkinson Set in 11.25-point Giovanni by The Perseus Books Group Cataloging-in-Publication data for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN: 978-0-306-82409-8 (e-book) Published by Da Capo Press A Member of the Perseus Books Group www.dacapopress.com Da Capo Press books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the U.S. by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail [emailprotected]. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedicated to all the fearless misfits who made it through, those who didn’t, and to X bandmates DJ, Billy & most of all Exene. —John Doe
I’d like to dedicate this book to my father/best friend, who let me waste all my money on records and put up with the noise that ensued in the hopes that one day I’d figure out how to make a living from it. Also, my eternal thanks go to X, for changing everything my fifteen-year-old self thought he knew about art. I remain eternally grateful to Billy, DJ, Exene, and John. —Tom DeSavia
Certainly more stories will be told about this era. To the best of our abilities, we tried to tell what we know & what we can remember. It’s likely that people & events have been left out, but that will be someone else’s story. The different perspectives & voices here reflect the collaborative, adventurous spirit that defined the early punk-rock scene in Los Angeles. We couldn’t have & didn’t want to do it alone. —John Doe Richmond, Calif.
Contents Foreword
by Billie Joe Armstrong
Preface: Post-Apocalyptic Clowns
by Tom DeSavia
CH 1 Something’s Happening Here CH 2 A Seamless Race
by John Doe
by Exene Cervenka
CH 3 . . . a hundred lives are shoved inside CH 4 The Canterbury Tales
by Jane Wiedlin
CH 5 A Nonstop Crazy Party CH 6 Murphy Beds
by John Doe
by Pleasant Gehman
by John Doe
CH 7 You Better Shut Up and Listen CH 8 Acid, Meet Catholicism CH 9 Take My Picture . . .
by Chris Morris
by Tom DeSavia
by Tom DeSavia
CH 10 So Young & Beautiful
by John Doe
CH 11 Punk-Rock Teenage Heaven CH 12 Starry Nights in East LA
by Robert Lopez aka El Vez
by Covarrubias/DeSavia
CH 13 Go West, Go West, Go West
by John Doe
CH 14 The Stucco-Coated Killing Field CH 15 When It Came to Drugs
by John Doe
CH 16 Punk as a Young Adult
by Chris D.
CH 17 Stuff Gets Twisted Up
by Henry Rollins
by Mike Watt
CH 18 Unvarnished, Detailed, West Coast CH 19 The Almighty Song
by Charlotte Caffey
CH 20 Sunglasses & Cool Cars CH 21
by John Doe
by John Doe
Descent
by Jack Grisham
CH 22 No Slow Songs Tonight: 1979–1982
by Dave Alvin
CH 23 How to Build a New World Then Tear It Down Kristine McKenna
CH 24 My Only Friend, The End Acknowledgments About the Authors Permissions Index
by John Doe
by
Foreword by Billie Joe Armstrong
Green Day finally made it to Los Angeles for a gig in 1990. We were roughly ten years too late for a scene that spawned some of the best bands ever. We played the godawful Coconut Teaszer on Sunset Boulevard. We were all under twenty-one, so we weren’t allowed inside the club. We waited our turn outside, sandwiched in between a strange lineup of bands that were trying to get signed to a major label. The stage wrangler hauled us in, and we played our twenty-minute set on borrowed gear. It was a good set, and people were genuinely into it. But before we got a chance to bask in the glory, we were asked to leave. And that was my first impression of Los Angeles. I sat outside on the curb kinda sad. I wondered if maybe Exene and John would walk by and bum a smoke off me. Or just maybe Leonard and Stan Lee possibly caught our set. Or by some weird chance Jane Wiedlin would invite me to a party at the Canterbury . . . NOPE. None of these things happened. But what DID happen is that their music made its way to the painfully small town I came from in Northern California. And it made me want to slam dance my way out of it. Finding like-minded weirdos at the Gilman Street scene in Berkeley who also had dreams of “almost” hanging out with Darby Crash and the Light Bulb Kids in the Decline of Western Civilization. However, “almost” isn’t good enough. You have to take whatever spirit is left and make it your own. History only happens for a second, and you have to do everything you can in that moment. Thank god for Alice Bag. Good lord! And Pat Smear, for that matter. The thing that makes these people brilliant is the fact that the music and ideas they created are still relevant today. Songs like “Los Angeles,” “We Got the Neutron Bomb,” and “Lexicon Devil” don’t have expiration dates. And that’s at a time when the entire decade of the eighties WAS a giant expiration date. These are the kids before the kids. And then there are the kids after that. And so on. I’m not much of a kid anymore, but I still got all these songs stuck in my head.
So even if the Coconut Teaszer wasn’t exactly the Masque, I still had all that graffiti in my brain. Imagination can take you a long way. Roughly, Billie Joe Armstrong
Preface Post-Apocalyptic Clowns by Tom DeSavia
I wasn’t there, but it was about to change my life. Living in the suburbs outside of Los Angeles, punk rock was simply the scary legend that came from the big, dirty metropolis. Punk itself was kind of a pop-culture mythology proven to exist only by the desolate outsider occasionally spotted wandering our streets, causing the community to collectively clutch their pearls and pray they were just passing through. In our minds these punks shared space only with the homeless and war vets, except they scared us more because it was obviously a rebellious choice they had made to live this way. Punk was dangerous, a gateway drug to a dark, violent world. This wasn’t teenage rebellion—this was alarming, ugly, and threatening. The first time I became aware of punk rock was as a lad in 1976. There was TV coverage of the Sex Pistols in America—the only footage I recall was showing the audience spitting on this hideous band of post-apocalyptic clowns. The only reason I even recall it was because of the distaste it drew from my parents, and I couldn’t have agreed with them more. It was disgusting, obviously immoral, and seemingly devoid of all melody. Also, they seemed angry. As did the crowd. It was shocking on all levels; the newscasters reporting enthusiastically agreed. I was young enough to be intimidated by the images that came over the local news channel that day but just becoming old enough to begin to sort of learn what rebellion meant. Those images stuck with me strong . . . and I always associated them with my folks being so offended by this. Perhaps that was why I needed to find out more. More images started to creep in, mostly in the pages of the rock magazines I began to devour religiously: Circus, Creem, even Rolling Stone. I wasn’t even ten years old, but I was just starting to realize the world was a real f*cked-up place. Saigon fell in 1975, ending the Vietnam War. Hippies were turning into cultists and murderers. This Nixon guy seemed to have f*cked up a lot of sh*t. Basically it seemed folks were prepping for the arrival of four horsem*n. In only a few short years the hippies became unflinching heartless businessmen, greed was good, and Reagan would introduce Jesus Christ into the Republican Party. Combine with that pop radio so smooth that flute solos were replacing guitars, and you had a larger sect of the
American mainstream ready to accept punk rock in their hearts, just as our compatriots on the other side of the pond had been doing for a few years. Looking back on that time, I suppose the hippies and the punks had more in common than they would have chosen to believe, especially back then: political rebellion, the rise of counterculture activism, economic uncertainty, and needing art that spoke to these and other issues in an unflinching way. As the 1970s were starting to come to a close, suddenly the radio really began to sound different: songs by bands like The Clash, The Pretenders, Blondie, and Devo were creeping into our bedrooms, some even going on to become pop hits. I remember hearing DJs on rock stations make fun of punk as they were obviously forced to play some of the bigger tunes due to listener demand. Devo’s “Whip It” and the Vapors’ “Turning Japanese” were straight-up pop-radio smashes, so was Blondie’s discoish/new-wave hybrid “Heart of Glass,” which soon led me backward to discover the band’s less radio-friendly tunes, like the alarming “Rip Her to Shreds.” Nick Lowe’s power-pop masterpiece “Cruel to Be Kind” single-handedly enabled me to unearth the whole Stiff Records culture. I had discovered a treasure map with so many roads to follow, and I was equally overwhelmed, enthralled, and confused. This Reagan guy had arrived in office and was suddenly the target of and inspiration for a whole wave of US punk anarchy. Politically charged bands and songs began to creep into our consciousness, with not-so-subtle Reagan Youth, the UK’s Crass and The Subhumans, and, of course, the West Coast’s own Dead Kennedys and Avengers, who took fierce and unapologetic aim at both political figures and policies with such brutal imagery (both lyrical and visual) that they would make more melodic activists like The Clash and the Sex Pistols blush. At the same time, ’70s arena rock was making its evolution into what would become labeled, accurately, “corporate rock.” And lines in the sand were officially drawn. You picked a team: you liked Journey or you liked Black Flag. Never both. Not ever. The punk kids and the heavy-metal kids did not play nicely, though as a result of this postmodern Montague/Capulet war, I never saw Motörhead, arguably a great punk band, as clad in leather as they may have been. I’m not sad I never saw Journey. f*ck them. It was around that time that friends led me to a Sunday night show on KROQ by the most nontraditional DJ I had ever heard, Rodney Bingenheimer. At first I found both his unconventional voice and on-air awkwardness annoying, but after a while his fan-boy exuberance became not only endearing but vital. And then there was the music: I was hearing hefty doses of bands called The Ramones and The Runaways and that band from the news a couple of years back, the Sex Pistols. There was bad and good—some were novelty records, some were plain ol’ weird, and some seemed brilliant. I listened intensely with the headphones on . . . it was my secret. The folks would be worried if
they knew what I was listening to, I knew that. I liked that. That year I made bona fide punk-rock friends. They were my age, but they had all these records by bands with names like The Flesh Eaters, Christian Death, the Circle Jerks, and Agent Orange. The records were harsher than what I was used to, and the accompanying art was often shocking. They didn’t get along with their parents that well, so while trying to listen to these records in darkened bedrooms after school, the tunes were regularly drowned out by the sounds of mothers and fathers and kids screaming at each other. This was the uncomfortable compromise that came with hearing new music then—and it became normal in its own weird way. These were the misfits, I guess, and they had the best and most interesting record collections. These were the kids who told their folks to f*ck off and the parents just walked away. What kind of world was this? Another constant in the suburbs was the local paper, the Los Angeles Times. Every Sunday featured a pullout section called Calendar, which provided a fantasy into a world of clubs that I could only dream of—I wondered what these places looked like inside. In it were also reviews filled with words I didn’t understand, so I usually just liked to stare at the album covers that accompanied them and fantasize about having them in my collection. It was about that time when there was a lot of press about this band called X. I had heard Rodney play them before, and once I got past jarring harmonies unlike anything I had ever heard, I decided I really liked them. I saved up my money and bought their album Wild Gift at the local Music Plus after I had heard “We’re Desperate” and “The Once Over Twice” at a friend’s house. I didn’t really understand what they were singing about, but I got lost in the words anyway. And I couldn’t stop listening. I played it every day. In 1981 or 1982 I discovered this record store in the San Fernando Valley called Blue Meanie. It was a great import and alternative record shop specializing in punk, metal, and new wave. I would save up all my money to spend there, and when I went, I would literally stay for hours . . . getting dropped off to go through every record in the store. I spent so much time at the store that I soon befriended two of the clerks there, two mods who were about my age named Lance and Jeff. It was a great, unique store where I learned of The Damned, The Jam, and even classic soul. It was also the store where those clerks led me into the living world of punk rock. I already knew some of the counterculture stuff that I liked: the aforementioned Stiff Records canon and a lot of the British new wave and punk that I was really starting to dig. Soon enough I was hanging out with Lance and Jeff outside of the store and listening to records at their homes, but this time we had cigarettes and beer and weed. Holy sh*t. This was teenage rebellion, and I was really starting to get that it had a soundtrack. The words were starting to make more sense. I was a kid from a slightly lower-middle-class family living in an apartment in an affluent suburb—I wasn’t exactly desperate, but now
I longed to be. It was then, during my fifteenth year, when my new mod pals took me to my first punk-rock show. When we walked into the club we walked into a nightmare: everyone there looked like they belonged—I stood out. I didn’t have the right haircut or clothes. Everyone looked pissed off or drunk or both. I was way out of my element and wasn’t happy about it. And I was scared. Full-on I’m-gonna-crap-my-pants scared. I was going to be killed here, or at least have the sh*t beat out of me. I still remember the argyle sweater I was wearing and how it looked among the ripped T-shirts and mohawks. I found a spot in the very back of the club and pushed myself so hard into that wall that I felt I could have gone through it—and it would have been a welcome escape from this unspeakable land of Oz that I wandered into. All the records I had listened to and all the photos I had stared at, and I still wasn’t prepared for this world. Not even a little bit. We were there to see X. I had been so excited to finally see this band I loved, but I had envisioned something different. I envisioned seats and appropriately timed applause, and probably a clean snack bar. Also we had arrived to the show in a “borrowed” car and ingested a good amount of cheap beer and San Fernando Valley weed, making the evening all the more surreal. I quietly prayed to myself that if I made it out alive, I would not put myself in this situation again—in the same way a kid bargains with God to get them through a night of alcohol poisoning: survive and you’ll never touch the sauce again. But at some point during that gig—once the sensory overload of the environment slightly subsided—the music began to come into focus and enveloped me whole. I knew everything would be different after that, whether I liked it or not. I had lost my virginity, innocence gone. Good riddance. Through the thunderous white noise of the crowd the music began to come into focus. Everything else vanished and I sat there transfixed. Like anyone who has ever seen X perform, I was completely captivated by Exene and John. She was gripping the mic with both hands, leaning in almost menacingly and defiantly toward the adrenalinefilled crowd, the two of them soundtracking the scene unfolding before me perfectly with high-decibel poetry and a brash dual lead vocal like I’d never heard: I play too hard when I ought to go to sleep They pick on me ’cause I really got the beat Some people give me the creeps Song after song, I was getting dragged in deeper. Not everything was sounding like the albums—songs were faster, louder, and Exene’s vocals would often trail off into undecipherable guttural growls. John Doe and DJ Bonebrake played like no rhythm section I’d seen before or since, and of course, Billy Zoom, poised—almost motionless
among the chaos—eerily grinning like I’d seen in dozens of photos. Still, all these years later, if I close my eyes, I can recall every bit of the sensory overload of that night: the smell of stale cigarettes and sweat, the way my face flushed with panic and humiliation at the stares I knew I was getting, and the eventual exhilaration at the feeling that I had discovered a new world that was mine, that was dangerous and challenging, that would give me a new identity. It wasn’t exactly acceptance—I didn’t need acceptance—it was more a feeling that challenged everything I thought I knew. I had gone through the mirror. I liked it. Now I felt indoctrinated into a world where The Flesh Eaters’ Chris D. scared the sh*t out of me way more than an Ozzy Osbourne ever could. It was wonderful. We had known of the legend of the clubs that had already closed; the Masque, Hong Kong Café, and the Starwood were the stuff of punk-rock legend to us. We would endlessly fantasize out loud about how we wished we had been able to experience them. But venues still remained for us: in the form of the Whisky a Go Go, the Cathay de Grande, the Anti-Club, the 818’s own Country Club, bigger settings like the Santa Monica Civic, downtown LA’s Olympic Auditorium, and a host of other fly-by-night—and I’m guessing hardly legal—rooms that would host bands like The Gun Club, Meat Puppets, The Cramps, The Vandals, Social Distortion, The Plugz, 45 Grave, Agent Orange, T.S.O.L., the Circle Jerks, Wasted Youth, D.I., Fear, Tex and the Horse-heads, and literally countless others. I wasn’t there for the birth, but I was there for the evolution. When members of X, The Blasters, and The Red Devils formed The Knitters and made it okay for us to like real country music. When bands like Lone Justice, The Beat Farmers, Long Ryders, Rank and File, Green on Red, and Blood on the Saddle challenged our thoughts on “modern rock” and brought influences from both punk and the world of roots music. When The Plugz and Los Lobos opened our eyes to a Chicano artistic subculture that we, as suburban white kids, were painfully unaware existed. The treasure map was expanding, and so was our knowledge of the world that came before punk: the worlds of Eddie Cochran, Merle Haggard, Muddy Waters, Ritchie Valens, Gram Parsons, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Motown, Stax and Chess Records, and so many more. That’s how punk rock changed my life. I know that’s how punk rock changed a lot of folks I know, and an army of those I’ll never meet. It’s an education and lifestyle we always keep with us. And those early bands, completely unbeknownst to them, became our teachers, role models, and influencers. In 1996 I went to work as an A&R man at Elektra Records, once the home of my favorite punk-rock band. I was hired by the legendary Seymour Stein, arguably one of the most important architects of bringing punk rock to the mainstream. During my
interview process I pitched the idea of an X anthology—the company bit. I slowly reached out to the band, one by one, and we assembled what would become Beyond and Back: The X Anthology, a two-disc career retrospective tracing back to the band’s roots. It was amazing fun to put together . . . and even resulted in a Tower Records autograph-signing appearance that would reunite the four original band members together for the first time in over ten years, spurring the second wave of the band’s existence. During the process of assembling the compilation, somewhere between going through a million old sh*tty cassette tapes, John Doe became my pal. As I began to chat with John I would very surreptitiously dig for stories from the scene, soon discovering that a lot of what I thought I knew from those early days of LA punk was wrong. There had been no real documentation from that time, save for some salvaged fanzines, films like Penelope Spheeris’s groundbreaking The Decline of Western Civilization and Urgh: A Music War, some brilliant writing by the likes of Chris Morris in the sort-ofunderground LA Reader, and the mainstream press reviews in the Los Angeles Times. And, of course, W. T. Morgan’s X documentary, The Unheard Music. To unapologetically generalize history: the New York punk-rock scene was born from the city’s art scene and community, while London’s influence came from both reggae and the UK invasion of the New York punk scene. Both landscapes produced stars, widely documented and deservedly securing their place and stories forever in history. At the same time it was evident that there was very little being said about the LA scene; it was becoming a footnote—if not overlooked entirely—in articles and documentaries chronicling the rise of punk rock. With very little documentation of that era easily accessible, it seemed it was also falling to revisionist history. LA punk was born from rock ‘n’ roll, from country and blues and Latin music, the true next step—and one of the last steps—in the evolution of rock ‘n’ roll music. Although legends were born from this scene, there were very few stars and really no celebrities. This is an attempt to tell the story. When John and I first spoke of writing this book, I told him I thought it was important for the true story of LA punk rock to be told. He replied that everyone in the scene probably had their own truth to tell. He would be interested in that story, regardless of whether it matched his own memory. So here it is —the many true stories from a mostly undocumented era in cultural history. This book is about that time. The time before the major label deals and the mainstream press. This is about the birth of the true second coming of rock ‘n’ roll—a story most haven’t heard, told from the voices of those who were there.
CHAPTER 1
Something’s Happening Here by John Doe
It could’ve been 10 p.m. in July in a painted, plywood hallway upstairs at the Whisky a Go Go. There was a corner w/ red & black linoleum squares on the floor. This corner was at one end of another short hall & staircase that led down to the stage. I stood there breathing short breaths waiting for the rest of X to join me before we’d walk down those stairs. I imagined Jim Morrison & Ray Manzarek or Otis Redding or Arthur Lee or Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell standing on the very same spot, waiting for the rest of the world to catch up to them. It wasn’t the first time I’d been here & this had become a kind of ritual. But it was the first time in 1978 that the show was sold out & the Whisky added another. This was a place where you knew that something was definitely happening, that you were definitely headed somewhere. I would look down at my shoes and those red & black squares and think that we were part of something, like others had been part of something else. Where the people in their audience had known something that other people did not & were about to see something the rest of the world might see soon. When we walked down those stairs, I knew it would go from zero to a hundred in a blink, cymbals would crash & DJ Bonebrake would hit his drums so hard that he’d probably knock something over or snap a hi-hat pedal in two. I might pull the cord out of my guitar & stop the giant, rumbling bass. And we would forget about the asshole soundman who said we were too loud. After all the nights of rehearsals & learning songs, bad equipment at the Masque & other DIY shows, this would be louder than hell & there would be sounds hurtling past & swirling around us all & somewhere amidst that mayhem, there would be a moment when everything would slow down & I would see things slo-mo. I’d catch someone’s face distorted by a shoulder or the palm of another’s hand. Or Exene’s hair would rise into a fan as she flipped it into or out of her face. I would glimpse her dark red lips making wonderful sounds that I knew were the only sound that could be made at that moment. She would tell the truth to all these people who knew she would tell the truth. There would be flashing lights & sharp, piercing guitar notes & monstrous chords & Billy would look like he was straddling a
wide creek w/ a smile that was genuine & scary & somewhat practiced because a fan of his rockabilly band had said he looked like he wasn’t having fun while he played. I knew Exene & I would bounce around the stage unhinged, but Billy would stay still, play so fast & true & smile & wink at girls. There would be people’s faces upturned to the lights & we would recognize over half of those faces & they knew where & about who the songs had been written. There would be sweat and DJ would have no shirt on. He would shine w/ the power of his driving hands & arms & legs & his eyes would roll back in his head & his chin would tilt upward and sometimes steam would rise from his back. And we knew then that we were unstoppable & that we had power. And that something was definitely happening here. There had been so many other nights when the roles were reversed and Exene & I were in the audience seeing something—a band?—that was not fully formed but breaking something to pieces, getting to the bottom of some core. When The Screamers stretched heavy, black plastic across the entire front of the stage to obscure all that lay behind, only to slit it open w/ a knife & begin their jagged, distorted performance, it didn’t matter what the sounds were, whether they were good or smart or accomplished. It didn’t matter if they were pretty or polished. They had an edge & were cool & probably dangerous. You could just tell. And it was happening now, right now, in front of your face & no one had seen this before. Tomata du Plenty could’ve been wearing a straightjacket, could’ve escaped from the asylum, no one knew, but our imagination allowed anything to be possible—the wilder the better. It throbbed & pulsed & was part music, part theater & all live experience. No one cared whether they could buy a record later. No one cared to have a souvenir T-shirt. The band, any band, dropped complete onto this stage, right now & we may never see them again after this night was over. Rik L Rik from F-Word or John Denney from The Weirdos both seemed to move like they were dodging imaginary bullets, swerving & bending, choking the mic stand as their eyes bugged out of their heads. They had practiced & were prepared to meet whatever was thrown, sometimes literally, at them, but there was nothing calculated in what they did. The bands pounded & roared & droned & fell down & broke sh*t & got too high to play right, but it was all happening right there in front of our eyes.
CHAPTER 2
A Seamless Race by Exene Cervenka
1976 was the bicentennial of the United States of America. Two hundred years of red, white, and blue. Fireworks and celebration. Meanwhile the carnage of a generation of young people drafted or volunteered into the Vietnam War had just ended. The hippies had won, or so it seemed. But Jim, Jimi, and Janis were among the dead, victims of nascent rock stardom, drugs, or maybe something much more sinister. FM radio, reeling from the blow of losing the most important voices of that generation, made the conscious choice to hold on tight to the memories and the music. Classic Rock was born. And mixed into that were The Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, Fleetwood Mac, Frampton, Steely Dan, David Bowie—and disco. Everything was quieting down. Los Angeles nestled its soft rockers on fluffy pillows of white cocaine, upon which their dreams of fame came true. Walking up the hills of West Hollywood side streets to get to Sunset and Crescent Heights, I would see real limousines probably headed to the Record Plant, where reels of tape were spun into multimillion-selling LPs. Limos full of pretty groupies and skinny rock stars, dressed in velvet and wrapped in scarves. Snorting blow. Drinking expensive champagne. But I never wanted to be them. Not the groupie nor the rock star. I thought they were excessive, alien, obsolete, funny. It felt like The Doors were light years behind us. I loved them; my first realization that music was life-changing, soul-stirring, and cosmic came when I was 12. I had just heard the long version of “Light My Fire” on the car radio. But only 7 years later, after their mystical Whisky a Go Go days—I was only 20 then—some of the younger kids (teens) in the LA scene didn’t have as much knowledge about hippies and the ’60s music and culture. These kids grew up with KISS and what their brothers might have played, usually going back to metal, but not rockabilly, blues, or Little Richard. But we all learned from each other. Bits and pieces of Brit pop, glam, country, old music, new music, old cars, East LA sugar skulls and lowriders, Hells Angels with their choppers lined up on the Sunset Strip—it was a sexy, scary thrill to walk the gauntlet of all those biker eyes.
We thought we were doing something new and revolutionary, but really we were handed the torch, and it was a seamless race from jazz, to poetry, to be-ins, to love-ins, to beatniks, to hippies, to protesters, to punk. Not a lot of time passed, considering that 200 years of history—it was maybe 25 years’ time. But in so many ways we punks were different. We were angry—or pretended to be —to ward off the jocks and mockers. We were flip and funny, bratty and aloof, scared and brave. We were the kind of fearless that comes from not knowing how dangerous what we were doing really was. San Francisco had a commie, loving side. New York had the dark side, the no-wave scene. I thought The Ramones were just as dark as James Chance with their pale skin, skinny leathers, and a kind of West Side Story Jets legacy. Los Angeles had the wild, reckless humor, drugs, and beer yet close-knit community side covered. We were fun. We wanted the world to revolve around us. I had picked the right city to land in when I made my escape from Tallahassee, Florida. I thought punk was gonna end the corporate takeover of America’s rock ‘n’ roll, our real music, and we would never have to give in to the dumbing-down, mass-minded crap of the now-ruined radio. The sunny afternoons on Sunset Boulevard—walking past Schwab’s drugstore, where you could sit at the counter, order a co*ke, and sip the lie that said that Veronica Lake (maybe it was Lana Turner) was discovered right here—would turn into nights traipsing up Hollywood Boulevard to the Masque basem*nt, where we would make our descent into the pitch black of a new light. When X played there, or at a rented hall, or even the Whisky or Starwood, I loved the blur between band and crowd, taking my turn jumping around in the mix of friends and weirdos then back to the band. I loved floating on a small sea of people who knew we weren’t rock stars or even fans; we were all the same freedom-loving rebels, doing our job as young people do— changing and destroying, creating and rebuilding culture. We were in a vortex, a vacuum, an underground scene so secret and so beautiful, it was hard to believe it was happening. I could wear my same Florida thrift-store dresses and antique jewelry and vintage shoes with ripped-up stockings or black straight-leg jeans that I would take in by hand ’cause all I could find in stores were flares and bell bottoms. We didn’t go to malls or grocery stores or school. We didn’t have to. Rent was cheap, 3 or 4 hundred bucks split 2 or 3 or 4 ways. We made all our own fliers and took them to Charlie Chan’s on Hollywood Blvd to get them printed, 2 cents each. Wheat paste and a paintbrush—those were all the ads we needed. But I also felt so sophisticated some nights, drinking martinis at the Whisky a Go Go, watching Blondie or The Damned or playing the same stage Johnny Rivers and The Doors had played, sitting in the same red booths. We had it made. We were called up to serve our country or we volunteered for
battle. Even in the early days of our scene there were casualties. Darby Crash, who died in 1980, was a deep and sensitive young man and the first martyr. His death hit us all very hard, and losing him injected the scene with the new drug of sadness, and forced us to grow up. The rest of us had to go on. We were playing the best music and doing the most creative performance art. We were a living spectacle that terrified and confused the traffic on Sunset and Vine, that broke the TV, replaced the radio, infiltrated the record companies, became the big stories the media was forced to tell, and maybe gave the government a bit of a scare. But the best thing we had going for us was originality. Nothing quite like LA punk had ever existed or would ever again. We won.
CHAPTER 3
. . . a hundred lives are shoved inside by John Doe
When
Exene & I lived in West Hollywood, from 1979 to 1982, there wasn’t a moment’s rest. It seemed every day & every night someone was knocking on the door of our tiny duplex w/ a couple quarts of Eastside beer, a Bukowski-endorsed local brew. There were only 4 rooms, including the bathroom, which had aluminum foil for wallpaper. 1118 N. Genesee Ave was half a block north of Santa Monica Blvd, the Spike (a popular leather bar) & the strip, where most of the gay hustlers worked, even one of our friends who went by the name Tony the Hustler. I believe the rent was $250 & the place was just south of the heart of the beast. Exene had an eye for decoration, loved anything—especially bark cloth—from the 1930s & ’40s. Our place had as many pieces of that as she could bring from Florida & what we found at junk stores. We loaded our mantelpiece w/ as much scary voodootype stuff as we could find, hoping it would discourage people from breaking in. Of course, there was nothing to steal except maybe a couple guitars, a rhinestone tiara, or some engineer boots. Billy Zoom slept on the couch for 3 months or more. Our biker roadie, Chuck, fell asleep smoking in a chair, set fire to it & the prized leather jacket he was wearing. I remember waking at 3 a.m. to smoke, Chuck & Billy yelling & someone, maybe me, hoisting the smoldering chair out the door, over the wall of the four-step, tiny balcony/landing that led to our front door & onto the curb. We drenched it with the garden hose & crawled back to bed. We were roused again an hour later by a fire truck clanging up to our duplex & hosing down that beautiful, tenacious & now sad 1940s chair. After playing two shows at the Whisky a Go Go, we were filmed in that living room, high on speed, drinking & tattooing each other for The Decline of Western Civilization. I believe we had an impromptu wake there for Exene’s sister Muriel. In the middle of the night I gave teenage runaway Gary Ryan a black eye for screaming that I had slept w/ his wannabe girlfriend Lorna Doom of The Germs. Only now I can admit that I had. And in that Hollywood duplex we wrote or lived all of the songs for Wild Gift & Under the Big Black Sun.
CHAPTER 4
The Canterbury Tales by Jane Wiedlin
Living at the Canterbury Fighting off the roaches Like being in a dormitory Till rental due approaches Don’t know where we’ll get the cash Spent it all on drink I don’t know, but sometimes It’s better not to think And sometimes I don’t like to think Living at the Canterbury My friends think I’m a fool Living at the Canterbury I guess it’s pretty coola
“Living at the Canterbury,” performed by The Go-Go’s, written by Jane Wiedlin. It
was 1976, and I’d just started college at Los Angeles Trade Tech, a cheap-ass school in downtown LA where kids from “the ghetto” went to learn a trade. I wanted to be a fashion designer and desperately wanted to go to a chic, trendy school like Parsons, Otis, or FIDM. In typical style, my midwestern parents informed me that art school was a damn waste of their good money and if I truly wanted to be a fashion designer, all I really needed to learn was the trade and the tech. I was already plenty creative, so off to Trade Tech I went. I became, after growing up in the very white, very middle-class San Fernando Valley, a minority. Even though I wanted to be somewhere fancy and artsy, I loved college. After the loathed high school, it was a relief to finally be taking classes, learning things I was actually interested in, like pattern making, sketching, and sewing. In high school I’d had good friends, a small tight-
knit group of kids called the Hollywooders because of our obsession with “glitter rock.” We lived for David Bowie, Roxy Music, T-Rex, and Sparks. The rest of the school (other than the stoners and the geeks, whom we got along with just fine) despised us and called us fa*gs and trash. The jocks and the surfers were particularly antagonistic toward us. Later, in a life-imitates-art moment, hostilities temporarily ceased after Bernie the surfer Romeo f*cked Nancy the glam Juliet. If memory serves, the cease-fire was short-lived. We glitter rockers had our own hangout on a set of steps dubbed the Hollywood Stairs, which was our tiny kingdom (queendom?) at Taft High School. We all rechristened ourselves with “cool” glam names. I was Tiffany Teardrop, and some of my friends were Limor Lovestar, Nicki Northwind, Chelsie Vixen, and Benni Electra. We wore satin and sequins and ridiculous platform shoes. The high point of high school was when Joan Jett (who was already a locally famous up-and-comer) enrolled in our school for a semester. For thrills, on weekends our gang would sneak out and take the bus to Sunset Boulevard to go to Rodney Bingenheimer’s English Disco. All the English rock stars visited Rodney (a strange little man who later became a DJ on KROQ) when they were in town, and young girls were served up to them like fresh meat on platters. I never did f*ck a rock star, but we met lots of wannabes like Zolar X, Silverhead, and a then-unknown Iggy Pop. Once, a well-known promoter dragged me into the walk-in cooler in the back of the joint and started rubbing up against me. I remember him complaining about my belt buckle being in the way. In the way of what? I was numb, confused, scared, but just stood there, paralyzed. I was young and inexperienced, but after I went back out to the dance floor and saw the mess on my satin hot pants, I figured it out. Oh, precious youth. I’d been struggling with severe depression since puberty had hit me like a freight train at the tender age of eleven. In the early seventies a lot of young people (and probably a lot of adults too) were convinced that at any moment nuclear bombs were going to blow the world to smithereens. My conviction that this was true, combined with raging hormones and a brain that was naturally colored blue, made me sweet and sensitive and a huge mess. I was completely convinced that life was utterly pointless. Just before my sixteenth birthday, crushed by the rejection of Ron, a boy at school with an actual David Bowie hairdo, I took three bottles of phenobarbital in an attempt to end it all. My suicide note was a love letter to David Bowie. One of my many brothers discovered me unconscious and I was rushed to a hospital. I was in a coma for days, and it was feared that I was going to be blind and have kidney damage, but I (obviously) survived. My poor, besieged parents wanted to put me in a loony bin, but the psychiatrist next door (who later turned out to be a wife beater) told them to just get me a good shrink. This was before the days of antidepressants
(praise Dog for them!). The two things I remember about my sessions, both solo and group, are, one, the shrink kept trying to get me to admit that I masturbat*d, and, two, one of the boys in my group therapy was suicidal because his co*ck was crooked. I never did admit that I masturbat*d, but I reckon that doctor helped me get through high school alive. Once I escaped high school and moved out of my long-suffering family’s home, I was still depressed as hell, but I was at least finally living the life I wanted. As an aside, it is so wild that I found life so pointless as a teenager, when just a few short years later I would be part of a band that was number one in the charts. You just never know what the future will bring. Painful, yes. Pointless, no. In late 1976, a few months into college, I was reading the fashion newspaper Women’s Wear Daily when I came upon an article on punk-rock fashion! At this time I was still pretty immersed in the whole glitter-rock thing (which, like punk rock, was equal parts look, music, and attitude). Music was everything to me, though I never dreamed I could actually be in a band. I was going to be a famous rock ‘n’ roll clothing designer. Anyway, that day, looking at the photos of these wild-looking kids on Kings Road in London, I was instantly smitten. Suddenly everything changed for me. I started reading everything I could about punk rock. I started making my own punk-rock clothes and dressing in them, much to the chagrin of my teachers, to whom I’d previously been a pet. I still had my 4.0 grade point average, but now everyone labeled me a nut job. One weekend I visited a store on the Sunset Strip called Granny Takes a Trip. GTAT had been a glitter-rock clothes store for years, but they had started to lean in favor of the new punk-rock style. The Brit running the place liked my stuff (even though he had a lot of good ideas on how to improve my designs, which I ignored) and ordered a bunch of it. I was ecstatic. While I was there another girl came into the shop to hawk her wares, and we got to talking. Her name was Pleasant (I thought it was a fake name but I was wrong), and she was also a former glitter-rock fan. In fact, she had recently met some other kids who were also transitioning from glitter to punk. Kids she’d hung out with while stealing room-service food in the hallways of the Continental Riot (Hyatt) House Hotel. Food that had been eaten by the members of the band Queen! Some of those kids ended up becoming The Germs. Pleasant informed me that punk rock was not just in London; it was in Hollywood too! Well, you coulda knocked me over with a feather. I was so excited! She gave me a flyer to a new club called the Masque. I wanted to be part of something glorious and revolutionary and, most of all, infuriating to grownups. With the death of glam came the birth of punk, and I was all in. Pleasant and I became great pals and had an on-again, off-again fling going. We’d get wasted at parties and slip off to a quiet corner to mess around. It was all good fun, and as David Bowie had taught me, “Bi is best.” (I actually said this to my parents as a teenager! Oh, my poor mom and dad. What they went through with me!) The boys, and then the men, came and
went in both our lives, but Pleasant and I are still dear friends nearly 40 years later. The Masque was in the basem*nt of the puss*cat, a p*rno theater. You entered through the back alley, down a long set of stairs. It was dark, filthy, and smelly. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. The first show I saw was The Alley Cats and The Controllers. There were about 40 kids there, and I knew right away I’d found my home. I made some friends, including Chloe, a tiny woman who was a wannabe hairdresser and gave me some really revolting hairstyles! Five different colors, four different lengths, all short, of course. Wouldn’t want to be mistaken for a hippie, who I quickly learned were “our” arch enemies. My hair was so wild that when I got a waitressing job at Norm’s Coffee Shop on La Cienega, I would have to wear a wig to work. Norm’s was an old-school Googie-type building, a restaurant frequented by the ancient Jews who lived in the Fairfax district. We served food like liver and onions, and I was frequently rewarded for my hard work with a quarter for a tip. “Here ya go, dearie!” Even then, 25 cents did not make a tip, but most of the patrons were really nice. My bravest act back then was to spit in the food of customers who were mean to me. I’ve always hated bullies. Chloe the fake hairdresser lived with the incredible band The Screamers, who, along with The Weirdos, were arguably the kings of the Hollywood punk scene. The Screamers lived in an old run-down house everyone called the Wilton Hilton. The guys in the band were handsome, sophisticated, and a bit older. They approached music from the art-school angle and were unbelievable live. So intense. So scary. So great. I hung around but was always nervous and shy. These guys were beyond me—and everyone else—in every way, and they knew it. They wrote songs about people like Eva Braun and Twiggy. They were twisted and fabulous. Everyone thought they’d be the breakout stars of our scene, but that is another story. As I got more and more into the Hollywood punk movement, it got harder and harder to live at home in the Valley. My mom would burst into tears when I’d come home with yet another ridiculous/fabulous hairdo. She even asked me whether I was mentally ill, which was kind of a compliment at the time. After my first suicide attempt at fifteen, my entire family, including, of course, my parents, never spoke of it. Ever. So in retrospect I can see why she was worried about me when I went punk. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, I moved out of the Valley and into the Canterbury, a 1920s apartment building at the corner of Cherokee and Yucca, just one block from the Masque. The year was 1977. The Canterbury had previously catered to the influx of starlets in Hollywood’s glamour days, and though it was run down, it was still a fantastic building. It still had the original built-in vanities, huge walk-in closets, and a beautiful-if-decrepit fountain courtyard. I couldn’t afford the $185-a-month rent on my own, so I met a girl also looking for an apartment. Debbie Dub was just returning to California after living in London for a few years. Poor Debbie! I was a selfish, spoiled
teenager and immediately took the one bedroom and all the closets, leaving her nothing but the Murphy bed in the living room. I ripped up all the old carpeting and painted everything, including the floorboards, bright white. I was really into surrealism at the time, so nothing nonwhite was allowed into “my” space. I turned one of the huge closets into a sewing room and hauled my enormous industrial antique sewing machine in there, where I continued to make punky clothes. The manager of The Weirdos, my favorite band, actually approached me about designing their stage wear (they always looked like hot/crazy men in their mismatched thrift-store finery), but alas, it didn’t end up happening. Still, I saw The Weirdos (and The Screamers and every other band that formed) dozens of times. I don’t think I slept for years; between school, jobs, and shows, there was no time to sleep, and that was fine with me. During the day, after a brief few hours of sleep the night before, I took crystal meth to stay awake at my job. I worked in a sweatshop factory downtown, where I wrote my punk-rock poetry (later to become lyrics) onto the patterns I was making for mass-produced cheap men’s sportswear. Pulling up the old carpets left a huge gap around the baseboards in my trashy-chic starlet apartment. That, in turn, created a superhighway for every co*ckroach in Hollywood to come visit us. It didn’t help that, though I wanted to live in a perfect surreal setting, I was also a teenager. Naturally I was lazy about taking out the garbage. The stockpiled bags of trash in the kitchen created a truly horrendous roach and rat problem that I had no idea how to deal with. So I ignored it. I lived on Top Ramen, Kraft Mac & Cheese, and trail mix in those years, and my “grocery store” was the corner liquor store. I’d save coins to eat, and when I didn’t have enough money, I’d steal food. My apartment had a fire escape outside the kitchen window that I used like a balcony. I liked to sit out on my “balcony,” swigging beer, smoking cigarettes, and watching the hookers ply their wares. It was just the sort of life I pictured when I became a punk rocker. The biggest treat for me and the rest of the gang was saving up our pennies to eat at Johnny’s Steak-house on Hollywood Boulevard, just east of Cherokee Avenue, where the Canterbury was. For $1.99 you could get a real steak dinner with all the fixings. Never mind that the windowsills were covered with flies, dead and alive. It was steak! I fell in love with Terry very early into my new life. He was deathly white, with huge brown eyes and a shock of dark spiky hair (once he got the right haircut of course). He liked Kerouac and Bukowski. He claimed he was just a fan and didn’t play an instrument. Later it turned out he was actually a fine drummer, and he joined The Bags and then The Gun Club. I invited Terry to move into my Canterbury apartment rent-free, without first asking or consulting Deb Dub, of course. Jesus, I was a dick then! Terry didn’t pay rent and didn’t have a job. At first I didn’t care—it was punk to be
unemployed! Later it became an issue, as I made almost nothing and was now working for two. When I meekly asked him to get a job to help pay rent, he dutifully went out and got one. He’d disappear “to work” every day, nine to five. I was so happy to have a working man for a boyfriend. Terry would come home to my all-white-but-filthy flat at night, tie me up, and (consensually) abuse me. “Oh Bondage, Up Yours!” It was my first real-life experience with BDSM after having obsessively read Story of O and 9½ Weeks over and over as a teenager. I was a total closet perv, too ashamed to talk about it or admit it. Luckily the punk scene was loaded with BDSM imagery (check out Vivienne Westwood’s early T-shirts!), and Terry really “got” me. I understand now why. Back then so many punk rockers—especially me—were enamored with legendary fifties pinup star Bettie Page. Bettie Page was the undeclared gorgeous queen of my “tribe”: half devil-girl, half angel. Of course I adored her. Still do. Bettie was the perfect physical embodiment of a divided soul. Sadly, my punky-pervy honeymoon with Terry proved to be short-lived. I learned from friends that instead of working, Terry was actually spending his days wandering Hollywood Boulevard, hanging out in the many used-book stores and crappy coffee shops, reading and caffeinating. Looking back on this almost 40 years later, I think this was clever and funny and, of course, very punk rock. At the time, though, I was heartbroken. Sayonara, Terry. Punks quickly took over the entire Canterbury, and it really was like a dormitory. Doors were left open and unlocked. Girls and boys would be running through the hallways at all hours of the night and day, borrowing guitars, food, booze. A typical night out involved walking 400 feet to a show at the Masque, or possibly some other seedy temporary club location. The audience consisted of the same 100 kids—the scene had grown a lot in a year!—most of whom were in bands themselves. Most times it would just be a night of swapping, kids going from audience to stage then back again. It felt like Our Scene. It was our scene. There was an endless stream of boozing, barfing, dancing, and f*cking. As I mentioned earlier, I grew up in a boring middle-class neighborhood, but I was no Pollyanna. I was working to be as good at being bad as I possibly could. Most of the punk kids I knew had been raised Catholic like me. There was just something about that religion that brought out the inner rebel in teenagers. If you grew up in that cult, you had an understood, unspoken frame of reference. We called it Catholic Damage. It made you want to be as bad as possible, all while still being a little bit scared of Hell way deep down inside. Bands were forming and re-forming faster than you could keep track of. Everyone was welcome, girls included. It was even okay to be gay in the Hollywood punk scene. It was an inclusive scene, centered on art, creativity, and fun rebellion against grownups. By 1978 nearly everyone was in a band, except for a lone few girls. That was how The Go-Go’s formed. Belinda Carlisle lived across the courtyard from me
with her best friend, Lorna Doom of The Germs. Belinda was beautiful and glamorous and always perfectly put together, even when she was wearing a trash bag for a dress. She kept her makeup in a cookie tin and made spare money on the foreign currency trading market. How the hell she knew how to do this, I still have no idea. Eventually it became painfully obvious that you needed no prior knowledge to form a punk band and that we were the only kids left who hadn’t done so. So Belinda, Margot Olavarria (an adorable girl with rainbow-colored hair just back from two years in London), and I decided we were going to be a band too. Hey, why not? We were perfectly capable of being just as incompetent as everyone else. No matter that we didn’t know how to play our instruments—we were going for it! The manager of the Canterbury (who also happened to be some kind of shyster Pentecostal minister) started letting everyone use the basem*nt of the building as a rehearsal room. Soon our little fledgling band was down there too, learning to play our instruments, cranking out fast, loud music, and having a blast. With Belinda living in one apartment and me in another, it only made sense that we’d use the basem*nt, even though it was in no way a safe situation. It was spooky as f*ck down there, and Hollywood was a dangerous town in those days. After rehearsing a bit, we would wheel our amps a block down the street to the Masque and play shows to an ever-growing “crowd” of enthusiastic friends/fans. It was so exciting! After a few short months Charlotte Caffey, a real musician, joined our group. Char actually knew how to read music. You may as well have told me she spoke ancient Aramaic, it was so exotic and so impressive. Charlotte and I later became a songwriting team, and to this day I am still in awe of her genius. After The Go-Go’s formed, things really started heating up in Hollywood. Bands began to perform at real clubs, like the Whisky a Go Go on the Sunset Strip. This was about as prestigious as it got in those days, and I’ll never forget the night that X was there, playing a two-set sold-out night in 1980. I was there, of course. Everyone was there. X was now the biggest, best band on the scene. In between the two sets Exene discovered that her sister Mirielle had been killed in a car crash on the way to the show. Exene was understandably inconsolable. Nobody knew what to do. Everyone was in shock. John Doe threw a chair through the big plate-glass window of the dressing room, unable to handle his feelings. I remember sitting on the floor in a corner of that dressing room. I wasn’t really a friend; I was too in awe of them to be that. I was just another part of the tribe, and bands didn’t really have private dressing rooms back then. I didn’t know what to do. I was so uncomfortable being in the midst of this insane tragedy. I started cutting myself with a piece of glass from a broken beer bottle and playing with the blood to distract myself from the horror of it all. Later I read an article in the Los Angeles Times in which the journalist talked about that night, mentioning a little punk girl ritualistically cutting herself in a nihilistic way. It was like he was a
scientist observing the behavior of some far-flung tribe from the deep jungles of the Amazon. It felt so strange that some total stranger had noticed me as I was doing something meaningless to me. That he’d assigned meaning to what I’d been doing. That I was part of the narrative. X played the second set anyway, and they were more brilliant than ever. I felt like the club was going to burst into flames, the intensity was so great. Yup, the Canterbury was like a dormitory—a dormitory with heroin, rape, and plenty-loud punk-rock music. A schism, based on drug use, started forming pretty early on. We were all in agreement that nobody was allowed to smoke pot. Pot was for dirty hippies. The Great Punk Divide happened because some of us stuck to booze, pills, speed, and hallucinogens, while others moved on to shooting heroin and dilaudid, a synthetic opiate kids took when they couldn’t score the real thing. The idea of shooting drugs was really scary to me. I still had a few lines I was afraid to cross, needles being the primary one, though I do remember smoking angel dust one afternoon in the early days. I don’t know why I did it or where I got it, but I got so high, I thought I was having a nervous breakdown. I wandered over to the Masque and climbed down the stairs to hide. The guy hired as caretaker there, a Scientologist named Larry, found me in a corner of the basem*nt freaking out. Scientology was a new thing then, and they had their headquarters on Hollywood Boulevard. We used to try to mess with them, taking their tests and lying about everything. It was something to do, a way to pass the time. Anyway, after smoking the dust, I was crying, crumpled up on the filthy floor. Larry the Scientologist held my hand for hours until I came down from the high. Maybe he tried to recruit me; if so, I don’t remember! Either way, it was a kind moment. It did not stop me from being a wild child, but I did stay away from angel dust thereafter. I remember the excitement in the apartment building one day when it was discovered that the bag lady who we called Miss Conehead had died. Bag ladies were people who, back in the days when the government helped people, lived on SSI, money you could get if you were declared crazy. Miss Conehead had lived in the Canterbury far longer than any of us and was a real character. She always wore a tall, pointy hat and a wimple, like a princess from the Middle Ages—hence her nickname. I thought she looked about a hundred years old, though for all I know she could have been in her fifties. I had a lessthan-firm grasp on such things in those days, plus she was crazy. I often wonder if Miss Conehead had been in the building since its heyday, an aspiring starlet who just never caught a break. Anyway, Miss Conehead lay dead in her apartment for days—sad that— when finally the coroner came and took her body away. Her apartment just sat there, untouched, for weeks. Her family had obviously abandoned her long ago. When it became painfully clear that no one was coming to remove her possessions, I snuck in there and stole one of her dresses, a lovely white 1950s sundress that I still own to this
day. I can’t bear to part with it, and sometimes I think I’m the only person alive who still remembers her and still thinks about her . . . of course partially because I still feel guilty about stealing that dress. Catholic Damage. Parties happened nearly nightly at the Canterbury. One night I was at a get-together with my good friend Alice Bag, a girl I’ll call The Vampire, and Shannon, a newer member of the punk tribe who later started the Castration Squad. Alice lived in the Canterbury with her boyfriend, Nickey Beat, the hard-hitting but sweet drummer for The Weirdos. Alice was gorgeous and ferocious, and the lead singer of The Bags. The Vampire had crazy, jacked-up-looking teeth, pointy and menacing. She was volatile and frightening . . . truly frightening. She looked like goth before goth existed. The three girls had recently started a joke girl-gang they called The Pyranas. That night someone offered me some pills that I, of course, immediately swallowed, no questions asked. We were all drinking cheapo wine, getting drunk as skunks. The Vampire started into this long tirade about how she was really and truly a genuine vampire and that she was the real reincarnation of Drusilla, sister of Caligula. (This next part is told by Alice, because I had blacked out from the pills and wine by then.) Everyone was laughing at her and dared The Vampire to prove her claims. The Vampire got pissed, grabbed my arm, and started sucking on it. I protested feebly, so then, of course, everyone started laughing at me and pounced on me, covering me with bites and hickeys. (Trust me, this was no big thing back then.) Later that night I made my way back to my apartment, still in my zombie blackout, where my boyfriend, Terry Bag, awaited me. Terry was so irate that I’d been “raped” by them (I hadn’t—I’d been pranked punkrock style, but still) that he spray painted “Pyranas Suck” all over the elevator of the building. He was furious, and I appreciated his gallantry, but I felt more embarrassed than anything by this event, and that was only because I couldn’t remember what actually happened. The big problem then became that Terry was the drummer of The Bags, and The Bags was Alice’s band! So eventually Terry’s outrage at my “assault” morphed into him claiming he was just mad that he hadn’t been there to watch the action go down (bow chicka wow wow). A classic Canterbury Tale. There were parties for the “regular” kids (my word) and parties for the shooters. Of course, lots of the IV users had come from the same normal background as me, but at some point two paths emerged then diverged. It was sad to see that divide in a scene that was already pretty f*cking small. I remember Rob. He came from Arizona and was the cutest, sweetest boy ever, but he got caught up with the shooting crowd and ended up dead. This was a guy who started off looking like the president of the Chess Club and ended up looking like the Walking Dead. I remember Greg, gorgeous and sexy. I had a mad crush on him. We “dated” for a little while, but there was always a strange space between us. He was so secretive. It even turned out that he was seeing Charlotte while
he was seeing me! Charlotte and I later wrote the song “He’s So Strange” about him. Go’s before Bro’s. I didn’t know what Greg’s secret was (heroin) until he ended up dead. Shannon, one of The Pyranas, died in the nineties of AIDS complications, caused by IV drug use. The Vampire was another one of the members of the “other crowd.” She was a real tough broad and mean as hell when cornered. The Vampire had no problem picking a fight with anyone—bikers, cops, she didn’t give a sh*t. She was fearless. When she got raped one night at the Canterbury, things took an awful turn toward the dark. If that tough-asnails chick was vulnerable, everyone was. There were a lot of turning points in the Hollywood punk scene. I always remember when I started feeling like the scene had grown a little too much. When guys from Orange County started showing up, ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence. When it went from being female friendly and gay friendly to more testosterone driven. When mock fighting became real fighting. And when people started dying from drugs. Meanwhile The Go-Go’s got more and more (and more) popular. We started getting accused of being sellouts. We started playing places other than Southern California, until finally we weren’t part of the Hollywood scene at all anymore. The scene continued on without us, and the history books erase The Go-Go’s from the chronicles of those days, because it is just too much work to try to imagine how we had ever been a part of it. But we were part of it. I feel incredibly lucky to have experienced what I did, to have been there at the beginning when everything was possible and everyone was welcome. I feel even more lucky to have survived it. It was the time of my life.
CHAPTER 5
A Nonstop Crazy Party by Pleasant Gehman
It took a moment to realize that the handsome silver-haired man handing me a lit joint was Tony Curtis. I’d arrived in Los Angeles—and turned sixteen—less than two weeks before, but somehow I had the social savvy to act as though it was completely normal to be getting high with a movie star. Taking a huge hit and choking out “Thank you!” as I handed the reefer back to him, I silently marveled at my good fortune. Being in LA was surreal, something I’d dreamed about constantly since I’d discovered Creem magazine, Rock Scene, and Andy Warhol’s Interview at the age of twelve. I was absolutely certain that once I got to the City of Angels, everything would pan out the way I’d always daydreamed it would. A rock ‘n’ roll–obsessed girl, I saw myself hanging out backstage at the Whisky and the Rainbow sipping champagne with rock stars, or riding in the backseat of a vintage convertible, cruising past pastel mansions and towering palm trees on my way to the beach. To manifest this opulent fantasy lifestyle, I channeled the glamour of silent film star Clara Bow, dying my asslength hair bright red with henna, piling on way too much black eye-makeup and muddy maroon lipstick. I’d taken the 83 bus down to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for a concert. I felt extremely foxy in my stained crepe 1930s evening gown, a frayed antique velvet jacket, and the pair of mile-high silver glitter platforms that had cost me three weeks’ worth of waitressing pay and tips . . . and now I was getting wasted with the leading man from Some Like It Hot! It was March 29, 1975, and along with the rest of the sold-out twothousand-seat house, I was waiting breathlessly to see Queen. As Mr. Curtis handed the joint back to me with a beatific smile, a pair of amazinglooking boys passing my seat suddenly diverted my attention. The taller one was slender and dark, with a long black satin cape billowing out behind him as he strode down the aisle. Barefoot and shirtless, he wore heavy Egyptian eyeliner, and his kinky hair splayed out from his head in a Sphinx-like wedge. The other one looked like a real-life David Bowie action figure, attired completely in white, his fluorescent red rat-tail mullet framing icy blue eyes and powdered pale cheeks with a perfectly rendered
lightning bolt zigzagging across his baby face. Sharing a reefer with a movie star was one thing, but what I was seeing was quite another. In that moment it seemed that all my fervent prayers were being answered. Never one to ignore an omen, I took fate into my own hands, borrowed a pen from Tony Curtis, and scrawled a note on a matchbook: Aladdin Sane, You Cosmic org*sm—Call Me!!!
To further drive the point across, I added stars, a moon, a Saturn, and a lightning bolt. With the precision of a crackerjack pitcher, I threw the matchbook across a few rows of seats just as the house lights were dimming, certain my life was about to change. The next day they called me, constantly grabbing the receiver from each other for the hour or so we stayed on the phone. Our affinity was immediate. Because they lived by the beach and I lived in LA proper, we decided to take the bus to meet at the median point of Westwood. We became a trio on a regular basis, cutting school, day drinking while listening to records, vandalizing office buildings, and hanging out at Santa Monica’s Lifeguard Station #26, known as the “juvenile delinquent” beach. We’d prowl Hollywood Boulevard, another haunt for high school students who were ditching class. At night we’d invade Sunset Strip to hear The Motels, Van Halen, The Quick, and the newly formed Runaways play the Whisky, where I’d gotten the coveted job as ticket taker in the box office. After the show we’d score Quaaludes for a dollar in the Rainbow parking lot. Of course I had crushes on both guys and couldn’t decide which one I liked better until the dark-haired one made a move and I officially became his First Girlfriend. Their names were Paul Beahm and Georg Ruthenberg—they hadn’t yet switched to the monikers Darby Crash and Pat Smear.
Historians might argue that LA punk didn’t get its “official” start until 1977. It was definitely a year of benchmarks, with the April 16 Weirdos/Zeros/Germs Orpheum show, followed the next day by the first visit of a UK punk band, The Damned, at the Starwood, Slash magazine’s debut in May, and the opening of Brendan Mullen’s club the Masque in August. However, the scene had actually been bubbling under the surface since 1975. That year two key punk-precursor events occurred in quick succession: glam rock haven Rodney’s English Disco closed, and Patti Smith’s debut album, Horses, was released. Suddenly everyone on the scene chose sides, pledging allegiance to one of two distinct camps. Those who were interested in frivolously dancing the night away kept their Farrah hair and French bellbottom jeans, embracing disco. The others— like me—who were interested in a darker form of hedonism gravitated toward what
was soon to coalesce as the original LA punk scene. Along with Georg/Pat and Paul/Darby, almost everybody I knew was in high school. Most of us were seriously unsupervised latchkey kids, completely alienated by the bland seventies pop culture that society relentlessly shoved down our throats and into our ears. We actually read books, something that seemed like a truly archaic pastime and was frowned upon during The Disco Years. Horrified by the stupidity of Charlie’s Angels and The Six Million Dollar Man, we infinitely preferred subversive “art house” fare: the racy foreign films, Manson Family documentaries, John Waters’s Pink Flamingos, and Reefer Madness that showed as midnight movies at the Nuart or the Fox Venice. We were disgusted with the syrupy garbage on the radio, the infinitely stupid, effervescent saccharine of The Carpenters or The Captain & Tennille. We chose the sonic mayhem of The Stooges, the salaciously macabre Alice Cooper, Kraftwerk’s robotronic void, and the tawdry, hom*oerotic fabulosity of Lou Reed, David Bowie, and the succession of British bands influenced by them. There wasn’t a snowball’s chance in hell any of that would ever be broadcast on Top Forty radio, so we never expected to hear it on anything but our cheap Sears Roebuck stereos or our painstakingly curated homemade cassettes. Underfed intellectually and refusing to conform to a dumbed-down vanilla sensibility, we were constantly searching for like-minded souls, people who shared the same arcane frame of reference. Soon a scene began to develop. In addition to disenfranchised kids from LA’s vast array of suburbs, we began meeting people who were slightly older than us. Aside from a love for unadulterated rock ‘n’ roll, we all seemed to have a blend of the Beats’ appreciation for literature and art combined with the louche, Harry Crosby–informed laissez faire of Paris in the twenties or the drugaddled debauchery of Andy Warhol’s Factory or the notorious Back Room at Max’s Kansas City. Once night fell, we were sincerely on the prowl and, as the New York Dolls said, “Lookin’ for a Kiss” . . . or more, if we could get it—and usually, we could. My crowd and I were streetwise teenagers, sophisticated enough to be experimenting with drugs and sex but hideously below the legal age of consent. Most of us hitchhiked or took the bus to Hollywood Boulevard because many weren’t even old enough to have a driver’s license, let alone own a car. With Rodney’s closed, we hung out in Westwood at the Sugar Shack, a San Fernando Valley teen club where you were carded to prove you were under 21. Our favorite late-night gathering spots were the all-night coffee shops—Arthur J’s on Santa Monica Boulevard and the two similar Hollywood Boulevard institutions, Danielle’s and the Gold Cup, later immortalized in Black Randy’s song “Trouble at the Cup.” We fit in at these places, which were full of street crazies, leather daddies, and
75-year-old women with capped teeth who’d come to Hollywood in the 1950s as aspiring starlets. Trannie hookers turned tricks in the ladies’ room while rent boys straight out of John Rechy’s City of Night worked the sidewalk. Mostly we hung out at these establishments after hitting the United Artists Theater in Westwood to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the millionth time. None of these dives served liquor, so they didn’t card anyone. Whether you were male or female, you could be totally at home in your ripped fishnets, heavy maquillage, and Sally Bowles’s fierce, divinely decadent attitude. Who was going to hassle you about your appearance—a stoned drag queen? Because it was The Swingin’ Seventies, our nascent sexuality was also one big fat gray area—and it’s not like anyone was keeping tabs either! Our youthful, carnally adventurous spirit fit in with the prevalent freewheeling attitude of the time. Mixed with the handfuls of pills we took, washed down with the Mickey’s Big Mouth and Olde English 800 tallboys we guzzled in back alleys, it made any sort of sexual classification totally irrelevant. My crowd’s prurient interests, which had taken hold during glam rock and informed many factions of LA’s early punk scene—included but weren’t limited to fluid-gender identities and nonspecific sexual roles, uniform fetishes, multiple partners, and, especially, openly gay and bisexual experimentation. The people I ran with were all fun and interesting. My schoolmate Randy Kaye introduced me to Dennis Crosby, delinquent grandson of Bing. Dennis was an absolute riot—openly gay and so casually out, everyone accepted him. He was like an outlaw rock ‘n’ roll version of Liberace. He’d wear my 1960s Peter Max mini-dress with a thick leather and rhinestone KISS belt, cowboy boots, and a Lone Ranger mask to school. Through Randy and Dennis I met their mutual friend from Rodney’s, Joan Jett, just as The Runways were being formed. We’d cut school nearly every day to watch the band rehearse at SIR Studios in Hollywood. Joan introduced me to their managerproducer Kim Fowley, and the guys who wrote the Back Door Man fanzine, Phast Phreddie and Don Waller. The Runaways actually played their first show in Torrance . . . in Phast Phreddie’s living room! Around the same time I’d met a kid whose thrift-store, pachuco-pimp clothes belied his amiable nature and vast musical knowledge, Brian Tristan. He became my roommate and changed his name to Kid Congo before joining The Gun Club and, later, The Cramps. Brian worked as a clerk at Greg Shaw’s Bomp! Records. Though it was located in the vast wasteland of the San Fernando Valley, Bomp! might as well have been Mecca, and everyone made the pilgrimage, staying for hours because the English import 45s we all read about in Brit music papers Sounds and NME were always in stock. Anna Statman, who went on to be an A&R person at Slash Records, and Jeffrey Lee Pierce, who was the president of Blondie’s fan club before forming The Gun Club,
both practically lived there. The double-trouble blond duo Belinda Carlisle and Terry Ryan (later known as Germs bassist Lorna Doom) made the long trek from Thousand Oaks to Hollywood almost nightly. Likewise, brother and sister Paul and Kira Roessler and their pal Michelle “Gerber” Bell had left the surfer life, abandoning Station #26 in favor of hanging out on Sunset Strip or at the Starwood. The gals from Backstage Pass—Johanna “Spock” Dean, Holly Vincent, Marina Del Rey, and Genny Body—looked like tough sixties B-movie stars and were ubiquitous scene makers: wherever you went, they were already there or walking in just behind you. Photographer Theresa Kereakes, whose appearance was fairly “normal” (she was just starting at UCLA), began spending every night out at the clubs documenting the bands playing. Alice Armendariz and Patricia Rainone (later known as Alice and Pat Bag) were always on the scene. A few other gals constantly out on the town were Natasha, a petite redhead who’d been around at Rodney’s, and sisters Jade and Zandra, who wound up documenting the LA scene in their fanzine, Generation X. Along with Exene, they all rocked a vampy 1920s look with a modern streetwise twist. I’d met Jane Wiedlin long before The Go-Go’s existed. We were both at the Sunset Strip sister-store of the famed London rock ‘n’ roll boutique Granny Takes a Trip, trying to sell our original T-shirts. Mine were covered with dirty words stenciled on with spray paint; hers had two zippers down the front, which, when opened, would reveal the breasts. Jane swears I was the first punk she’d ever met, and she immediately began hanging out in Hollywood. I can’t remember the first time I encountered Hellin and Trudi, but it was probably while in line waiting to get into the Whisky. Manager Jim La Penna had a habit of letting teenagers in for free if we could prove we maintained a B average—he’d actually make us show him our report cards! Hellin, Trudi, and I formed a trio immediately, a mutual admiration society based on similar taste. Hailing from the beach community of Palos Verdes, they looked and acted anything but suburban. A slu*tty symphony in black and white, it was as though they’d come to life from the pages of a 1950s pulp men’s magazine. Their dyed black hair was always snarled, and they wore torn vintage black slips, lacy bullet bras, and battered stiletto-heeled pumps. By accident or design, their vampire-white bare arms and legs were usually covered in an assortment of scratches and bruises. One night while driving from the beach to LA, they got in an accident that totaled Hellin’s mother’s car. After that, they moved in with me so they could be closer to Hollywood. Though my mom detested the fact that our pillowcases were routinely stained bright pink or electric blue due to the Rit Fabric Dye we’d taken to using on our hair (Krazy Kolor hadn’t hit the market yet), she was actually the one who named Helen “Hellin Killer,” and the name stuck. We’d study the postage stamp–sized photos of
Kings Road punks in the English rock rag Sounds, trying to absorb their ferocious attitude. Because there wasn’t any punk gear available in America, Hellin, Trudi, and I made do wearing dog collars from the pet store and bought $4.00 studded leather co*ck rings from the Pleasure Chest to wear as wristbands. Soon Hellin chopped off her bedhead hair, styling it into a crew cut with two points in front, then shaved her eyebrows and pierced her cheek with a large safety pin, emulating Soo Catwoman of the Bromley Contingent, a group of Sex Pistols fans that included Siouxsie Sioux and Billy Idol. Around this time Belinda started showing up at gigs in Hefty trash bags that she’d fashioned into dresses. Though our attitudes—and the way we expressed them in our DIY fashion—were shocking to “normal” people, we soon fell in with a crowd of slightly older hipsters who were in their twenties and thirties; their arty outrageousness was so professional, it made us look exactly like what we were: kids. Every night there’d always be a bunch of new cool people congregating in Hollywood. Many of them had been involved in various other fringy subcultures. They came from all over Southern California and beyond, including major cities like New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and London as well as even obscure places like Oklahoma State University, where Dangerhouse Records founders K. K. Barrett and Pat “Rand” Garrett had fled. John Doe hailed from Baltimore, Exene and Farrah Fawcett Minor had left Florida; the three eventually settled into a large single apartment in the alley behind Circus Books. Located across the street from the legendary rock club the Starwood, the apartment where X’s song “Adult Books” was written, it soon became infamous for noisy afterhours parties. The constant influx into Hollywood was like a seasonal mass migration, happening as if by instinct. In those days you absolutely could judge someone on appearance alone, because nobody in mainstream society looked the way we did. God knows where they all came from or how we all found each other, but we were always excited to meet. There’d be an almost tribal moment of stunned recognition—you could practically see everyone thinking, Holy sh*t, there’s other people like me? One night early in March 1977 at the Whisky I was in the balcony with Joan, Hellin, and Randy, trying to act nonchalant as we sipped the illegal Long Island Ice Teas that waitress Marsha Perloff had slipped to us. She’d get us drunk every night by putting our co*cktails on some hapless record exec’s tab . . . not that they ever noticed. The Runaways’ Queens of Noise had recently been released, and Joan had just returned from London. She’d left for the UK wearing her customary battered white platform boots, high-waisted French bellbottom jeans, and a baseball shirt, but she returned clad in straight-legged Levis, Converse sneakers, a black leather jacket, and a necklace made of safety pins. She regaled us with tales of what was going on with rock ‘n’ roll in the UK, and we were all fascinated to hear a firsthand account. We were grilling her about
English punks as The Damned’s “Neat Neat Neat” blared over the PA, when suddenly our minds were blown to bits as we first laid eyes on The Screamers. As Tomata du Plenty and Tommy Gear walked through the front door, our mouths fell open in unison. They were magnificent; it was as though they were a pair of ambassadors who’d been sent from another planet to educate earthlings on punk cool. Both had black spiked hair and wore wraparound sunglasses and pegged black pants. Gear had on a 1950s black motorcycle jacket and a hardware-store chain around his neck fastened with an industrial padlock. Tomata was in a red sharkskin suit jacket with a huge wooden coat hanger shoved into the shoulders. As if hypnotized, we all walked onto the dance floor to talk to them. I immediately became obsessed with The Screamers, as did everyone else. Even though they hadn’t played yet, their looks alone were so impressive that we all bowed down. Brian/Kid Congo soon became the president of their fan club. I hung out daily at The Screamers’ place, dubbed the Wilton Hilton. A dilapidated Craftsman duplex, it was two blocks away from Dangerhouse, the pad where Screamers K. K., David Braun, and their friend Rand McNally lived and founded LA’s infamous underground record label of the same name. Tomata and Gear lived in the top half of the Wilton Hilton with Chloe, wide-eyed professional makeup artist whose crew cut changed colors every week. A stunning redhead named Fayette Hauser (who shared a matching crudely done Kewpie doll tattoo with Tomata) lived there too. She and Tomata had been a part of The co*ckettes, San Francisco’s celebrated, outrageously gender-bending cabaret drag troupe. According to Tomata, William Randolph Hearst had built the place in the 1930s as a love nest for Marion Davies before Paramount Studios bought it to house their starlets. Apparently at some point in the 1960s all or most of the GTOs had resided there; after they left, it was occupied by a Satanic cult. It seemed credible—the floors had large circles burned into the wood that could’ve been used for rituals, and the downstairs family’s dog constantly dug up cat skulls from the backyard. The hallways were painted matte black, and at the base of the steps there was a huge wall safe and a framed newspaper clipping from August 6, 1962, that declared in French “Marilyn Est Mort!” Hanging out at the Wilton Hilton was like attending punk-rock finishing school. The Screamers taught me how to crash strangers’ parties and make a French Exit, which meant you left by slipping out suddenly without saying good-bye to anyone. They showed me how to screen telephone calls, a necessary art in the days preceding answering machines. Gear demonstrated picking up the phone with your voice disguised, and when the caller asked if you were home, you’d say, “Let me see . . . ” as you put your hand over the receiver, wait, then come back on the line and say, “No, I’m sorry—can I take a message?”
Everyone visited The Screamers; it was like paying homage to their greatness. I was so obsessed with them that I kept a CIA-like dossier on them in my journal, surreptitiously noting down pertinent facts such as their real names, the people they knew (Divine, John Waters, The Ramones, Blondie), and even what theyate. Hellin, Trudi, and I would sit quietly, amazed that they considered us friends and awed with the parade of cool people trickling into their house. Their entourage included Seattle cohorts Gorilla Rose and Suitcase, ex-Warhol star Mary Woronov, Black Randy, Hal Negro, and houseguests from San Francisco like The Nuns, Don Vinyl from The Offs, Chip and Tony Kinman of The Dils and The Avengers, plus their mutual manager, Peter Urban. The Screamers were constantly photographed, and the screaming spike-headed logo that artist Gary Panter created for them became one of the most recognized punkrock images ever. The spring of 1977 turned out to be a huge turning point in the Hollywood scene; the punk-rock storm clouds that’d been gathering and building steadily turned into a killer tornado. Word spread quickly on the street that The Damned, the first UK punk band to visit America, were playing a two-night, four-show run at the Starwood. Anticipation ran high because since their first album had come out in February, The Damned had usurped The Clash as our favorite English band. For weeks you could walk into any apartment at the Canterbury at any hour of the day or night and hear “New Rose” or “Fan Club” playing. In fact, The Damned album was always blaring so loudly, you didn’t even have to be in the building—the sound carried out the open windows and you could heard it all the way down on Hollywood Boulevard. Once Brian/Kid Congo spilled the beans that The Damned were making an in-store appearance at Bomp! on April 16, we all made giddy plans to be there. Bomp! was a madhouse, so packed that the crowd spilled onto the sidewalk. Everyone was there, even Rodney and Kim Fowley. It was an event. It was also the first time many of us had seen each other in daylight. Randy Kaye and Brian were elbow nudging me as Angelyne sauntered in wearing a powder-blue marabou-trimmed satin corset, her white Barbie-doll hair piled in a high bouffant, with a face full of stage makeup, which, in the afternoon sun, looked like a scary doll-head mask. At the time, well before her billboards had gone up all over LA, Angelyne was in an excruciatingly bad bar band called Baby Blue, made up of shag-headed poseurs trying valiantly to ride on the coattails of the punk scene. As though a chorus of angels heralded their arrival, The Damned appeared with the vampirical Dave Vanian, sending every punkette’s heart aflutter. Hellin, Trudi, Mary Rat, and I were absolutely dumbstruck—and even more so years later when Pat Bag wound up marrying him! Lots of us were drinking or had shown up already drunk, like Darby Crash (who was going under Bobby Pyn at the time) and Pat Smear. They were proudly wearing
their new mustard-yellow band T-shirts, emblazoned in velvet iron-on letters GERMS. The shirts had been made at a store where they charged by the letter, and their first choice of band name, Sophistif*ck and the Revlon Spam Queens, simply wasn’t affordable. A band that none of us had ever seen before, The Weirdos, showed up, and their appearance was so extreme—a pastiche of 1960s vinyl raincoats, white patent leather belts, bits of trash, metal chains, and Japanese toys—that they momentarily diverted everyone’s attention from The Damned. The Germs and I introduced ourselves and found out they were promoting their show that evening at the Orpheum Theater, with Peter Case’s band The Nerves and a band from San Diego called The Zeros. Ready to stir up some trouble, I announced that The Germs were a band and that they should open the show—and they got invited onto the bill. We were already tipsy before leaving Bomp! but because Chris Ashford was driving and was over the legal drinking age of twenty-one, we stopped at a liquor store to get a few bottles of Cold Duck before adjourning to my mom’s house so The Germs could get ready for their debut show. Bobby/Darby had purchased ten or so packages of red licorice whips, so we spent the hours before the show tying them around his whole body, over his clothes, knotted bondage style, while popping Quaaludes washed down with the cheap champagne. We got so wrecked that all I remember from the ride up to the Sunset Strip was being crammed into the backseat, giggling hysterically as the Cold Duck spilled all over Bobby’s licorice whip–wrapped body, making him a sticky mess. The Orpheum wasn’t a regular rock venue, just a small black-box theater that Peter Case had somehow managed to rent for this gig, which I believe was the first—and last —rock show ever held there. Located just off the Sunset Strip, kitty-corner from Tower Records on the tiny dead-end Nellas Street, the entrance was in the back, and as our carful of crazies arrived, there was already a number of punks congregated in the alley drinking, including Belinda, who was dressed in a light blue disco jumpsuit and spike heels, with a giant flower in her hair. She hadn’t yet started rockin’ the look she had in The Go-Go’s. The place was pretty crowded; lots of people who’d been at Bomp! earlier were there. When The Screamers showed up with The Damned in tow, sitting on top of the theater’s seat backs, it proved the show was definitely the place to be. The Germs set was a huge mess, and that’s an understatement. Aside from the ’ludes and Cold Duck, they’d never really played before and only had minimal rehearsals, and it showed. Even setting up took them ages. Their show was actually pretty funny it was so bad, but a lot of people were horrified, especially when the peanut butter came out, setting a sloppy, condiment-oriented precedent for their future shows. It was meant as a tongue-in-cheek tribute to Iggy, but it created a gigantic, disgusting mess. The plug was pulled and The Germs were thrown out. The Zeros were on next and were amazing. They were so young and cute, like fetal versions of The
Ramones, and really tight as a band. “Don’t Push Me Around” was so catchy, it became a new anthem for many, including me. The Weirdos were flat-out astonishing. Everyone went crazy. Their insane appearance was the perfect foil for their music, which was like a sonic wall of sludge, with John Denney lurching around the stage like an escaped mental patient. With his tongue lolling out of his mouth and eyes rolling as he growled out unintelligible lyrics, he was a rock ‘n’ roll version of a Pieter Bruegel demon. The next evening The Damned played the Starwood. It was a pure revelation and also sort of legitimized the LA punk scene. Local power-pop faves The Quick opened for them, which might seem odd now but wasn’t at the time, though it did explicitly illustrate the difference in what was actually punk and what would soon be called new wave. The Damned played at lightning speed with violent energy. Dave Vanian was fierce and scary-sexy onstage, Captain Sensible dropped trou, and Rat Scabies stood up behind his drum kit, spitting beer and flipping the audience off. It was the first time I stayed out all night, blowing off my curfew and my ride home. In anticipation of a wild night, I’d taken my schoolbooks to the Starwood, parking them upstairs at the VIP bar while I watched the show. I went to Cantor’s with The Damned afterward, engaging in a food fight before going to party at the infamous Tropicana Motel. The next morning, at Duke’s Coffee Shop, Tom Waits took in my hungover appearance—whipped cream and maple syrup congealed in my hair and staining my homemade Damned shirt—and admonished me in his gravelly voice, “Pleasant, for God’s sake, stay in school!” I assured him I would and, looking like a hot drunk mess, was chauffeured down Santa Monica Boulevard to school in the back of Rodney Bingenheimer’s vintage black Caddy, the envy of Randy Kaye, Dennis Crosby, and Lisa Curland, who’d made the mistake of adhering to their curfews. After that there was a summer-long string of benchmark events and uproarious gigs, all with a full attendance roster of those who’d eventually become celebrated as “LA’s First Hundred Punks.” The Germs had their first official gig at Kim Fowley’s punk series at the Whisky, which resulted once again in a huge mess of food, this time because they’d requested their fans to bring condiments, and everyone obliged. They’d moved into a nearby apartment on Holloway Drive, Joan and Lisa had rented an apartment on San Vicente, across the street from both Licorice Pizza and the Whisky, and Brian/Kid Congo, Ann McLean, Dennis Crosby, and I moved into 909 Palm—all our pads were within walking distance of each other. Our 909 parties were epic and never-ending. At the end of the night, no matter where we were, there was always a standing invitation for everyone to come over, and they did. Slash magazine held a coming-out bash at a ballroom at the Santa Monica Ramada Inn, because their offices were nearby. Hotel guests were staring at us in sheer terror. I
was in disbelief that such a cool punk magazine had an “old” publisher—Steve Samiof —who also had a beard! Nevertheless, I knew a good thing when I saw it, hitting him up for a staff writing position, which he agreed to. My name appeared on the masthead in the next issue, and my first piece was the Germs interview I did, though to my chagrin, the story went uncredited. When Slash moved to a loft on Pico and Redondo in LA, they had many insane parties there, not the least of which was the May 1977 Screamers debut and a party for Devo in July, after which I slipped on a puddle of spilled Mickey’s Big Mouth and fell over the Germs’ second-story balcony. Phast Phreddie and K. K. rushed me to the hospital, where I got five stitches in my chin . . . and stole a plastic “Patient Belongings” bag to use as a purse. Soon two events occurred, spawning a party of mythical proportions at my place: my mom left to work out of town for a week, and Hellin and Trudi got a settlement for their car accident. Because I’d let them stay at my house for so long and they were now rollin’ in dough, we went on a shopping trip to the Pleasure Chest. We bought matching black-leather spiked slave collars and more co*ck rings, a cat-o’-nine-tails, various bullwhips, paddles, and an authentic regulation canvas straightjacket with leather straps. Because my mom was gone, in order to show off our kinky loot, we decided to have a party. We got cases of beer, lots of vodka, and avocados to make guacamole; we spent the afternoon calling everyone to invite them. Among the first to show up were Joan Jett and Lisa Curland, already many sheets to the wind on Quaaludes and vodka. Our other guests all arrived in various states of inebriation too. By the time Cherie the Penguin, Tony the Hustler, John Doe and Exene, and everyone from Dangerhouse and the Wilton Hilton showed up toting six-packs of Mickey’s Big Mouth beer, we’d run out of chips. I dared Tomata to try the guacamole with a dog biscuit, and he did, declaring it “fabulous.” Suddenly everyone had to do it. The downstairs bathroom was commandeered as a dungeon, with Joan, Lisa, Hellin, Trudi, Gear, and I taking turns bending anyone who was willing over the rim of the bathtub and whipping them as hard as we could. We started a game with the straightjacket and a stopwatch, having a contest to see who could last the longest amount of time; some people took dares to escape but couldn’t. When K. K. emerged from a really long bathroomsession with Trudi and Joan Jett, I convinced him to try it. He was drunk so he obliged, but none of us—even K. K. —realized he was claustrophobic! Once the buckles were in place, he flipped out and made a dash for the open front door, running down the street screaming and body slamming against the palm trees in an attempt to escape. Of course a neighbor called the cops and the party was busted immediately. The clean-up was challenging; there was blood on the bathroom walls, guacamole and crushed dog biscuits everywhere, and for months any time a piece of furniture was moved, a booze bottle or beer can rolled out.
When the Masque opened in August, it became our amazing secret clubhouse. The steep concrete stairway—which, in hindsight, I’m shocked no one ever tumbled down and died on—led to a warren of subterranean rooms, with the walls already covered in punk graffiti from the bands who practiced there. The stage was small and low, and the sound system sucked, but we were in heaven! It was also conveniently located within crawling distance of the Canterbury and the Hollywood Boulevard Jack in the Box, where you could buy pills. The vast public parking lots behind the Masque functioned as a free motel—the ’ludes-fueled make-out sessions that started in the Masque bathrooms would inevitably be consummated there. We’d select the nicest cars we could find, try the doors, which were mostly left unlocked, and climb in the backseat for some lovin’, leaving the windows fogged up as we made a hasty exit to catch the next band. Sex in those extremely pre-AIDS days was louche and fun, and the hook-ups weren’t always heterosexual. One night at Larchmont Hall, during an X show, Alice Bag and I got very cozy while guzzling Southern Comfort on the fainting couch in the ladies’ room. Her boyfriend, Nickey Beat of The Weirdos, burst in and a huge brawl ensued. My other constant make-out companions—all on a friend-with-benefits basis, with no strings attached—were Joan Jett and Lisa Curland (who were in a relationship at the time), Bobby/Darby, and Go-Go’s Jane and Belinda. My affair with Jane, which had started at the Masque, spanned years, continuing into our respective relationships with Levi Dexter of The Rockats and his drummer, Dean Thomas, though neither of the guys ever knew about it! 1978 started off with a January 14 Sex Pistols gig at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco. Tickets were a whopping three dollars, and the migration from LA was massive. Brad Dunning, Randy Kaye, Brian/Kid, Nancy Nagler, and I all crammed into Theresa Kereakes’s tiny Honda to make the pilgrimage. But a few others got a head start: Hellin, Trudi, and a bunch of other chicks from the Canterbury had gone to Texas to catch the shows there. It was rumored that Hellin lost her virginity to Sid and that Alice Bag and Pat Bag had followed suit with Paul Cook and Steve Jones. I reported on this salaciously in my fanzine, Lobotomy (which I started with Randy Kaye in 1978), though now I’m not entirely sure whether these rumors were actually true and who did what to whom! A few days after Winterland the Sex Pistols broke up and the Masque was shut down by the LA fire marshals. The huge Save the Masque benefit took place at the Elks Lodge, with The Dickies, Black Randy, The Avengers, Dils, Weirdos, X, Bags, Screamers, Randoms, and many others taking the stage. Things rolled along, with events happening thick and fast. There were now so many local bands, plus New York and English bands touring, that there were multiple choices of things to do on any given night. In 1979, with the release of GI, produced by Joan Jett, The Germs morphed from a
seminovelty band into a serious force to be reckoned with. Their legions of slavish followers, fresh “Germs Burns” blistering their hands, were sort of annoying and cultish to me and quite a few of the other original punks. Also, beach punks and Cromagnonesque jocks from Orange County had begun to infiltrate our scene, and many of us, especially the women, were put off by it because of the violence in the slam pits. Instead of the pogo-dancing fun we’d been accustomed to at the Masque, the idiots who just months before had been screaming at us from car windows and beating us up had suddenly decided that punk was “cool” and the original scene began to splinter. Many of the punkettes made a swift turn to the neo-rockabilly movement, perpetrated by Levi & the Rockats, an English band managed by the legendary Leee Black Childers of Bowie’s MainMan Productions. Brian/Kid and I had seen them at Max’s Kansas City in New York, opening up for the Cramps, and they were astounding. When they moved to LA and took up residence at the Tropicana Motel, Jane Wiedlin and I were among the first punk chicks to convert, followed quickly by Belinda, Connie Clarksville, Rosemarie “Wyline” Patronette, Anna Statman, Ann McLean, and many more. Though we all still adored punk, rockabilly shows were a much safer bet for us physically, and the guys were more courtly in a 1950s throwback way. Guys were converting too, including Jeffrey Pierce, Billy Persons (of The Falcons), and Brian/Kid. I reported on this trend with my first article, “Rockabilly Redux,” for the LA Weekly, and after that they gave me my own gossip column, the infamous “La De Da,” which I wrote for years, first by myself and later in tandem with Craig Lee and other contributors. By early 1980 Anna Statman and I discovered The Blasters just before their first album came out. Even though I still continued going to punk shows, writing for Slash, LA Weekly, and New York Rocker, and publishing Lobotomy, the punk scene had lost its initial lustre for me. The rampant violence at shows, constant police harassment, and the rise of heroin as the drug of choice within the scene had left me seriously disenchanted. The quick rise—and subsequent fall—of The Germs, the concert series for The Decline of Western Civilization, and, in December, the untimely death of Darby Crash sealed it for me. I not only lost a dear friend, someone I felt I’d already lost to heroin, but I was also sure that the scene I’d loved so much had ended for real. At the time I blithely moved on to other things—more writing, starting my own band, the all-female Screamin’ Sirens, in 1983, and becoming the full-time booker for the seminal LA clubs Cathay de Grande and Raji’s. In retrospect—and not just because I was so young—the years between 1975 and 1980 really were beyond incredible. Los Angeles was a crazy nonstop party, and the punk scene was chock-full of interesting, wildly creative people. It was so much fun, most of us didn’t even have time to stop and notice that history was being made.
CHAPTER 6
Murphy Beds by John Doe
Behind
Circus Books on Santa Monica Boulevard stood an unassuming, chalkwhite, 1920s apartment bldg. Circus Books was a typical dirty bookstore from the ’60s, when p*rnography was for perverts & hom*osexuals. We loved it for its lawlessness, people watching & service to a community right in the heart of the gay hustler district, West Hollywood. At the end of the hall on the ground floor was Exene & Farrah Fawcett Minor’s apartment. They were both lapsed Catholics from Florida, both of which usually lead to bad behavior. They had a talent for egging each other on to great heights of chaos. On any given night Farrah would throw a drink in someone’s face and make it seem like it was the person’s fault or, at least, they deserved it. Exene always had her back & occasionally instigated the fracas. The studio apartment was unremarkable except for a few sturdy built-in cabinets that were part of any building from the 1920s or 1930s. Naturally there was a Murphy bed & a fold-out couch where they slept. More punk rockers slept on & did who knows what on Murphy beds than you could count. It’s a testament to the functionality & practicality of the invention. (Thank you, Mr. Wm. Murphy & your SF opera star paramour.) Exene & Farrah’s front door opened directly into the main room. An attached bathroom and kitchen was somewhat divided by those built-ins. It was perfect for any aspiring starlet or punk-rock girls looking for an affordable lifestyle that left plenty of time for dreaming, writing, drawing, or generally f*cking off. The greatest benefit of the place was its location, directly across from the Starwood, the Whisky a Go Go’s main above-ground competition for live music. When DIY shows at veteran halls weren’t happening or the Masque was shut down, we saw countless punk-rock shows there. The Damned’s debut w/ flour billowing up from the floor-tom as the first, rocketing song was counted off. Devo, as they left everyone speechless w/ their airtight, mid-west, rhythm section, catchy songs, uniforms & dance moves to boot. Cheap Trick, before they graduated to the Top Ten & arenas. The Germs’ penultimate show, which everyone hoped wasn’t the end but secretly knew it was.
The apartment on La Jolla was ground zero for the party before & after almost every show. To her friends, Farrah went by the name Fay, which, not surprisingly, was also a pseudonym. She was a hellion then & during that time earned a place in history by inspiring several songs. Owing to her Southern roots, she would transform their small space into the most inviting party atmosphere. I always thought of her as a character from Tennessee Williams or Truman Capote. Exene was an able cohort & stylist of the environs. Florida souvenir ashtrays & pillow covers were cleaned & placed just so. The Murphy bed folded up, the decks cleared & low light from table lamps all set before everything went to hell or at least pretty damn haywire. The drink Fay invented she called the “fast gin fizz,” Gordon’s gin & Nehi strawberry soda. It tasted pretty horrible (Darby Crash once announced, “This tastes like GAASSS!”), but the sugar from the soda pop seemed to inject the gin straight into your veins, brain & heart of crazy. Anyone who went to any show at the Starwood in 1977 or ’78 probably passed through this door. At the time word of mouth was king & news spread quickly when the gig or the party & the gin was on. Somewhere there’s even a few rolls of film that Jenny Lens shot of a beautiful sh*t-show that was crowned by Cherie the Penguin swanning out of the bathroom with nothing on but strategically placed pieces of wet toilet paper—or was it shaving cream? K. K. Barrett, drummer for The Screamers & Fay’s boyfriend at the time, was an artist who excelled at re-creating the reentry rubber stamp placed on people’s wrists by the Starwood staff. One or two people would pay to get in & the rest of us would get in w/ fake hand-drawn stamps—genius! This is how bonds & alliances were made & broken. This is how a bunch of outsiders, f*ckups & loners turned into a bohemian, punk-rock community. People exchanged stories of where they came from, crazy sh*t they had done in their young lives, ideas of what was & wasn’t cool or what was or wasn’t punk rock. It was like going to the strangest, coolest graduate school of music, art & life, even though everyone was just f*cking around & having a wild time. This place was the same as dozens of other apartments or houses where other friendships, partnerships & insanity took place. A short time after Fay & Exene moved out, a group of women—Trudi, Hellin Killer & Mary Rat—would move into another ground floor apt in the same building, which was aptly dubbed the Plunger Pit.
CHAPTER 7
You Better Shut Up and Listen by Chris Morris
I was a stranger in a strange land. Then I found other strangers, stranger even than me. I arrived in Los Angeles on Good Friday of 1977. That January I had been ejected from my job as an all-night disc jockey at a freeform FM station in Madison, Wisconsin. I had hopped on a train for an already-plotted vacation in LA, where I stayed with an old high school buddy for a few days in Beverly Glen. In the dead of winter I had walked beneath a night-blooming jasmine tree in Westwood, and my destiny was sealed in the moment I inhaled its perfume. After my return to Madtown I was morosely swilling a beer in my favorite saloon one night when the phone rang. “It’s for you,” Mitch the bartender said. My friend was on the other end of the line—he knew where to find me. He was well connected in the movie business. He told me that if I got on a plane at O’Hare in Chicago two days later, there was a job waiting for me on the Left Coast. On my arrival I was hired on the spot by the three partners who ran Parallax Theatre Systems. The outfit, later known as Landmark Theatre Corporation, operated a chain of revival movie houses around the country, including the Nuart in LA, the Rialto in Pasadena, and the Sherman in Sherman Oaks. (They later acquired the Fox Venice.) I had minored in film at college and could push two words together and, thus, was deemed suitable for the position. I was charged with writing the film notes on the back of the free theater calendars and coordinating publicity. I rented a cheap, utilitarian apartment with a cottage-cheese ceiling in Westwood Village. For the first few months I lived in the city; a typical evening’s entertainment involved buying a six-pack at the liquor store below the company’s offices on Santa Monica Boulevard, walking a hundred yards to the Nuart, and drinking the night away in the back row of the theater as a double feature of classic films unspooled on the screen. I hadn’t lost my love of music, but I had grown alienated from the status quo during my days spinning records in the Midwest. I’d wearied of the daily requests from frat boys and sorority queens seeking their minimum daily requirement of Fleetwood Mac, The Eagles, and Boz Scaggs. The stuff sent me around the bend with boredom.
Moreover, the radio biz was driven by everyday corruption, and I’d wearied of its sordid perquisites. I recall a time when a hundred-count LP box arrived at the station from a label with which we were doing no current promotions. Upon opening it, we discovered that the generous regional promo man had sent us hundreds of peyote buttons. This was the way it worked. But something else had been going on, and it had occasionally seeped onto the airwaves at the station. I was a fan of Patti Smith’s writing for Creem and was delighted when a copy of her Mer single “Hey Joe”/“Piss Factory” materialized in the studio. After Patti’s debut album, Horses, was released in 1975, I had interviewed her for the station; she had thumbed desultorily through an issue of Down Beat while I grilled her but still graciously signed my copy of her book Seventh Heaven: “TO RADIO FREE MADISON TONGUE OF LOVE PATTI SMITH.” Among the real or imagined crimes that had led to my dismissal was my decision, during a midafternoon substitute shift, to play The Ramones’ debut album in its entirety at 2:30 p.m. as the day’s featured LP. The studio telephone glowed white with listener outrage. Those acts had already played LA by the time I landed, but I wasn’t prepared to sally forth in search of the new music immediately. The size of the city was terrifying and daunting, and I didn’t drive (and still don’t), so I was slow to learn the lay of the land. However, in the summer of ’77, a first fire got lit under my uncertain ass. I was sitting at my IBM Selectric in the small space I shared with Parallax’s art director when I heard a knock at the door. A swarthy young guy in a sports coat walked in with some newspapers under his arm. He introduced himself as Steve Samiof. He told me he was publishing a magazine devoted to new music in LA and asked whether my company would be interested in running some ads for its theaters in its pages. When advised that I had nothing to do with purchasing advertising for the company, Samiof shrugged and dropped the papers on my desk, told me to get in touch if there was any possibility of a buy, and walked out the door. I took the three magazines Samiof had left—the first three issues of Slash—home with me. I studied them in amazement. A scene of some unprecedented sort was developing in town. Like the one that had grown in New York, it was a small one, so infinitesimal as to be, at that point, almost undetectable, but it was populated by a fascinating-looking pack of musicians. I had no idea what they sounded like, but their contorted, painted visages and ripped-up togs were alluring, and their names—Tomata du Plenty, Exene, Alice Bag, Bobby Pyn—promised something strange, dangerous, and adventurous. The writing in the mag was raucous and hectoring; much of it was penned by a sardonic and obscene scribe who called himself Kickboy Face (who, I would later learn, was actually a French émigré named Claude Bessy). It appeared from the reviews and interviews in the mag that the local bands played at a subterranean Hollywood
firetrap/dungeon called the Masque. I was still too timid and unsure of my geographical footing to explore any gigs, but I did a little poking around. One afternoon I climbed into the Parallax van with our driver, Dave Cohlmeyer, a skinny metal dude with lank blond hair that spilled over his shoulders, to pick up some film cans from a Hollywood depot. On the way back I suggested that we stop by the Masque to scope out the center of the punk vortex. Parking the van on Cherokee, we cautiously walked down the alley behind the puss*cat p*rn theater. Finding an open door, we stared down the dark, narrow, graffiti-splattered staircase that led into the bowels of the Masque. We heard a stirring below, and a figure emerged at the foot of the stairs. Looking up at two hirsute intruders, the man glared at us with a bleary, poisonous eye and began to yell in a thick Scottish accent: “We’re not open! f*ck off!” Dave and I beat a hasty retreat. I had been 86ed by Brendan Mullen, the man who gave LA punk its first home. I was still looking for my crew. I found it at Rhino Records. I occasionally walked past the tiny Westwood Boulevard store on my way home from the office. I started dropping in on a regular basis. The place specialized in the new music—they carried everything from New York and England, and local singles were beginning to trickle out —and its clerks were knowledgeable, funny, and loudly opinionated . . . my kind of people. The shop soon became my living room, to the dismay of some of its employees, who would sometimes honor me with a slot on the store’s Worst Customers List, a Top Ten of muso infamy. I can’t recall whether I made my first trip to an LA punk gig with one of the Rhino habitués or a like-minded Parallax colleague—several of my coworkers were already co*cking an ear to the local bands—but in January 1978 I found myself standing in front of the stage of the Whisky a Go Go, the grande dame of Sunset Strip clubs, for a show by The Screamers and X. In an instant I was sold, and something like a new life began. Had anyone ever seen anything like The Screamers? Today they exist more as a rumor or a legend than as a band, consigned to murky YouTube footage and bootlegged concert recordings and demos. They never issued an official recording during their brief lifetime. Back then they couldn’t be compared to anything on the scene—or anything in the world, actually. Unlike the vast majority of the bands I would soon hear, they eschewed electric guitars; their sound was a wall of loud, demonically distorted keyboards, played by band mastermind Tommy Gear and David Braun (aka David Brown, cofounder of Dangerhouse Records), the latter soon supplanted by Paul Roessler. Drummer K. K. Barrett pushed the music with an incessant pulse inspired by such krautrock skin men as Jaki Liebezeit of Can and Klaus Dinger of Neu! The band’s main attraction was vocalist Tomata du Plenty, who brought to the stage
an ardent, ingratiating theatricality, no doubt bred by his time with San Francisco’s co*ckettes and Seattle’s Ze Whiz Kidz. He skittered across the boards like a marionette with its strings tangled, waving his hands before his face, doing a bunny hop, prancing like an impatient child, declaiming such alternately twisted and yearning tunes as “Vertigo,” “I Wanna Hurt,” “A Better World,” “Punish or Be Damned,” and “Peer Pressure” in a choked yelp. An invariable highlight of the group’s sets came in the middle of the rocketing “122 Hours of Fear,” when the convulsive song would suddenly slam to a stop and Tomata would topple to his knees. Milking the silence until the audience began to shriek, he would leap back up to the microphone and command, “You better shut up and listen!” And the music would roar anew. The Screamers were a flabbergasting thing, and I would go on to see them every chance I got, waiting in vain for one of the small local labels that had begun to spring up to document their music. The band had its own ideas and ambitions, and by the end of 1978 they had virtually disappeared to hole up in an overheated makeshift studio at Melrose and Heliotrope in East Hollywood, where they hunkered down with Austrian film director Rene Daalder, plotting a prescient multimedia project that never came to fruition. Shows at the Whisky and the Roxy in 1979 were chaotic and disjointed, and the band was already atomizing. Daalder’s dreadful dystopian musical Population: 1, starring Tomata with art direction by K. K. (who would later find great success as a production designer for director Spike Jonze) would serve as a kind of epitaph for LA punk’s most stellar unit. You will hear a great deal about X straight from the horse’s mouth elsewhere in these pages, so I will attempt to be brief. The band was as much of a revelation to me that night at the Whisky as The Screamers (whose lead singer’s name was invoked on X’s debut single “Adult Books”). It was love at first sight, really. Their songs immediately bowled me over: their hurtling, imagistic lyrics betrayed John Doe and Exene’s roots in poetry and fused influences like William S. Burroughs and Raymond Chandler in a grimy homebrew. Their performance was like a kinetic sculpture, as John bounded around the stage and Exene thrashed in its center as if the mic stand was the only thing holding her to the Earth. Drummer Don (later DJ) Bonebrake pushed every tune in your face. Their instrumental weapon was unlike any other: blond, pompadoured guitarist Billy Zoom, a rockabilly veteran, who stood, splay-legged, on the boards in a silver leather jacket and an insolent grin splitting his face as he slapped antique Chuck Berry and Cliff Gallup licks against the songs’ amped grain. I would see the band literally dozens of times over the course of the next eight years, during which they established themselves as LA’s most accomplished and important group.
By the time I witnessed that epochal Whisky show, the Masque era was essentially over; the club was shuttered under intense pressure from the LAPD and the Hollywood city fathers in January of ’78, and it operated sporadically, essentially as a private venue, until late that year. Brendan briefly reanimated it at a bombed-out location at Santa Monica and Vine, but it too folded in early 1979 after an astonishing show by The Cramps, The Dead Boys, and Pure Hell. (Brendan distinguished himself as a club booker at Club Lingerie and later as a Boswell of the LA punk scene before his sudden death in 2009.) With the demise of the Masque, the MK1 punk bands scattered like roaches under a kitchen light, moving into whatever venues proved hospitable to the music. The Whisky and the Starwood on Santa Monica were safe havens until their respective closures in 1982 and 1981. Less upscale joints—well, some of them were toilets, really—picked up the slack: Blackie’s on La Brea, Club 88 on Pico in West LA, the Hong Kong Café in Chinatown, Al’s Bar downtown, The Vex in East LA, the Cathay de Grande in Hollywood. I wound up pursuing the music at most of these down-at-the-heels nightspots after I became the music critic for the Los Angeles Reader, a new alternative weekly, in October of 1978. I got to know many of the OG punk musicians. You would run into some of them on the street. I encountered Randy Stodola and Dianne Chai, respectively the guitarist and bassist for The Alley Cats, as they handed out flyers for one of their shows in front of the Whisky one night. They were small, soft-spoken people, almost doll-like. With her ratted bouffant and brightly painted cupid’s-bow mouth, Dianne reminded me of a mussed-up Ronnie Spector. Given their looks, it was surprising that, with drummer John McCarthy, they made some of the toughest, most nihilistic music on the scene. Song titles like “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore,” “Too Much Junk,” “Nightmare City,” and “Escape from Planet Earth” pretty much encapsulate their worldview. They whacked their streetwise weltschmerz across with a snarling guitar vengeance. The Alley Cats seemed to lose the thread after a brief and thoroughly unlikely association with MCA Records and a reincarnation as The Zarkons, and then they disappeared into the cracks in the sidewalk. In the new millennium Randy resurfaced with a new group playing under The Alley Cats handle; at last report Dianne was married to the band’s former manager Marshall Berle (son of the early TV icon Milton Berle) and working as a travel agent in Florida. I only got to know The Plugz, one of the first acts on Slash’s in-house record label, after hearing the trio’s debut album Electrify Me, the first self-released LP by an LA punk band. I loved their energy and charging original songs—“Electrify Me,” “A Gain A Loss,” “Berserk Town”—and their cranked-up cover of Ritchie Valens’s “La Bamba.” I subsequently saw several club gigs—at one of which, at the Hong Kong Café,
drummer Charlie (Chalo) Quintana, all of seventeen at the time, was given the heave-ho for being underage. After one show I approached the band’s sardonic singer-guitarist Tito Larriva and asked whether I could call him to interview him for a Reader story about LA punk. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “My number’s in the run-off groove of the record.” And so it was. With members born in Mexico (Tito) and on the Texas-Mexico border (Chalo), The Plugz were probably the most prominent of several early LA punk bands featuring Latino musicians—an appropriate contingent in a burg with the largest Hispanic population outside Mexico City. The Zeros, a quartet of whey-faced transplants from Chula Vista (including Javier Escovedo, brother of Alejandro Escovedo, the guitarist for San Francisco’s Nuns), made their bones at the Masque and released a pair of asskicking 45s on Greg Shaw’s Bomp! label. The Bags, a first-gen Masque act, was distinguished by the ferocious presence of its lead singer, Alice Bag (née Armendariz), whose raw-voiced vocals put across such early local anthems as “Survive” and “We Don’t Need the English.” Acts like The Brat and Los Illegals would succeed them. Tito Larriva was responsible for introducing LA punkdom to a soon-to-beprominent Chicano group who had never performed outside of East LA. After an act dropped off the support bill for a May 1980 concert by Public Image Ltd., led by former Sex Pistols front man John (Johnny Rotten) Lydon, Tito asked an East Side folk quartet whether they might be interested in subbing. The crowd greeted the group with a hail of refuse and spit. The next time they appeared in front of a punk audience, the members of Los Lobos came armed with electric guitars. To this day some of them suspect that Tito set them up. One got used to rubbing elbows with the drunk, the drugged, and the deranged at LA punk shows—it was an outlaw music, after all, and a modicum of madness went with the terrain. But there were still certain bands to which I gave a wide berth. One of them was Black Randy and the Metro Squad. Because their front man was a founding partner in Dangerhouse Records, the group was well documented, on hilarious singles like “Trouble at the Cup” and the elegantly titled LP Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie, largely a slab of f*cked-up punk funk. But by all reports Black Randy was the loosest of cannons who lived out his skeevy lyrics; I was somewhat apprehensive about a guy who left go-cups of his own sh*t as booby traps on nightclub floors—I kept my distance. Likewise, I kept The Germs at arm’s length. Established as a local moving violation before the Masque even reared its head, their early shows were anything-goes trainwrecks that attracted a following notable for its destructive dementia; their homemade, Nazi-emulating armbands bearing the band’s blue circle logo were an effective stop sign for me. My closest encounter came after a show at Club 88. I had just missed their performance, and I entered the men’s room to discover stalls festooned
with wet toilet paper as well as shattered sinks and toilets lying in pools of brown water on the floor. (The fans couldn’t destroy the urinals, which were metal troughs bolted into the walls.) On occasion I would see lead singer Darby Crash wandering amid the crowd at the weekend record swap meets in the parking lot of the Capitol Records building on Vine Street. Clad in leather, sullen and acne encrusted, he wasn’t a guy I wanted to chat up. Only fifteen years after his suicide by overdose in December 1980 did I learn the facts about Darby while researching a story about his life and career. He was a glamobsessed graduate of the West Side’s Uni High, where he attended a frankly loco alternative studies program. With a head filled with Nietzsche, Hitler, Manson, L. Ron Hubbard, Werner Erhard, Bowie, and Iggy, he attacked the nascent LA punk scene like a baby-faced one-man demolition derby, too smart for his own good and bent on some kind of pestilent stardom. The Germs’ early singles “Forming” and “Lexicon Devil” (the latter of which was Slash Records’ inaugural release) in no way prepared me or many other skeptical listeners for G.I., the band’s lone LP, released in 1979. Produced by Joan Jett of The Runaways, it bristled with slovenly, furious intelligence and grim, tumbling poetry. They followed it up with a few scathing tunes for the soundtrack of William Friedkin’s much-maligned gay-themed noir Cruising. But by the time one of the Germs’ outré performances was immortalized in Penelope Spheeris’s 1981 documentary The Decline of Western Civilization, Darby had been sucked under by the terminal whirlpool of his reckless and frankly miserable life. A biography and a low-budget Hollywood biopic would follow years later in the wake of Darby’s canonization by some hardcore punk flag wavers. In the end it struck me as one sorry-ass legacy to leave behind. A dozen years after Darby’s self-designed exit, The Germs’ guitarist, Darby’s Uni classmate Pat Smear, would be recruited to play behind another similarly ill-fated, posthumously lionized musician, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. I initially found Chris D. of The Flesh Eaters as forbidding a figure as Darby. Glowering and beetle browed, he slouched through the local clubs like a bad dream made flesh. At one point he experienced some kind of eye trouble, and the eye patch he wore only accentuated his unnerving presence. He seemed to maintain a kind of force field around himself. Yet he managed to capture my imagination, for he crafted some of the most feral word-spew on the scene, on his band’s rampaging tracks for the anthology Tooth and Nail, and The Flesh Eaters’ album No Questions Asked, both of which he released on his own label, Upsetter Records. My true Flesh Eaters epiphany came with A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, an astonishing amalgam of fiery punk, swamp blues, and jazzy atonality cut in 1981 by an all-star lineup comprising members of X and The Blasters. The record was virtually all
I listened to during a protracted siege of pneumonia that year, and it was a perfect soundtrack for my fever. I attended the handful of shows this dazzling unit performed, including one at Myron’s Ballroom, where they blew The Fall back to Manchester, and I quickly learned that Chris was a soft-spoken, deeply thoughtful guy with a passion for movies of all stripes and the darkest veins of literature. No one-shot, Chris followed A Minute to Pray with a pair of albums, Forever Came Today and A Hard Road to Follow, which featured paint-peeling work by lead guitarist Don Kirk. Ever the renaissance man, he backed up those early achievements with a decades-long succession of equally hair-raising Flesh Eaters releases plus a couple of fine poetry collections, stints as a film actor (in Alison Anders’s punk drama Border Radio) and screenwriter-director (of the vampire film I Pass for Human), and a long run as a programmer for the American Cinematheque in Hollywood. Sometime in late 1978 or early 1979 I had a fateful meeting with a then-neophyte musician who would ultimately make some big ripples and raise a few hackles. One afternoon in the reggae section at Rhino Records, I struck up a conversation with a fellow browser, a pudgy, moonfaced kid with bleached-blond hair who began to jabber excitedly about Lee Perry. Waves of chatter, punctuated by breathless explosions of nervous laughter, poured from him ceaselessly. It turned out that, like me, he was also a blues fan, so we ended up cruising down to the Santa Monica specialty store Muskadine Records to pick through the bins as the manager eyed us with suspicion. On his recommendation I bought a Bo Weavil Jackson LP that day. The kid’s name was Jeffrey Lee Pierce. A San Fernando Valley product, he was at that point president of the Blondie fan club, a sometime scribe for Slash (under the handle Ranking Jeffrey Lee), and a former member of some short-lived ad hoc punk bands, which had included as members such friends of mine as Phast Phreddie Patterson, editor of Back Door Man and later front man of his own band Thee Precisions, and Anna Statman, briefly a Parallax coworker and subsequently a Slash Records A&R rep. Jeffrey was ubiquitous in the local clubs and harbored continuing ambitions for his own band. I dutifully attended the shambolic early-1980 debut of his group the Creeping Ritual at the Hong Kong Café; its lineup included my colleague Don Snowden, a music writer at the Los Angeles Times, and a skinny, frail-looking teen with a caterpillar mustache named Brian Tristan. Taught to play in open tuning by Jeffrey himself, Brian soon rechristened himself Kid Congo Powers and joined The Cramps as their guitarist. Jeffrey finally drew together a stable lineup for his band, renamed The Gun Club at Keith Morris’s suggestion, sometime in 1980. That quartet, which included guitarist Ward Dotson and the former rhythm section of The Bags, Rob Ritter and Terry Graham, stirred a forceful blues-soaked noise, which took some of its cues from The Cramps,
behind Jeffrey’s soul-baring lyrics and wavering vocals, all captured to perfection on the 1981 debut Fire of Love (produced by Chris D. and Tito Larriva). Live, the act was an iffier proposition. Jeffrey liked—nay, demanded—attention, and he didn’t particularly care what kind. On some nights the band would simply tear your face off; on others, Jeffrey would get loaded, bait the audience, and maybe curl up in Terry’s bass drum for a while. He was an exasperating combination of addled genius, mammoth ego, and brittle insecurity. There were times when I wanted to wrap my fingers around his throat, but I never lost my affection for him. A prophet bereft of honor in his hometown, Jeffrey still managed to record a dozen Gun Club albums and solo projects and found some adulation in Europe. The recognition probably hastened his demise, his body broken by a flood of poisons, at the age of thirty-seven, in 1996. Some years later I interviewed Kid Congo at a garage-rock festival in Portland. Naturally Jeffrey’s name came up, and in an instant we both found ourselves crying. By 1981 to 1982 the original punk-rock scene in LA had atomized thoroughly. Some of the original fixtures of the scene—acts like The Skulls, The Eyes, and The Controllers—had vanished. Others, like that art project in motion The Weirdos, authors of such indelible singles as “Destroy All Music” and “We Got the Neutron Bomb,” I would not encounter until much later. The beach-punk posse had made its incursion within the city limits around the turn of the decade, leading to confrontations with the police that made 1979’s St. Patrick’s Day riot-squad assault on a punk show at MacArthur Park’s Elks Lodge look like a family picnic. My favorite group among the new breed was The Minutemen, a smart, gale-force San Pedro trio who took their cues from the hypereconomical UCLAspawned punk trio The Urinals. The Port-of-LA band shattered their songs into minute fragments of churning funk and darting, politically pointed punk. They liked Blue Öyster Cult and Creedence Clearwater Revival too. I adored them from my first listen to their debut 1981 long-player The Punch Line, and they only gained in skill and ambition as they relentlessly soldiered on. The rest of the hardcore bands were more difficult to love, and I came to associate their scene with outbreaks of violence. For instance, in October 1980 I left a show at the Whisky early. Out on the sidewalk writer Richard Meltzer, who was also contributing to the Reader at the time, suggested we head over to Baces Hall to catch some of Black Flag’s set. I climbed into Meltzer’s car and we drove east. You could see the police helicopter hovering above the venue from a mile away. By the time we pulled within a block of the venue, chaos had poured out of the hall; uniformed police were chasing punks down the middle of the street, aiming nightsticks at their close-cropped heads. Like many another Flag show of the era, this one had quickly devolved into a full-scale
riot. Four months later, still curious, I decided to take my life into my hands and attended a Black Flag show at the Stardust Ballroom, an antique big-band venue on Sunset Boulevard that occasionally played host to punk shows. I walked into the place and was immediately confronted with the spectacle of twenty or so skinheads kicking, beating, and punching a long-haired concertgoer across the open floor. Entering the men’s room a few minutes later, I found the guy crumpled and unattended in a corner on the floor, covered in blood. It would be some years before I attended another Black Flag show. Old-school punk types who declined to mingle with maniac skinheads a decade their junior retreated to musical entertainment less likely to involve bloodletting and/or arrest. It struck me as hardly coincidental that the arrival of the hardcore bands in Hollywood coincided with the flourishing of a contemporaneous roots-punk wave, populated largely by LA punk elders. The impulse was already there: The Gun Club and The Flesh Eaters were steeped in swampy blues. Levi and the Rockats, an émigré Brit unit fronted by Pleasant Gehman’s significant other Levi Dexter, had developed as a Masque-era attraction. Brothers Chip and Tony Kinman of the left-tilting, Clash-aping group The Dils founded the cowpunk outfit Rank and File with Alejandro Escovedo. In 1980 the Downey-born American music band The Blasters hit the scene like a bomb; they would successfully sponsor such kindred acts as Los Lobos and hardcore honky-tonker Dwight Yoakam, who became a bona fide country star after breaking in on the postpunk circuit. Blood on the Saddle, Pleasant’s own band The Screamin’ Sirens, and Lone Justice rose in their wake. I first encountered Lone Justice’s rodeo-sweetheart vocalist Maria McKee sitting in at a Blue Monday show at the Cathay de Grande, where Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs held their sodden weekly punk-blues revels under the basem*nt’s sagging ceiling tiles. Jimmy, our own Howlin’ Wolf, friend and familiar of X, also did the pouring at the after-hours spot the Zero Zero on Cahuenga Boulevard, where the old punk crew would drink themselves to sunrise on the weekends. Recognition for LA’s punk pioneers would be late in coming, but even in the day a couple of the acts managed to make an impression on the national consciousness. Fear, which had been haranguing local audiences successfully with low humor, vile epithets, and in-your-face noise since 1977, brought full-on disorder to a 1981 Saturday Night Live telecast, thanks to the beneficence of their number-one fan, John Belushi. And The Go-Go’s, the all-female quintet who had been a perennial punk opening act since their 1978 Masque bow, upped their commercial game, scored a hit on tour with Madness in the UK, signed to I.R.S. Records, and sold 2 million copies of their perky, radiofriendly 1981 debut album Beauty and the Beat.
Strange days had found us. Today some would call it history. Back then we called it fun.
CHAPTER 8
Acid, Meet Catholicism by Tom DeSavia
We—the
generation that came in later—were transfixed by punk logos: The Dead Kennedys’ “DK” symbol was the easiest to draw, but the Black Flag logo was by far our favorite. I knew the Flag emblem before I knew the music, of that I am certain, and it was that logo that led me to my first hardcore show, a multiband bill at the Santa Monica Civic in 1983—Black Flag, The Misfits, The Vandals. I didn’t really like going to hardcore shows initially—they felt mean, there were real fistfights with fans being carried out bloodied, and I always felt like a potential victim. And it was way harder to decipher lyrics at these gigs—way harder. But much like the punk shows that preceded it, the poison began to seep in, and I started to love the adrenaline rush I got from going to these more “dangerous” gigs. I didn’t really own any hardcore records, so I bought a couple: the Flag’s Damaged and Angry Samoans’ Back from Samoa—both, honestly, because I thought they had cool album covers. Those covers—and, really, almost all punk album covers—were half the fun of the experience. They felt forbidden. They would have been forbidden had they been discovered. In our elders’ eyes these images, like the music, would lead to no good—so I kept them expertly hidden, tucked away between more acceptable discs, knowing that my parents—wonderful folks from a different generation—had no interest in hearing anything in my collection. If my sweet mother had discovered any of the Pettibon artwork that adorned some of them, it would have been curtains, both for the records and for me. I would stare at the Damaged album cover endlessly. That image of Rollins— reflected in front of a just-punched cracked mirror, fist bloodied by the impact—had the intensity of a Scorsese film, violent and savage. And it didn’t look staged. “Cover Photo—Ed Colver” was one of the few credits, and it was noted prominently on the back of the LP. For whatever reason, his name stuck with me as much as any band member. His name started to pop up more and more as I went deeper, not only on Flag records but also on discs by Wasted Youth, T.S.O.L., The Adolescents, and the Circle Jerks. Whoever this dude was, he seemed to have the coolest job.
Flash forward to the very early nineties: while at dinner in Silverlake one night with my friend, the songwriter Dave Bassett, our conversation turned to drugs. I confessed that, unlike most of my pals, I had never tried acid, but wanted to. At that point Dave pulled out his wallet and revealed two tabs he had bought the night before outside of the Coconut Teaszer, a rock club we all used to frequent. Without hesitation, I put the little piece of paper under my tongue as instructed and let it dissolve, being reassured that we’d have plenty of time to drive to my apartment before the effects of the drug took hold. A friend volunteered to serve as our designated tour guide, with our first stop being the old brewery lofts in downtown LA to visit another buddy. Loft living was taking hold in downtown—it was relatively cheap, and the buildings were filled with artists and musicians putting their own personal stamp on this creative living space. At some point, after the acid really started to kick in, it was suggested we pop in on our friend’s next-door neighbor. So we crawled through his window, out on a fairly large segment of roof, and entered the window of the neighbor’s loft. That was how I found myself in the home of . . . Ed Colver. In this virginal drug haze I don’t remember much about the night other than the bottom floor of Colver’s loft being an art installation, with a weaving path that led through different pieces: I’ll never forget passing “A Well-Hung Klansman”—a mannequin gussied up in KKK garb hanging from a noose overhead; another dummy swaddled from head to toe in an American flag, wrapped tightly with rope, dubbed “Bound for Glory”; a coffin atop a bunch of Campbell’s soup cans; empty film canisters everywhere—with the body inside adorned with a Warhol mask and a Sticky Fingers album cover placed, appropriately, below the torso. When I reached the end of this maze—and after being captivated by a suspended, spinning infinity cube for either five hours or five minutes—I focused on an upsidedown cross at the very end of the path. Suddenly the implanted Catholic fear/guilt/paranoia of my upbringing came out all at once, and I remember literally crumbling into a fetal position, unable to move. At some point someone or several people rescued me and I was ushered back through the maze of artifacts to safety. I never did acid again, but I will never forget getting lost in Colver’s labyrinth. I still have panic attacks to this day as to what would have happened if I would have destroyed something. Or if Satan would have gotten me. I barely remember meeting Ed Colver that night. I think he was tall.
Photo: Ed Colver
CHAPTER 9
Take My Picture . . . by Tom DeSavia
It was a photo of Exene: a black-and-white shot, her extra-wide open eyes peeking out from her bangs under a shock of jet-black hair, her arms in front, upright, crossed at the forearms to form the letter X, framing her face. I think I saw the photo before I ever heard a note. And that photo said everything: it was supposed to shock, I suppose—it did—but mostly it was hypnotic. I remember staring at it, showing it to friends, eventually pinning it up on my wall. The photo was by Ed Colver. He, along with Frank Gargani, Jenny Lens, Gary Leonard, Melanie Nissen, Ann Summa, and a host of other emerging photographers, would become documentarians of the history of the Los Angeles punk-rock scene. Each of these artists captured images so iconic, they almost instantly became as important as the music, not only defining the subculture but also differentiating it from sister scenes going on in New York and the UK. B&W was the preferred exposure for most—although some utilized the vibrant, somewhat shocking contrasting colors present in fashion and hair dye—often with scenes of the West Coast’s decaying glamour providing the backdrop. The marriage of music and photography was natural; for those too young to be in the center of the actual scene, these very images were what resonated with us as much as anything else did. I shot the first lineup of Black Flag in front of Frederick’s of Hollywood on Hollywood Boulevard, and after two or three frames one of the members put his foot through the huge plate-glass window and it shattered, crashing down in thousands of pieces—but I got the shot—it ran in No magazine. —Frank Gargani
These photos showed us the desperate faces, at any moment capturing rage, defiance, apathy . . . sometimes all in one moment. The snapshots of the live shows often conveyed the tension of an authentic underground and its unearthly inhabitants. Occasionally the gritty reality of the performers resembled early-twentieth-century crime scene photography, a havoc-laden Weegee-like alternate universe where the “victims”—covered in chaotic tattoos and sometimes spit, thrown beer, and
occasionally blood—were the center of attraction, violently gripping microphones and guitars in midperformance. They introduced images of mosh pits and stage diving that would serve as instructional blueprints for those who saw them. It was all part of the most mesmerizing visual cautionary tale since rock ‘n’ roll’s first real evolution in the mid-1960s. Exene standing on the toilet at the Masque—her pose, that grimy graffitied stall, those skinny jeans and orthopedic shoe-boots. So tough and cool. —Ann Summa Screamers on the Bus Bench perfectly encapsulates the cultural revolution. Young men with their spiky hair (so radical for its time), jeans with holes during a time most ironed on patches or threw them out, pointed boots, and other unique clothing versus a little old lady with her cat-eyeglasses, neck brace, and checkered dress says more about the visual and societal changes than any other photo from LA or any other city in 1977. —Jenny Lens 1979, Hong Kong Café, The Germs—best live photos I ever shot. I got punched in the face by a rabid Germs fan and I struck back by tackling him; we ended up onstage in Don Bolles’s drum kit and the show went on. —Frank Gargani
There were the anticelebrity icons who were born: the Darbys and Exenes and Rollinses. But just as captivating were the crowds, the kids from the street, the scenesters expressing fashion, the reactions of proletariats interacting with the undesirables. I took a picture of Carlos Guitarlos and Mayor (Tom) Bradley. I was covering a celebrity (singer Vikki Carr) getting her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and I invited Carlos to come along. He hung out in the background while I shot, and as the ceremony was ending, I asked Carlos if he wanted his picture with Mayor Tom Bradley, who was officiating the proceedings. I went to Mayor Bradley and I said, “Can I take a picture of you and my friend Carlos Guitarlos?” Being a politician, he of course said yes, and then did the most spectacular double-take when he saw Carlos. I knew I had captured something: the first black mayor meeting a punk rocker. This was such a native view, and that photo screamed, “This is Los Angeles, this is happening, this is taking place.” —Gary Leonard
Fashion and music seemingly evolved together, and the photos brought to life a punkrock look that would eventually become a defining, widely adopted style, born from vintage thrift-store finds. A mix of garage-sale chic with nods to the Brandos and Bettie Pages that came before adorned the musicians and the fans alike. Just mentioning the word “punk” to any God-fearing citizen would conjure up a look, a style, a knot in the stomach. Punk was associated with one noise—and it was way worse than just loud, fast, and out of control. Mission accomplished. Punk photography and my style of shooting were a match made in heaven. I have always shot very quickly,
no fear of getting close, and I was very body language and personality oriented, with a bit of fashion thrown in. Fast, just like the music. —Melanie Nissen The visuals, the creativity, and the music drew me. The fashion was amazing, the music loud and crazy and pretty much like nothing I’d ever heard before. It felt like a revolution. —Ann Summa I used to turn the camera at an angle—it really was my signature during that time—I related most to Diane Arbus and Garry Winogrand. This was about documenting. As for his signature style for the first few years, Gary observed, “I got into this angular portrait thing. I grew out of it and no longer do it—it really is the one little affectation that seems to work at that time—not straight or vertical, but filling the frame to a different view. —Gary Leonard I merely wanted to capture the energy, fun and excitement, and, most of all, creativity of what I was feeling and seeing. I used my camera to support the musicians and the scene. —Jenny Lens At the shows I shot as fast as I could, with an on-camera flash powered with a battery pack, on a Nikon F. That way I could keep up with the music. I liked the live photos to be very high-key, hard-edge b&w. —Frank Gargani Everything was frenetic, so one had to be organized and at the same time keep one eye on your subject and the other to protect yourself and gear from the craziness around you. I had two cameras with different lenses on each so I wouldn’t miss a shot. —Ann Summa I bought darkroom gear using a credit card. I taught myself how to roll film, develop negatives, print proof sheets, and make prints (all of which I hated! Hated! Hated!). I taught myself to reach out to magazines and record companies to get my photos into the world. I also moved from the Valley to Hollywood to be near all the action. —Jenny Lens
LA has historically been dubbed a cultural wasteland; the rest of the country, generally even the world, have looked down their collective noses at us at one time or another. Our culture was too new, our architecture and literature boorish, our artistic aesthetic subpar or even nonexistent. To the outside world we lived in a shallow paradise. We snacked on fresh citrus fruit and listened to The Eagles whilst sipping margaritas on chaise lounges by our pools in year-round perfect weather. This, undoubtedly, was either not the reality for most punks or served as the main source of rebellion for the ones who came from that existence. I’ve always been on a mission to chronicle this city in a very intuitive way. I wanted to put out a native point of view. I get the romance of Los Angeles—that romantic ideal that captured those who were from out of town. It was always about the place, about recognizing the history of the city. It was a moment in LA history that hadn’t occurred before—and it wasn’t confined like before to those early days of the strip and along
Sunset Boulevard; it really was everywhere. What drew me to the scene was all the different places that they had to be—in small clubs in Hollywood, downtown, in Chinatown. . . . I mean that was amazing, music in Chinatown? —Gary Leonard
These were the days before the outskirts of Los Angeles were filled with high-priced lofts and the trendiest restaurants and clubs. Downtown LA was a scary place of homelessness and crime, of abandoned buildings and gutted shops. Just west was MacArthur Park, which, riddled with its infamous large population of heroin addicts, prostitutes, and (probably) dirty cops, was even worse. As such, these also became not only affordable neighborhoods for burgeoning artists to settle but also a haven for makeshift venues to pop up, many with the lifespan of a firefly. The raw loft spaces and the rest of the nearly abandoned real estate proved perfect locales for artistic types to gather and settle. Clubs such as Al’s Bar, Madame Wong’s, and the Elks Lodge coexisted alongside plenty of tried-and-true dirty dive bars, surrounded by bona fide skid rows to rival that of any doomed metropolis. The moment I entered the Elks Lodge it felt like I walked into the first chapter ofOn the Road. Visually it was stunning. One of the first scenes I saw was a guy showing off his newly refinished bass and the girl who appeared to be with him. I got a photo of them, and they turned out to be John Doe and Exene. Those two nights changed my life and gave me a direction, a focus for my photography. This was more than a revolution for me; I’d call it an antirevolution. —Frank Gargani It was easy to recognize that there was a pure counterculture going on. In LA there was the mainstream and this counterculture. That was it. —Gary Leonard The punk demi-world brought together downtown art-damaged artists, South Bay head-banging skinheads, East LA muralists, Valley fans, and Hollywood runaways/squatters into one big mess. It wasn’t organized enough to be called a revolution, but thanks to Slash and Kickboy Face (né journalist Claude Bessy) and Dangerhouse Records, at least it was documented. —Ann Summa
The importance of the birth of Slash magazine in May 1977—not only to the LA movement but also to punk rock in general—is immeasurable and cannot be overstated. The large-format fanzine/tabloid, the brainchild of Steve Samiof and photographer Melanie Nissen as well as a handful of artists, musicians, and scenesters, not only brought the exploits of the LA scene to the world in its own underground way but also helped set forth a style both in imaging and text that would go on to instantly define punk rock for eternity. “Steve Samiof showed me an article in the Los Angeles Times about a new music scene that was underway in London,” recalled Nissen. “Everything about it sounded intriguing and exciting—the music, visuals, fashion, and politics. We also
heard that The Damned were coming to perform at the Starwood, and we went and checked it out. It was love at first listen. We talked about doing a magazine, and The Damned were going to be the first group we worked with. I took the photo of Dave Vanian backstage that night for the first cover of Slash, Steve designed the logo, and we were ready to start. We then heard about The Screamers and that The Damned were going to be at their place, so we went over to their house and took more photos. The Screamers were the first LA punk band we met, so I did a photo session with them too. We also met The Germs there. That was a great hangout party house, a great place to shoot photos. And so the first issue of Slash started coming together. —Melanie Nissen I knew that punk was more than music. I merely wanted to capture the energy, fun and excitement, and, most of all, creativity of what I was feeling and seeing. I wanted the groups to be successful. —Jenny Lens
Success? Success seemed the furthest possibility. Radio was not going to play this music, the mainstream press would mostly cover their disdain for it, save for a handful of established critics, from Gonzo journalist Lester Bangs at Creem to Kristine McKenna from the Los Angeles Times. More accessible than Slash was the LA Reader, the alternative weekly where emerging columnist Chris Morris began covering the scene and converting many an impressionable youth along the way. But still, many in the community seemingly shared Lens’s sentiment: at the root they wanted it to be successful. This could be the viable alternative the world needed. Rock ‘n’ roll reborn —but instead of inspiring a sexual revolution, this was a counter-counterculture artistic, political, and cultural movement, full of poets, burgeoning activists, and sophisticated derelicts. This could be a revolution. There was the art, arguably led by Ray Pettibon’s show flyers and album art. Pettibon’s work defined the look of SST Records, the label owned and operated by his brother, Black Flag’s Greg Ginn. His artwork, usually created with simply black ink, was often antiestablishment and sometimes violent in its imagery. It defined an uprising, didn’t pretend to be gentle, and identified a segment of punk rock. Pettibon’s Black Flag logo remains one of the most recognizable rock ‘n’ roll emblems in existence. Exene herself possessed a hand-lettering technique so unique that it became synonymous with the scene and, eventually, punk rock in general. Her work was emblazoned not only on the printed lyrics in X’s albums but also in the songbooks they created in the early years and then later adopted liberally by anyone anywhere wanting to present something resembling a credible punk aesthetic. It could be argued that nothing challenged the complacency of 1970s visual, mindnumbing glitz than the rise of the punk-show flyer. All it took was some 8½-by-11 paper, glue, a razor blade, and a stack of old magazines, schoolbooks, some old p*rno mags as well as access to a copy machine. These seemingly hastily put-together show
promos were showing up everywhere: record stores, skate shops, bars, and, most of all, telephone poles, club walls, boarded-up construction sites—basically anywhere that was ripe for plastering. Angular and uncomfortable layouts challenged our senses, typography design delivered the shock of a ransom note: dictators, celebrities new and old, 1950s science-fiction imagery, sacrilegious Christian iconography, Ronald Reagan’s forehead emblazoned with the number of the beast—these were all de rigueur. The flyer culture held such significance that today these Xeroxed concoctions have received the museum and coffee-table respect given to fine and modern art. Deservedly so: a case can be made for these handbills paving the way for more conventional outsider art that took hold at the rise of the twenty-first century, including Shepard Fairey, Banksy, and the like. The revolution wasn’t televised, but it was photographed. It was given immortality through the visual artists who were there, through an oftentimes unspoken shared vision with the musicians whose songs brought the scene together. Architects of not just a time but a movement. It turns out it was a cultural revolution all along, and although very few saw fame and riches from the birth of the Los Angeles punk-rock scene, they left behind an influential legacy more lasting than one assumes anyone could have imagined. After the end of the Vietnam War, when the hippies decided to forget it and get high, I was extremely let down. After all, the sixties revolution was supposed to change the world, but where did that go? The punk movement was crazy and hectic and energetically full of life. I believe the statement punk made at that time was prophetic of where we are as a society today. —Frank Gargani
Photo: Melanie Nissen
CHAPTER 10
So Young & Beautiful by John Doe
Black
hair, brown faces, black hair, brown faces—beautiful, sweaty, Mexican teenagers swimming in a sea of white suburban kids. It was summer 1978 when we first clocked a new gang of people coming to see X. Club 88 in July was where I remember it best, maybe w/ The Blasters. I’ve seen a picture w/ Pat Smear & Joan Jett up front and members of The Stains and The Brat surrounding them. Exene wore a blue, Chinese-style shirtdress & I was in a mesh shirt (my excuse? It was Los Angeles in July in a nearly airless club w/ 8ft ceilings). The audience was a broiling, oozing pool of primordial goo. Bill Bateman cut his hand on a cymbal early in The Blasters’ set & bled all over his drums. Phil Alvin & I talked about getting a tank of oxygen the next time we played there. Seeing this new contingent of teenagers from the east side made us feel legit, gave us a feeling that we could communicate to more than people we knew. Communicating to people outside of the Hollywood 200, everyone who had been there from the beginning & probably played in at least three bands. Communicating to someone who probably heard too much Art Laboe, the Oldies Show on KRLA, because their parents were listening. Teenagers who answered the call to “new music” from a culture steeped in the ’50s, where our heroes came from. In our minds these people had a direct connection to Ritchie Valens & the heart of Los Angeles. It was wishful thinking then, but it gave us confidence that this music of ours, this punk rock, wasn’t just for one slice of the public; it could speak to everyone. From the very beginning Latinos figured into the LA punk-rock scene. Alice Bag was another superwoman, lead singer & role model. Delphina owned the black lingerie & cropped black hair look well before it became a default. Tito Larriva, it was rumored, had been a child star in Mexico City & Chalo Quintana was a 17-year-old monster drummer who Tito plucked from the streets of El Paso. Brian Tristan, a frail kid who began as The Screamers’ fan club president, ended up playing guitar for The Gun Club & The Cramps and could’ve given Peter Lorre a run for his money in the exotic looks department. Others made fanzines or fliers or just hung out. We knew their
upbringing was vastly different from ours, but so were the teenage runaways who played in some other groups of the time. No one cared. They were travelers & had made a scattered journey to a crazy scene that welcomed all sorts of misfits. If you wanted to be part of a group that would be yelled at, have trash thrown at them from passing cars & were generally ridiculed, why would we care if you had olive skin? But these kids from East LA, they were somehow different. They were more like normal citizens. What did we know? They seemed like another part of the growing audience, but a much cooler part. Maybe they wore tight jeans & a skinny tie w/ a button-down shirt. They were individuals but looked like a group, like a band. They were roughly the same age & just wandered over the LA River to see what was happening on the west side. Like most of the audience, they didn’t look like “punks.” What set them apart was their unity and our desire to include something & someone exotic, to prove our scene wasn’t just for disaffected suburban teens. Plus, they were all so young & beautiful. It was probably Sid or Rudy Medina who introduced themselves first. They told us they had a band called The Brat & that we should come to one of the backyard parties they played. We had no idea what we were in for. Lincoln Heights, City Terrace, Boyle Heights could’ve been “south of the border” for our lack of experience, but it was thrilling. Exene & I felt we snuck into a rare land w/ great guides who cared about us and somehow thought we mattered. We were the only white faces there, the food was incredible & The Brat played w/ precision, passion & innocence. They had great culturally different songs & sounds that owed more than a little something to the songs they grew up on. Then, while the band roared through their set, someone squeezed off four or five rounds from a semiautomatic .45 into the air. An uncle quickly straightened out this overenthusiastic partygoer by hustling him out the back gate. It wasn’t a cliché; it was just something that happened back then. This was a reality unlike what we had known and was all part of that bohemian lifestyle I moved across the country to find. As ’79 rolled around, we began to meet all manner of characters from Los Illegals, The Stains & Saccharine Trust & came to understand that their world was a world of many disciplines of art. Each group had their own demeanor & style of music. Stains were a faster, scarier version of The Germs & some members would insist that you smoke angel dust w/ them. Los Illegals had a tight, well-crafted sound that was more new wave than punk. They sang more in Spanish than English & relied on their Latino roots to craft their sound. But The Brat were a blend of so many styles, had such great songs & looks, it still boggles my mind they didn’t catch fire & blow us all away. They could’ve been a Latino version of Blondie & I believe that comparison was made at the time. The deeper we dug, the more of a microcosm was revealed. A new club, The Vex,
created a home for this wave of new music, partly due to Hollywood clubs’ unwillingness to book another new branch of this unpredictable music. Richard Duardo & his art collective/screen print business, Hecho en Azatlan, would have a significant presence making beautiful art posters for important gigs. Truly independent labels like Fatima Records released LPs by The Plugz & The Brat using Dia de los Muertos–styled graphics, which I think was a first in pop culture. This east-side culture folded into the blend w/ the original Hollywood scene & despite their difficulty getting booked, they found plenty of opportunities on the west side. It all might’ve been too little, too late. By the time The Brat, Los Illegals, etc. came onto the scene, it was already fracturing, but they planted a flag in the ground for all Latino rockers & paved the way for the Rock en Español movement years later.
CHAPTER 11
Punk-Rock Teenage Heaven by Robert Lopez aka El Vez
In 1975 I was 15 years old. I had just left being fat, long haired, and bad skinned. I was born and raised in Chula Vista, a suburb of America’s finest city, San Diego, California. My family floated somewhere between middle and lower-middle class. Our diet included government cheese and something we called “poor people’s chop suey” a few times a week. I attended Chula Vista High School in the later seventies. Surprisingly, compared to today’s population, it didn’t have many Latinos. It was mostly a surfer, stoner, sosch crowd. I didn’t get high or play the sports ball, so I wasn’t in any of those groups. I was not very popular. I had always been a misfit. I cried very easily in elementary school. Didn’t have many friends. By high school I was used to it. I was a very, very chubby kid who had found his nest of salt in Warhol, Dali, and the arts. I would spend my lunchtimes in the school library. Looking back, I seemed to be an aware kid, at least that’s what I remember. Insecure, for sure, but I would hope we all were. I had knowledge of things other than just the school and its student body’s curriculum. The year before I had gone to my first concert: Led Zeppelin. I much preferred my second concert: the New York Dolls. I read Creem and Rock Scene magazines. I was up on the latest bands, albeit through the writers’ reviews: I had to use my imagination as to what the bands actually sounded like. On PBS television I watchedAn American Family, perhaps the first actual reality TV show. It was about a Southern California family who were about to implode by divorce. That is where I was introduced to Lance Loud and Kristian Hoffman (both of whom would go on to form the NYC-based punk band The Mumps). They too were Southern California guys who loved rock music and Warhol and knew that New York was the place to be. In 1975 they would be my first gay role models from watching television. They would become my friends that next year. I saw Iggy Pop smear peanut butter all over his shirtless body as he walked on the uplifted hands of people! PBS was pretty informative back then. These things, plus my older sister Rhoda, were my first
exposures to punk rock. There was always something earlier that influenced punk—Iggy and the Stooges and the garage bands of the sixties that Creem magazine would write about, and so forth. The end of glitter rock had lots of foreshadowing to punk rock. These things served as a small but constant stream of “something else beside the norm” for me. I knew there was a whole different world out there after high school. I just didn’t know yet what it held for me. 1976 I cut my hair very short in my parents’ bathroom. I used my mom’s scissors and caught the droppings into a brown paper bag—I was a tidy punk. I unevenly clipped down to maybe an inch all around. The back of my head looked very chemotherapy. I was in a band called The Zeros, and we were on our way to play our first show outside our hometown. (Playing a quinceañera in Rosarito, a sleepy town south of Tijuana didn’t count. That band was the Main St. Brats and had had only half of The Zeros.) This would be our first show in Los Angeles! Now, we were a real band of like-minded Latino teenagers: me; Javier Escovedo, from the Main St. Brats; my cousin, Baba Chenelle; and his friend Hector Penalosa. Javier was the oldest at 18. Baba and I hovered at 16 and Hector was someplace in between. We had our own amps and guitars—mine bought from what I made from my paper route. I had bought a black Astoria Les Paul copy with three pickups, just like Ace Frehley, at Harper’s Music Store in Chula Vista. We had our own original songs, plus a handful of covers from our favorites: The Velvet Underground, The Seeds, the New York Dolls, and The Standells. Javier borrowed his parents’ brown Dodge Coronet station wagon with the modern cassette player, and we all piled in. Jackie Ramirez from San Diego had a friend named Audrey who lived in Los Angeles. Audrey was dating this guy named Phast Phreddie, a writer for a magazine called Back Door Man. We had all seen it at the record store. Jackie had mailed him a C-30 cassette of one of our rehearsals with our songs: “Don’t Push Me Around,” “Wimp,” “Hand Grenade Heart,” “Main St. Brat,” “Beat Your Heart Out.” He liked it and asked us to be part of a show of new bands. This was the infamous Orpheum show, across the street from Tower Records; the Whisky a Go Go was down the block. Perhaps the first punk-rock show in Hollywood —The Germs, The Zeros, and The Weirdos. Many of the audience would end up being my friends and neighbors. It was The Germs’ first show. They made a mess, were full of noise and great to see. To me that first show seemed more like performance art: How much could we get away with before someone told us to stop? We were all starving for something new, so it wasn’t going to be any of us. Bobby Pyn (later to become Darby Crash) did the “Iggy Peanut Butter” I had seen on TV! The Weirdos were fantastic! Older than us, they had a more mature vision, sound, and look as well as great songs. They wore Jackson Pollock/Robert Rauschenberg–inspired outfits they made
themselves of jumbled-together clothes that were splattered and spray painted, cobbled together with pins, staples, and tape, adding chains, bits of plastic from six-pack holders, and whatever else was about. Each outfit was different, but together they looked like a unit. We were pretty tame in comparison. Straight-leg slacks and button-down shirts—no antics. Someone noted that we looked like the Jets from West Side Story. D. D. Faye said we looked like four young Sal Mineos, the actor from Rebel Without a Cause. She insisted we change our name to The Mineos. I think we mainly just looked down when we played that night. Our songs were short and fast or slow and short, a mix of the New York Dolls, The Velvet Underground. As I was still just sixteen, but now I see the KISS influence also. I think we played well. Our songs were teenaged because we were teenagers. We were the youngest ones there that night. We were quiet and shy, which translates in having never been popular in school. These new people liked us and what we did. This was a new social experience! Greg Shaw from Bomp! Records saw our show. He liked us! He asked if he could put out a 45 record of us on his label. Of course we said yes! Javier drove us back to Chula Vista late that night. We were more than excited from what had just happened: playing on a stage in the big city in front of strangers—who liked us! And then being asked to put out a record by a guy we’d read about in magazines. This was punk teenage rock ‘n’ roll heaven! We were back in high school the next morning. Before this, I had been an A and B student; I would receive my first D that year in US history—my first class of the day. Thus came my punk-rock education! We quickly got labeled the Mexican Ramones. I loved The Ramones, so I didn’t mind the title. But we thought our style was more New York Dolls and Velvet Underground; after all, we had guitar solos. Yeah, we were Mexicans—so what? It wasn’t our calling card. Funny enough, that would become my raison d’être for my later performing—always a “Mexican” something. Back then the California scene only existed in Hollywood and San Francisco. There was nothing in San Diego; that’s why we had to drive all the way up to LA. Javier did the driving—none of the rest of us had our driver’s licenses yet. It was sort of a blessing to be of the scene but not in the scene. We were still in high school in Chula Vista. We would go to LA as often as we could or when the shows asked for us, but we were not constantly there. Perhaps that kept the best parts and the bad parts at a good distance. We could scheme and dream for the week and then be back with fresh eyes for the weekend. Those early shows were pretty inspiring. I felt part of a movement, or something at
least. Part of a music scene. It was a great feeling after years of misfitdom. Your friends and peers were in the audience, then performing onstage after you. Or they were making posters or paintings. Gary Panter’s angular, punky cubist art was a perfect companion for the times. There were writers like Claude Bessy and Craig Lee spouting opinion, making comparisons, or just talking trash. You would get a review in their fanzine and even in the major city newspapers. We even got to be on TV to promote our first single! (Sure helped that my dad worked at the local TV station in San Diego.) The alwaysgreat question of the morning TV show host would be: “What exactly is punk rock?” These were great times to feed a developing teenage performer’s mind. There were performance artists too! The Kipper Kids and Johanna Went—all the art forms I had read about in the school library, my friends and I were now doing. I remember a rare underage drunk evening at the Masque (looking back, I rarely drank and wasn’t having sex, which really seems like a missed teenage experience). This was later, after I had moved to Hollywood. I had just seen Hal Negro and the Satin Tones, who ushered in the first wave of joke bands. The joke bands were pop-up groups who would quickly form to parody a certain current trend or comment or would form simply because they found matching orange tennis shoes at the Pic ‘N’ Save discount store. The Satin Tones were good, actually. Pat Delaney played saxophone and looked like a high school band sax player. They had a concept and a look. They were a piss-take on lounge music, way before its time, playing a co*cktail classic in a punky style. Back then you could get the best matching horrible tuxedos for cheap at the La Brea Circus. As they played, I was yelling for them to stop. Trixie Plunger tried to console me as I was crying, “No, you don’t understand! They are making a joke of us. They are making fun of our scene! They are making fun of us!” I was actually crying. (And I am usually a happy drunk! Perhaps this was the last of my “and easy to make cry” from my elementary school days.) Now it seems sweet that it meant that much to me, to have respect for the scene. Funny that those cursed and hated joke bands would become the bread and butter for my later success. My most romantic sixteen-year-old mind’s eye paints it as a group of misfits joined together by a common love of the new music. We were trying to build something. We couldn’t afford to exclude someone because they were a girl, a person of color, gay, or had long hair and flares. Sexism, racism, and hom*ophobic ideas didn’t come along until later, when the new music spanned so much wider than what it would narrow itself to— ahh, success! We were like-minded outcasts. I may not have had friends in school, but here I made friends who spoke my language. In 1976 nobody at school knew of The Damned, The Clash, and the Sex Pistols. Here they did and could go back further musically! The
bands I loved that got you labeled a freak to begin with—Bowie, Alice Cooper, and the New York Dolls—they loved them also! They knew the odd films too—The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Un Chein Andalou, Salo, 120 Days of Sodom, and Pink Flamingos! Everyone knew who Warhol and Picasso were, and some even knew of the Dadaists. All the knowledge from my high school lunch library was blooming! All freaks were allowed, it seemed to me. We didn’t bond because you were the same color as me, the same gender as me, the same social class as me; we were trying to unite a scene of oddballs. It was hard enough to be an outcast—why would you not let somebody in if they would admit that they, too, were an oddball? Of course, jerks and assholes were quickly shown the door and given the boot with a then-rare and hard-to-find Doc Martens Air Sole. If you look back at any of the pictures from the period, it was not a sea of camera-ready punks. There were kids with long hair and flares; there were regular, 1970s-looking folks tossed in with the mess. There was no need to specialize and subsect the Latino punks from the gay punks. In 1976 and 1977 there was no East LA scene yet, but there were always Latinos. I remember the Latino punks Alice Bag, Delphina, X8, Brian Tristan, and Tito Larriva, amongst others. Being Latino never made much of a difference. We knew we couldn’t bleach our hair like the other kids who would use the crazy color dyes. Black hair just turns this brassy orange kind of thing and doesn’t take on color—Alice and my brother Guy had that a lot. It turns to a dried, dead-looking ocher, not a Bowie red or a natural ginger that goes well with bright pink clothes. It was a non-issue, no gathering “Oh, you are Latino too!” It didn’t matter in the least. We came from a common background, but we were moving forward into the uncharted territory of the new music and scene. But we were growing up too. These were my first times far away from home without parents. Once I remember someone asking a Latino if they liked Los Lobos in that early period. She said, “Naw, too beaner . . . ” It made us chuckle. It didn’t seem disrespectful or self-hating to be Latino punk and think that. We weren’t ashamed to be Mexican or embarrassed of who we were; rather, we didn’t want to be what you expected us to be. Perhaps stereotypes loomed louder back then: jocks, sosch, stoners, hippies, or beaners. We were a new social set. All the Mexican standards were in our Latino heads; we all were brought up with them. You would know them by heart, but we didn’t need to use that stuff. We were teenagers—well, The Zeros were. We didn’t want to be our parents or our aunts and uncles. Their musical references—Vincente Fernandez, Eydie Gormé, Carlos Santana, or “Angel Baby”—was the old establishment. We wanted to be new! It was 1977—“no Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones.” So that for sure included Art Laboe and the Oldies. For The Plugz to take “La Bamba” and explode it seemed
especially subversive, taking what you expected—Latinos playing “La Bamba”—and turning it on its head. Los Lobos was ahead of the curve. They had been together longer. They were already into roots rock, including Mexican rhythms. Many of us—Alice Bag, Tito Larriva, Kid Congo, and myself as El Vez—would later mine our roots, embracing the music we heard as kids. But at that time, to forget your past and be now was the call of the day. “No Elvis, Beatles, or The Rolling Stones.” Indeed. I surely grin at the fact that I went on to be El Vez, the Mexican Elvis. Hector Penalosa went for the Baja Bugs, an all-Latino Beatles tribute, and Javier Escovedo’s little brother Mario would do a yearly Christmas Eve show at the Casbah in San Diego based on The Rolling Stones. We are new! What we are doing has never been done before. We are part of a change—at least in our own lives. One should be allowed to think like this at 16. It is good for the soul, if somewhat bothersome for parents. I had friends my age and older who were recording 45s and LPs, making their artwork for posters, writing stories for fanzines, making—well, altering—their own clothes, playing in bands, doing performance art, being loud and disorderly. We were making ourselves known and heard, no longer hiding in the library during lunch. One of my heroes of the scene was Tomata du Plenty. To me he was the man— funny, witty, irreverent, always trying new things but still rooted in vaudevillian showmanship and old-style Hollywood glamour (via the punk-shattered mirror). His life was his art onstage and off. He was an incredible front man to a groundbreaking, no guitar band, The Screamers. They were my favorite! They represented art, punk, sex, comedy, tragedy. And you could dance to it. They had the beat. He was a magnet of personality. He knew everyone, and those he didn’t know he named “Luigi,” and they became instant friends. He would introduce people to other like-minded people. He flirted with men and women, endeared himself to all. He made everyone seem like part of a party that was just about to start now because he had finally found you. The Screamers’ parties at The Screamers’ house (on Wilton Place), dubbed the Wilton Hilton, were the very best! A great old-Hollywood house painted flat black on the inside, maybe a chandelier hanging above the stairway with some great poster or found art on the wall. Fantastic music blaring—the latest punk single, to sixties garage, to Motown, to the soundtrack to Suspiria by Goblin. There was food and drink galore. Food was always a plus! I recall eating a lot of the Army ration crackers found at the Masque, the remnants of its past life being an air-raid bomb shelter. Being a former fat kid, I was still hooked on food. I think eating was a social relaxer to me in my early
awkward days. Thanks to puberty, though, I could now eat like a horse—and did—and still stay slim. The people at these parties were the greatest—gay, straight, black, white, bikers, rich kids and poor kids, lowriders, male hustlers, young Hollywood actresses, drag queens, the soon-to-be famous, the used-to-be famous, hippies, and Wild Man Fischer standing in a corner singing about “Taggy Lee,” plus the punk teens! All talking together, mixing ideas: “So what is this punk thing?” “You don’t know about EST?” “No, video is the coming wave—it’s going to change filmmaking.” “Yeah, Frank Zappa used to live right down the street.” These were low-rent versions of the parties I had read about in the library, Truman Capote’s black-and-white ball in New York, Gertrude Stein’s salon in Paris—or at least a punk version of the Peter Sellers’s film The Party. Here they served giant tin pans of Mama du Plenty’s famous potato salad and containers of boozy punch. One time someone brought bags and bags of McDonald’s hamburgers. Still eating government cheese at home, I remember being impressed with that luxury bounty. These were the teenage high school house parties I never got invited to in Chula Vista. But in Hollywood I was part of the club. The Zeros went on to record a second single with Bomp! Records, “Wild Weekend” b/w “Beat Your Heart Out.” The front sleeve showed our pointy toed shoes—we would buy new old stock in Tijuana—and the back showed our home away from home, the infamous Plunger Pit. The Plunger Pit was a 1930s studio apartment behind a magazine stand/adult bookstore known as Circus Books in West Hollywood. It was the after-party crash pad ruled by Trudi, Trixie, and Hellin, the members of the made-up band The Plungers, the answer to the constant plumbing problem at the abode. We toured up and down the coast but had no real direction for what we were doing, which seemed normal for a seventeen-year-old. This is how I remember The Zeros breaking up. Javier was complaining that Hector was playing in too many different bands. (He was. He played with F-Word; Black Randy’s side trip Mexican Randy, which I wish I had seen; and anyone else who needed a bass player. I thought it was great, like a jazz cat, playing with any gig just to play.) That seemed the main complaint, though there were others. And so we broke up. I don’t remember an artist plea of “Let’s stay together” or “We’ve come so far in such a short time.” I suppose I was ready for a change. They re-formed the next week without me and then moved to San Francisco. I don’t remember being too broken up about it. During my early years in music I was pretty much a passenger, along for the ride. I don’t think I added that much to projects. But watching and learning from other people put me in better control when I later took the driver’s seat. I had graduated high school early that year and would be turning 18 by summer. And I knew where I was going.
A girl named Doris helped move me from Chula Vista to Hollywood. She was friends with that new group of kids recently arrived from Phoenix, Arizona. They got called The Cactus Heads—Don Bolles, David Wiley, Paul Cutler, and Rob Graves. They were great little bits of smarts and poison who would come to shake things up in little Hollywood. We stuffed Doris’s blue Volkswagen Golf with all my possessions from home. After one last trip to my favorite thrift store in Chula Vista, Am Vets, we made the drive to Los Angeles. It was September 28, 1978. Pope John Paul I died that day. Pope Paul VI had just died thirty days earlier. I took these as good omens. Jane Wiedlin had just moved out of the Canterbury. The Canterbury was the wonderful, terrible punk home, crash pad, after-show party central, rehearsal space, four-story, collapsing 1920s apartment building right off Hollywood Boulevard, the avenue of the stars. She left me her apartment and mattress! I was set! She had painted the whole room white, with white enamel floors. She had left boxes of sixties fashion magazines, remains from her design school days. She was on her way to becoming a rock star. I had windows to the courtyard, where I could hear my friends yell to each other from their apartment windows, like in the New York movies! I would hear fights from different floors and people practicing their guitars over and over. I got a job as a waiter at the Pizza Hut on Hollywood Boulevard. I got to serve beer and was only 18. Older men asked me whether I wanted a sugar daddy. I would feed my punk-rock friends free pizza and beer. Of course, I didn’t have a car—I could walk to work! It was four blocks from the Canterbury, which was right across the street from the Masque. How much more punk-rock teenage heaven could I be in? That winter Margot Go-Go and I went to New York City. She had just gotten kicked out of The Go-Go’s, and their band’s ascent seemed for sure: “Hey, I got kicked out of a band too, so let’s go!” We got round-trip tickets for $99. It was the first time for both of us. This was before I HEART NY—the city was a wonderful bankrupt shell of its older, former self, a completely different world from what it is today. I remember going to a party way below SoHo, and the taxi driver told us, “You know, you won’t be able to get a taxi back—nobody comes to this area at night.” I first stayed with Trixie Plunger, who had recently transplanted herself from Hollywood. Then I stayed in a mid-town basem*nt apartment with Chase Holiday. Before I moved to Hollywood, I lived in her spacious hallway closet at the Canterbury, where I hung a black-and-white poster of Yoko playing golf. Chase worked at an amazing record store. I stole every Shaun Cassidy and Nino Rota soundtrack albums I could. I still have them all to this day. I had my first beer at a bar in Saint Mark’s Place, bought for me by Howie Pyro and The Blessed. You could drink at 18 then! 15, 17, and eighteen-year-olds in a bar, being served! This was truly a wonderful place.
I saw Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, The Contortions, The Cramps, and Johnny Thunders at all the spots—CBGBs, Max’s Kansas City. I would go to Studio 54 to pick fights with Steve Rubell. I refused to dance (although I really wanted to)—I stuck to my punk-rock morals of that time. Then I would go to the Mudd Club and hang with Klaus Nomi and the kids of that time. It was the New York City of my Velvet Underground dreams back then. I was there for a few months. It was a great eye opener for an eighteen-year-old. New York was a much darker colder place than palm-tree-lined Southern California. It was my first actual cold, cold “winter”—but not of my discontent. Then it was back to California, where things seemed different. I was becoming a jaded nineteen-year-old. I got an older boyfriend. Gorilla Rose, an art director/ideas man/lyricist of The Screamers, was moving out of his black room, where 1930s rosepatterned wallpaper peeked out at the ceiling’s edge. I moved in. It was just west of La Brea near the Rock & Roll Ralphs—almost the suburbs compared to living right off Hollywood Boulevard. I would swim twice a day at the Hollywood YMCA and showered with Bruce Springsteen. I was the only one there who knew who he was. He asked me not to blow his cover, but I still got his autograph for my friend Ruth. I think I worked at El Coyote, the cheap Mexican restaurant of choice, as a cashier. I was in a couple of bands, The Johnnies and another called Catholic Discipline. The music scene then had seemed to take on a different format—harder, faster, shorter. Catholic Discipline headed in the opposite direction: longer, slower, scarier. I think we saw Catholic Discipline as a “postpunk” band. Claude Bessy, singer and editor and writer for Slash magazine, was our figurehead. I think he felt a little constrained with his editor duties at Slash, and here was a way for his words to leap off the page and onto the stage. Craig Lee, our drummer, was the music writer for LA Weekly. Perhaps that gave us our literary bent. He would give me notes on how I played my Farfisa Combo Compact—“Play spookier.” Craig was afraid I didn’t like Claude’s wild-man antics—swinging his mic stand as a weapon to go with his verbal assaults. But, actually, I thought it was great. I was still pretty stoic in my demeanor in those days. I think I was sitting, waiting, and learning for my lead singer time. Admittedly Penelope Spheeris came into the game pretty late. She started hanging out at our rehearsals before filming us for her movie, The Decline of Western Civilization. The scene had changed a lot by then, and not for the better, if you ask me. Clubs were shutting down because of the violence caused by people we didn’t know, those new guys from Orange County. Punk had turned a corner. Less art and more machine, punk wasn’t dead; it had just become something else.
CHAPTER 12
Starry Nights in East LA by Teresa Covarrubias, with Tom DeSavia
Since the first wave of late ’50s/’60s garage bands, LA Chicano culture has played a vital—if often overlooked—role in the evolution of American alternative music. Bands like The Champs and The Midnighters to Cannibal and the Headhunters released tunes that seeped into the world consciousness, their ethnic roots and inspirations most likely lost on most who they reached through the airwaves. In 1976 East LA was a forgotten swath of neighborhoods directly east of a dilapidated downtown, across the LA River, and known primarily for gangs and poverty. Insulated from the city at large, those who didn’t enjoy slow dancing, car clubs, arena rock, or copying the lyrics of bland FM radio hits in perfect script on PeeChee folders found growing up on the east side a rather lonely experience. During the summer of 1976 I discovered the whole punk aesthetic from British fanzines sent to me by my sister. I was also listening to Rodney’s show on KROQ, and my musical tastes were beginning to morph from Roxy Music and David Bowie to The Ramones, Blondie, The Jam, and The Clash. Almost immediately the most striking to me were the women: Poly Styrene, Siouxie Sioux, The Slits—these really wild women. To me that was so encouraging. I grew up when rock ‘n’ roll was so much more of a male-dominated field, it was all about the guys. To see this whole wave of new music coming out with all these women was just amazing. That was what first got me to thinking, Hey, I can do that too. There were these punk shows in Hollywood where, for two bucks, you’d see seven bands. That was so inspiring; it was almost like an open-mic environment: if you had something to say and you had some heart, the stage was yours. That was foreign back then. Up until then it always felt like you had to be a super-accomplished musician and have a big show to even get onstage. This was the exact opposite. This was totally inclusive. I started checking out shows on the west side of town. I saw The Ramones, Siouxie, The Selecter, and Madness at the Whisky. On April 14, 1978, I saw The Jam at the Starwood, with The Weirdos and The Zeros opening. That was such a great show and
would prove life altering for me. The place was packed: there were the local punk scene regulars—the forerunners, who had that leather, tattered, bobby-pin look down— as well as individuals from the east side, which surprised me. I met Rudy (Medina) at that show. We were sweating as we pogoed right in the middle of that delirious crowd to those bands, and that very moment led us to the idea of putting a band together ourselves. That night The Brat was born. The Brat was formed by me and the guitar team of Rudy and his nephew Sidney. We started by learning covers and played gigs at high school dances and bars, and within a year, by 1979, we had all original music, but getting gigs on the west side was proving difficult. The golden age of the LA punk scene had seemingly come and gone, and the clubs were now booked solid with the local punk stars like Fear, The Weirdos, The Germs, and X. That openness and nurturing nature of the scene in 1977 and thereabouts was changing. That feeling of “C’mon everybody, you’re all welcome” that drew us to that world was ending. It became obvious that unless you were really a part of that early scene or knew somebody who booked clubs, it was really hard to get gigs. So in that respect we felt sort of excluded. But that’s a natural thing, right? You create a scene, and if you’re not a part of that inner circle, you’re kind of an outsider in a way. I suppose this very lack of access is what really created the East LA scene. There was a sense of the geography that a bunch of artists and musicians shared, and there was a healthy sort of competitiveness as well. Instead of simply struggling to break into the established LA punk world, we banded together, creating our own universe, maybe not even realizing what we were doing at the time. Together with Los Illegals, Odd Squad, The Undertakers, and a handful of others, we became equally as tethered around the whole East LA art scene, which was really vibrant. And growing. Initially we played exclusively on the east side, mainly at backyard parties or car club events. Usually the band would play simply to give the DJs a break. We were entirely out of our element, and the reaction to us was mixed, though generally positive. I remember once playing a house gig up in the hills of City Terrace. The DJ stopped playing and the dancers cleared the floor, grabbed their beers, and sat down to enjoy the cool evening sky. We started our set, and a couple of dudes ventured closer. As we played, a few more people started to join the crowd. Soon we had a small assemblage of live music lovers in front of us, moving to the music. We launched into one of our more frenetic tunes, and this one dude off to my right started flailing his arms about and howling with delight. All I remember seeing were these sparks of light, and our guitarist quickly got between me and this guy—he was shooting a gun into the air! It was so punk rock. After the gig I discovered that John and Exene had come around to check out the band and were outside the front of the house when they heard the shots and decided to call it a night.
House parties were always a big thing in East LA. Because there were so few outlets for us to play on the west side, it was almost like we had to create something for ourselves in the community. We played lots of these sorts of gigs. All the east side bands did. I think it was 1979 or so when we played our first real club, the Hong Kong Café. That gig was probably the first time we played to a more “punk” crowd. The place got hot, and the ceiling was so low that one jump onstage could cause a head injury. It was also around that time when the punk scene started to take hold in our own neighborhood, and it was obvious the shows needed to grow beyond the local backyards hosting them. Opened by nun Sister Karen Boccalero in the early 1970s in Boyle Heights, Self Help Graphics & Art is a nonprofit arts center serving the Latino community of Los Angeles to this day. Focusing on visual and performance art, its importance to the early punk-rock scene cannot be overstated. Our growth was really thanks to Self Help and Sister Karen and the whole mission of that center, which was all about encouraging art and making art available to the community and bringing that community into that space. Before that it was really like a desert out there—there was really nothing cultural happening. It just happened to be at that moment when the whole punk scene—the whole new wave—was happening, and it sort of incorporated itself into the whole Self Help model. They had been doing that stuff for years with the arts—they had screen-printing classes and originated the whole Day of the Dead celebration in the very early ’70s, well before it became usurped by mainstream culture. That history all happened there: the Day of the Dead, the Virgen de Guadalupe ceremonies, and on and on. I guess when the whole punk thing happened, Self Help ultimately became more open to the mainstream and less Chicano in a way, though we really didn’t realize that at the time. Willie Herrón, known before then for his work with the performance art group Asco, had started his own band, the aforementioned Los Illegals. Herrón had befriended Sister Karen, and she let them rehearse out of one of the art studios there at Self Help Graphics, later offering him the second floor of the space to start his own club. Eventually Joe “Vex” Suquette moved his namesake venue from a small space located in the basem*nt of an apartment building on Alvarado Street into Self Help. This incarnation of The Vex was open from March to November of 1980 and hosted punkrock shows twice a month. The first major event there was the infamous “Punk Rock Prom,” which featured X as a headliner. That show almost single-handedly opened up the west side’s awareness of East LA. The Vex was born, and instantly not only was it the only place to play on the east side, but it also quickly emerged as a go-to spot for bands from around LA, Orange County, and the San Fernando Valley. The first real Vex show featured The Plugz, Los Illegals, The Undertakers, The
Fenders, and The Brat. This gig proved to be instrumental to the whole East LA scene. Before, I’d always felt isolated, as if I were the only person this side of the LA River who liked punk music and art. But there I discovered that there were youngsters just like me. The stereotype of streets filled with cholos and lowriders had in some ways integrated into my thinking as well, so it rather surprised me to find so many others with the same sensibilities. Among the musicians was also an array of visual and performance artists. The collaboration between musicians and these artists was what made the East LA scene unique. Although there were others who were part of the LA/Hollywood punk scene of 1977, few if any really embraced their East LA roots. East LA was the place you ran away from to find others who shared your interests. But The Vex was all about the geography (and 25 cent beers!). She dared the Hollywood punks to cross the river. She dared you to rethink your ideas of what East LA was all about. Sure, you had the stereotypes—the gangsters and the macho types— and I’m sure people got their cars broken into, but not any more or less than they did at Al’s Bar or anywhere else. The range of talent went from the hardcore thrashings of The Stains—who represented the more nihilistic, Sex Pistol tradition—to The Odd Squad, who had a more pop sensibility. There was a core of bands—Los Lobos, Los Illegals, The Undertakers, The Odd Squad, The Stains, and us—who often played gigs together and basically became the ambassadors of the East LA scene. For me, I think I really felt like there was something going on when the whole Vex scene was starting out. It was then when I got a sense that it wasn’t just our band by itself just doing this thing in East LA; it was kind of a networking that started taking place, not only between the band but also among writers and artists and dancers. When that scene came together—when The Vex started happening and doing the first shows there—that’s when I got a sense of “Wow, this is really a scene and a community and we’re creating this space.” That’s when the lightbulb went on and I realized that this was different and separate from what was going on in Hollywood and the music scene there. We had our own little camp. The Vex became popular as a music venue, and west side bands saw it as a cool place to play. The venue lasted for a year or so before there was some disturbance and she was thrashed by a couple of reckless hardcore fans—it was a Black Flag gig, alongside some other Orange County punk bands. That last show at The Vex—that Black Flag gig—brought in the hardcore kids, including a few incendiary hooligans who came in and thrashed Self Help. They tore the place up. Self Help was largely an art community center, and these guys broke into where they had the prints and destroyed these works of art that had been archived there for who knows how many years. It was such disrespect of that place and our community. They broke windows and smashed statues and other works of art. The damage was so great that the club relocated to a new
address. Even though the “new” space remained open until 1983, it never regained the cultural importance of the Self Help location; it was simply another venue. Ironically, after the demise of The Vex, the east side had received enough press and attention that getting gigs was no longer impossible. We’d always hear about a few of these errant fools who were bent on destruction in the Hollywood scene—usually high on angel dust or some such thing–but until this, we had been “protected.” That new attitude that a segment of the new audience thought was “punk” wasn’t about art and creating at that point; it was just “f*ck everything.” For me, that’s the downside of what punk evolved into, this sort of nihilism. That was the end of Self Help as we knew it: people started hearing about it, and bands from the west side wanted to come play there because they saw it as a viable venue on the east side but had no respect for its roots or what it was about. That was the end of it. There goes the neighborhood. We played some wonderful art openings, like Aztlan Multiples’ print show at the Exploratorium at Cal State Los Angeles, which featured the master printing of Richard Duardo. Richard designed The Brat’s EP cover and was an avid supporter of the scene. The show at the Los Angeles Photo Center was a typical ensemble of east side talent featuring photography by Harry Gamboa, poetry reading by Marisela Norte, and music by The Brat and The Odd Squad. We played some really joyful gigs with Los Lobos at Madame Wong’s East. Those gigs felt like wedding receptions, with lots of drinking and dancing on the tabletops. When the Brat EP came out and started getting played on KROQ, we opened for some pretty cool acts like Bauhaus, The Cramps, The Gun Club, Suburban Lawns, Adam Ant, and The Go-Go’s. I think it was 1982 or 1983 when the Roxy hosted an East LA night featuring The Brat, Los Illegals, The Undertakers, and The Clichés. We had moved west and were finally feeling a real acceptance from punk audiences all over the city. But we never lost sight of our roots, and the music continued to reflect that. But now the crowds were more integrated. Although the overriding punk credo of disillusionment and rebellion ruled, a sense of community pride was steadfast. With that sense of pride in geography was a whole group of people that did not fit into the stereotypical idea of what people thought the East LA native was. Still today, you mention East LA, and people immediately think of gang culture. Thankfully—partly due to this time—those stereotypes are actually less monolithic. People see now that Chicanos are not just gangb*ngers, that they’re so much more. Back then we definitely felt like we were representing to this whole segment of the population that doesn’t really know us beyond what they see on television. That got fragmented though—when they moved The Vex to the new location, it had already
changed. At that point it just became a venue that integrated the west side bands and the east side bands, which was great, but it lost that community thing that it had in the beginning. With the scene starting to end and becoming fragmented and the internal support system falling away a bit, I definitely saw disruptive influences coming in. We all did. It was suddenly less about us supporting each other and more about dealing with outsiders coming in—outsiders who saw it as an opportunity for them, not opportunities for the art. The clichéd managers would come in and their best interest was not about the community and supporting it; they just saw opportunity for them to cash in on something that was happening at the moment. I think there’s always a certain competitiveness among people that leads to the deterioration of any support system. For us personally, we got involved with this terrible management situation that basically destroyed the band. It wasn’t about what we were doing anymore but about them trying to market us. They came in with all these ridiculous ideas and suggestions, all these stereotypes about what a Chicano band was, how we should present ourselves. We were young, but right from the get-go I knew it was a bad idea, and it became very decisive for our band. People wanted “success”— whatever that was—and striving for that proved a stake in the heart. That was the “beginning of the end,” as they say. The whole control of how we were going to present ourselves and what we were going to represent was basically given to this management team, these white dudes who came at the whole Chicano experience from what they had learned from the mainstream culture, which was all about lowriders and cholos. There’s this one day I will never forget—it was probably the saddest day of my musical life. We had done these demo tapes for Capitol Records and had been working on them for months. Our management wanted to finally present the music to the A&R people. Management had this bright idea—it was so embarrassing, and I kept telling them this was a bad idea, begging them not to go through with it. They got like five or six lowriders to pull up to the Capitol Tower, and the A&R people and some other folks from the label got in the cars and listened to the music while driving them around in these lowriders. That had nothing to do with us. It makes me cringe to this day. I’m second-generation Mexican, which means my parents were born in the States, as was I. So I was much more assimilated than people who were first generation, obviously. For me, I came to the whole cultural thing kind of late; my parents brought me up affirming, “You’re an American and you need to blend in.” We celebrated American holidays, trying to fit in. So I came into the whole music thing not necessarily to express my Chicana roots; it just sort of became that. A huge part of it was being involved in the whole Vex scene and meeting other people who were more inclined to
bring their heritage in and represent the community. That inspired me. It really just started as expressing myself creatively. I was always writing poetry, but it wasn’t Chicano. The influences came from the neighborhood, not my own house. My mom and dad grew up listening to big band music. We did not listen to any sort of Mexican music in our house. I came to that later, as a young adult. In that little group there was a sense of purpose and commonality, like we were a part of a greater scene. I can’t speak for the other bands who were part of the so-called East LA scene—The Stains, Violent Children. Their stuff was more hardcore, more thrashy. But for us there was a sense of camaraderie, more so from the bands centered on the art scene—the Vex/Self Help world. I remember thinking I just wanted to be in a band. I always was a singer, but I wanted to write music and to sing with a band. I wanted to be onstage—that was the goal. It was simple. I wanted to perform for people. Getting signed and making a record wasn’t in the plan at all; the goal was just to express oneself, to have a voice, and see what happened. Beyond that, there wasn’t a lot of planning.
Photos by Ed Colver
The Brat (from L-R): Rudy Medina, Lou Soto, Mark Stewart, Sid Medina, Teresa Covarrubias
Henry Rollins of Black Flag
Black Flag’s first LA show with Henry Rollins, 1981
Jack Grisham of T.S.O.L.
The Flesh Eaters, 1982, Chris D. with bassist Robyn Jameson
Minutemen on stage (from L-R): D. Boon, George Hurley, Mike Watt
Minutemen (from L-R): Mike Watt, D. Boon, George Hurley
Photos by Frank Gargani
Black Flag in front of Frederick’s of Hollywood, 1979 (from L-R): Keith Morris, Jill Jordan, Greg Ginn, Trudi, Chuck Dukowski
Exene on stage at Masque with beer can
Germs (Darby & Pat) at Hong Kong Cafe, 1979
Craig Gray, Negative Trend at Other Masque, 1979
Rik L. Rik, Negative Trend
The Wolves (biker-like gang created by X & crew) in a motel, San Diego, Easter 1980 (from L-R): Kit Maira (roadie), John Doe, Chuck Baron (roadie, standing), Top Jimmy, Exene, Dan O’Kane, Penny, Jill Jordan, Farrah Fawcett Minor, Mirielle Cervenka, Johnny O’Kane, Kelly O’Kane
Photos by Michael Hyatt
Billy Zoom in Hollywood, 1981
Phil & Dave Alvin, The Blasters at The Palace, Los Angeles, 1982
Top Jimmy backstage at the Whisky, 1981
X on the roof of their rehearsal space, Hollywood, 1981
Photos by Debbie Leavitt
X, Club 88, June 1979. Joan Jett and Pat Smear in audience.
X, Club 88, June 1979
Claude Bessy, from Billy and Denise Zoom’s wedding concert at the Whisky, 1982
Photos by Jenny Lens
The Screamers on a bus bench, 1977 (from L-R): David Allen, K. K. Barrett, Tomata du Plenty, Tommy Gear, a little old lady, the photographer’s shadow at bottom left
Joan Jett, Farrah Fawcet Minor, and K. K. Barrett at the Whisky, 1977
The Randettes, backstage at the Whisky, 1978 (from L-R): Sheila Edwards, Trudi, Trixie, Connie Clarksville, Spazz Attack, Alice Bag, Nickey Beat, Exene, K. K. Barrett
The Go-Go’s, backstage at the Starwood, 1980 (from L-R): Jane Wiedlin, Gina Schock, Charlotte Caffey, Margot Olavarria, Belinda Carlisle
Exene and John Doe, X, Club 88, March 1980. Filming of first Decline of Western Civilization.
CHAPTER 13
Go West, Go West, Go West by John Doe
It was like a drumbeat constantly in my head during all of 1976. Finally, the day after Halloween, I packed my 1970 International Travelall & headed toward California. The Doors said, “The West is the best, get here & we’ll do the rest.” Yeah. The idea & reality of California, Los Angeles & the West always had a mythic hold on me & I still believe it is the place of dreams. Nathanael West and Charles Bukowski captured the decaying, film noir quality of Los Angeles that I longed for & I was so desperate to leave the East Coast’s chokehold. In the early ’70s John Waters was the closest thing Baltimore had to a celebrity. I’ll admit that celebrity & fame was something I desired back then. All John’s actors had the kind of fame & notoriety that seemed attainable. They hung out in the same bars we did. John could be found having an afternoon co*cktail at Bertha’s, a Fell’s Point dive where I played for tips on Thursday nights. At the time I reasoned that if I could hang out w/ John Waters & see his actors in many of the same places where we hung out, then fame may not be as elusive as all that. John was a more focused & better filmmaker than Andy Warhol & David Bowie wrote songs & hung out w/ him. We were just this close, but I was done with the East Coast. By 1975 my parents lived in Brooklyn, so CBGBs & Max’s Kansas City were available w/ a free place to stay. It was there I saw Talking Heads, The Heartbreakers, and flyers pasted on telephone poles for Blondie & Television. I saw a particularly memorable Talking Heads performance in which they finished the set w/ “Psycho Killer”; David B. tossed the guitar over his head & w/ a singularly, crazed glare, walked straight out of the bar, perhaps never to be seen again. That was another moment when I thought, I can do that, and I want to do that. Patti Smith’s Horses had been out for a year, and it was clear that some great change in the stagnant music world was happening. It was equally clear that NYC was already locked up. The East Coast was cold, full of ghosts & people who said, “You’ll never make it, so why try?” By this point I had dropped out of George Washington University in 1972, installed aluminum siding, gutters & roofing for two years, played in a band that rarely got gigs,
smoked a huge amount of weed & drank too much peppermint schnapps w/ beer chasers. Downtown Baltimore had an avant-garde theater called the Theater Project. Through a few live performances there, I was introduced to Antioch College and eventually Grace Cavaleri, a teacher who changed my life. Grace was a petite, dark-haired woman w/ a teenager’s eyes & the most open smile I’d ever had directed toward me. Clearly my parents didn’t want me to spend my life as a roofer, so they paid for me to enroll in Antioch College. Now I was living w/ a childhood friend and bandmate JackChipman in a rural black community outside Baltimore, named Simpsonville. I was learning about modern poets & becoming a part of an incredibly vibrant poetry community in the Baltimore/DC area. During the private weekly poetry tutorials w/ Grace she always found the best passages or fragments of writing and showed us how truthful & possibly transcendent they were. She would often say, “I wish I had written that.” At the same time she would gently & lovingly point out the sections that were “not so good,” which, w/ some more thought & editing, could complement the beautiful breakthroughs of the better lines. It was here I first believed I could write something worth more than shoving in the bottom drawer of a hand-me-down dresser. In April of 1976 Jack Chipman & I flew to Los Angeles, rented an AMC station wagon & stayed at a rundown motel near Vermont Ave. The minute I stepped out of the terminal into the jet-fueled air by LAX, the light & a sense of wellbeing came over me like a déjà vu homecoming. Jack & I had written some songs that we naively believed were good enough for someone to buy & record. We tore the page for music publishers from the Yellow Pages & began cold calling them from a phone booth outside our sh*tty motel. I guess the room didn’t come w/ a phone. It’s incredible to think that we got through to someone who allowed us to drop off a cassette tape w/ four of what we thought were our best songs. After a couple of days one rather elegant black producer/publisher met w/ us in person. We played Mr.—oh, I wish I could remember his name—our tape & a couple of more songs live, with Jack on piano & me singing. He told us that he would “buy” two of our songs for $500 apiece. We knew nothing about publishing but had copyrighted our songs w/ lead sheets through the Library of Congress. Naturally we were ecstatic & figured that if we sold two or three songs a month, we’d have it made! I don’t believe we ever signed or sealed that deal—the producer’s phone was always mysteriously busy—but when we left California ten days later, we were certain we could “make it” in LA. Six months later Jack & I were living in a two-bedroom house at Pacific & Dudley Court in Venice, Cal. It was two blocks from the beach. I think we paid a whopping $800 a month rent & the proximity to the water was comfortingly like Baltimore. Because I had run a mildly successful poetry reading series in Baltimore, I figured the quickest way to meet kindred spirits was to drop into the poetry world. Beyond
Baroque, home of the venerated Venice Poetry Workshop, was a 20 min. walk through a not-so-dangerous part of Venice. They offered a workshop w/ Bill Mohr, Jack Grapes, Kate Braverman & James Krusoe. Later someone told me that Tom Waits and Bukowski had attended. A great person & poet Frances Smith, who was the mother of Buk’s only kid, was a regular. I believe the first Tuesday I went was also the first time a strange beauty w/ dark lipstick, bleach-splattered jeans, and dark red Egyptian-styled hair attended. This was the night Exene & I met. We were asked to make a list of poets/writers we admired. She asked to look at my list because she didn’t have many names on hers. When she did, she pointed out that I had written John Ashbery’s name twice. I thanked my good luck that someone who cut such an eccentric figure wanted to hang out w/ poets and—holy sh*t— she was a poet too! She worked at Beyond Baroque on a government jobs program teaching her a skill as a typesetter. Naturally I went to the poetry workshop every Tuesday night until I asked her to go next door to the Comeback Inn for a drink. They featured bad, soft jazz before it was even a genre, and I found out her real name was Christine & she had changed it to a phonetic version of Xmas. We were both born in February & had Czech last names. So here I was, in a place where the beatniks first hung out in Calif., hanging out w/ a woman named Exene. Of course neither of us was aware how fateful this meeting was. Quickly I found that she had recently moved here from Tallahassee, Florida, by selling her prized mint-green 1950 Cadillac. She had lived in Illinois, where I was born, had three sisters, and her mother had died when she was fourteen. She was just the kind of person I had moved to LA to meet. Exene was hanging out w/ scary Vietnam vets who would twirl her over their head at other dive bars while alternately calling her Mary Magdalene or the Easter Bunny. The first time I thought I had fallen in love w/ her, we were in her apt. above Beyond Baroque, sitting together in a broken-down chair, watching the street life on Venice Blvd. In that apt. there was a big old console TV that only got sound. One night we carried it down the stairs to the vacant lot next door. We threw bricks at the picture tube until it burst, which was much more difficult than we had thought it would be & only gave an unsatisfying, low-pitched thuuunk when it finally broke. It took another year of wooing & cajoling for her to agree to be my romantic partner as well as a lifelong friend, songwriting partner & often times soul mate. In 1976 the place everyone looked to find a car, refrigerator, cat, room to rent, boyfriend, or musician was the Recycler. It came out every Thursday and was oftentimes sold out at the liquor store by Friday afternoon. How I wish someone had saved the want ad that Billy Zoom & I placed that same week late in 1976.
Billy Zoom had his own rockabilly band & had worked w/ Gene Vincent & dozens of other bands. I knew “Be-Bop-A-Lula” & that was legit. He was tall & thin, with straw-blond hair & he spoke deliberately & had a 1953 Hudson Hornet in his driveway. Billy had fashioned a somewhat soundproof rehearsal room in the garage at his house on 6th & Van Ness. The house resembled the Munsters’. It was a once-grand, two-story Victorian in Hanco*ck Park w/ mahogany wainscoting, built-in glass cabinets in the dining room, a study—which would become Exene & my bedroom—& three other bedrooms upstairs. Billy lived there w/ his girlfriend, Kittra, who broke an acoustic guitar over his head just before he moved out. But Billy was able to keep the rehearsal space & his Hudson Hornet in the drive. This is where we first got to know each other by playing songs like “Honey Don’t,” “Bring It on Home,” & “Promised Land.” At first we played w/ Steve Allen, who later formed 20/20; Jimmy Nanos & drummer Blaze Henry. Billy had had some success w/ the Billy Zoom Band & there was a small but hearty rockabilly scene. For a number of reasons, mostly the coming wave of new music like The Ramones, etc., Billy was disillusioned w/ that scene. We learned that we were both born in February, grew up in the Midwest & hated jamming. We both loved rock ‘n’ roll songs & old R & B. Strange as it may sound, back then he was almost reticent to play leads. So after our first or second meeting, this prompted me to ask him & Kittra if we needed to look for a “lead guitarist.” When I asked that at the Carl’s Jr. around the corner, I remember Billy giving me the iciest, almost quizzical look & Kittra saying, “Oh no, you don’t understand—Billy is the lead guitarist.” OK then, that’s settled. Leaving one of our rehearsal sessions, I remember getting pulled over by LAPD & asked what I had been doing that night. After telling them that I had been playing music, they asked what kind, to which I responded, “You know, old stuff like Chuck Berry, Carl Perkins, Gene Vincent.” They replied, “Like what?” Me: “‘Be-Bop-A-Lula’?” They: “How about singing some of that for us?” So I start singing, and they: “Come over here to the squad car.” Me: crapping my pants because everyone knew what bullies LAPD were. I walk over to the car & they thrust the loudspeaker mic into my hands & the next thing I knew I’m singing “Be-Bop-A-Lula” over the black & white’s bullhorn. That must’ve been late Nov of ’76. It’s remarkable to think that within a few weeks of moving to LA, I had met someone I’d play music w/ for the next 37 years. By mid-November my roommate Jack had returned to Balto several weeks beforehand to see his girlfriend & came back just to get his instruments but never again to live there. This was sad but ultimately extremely liberating. I was finally living on my own. I hadn’t realized how much baggage the relationship contained, that I was shedding another layer of East Coast doubt & I began to move from one beach apartment to another (“every other week I need a new address”). I had a day job working at
Brentano’s bookstore at the corner of Wilshire & Rodeo (which is pronounced like the Spanish rodéo & I pronounced like a cowboy for the first week) on the bottom floor of the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, still the grande dame of LA hotels. There I saw Farrah Fawcett, Helen Reddy & actually helped Gloria Swanson find nutrition books—wow, a real movie star! Christmas that year was very lonely. I was living hand-to-mouth, didn’t have enough money to fly home & decided that if I’d moved to California, then I would stay through the holidays. This was certainly a stubborn, self-sacrificing move, but it allowed me to be sad & feel put upon. Because I had met Exene in December & she didn’t have a phone, I thought I’d walk to her apartment above Beyond Baroque on New Year’s Eve. A block or two after I had turned onto W. Washington Blvd (now Abbott Kinney), four kids between 10–13 yrs old clustered around me w/ a cup & asked if I wanted a drink. As I bent my neck to sniff, a sharp thwack hit the top of my head & two of them grabbed me. They only weighed 85–100 lbs each, so I was able to shake one free, grab the other & begin punching. The third or fourth kid kept swinging his belt, buckle first, at my head as we all collapsed onto the sidewalk. I was reaching for another’s leg when they all sort of disappeared or ran away. I suppose it was just too much trouble. Pulling myself to my feet, picking up a bracelet, I felt the top of my head & came back w/ a hand slick w/ blood. There was a bar a few doors down, so I made my way there. I came in the door & headed straight for the bathroom. There was my face in the mirror, w/ streams of blood coming down it. I remembered the woozy, bent faces of the drunken NYE patrons & their looks of horror as I passed by. Looking in the mirror, wet paper towels in my hand, I figured I was really on my own, living the bohemian life that I thought I would find in the land of dreams.
CHAPTER 14
The Stucco-Coated Killing Field by Henry Rollins
I came to Los Angeles in the late summer of 1981, having joined the band Black Flag. Before then I was well aware of the amazing music scene in Los Angeles but only through the records I mail ordered or managed to find in record stores in the Washington, DC, area where I was from. This association was in many ways quite pure. I evaluated the bands solely from their recorded output. Some of the bands I was listening to included The Germs, X, The Weirdos, The Alley Cats, The Bags, Black Randy and the Metro Squad, The Middle Class, The Deadbeats, and others. Besides the singles, the Yes L.A. and Tooth and Nail compilation albums were useful to try to get an idea of what was happening. These were incredible records. I remember buying The Weirdos’ Destroy All Music 7” on Bomp! through the mail. I played it over and over. The song “Life of Crime,” to this day, strikes me as a 140, and some second masterpiece. In fact, I can’t find one Weirdos song that isn’t great.
I do remember that all these records seemed to have one central theme running through them: danger. The Black Randy singles, all of them amazing, were scary. It
occurred to me that Randy was a genius maniac who didn’t have long to live. The song “Trouble at the Cup” laughs off life in favor of some huge, absolutely lethal darkness. There was a seasoned adultness to the music that made me think that the bands were living fast, free of life expectancy, making the soundtrack for a scene that was going to tragically self-extinguish. The first proof of that was when, in December 1980, I read that Darby Crash of The Germs had died. The Germs’ singles and their one, full-length album, G.I., was music from a different place. From then to now I have never heard anything like it. Crash’s death, which I knew nothing about more than what scant information I was able to find, made sense. There was a haunting finality to the G.I. album. The nine-minute song that closes out the record, “Shut Down,” is the sound of a cold, dark, solitary walk into the abyss. How could the band have followed up? What could Crash have done next other than die? As upsetting as it was, it all made some kind of Rimbaudian sense. Mind you, this is all being contemplated from thousands of miles away, having no contact or context from which to draw from. So when I finally arrived in Los Angeles with a duffel bag and about $200, I immediately realized I was going to have to make some adjustments. The differences between what I was raised in and what I entered into were profound and changed the way I thought about the world. I came from a music scene that was small enough to fit into a small to medium-sized venue. There were a handful of bands and a few record stores. There wasn’t much interest in this different music on local radio, and the local press largely ignored or insulted it. Los Angeles, on the other hand was an independent music boomtown. There were bands all over and venues for them to play in. There would be multiple shows in the city on any given night, and every one of them would be packed. There was Rodney Bingenheimer and his longstanding show on KROQ, which was a great messenger for music and information. It was, for me, an overload. Beyond the abundant music, youth culture in Los Angeles and the surrounding areas, at least in the music scene I found myself in was something else entirely, and I found myself all but totally unprepared to deal with it. I fairly radiated naïveté. I was a walking billboard for it. I remember, weeks after arriving, stupidly asking a teenager why he wasn’t in school. He thought that was hilarious and informed me that he dropped out somewhere in early high school and had run away to Los Angeles. Again, another wide-eyed question about where he would sleep that night, resulting in more laughter. I had been out of my all-boys prep-school uniform for a little over two years, but it might as well have been two minutes. It was in Los Angeles, in the second half of 1981, where I started to learn the ways of the world.
This world that I am telling you about existed almost completely disconnected from the “real” one of the citizens. With no exaggeration, I can tell you that I was surrounded by people who did drugs (the kind that kill you), committed crimes of all kinds, perpetrated deeds of life-changing violence with a casualness that was truly terrifying. One time, sitting on a bench at Oki-Dog, where Fatburger is now, at Gardner and Santa Monica Blvd., I saw a man walk by, heading east on Santa Monica, seemingly oblivious to the loquacious din we were making. Two guys at a table near me stand up at the same time, peel off from the crowd, and fall in behind the guy. It was obvious they were going to roll him. It was the seeming ease and confidence with which they made their move that was troubling—they were not new at this. They returned awhile later, laughing. They had indeed robbed the guy. It was no big deal. Around that time I had heard that a young girl’s body had been found at the site of Errol Flynn’s mansion, a popular party spot. Apparently it was a suicide. Right after I heard that, a woman told me how she had scored the drugs the girl had used and actually helped her kill herself by getting her to drink a large quantity of milk to make sure she choked if she happened to vomit. She laughed as she said this. I am willing to bet that if you were to talk to other people who were in this scene at this time, they might have a story or two like this. Although it never once appealed to me nor did I ever feel remotely a part of it, it was more than fascinating. If your parents ever warned you about the big bad world, I don’t think they really had much idea of what they were talking about; they just wanted you to be careful and get through in one piece. What they thought they were speaking to with authority was quaint and anemic compared to where I was. Generationally they simply had nothing with which to compare. What I noticed immediately upon arrival was the influence of “Hollywood” and the culture of Southern California in the Los Angeles punk scene. There was an aspect of glamour and understated confidence that was James Dean–esque. Many of the males worked on their rugged, heroic looks with almost aspiring-model earnestness, and the ubiquitous beauty of the females was more than just the observational hunger of my youth—these were really good-looking young people. Many of them seemed as ready for their close-up as they were to go to the next show. I am in no way trying to imply that these were lightweight scenesters, but the fact that so many of them were so cosmetically evolved gave the overall scene an attraction that could not be denied. I think this was one of the things that made the LAPD hate punks and assault them with regularity. It is also why this time period is so well documented by local photographers; it was an irresistibly photogenic happening that was going to be over almost as quickly as it started. As far as I knew, this was a very insular scene. X had come to the East Coast to critical acclaim, and The Dickies had made it there as well but canceled their
Washington, DC, show. Beyond that, all these bands existed in fanzines and cassettes of Rodney Bingenheimer’s radio show, dull sounding and off pitch due to multiple duplications. From the outside it seemed like a scene that wasn’t driven by ambition or financial gain but capturing the moment whenever possible. Just listening to live tapes from the legendary Masque Club, you can hear the reverie and minute-to-minute discovery, especially in the recordings of The Screamers. When I arrived in the summer of 1981 I couldn’t figure out if something new had taken the place of what had so recently transpired and deconstructed, or if this was the moment before the next thing was about to happen. One thing was undeniable: the level of drug abuse in the scene was toxic. The scene was teeming with danger and die-young vigor but seemed devoid of any motivation, purpose, or intellectual/artistic content. What I saw made me conclude that it was a scene full of beautiful young people trying to off themselves. I never thought myself any better, but my inability to understand things in a larger context alienated me almost completely. The cultish isolation of Black Flag soon separated me geographically from the LA scene as we soon relocated to Redondo Beach, where the band had its roots. It was only several miles down the 405, but it felt like we were a world away. Occasionally we would go into Hollywood to see a show and felt the “you’re not from around here, are you, son?” sneer. I remember seeing members of these Masque-era bands at shows. For me it was being in the same room as the legends from my record collection. I met a few of them, but it didn’t go very well, so I left them alone. Black Flag founders Greg Ginn and Chuck Dukowski had a label called SST Records. They were ambitious and driven as any two people I have ever met. The label released not only Black Flag’s recorded output, soon-to-be quite prolific, but also the work of other bands like The Minutemen and Saccharine Trust. They had no interest in remaining local; they were looking to get as far into the world as possible. I can only speak for myself, but I thought our method was not to write some kind of hit but, through a rapid release schedule and relentless touring, to conquer by sheer ubiquity. This approach takes all you can give to it and is rife with confusing, ironic twists. For me it made the concept of success, beyond a severely defined idea of artistic truth and unrestrained fury against any and all who sought to neutralize us, to be repellent. So if the goal is to do the work as you see fit, any slings and arrows that may come are as much a part of it as anything else. Whether real or imagined, we considered ourselves in opposition to almost everything and everyone. The artwork on the album covers and flyers was specifically meant to upset and provoke. At times I thought we were so extreme, we didn’t want to have an audience at all.
As a result of our actions, we existed in a world of high contrast. We were rarely considered less than in the extreme. We studiously sought to obliterate the middle ground. Within a few months of joining Black Flag and moving to Los Angeles, I spent most of the year on the road on tours that lasted months. We would return to Southern California primarily to record so we could leave again. Although the stays were longer, California became a state that was one of many I frequented. In a strange way I became the quintessential American, meeting people from all over the country, month after month, year after year. Between tours I would visit Los Angeles in a series of brief jump cuts. I would find out what happened to some of the people I had met when I first arrived. There were deaths from overdoses and suicides, stints of incarceration, and other bad news. I noticed that there seemed to be a lot of heroin going around. I found out that it was plentiful as it was potent and cheap. At that time, I had never heard of Hoover’s COINTELPRO efforts, but it seemed obvious to me that these people had been targeted in a campaign to clean things up, perhaps for the upcoming Olympic Games. I identify with Los Angeles through the filter of music. It’s the city that was as immortalized and defined by The Doors’ keyboard-driven, poetic nihilism and X’s first album as any industry, innovation, or event. I have often referred to Los Angeles as “the stucco-coated killing field,” and in a way, that’s true, but you have to live here to die here. That is to say, there are no babes in these woods.
CHAPTER 15
When It Came to Drugs by John Doe
When it came to drugs, the possibilities were endless. There was a “war on drugs,” but bikers still made crank the old-fashioned way, not w/ bullsh*t cold pills; acid could still have some actual LSD in it; East LA had a solid supply of heroin & MDA & you didn’t get AIDS from sharing needles. As dedicated bohemians, it was practically our duty to seek & find the other side of consciousness & break the rules of society along the way. Of course, the most available drugs were alcohol & tobacco & we couldn’t get enough of them. Among our immediate group, Camel filters & Marlboros were king & queen. An occasional Winston smoker might come along. Some who imagined they were hardened criminals went for Camel straights or god-awful Gauloises (I’ll admit to a brief fling w/ the French cigarette until I came to my senses) & for the less hardcore Marlboro Lights had recently come on the scene. A haze of light blue smoke filtered every room & gig where more than a few people gathered. It was common to fill & empty ashtrays several times throughout the night, have giant tin cans, crush out the butts on the floor or find that you had two cigs burning at the same time. The menthol craze came later when Kool Filter Kings made us feel like we had something in common w/ the culture of South Central LA. Where the beer came from is lost to history. But there was never a lack of it until the corner convenience/liquor store closed at 1:30 or 2 a.m. Los Angeles had any number of cheap & “relatively” good beers—Eastside, Brew 102, Lucky X Lager (which had rebus puzzles inside the bottle caps) or Mickey’s Big Mouth. Everyone had a short but meaningful relationship w/ Mickey’s (fortified but not as nasty as Colt 45, etc.), up until the morning after, when everything smelled like skunk. And cleaning up the almost-full, forgotten bottles made you run to the bathroom retching. Gin was popular for its psychedelic effect. The fast gin fizz—Nehi strawberry soda and Gordon’s gin— invented by Farrah Fawcett Minor, broke more than a couple lamps, coffee tables, hearts & relationships. We had yet to discover all the great dive bars in LA since we were too broke & busy hanging out in each others’ apartments or gigs.
Everyone wanted to go fast because everything around us was going fast. Stories of beatniks & Hells Angels staying up all night, inventing who knows what, fueled our desire to “break on through to the other side.” We had made a deal to break free of all the societal bullsh*t that sitcoms & The Eagles had told us was reality. Cocaine was too bourgeoisie & expensive. Pot was for hippies. Vicks inhalers no longer contained Benzedrine, but Black Beauties or White Crosses could be crushed up & snorted if you took out the annoying time-released dark flecks. Though it wasn’t very reliable, biker crank came around often enough to push several nights into insanity. Driving to or from San Francisco didn’t seem to take as long while you talked a mile a minute. In Venice, Cal, I remember Claude Bessy shooting me up w/ a tiny amount of high-grade speed & then I watched the entire world bend into slow motion just before launching into hyperdrive. I believe I played, very badly, w/ Top Jimmy that night & my jaw ached so bad the day after, I vowed no more shooting that sh*t—too much. So there we all were, breaking the law, doing our duty as outlaws. What’s a little heroin to really see what hardcore drug use is like? Insidious as always, King Heroin sneaked onto the scene while most people were having a wild time drinking, creating, partying & generally carrying on. Some of us older ones had seen the damage done, maybe tried it but never got serious about it. For those who didn’t get sucked into the dark well of dreams, it was only a side trip. But more & more people disappeared into their apartments only to emerge skinnier & stranger. It was clear to most of us who had something they wanted to accomplish that heroin was nothing but an edge to peer over, smile, nod & climb back to the faster pace of what was really happening: a punk-rock revolution. But the unsuspecting, unlucky ones got swirled into a toilet bowl of nodding, floating & talking about what they were going to do tomorrow. It amazed me how some people continued as serious users & creative artists, but that was usually short-lived. People started dying, first in SF then in LA, and suddenly it was no longer about breaking loose to see the other side. They were full-blown addicts, truly outside the law & lost to the rest of us.
CHAPTER 16
Punk as a Young Adult by Chris D.
Set with the task of writing this, I had to ask myself what really is punk rock? It seems to be something very different to different people, depending on whom you ask. To me it is doing your music, art, or writing exactly as prescribed by what feels right inside of you. Because it was and still is to some extent tied to youth or youthful feelings, many of the sentiments expressed are by way of channeling all sorts of unfocused anger through a prism—defiance of authority and the status quo. And, to paraphrase Joe Strummer, it is not accepting bullsh*t for an answer; it is about truth. Telling it as well as hearing it. For me, carrying over from pre-punk and proto-punk icons like Jim Morrison, David Bowie, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Iggy Pop, it is also about sexual politics, trying to determine what love between two people truly represents. John and Exene from X and Jeffrey Lee Pierce from The Gun Club were on a very similar wavelength. X’s song “The World’s a Mess (It’s in My Kiss)”—just the title alone—is a perfect illustration of this.
Since I started writing poetry before making music in my bands, The Flesh Eaters and Divine Horsem*n, my focus was initially on the song lyrics. And poetry is how I got
involved writing record and live reviews for Slash magazine, submitting poems for consideration. Slash did not do poetry. Philomena Winstanley, co-editor of Slash along with Claude “Kickboy” Bessy, liked the writing enough, though, to solicit record reviews from me. Thus my first, an appraisal of Iggy and the Stooges’ “I Got a Right/Gimme Some Skin,” appeared in the third issue, the one with Johnny Rotten on the cover. A plethora of reviews followed in subsequent issues, under my own name, Chris D., as well as a variety of pseudonyms, including Half-co*cked, Mr. OK, and Bob Clone. I met other Slash-ites in due course, opinionated (and often very funny) scribes like Allen “Basho Macko” McDonnell, Ranking Jeffrey Lee (aka Jeffrey Lee Pierce), Will Amato, and Pleasant Gehman. During the summer of 1977 I’d succeeded in making a mess of my personal life, with my first marriage disintegrating due to chronic infidelity. I had just finished grad school, getting an MFA in communication arts (in screenwriting). Life should have been roiling with promising possibilities, but I, in retrospect, could not navigate into some filmmaking harbor. I was and still am socially inept—a perfect recipe for involvement in punk rock. Networking with fellow grad students or show business contacts made through college at Loyola Marymount University should have been a piece of cake. But there was no one I had met to whom I felt connected, at least in filmmaking circles. The new music scene was another story, however. Through my connection with Slash magazine, I was going out to punk-rock shows at places like the Masque and one-off shows at galleries and lofts three or four nights a week, minimum. I was meeting likeminded people, many of whom were musicians themselves. My long-held second love, being in a rock group, was raising its unruly head. Coincidentally I had just landed a job teaching English at a private high school on the border between Westchester and Inglewood near LAX. On weekends it was a synagogue school, but during the week it was rented out to a middle-aged couple who apparently held some kind of charter for private education. The principal, whom I admired for his tenacity in the face of overwhelming odds against him, was morbidly obese and, when I met him, was already paralyzed on his right side. I had my long locks of hair shorn, needing to do this for the job as well as figuring I’d fit in better with all the punk-rock kids inhabiting my night life. Newly separated—yet again—from my first wife, I was living in an apartment on Venice Boulevard across from the old abandoned police station (or was it the defunct city hall?) John Carpenter had used a few years before as a location for his exploitation action tribute to director Howard Hawks, Assault on Precinct 13. Living in the apartment was a mixed bag. I was afflicted with an upstairs neighbor who did not appreciate me playing at full volume on my 1970 vintage Spectrasonic solid-state stereo The Stooges’ LPs Funhouse or Raw Power or miscellaneous singles I
needed to review for Slash. I remember him calling my landlord at least twice rather than calling me first as I had requested. I was convinced something awful had happened in the apartment in the past. It was 1950s (if not ’40s) vintage and had a long catalogue of tenants tromping on its hardwood floors. Abetting the uneasiness was my separation from my estranged spouse, which had left me with a Spartan collection of secondhand furniture: one large antique dining table, a red leather-upholstered easy chair, my stereo (in the living room), one basic double bed with no bedstead accoutrements (in the master bedroom), three cinderblock bookcases filled with vintage pulp crime and science fiction paperbacks, a crappy black-and-white TV, and a mattress on the floor (in the second “guest” room). I had at least two ghostly experiences while living there, one seemingly so genuine— waking up in the middle of the night feeling as if something invisible was latched onto my chest, trying to suck out my soul—that I, still to this day, feel it was the real thing. Then again, I was smoking a lot of pot as well as drinking heavily in those days, so I suppose this experience could have been self-generated. Claude and Philomena lived on Speedway in Venice, and Allen “Basho Macko” McDonnell and his then-wife, Delphina, lived off Rose Avenue. Sometimes various combinations of us would share rides to shows in Hollywood. I remember driving my 1969 Ford Falcon all the way down east on Venice Boulevard to La Brea, then north to where it split off onto Highland, homing in on the Masque on Cherokee in the basem*nt of the puss*cat Theater on Hollywood Boulevard, homing in on it like a beacon of gravel-pitted, concrete-blocked, acne-scarred depravity. At the time, a block south, on Selma Avenue (spanning east-west) was a notorious cruising area for gay hustlers. The Gold Cup on Las Palmas and Hollywood was a tiny coffee shop and covert hangout for “chicken hawks” (older men interested in young teen boys), immortalized in song by Black Randy and the Metro Squad and as a band name by Arthur J. and the Gold Cups. Often I would drive drunk, with a pint of Kamchatka, Jack Daniel’s, I.W. Harper, or a bottle of Pabst Blue Ribbon at my feet. It is a miracle I was never arrested for a DUI. The first show I remember seeing at the Masque was The Bags and a short-lived combo called The Spastics. On subsequent nights I caught The Skulls, The Eyes, X (every time they played), The Dils, The Germs, The Screamers, The Weirdos, The Alley Cats (nearly every time they played), The Deadbeats, Arthur J. and the Gold Cups, The Zeros, so many others. My memories of these shows all blend together. They were fun, they were chaotic, they were exhilarating, and they were sometimes scary and sometimes boring. Though I was in the process of separating from my wife, Bonnie, she still accompanied me to some of these early shows. She shared my interest in the scene,
but things were uneasy between us, and I had already met someone who would take her place as 1977 gave way to 1978. I had started to take tentative steps trying to put a band together—I’m not sure when, I believe it was as early as that past summer. Our first rehearsal was at DJ Bonebrake’s house out in the Valley. DJ was a friend of Joe Ramirez, as DJ was also drummer for The Eyes, and Joe, who was The Eyes’ singer-guitarist, was also playing drums for me. John Richey was on bass, and Bob Grasso, a crazy jokester of a friend of mine from college, played guitar. Bob only lasted that first rehearsal, and soon Tito Larriva, who was starting his own band The Plugz, replaced him. The Masque had rehearsal rooms as well as their main performance area, and we started to rehearse there. It was ratty, cold, and ill lit. I don’t remember the rooms having PAs, and if I’m not mistaken, I think I sang my vocals through an extra Fender Twin guitar amp. On the job front, halfway through that autumn semester the principal, Mr. H, had another stroke and went into the hospital and died. He was a master disciplinarian, despite his infirmities, but when his wife took over, all hell broke loose. There were several borderline criminal kids in the school, and Mrs. H, wanting to be everyone’s friend as opposed to an authority figure, let them get away with all kinds of outrageous shenanigans. I drew the line at letting the kids roll joints in class, and I gradually became known by a handful of them as the killjoy pariah. By the end of the first week of January 1978, I was history. My eleventh-grade class, composed of mostly A- and Bgrade African American female students, was sad to see me go. But four or five of my male nemeses in the tenth grade threw rocks at my car as I made my final exit. By that time The Flesh Eaters had already made their debut at the Masque on December 23, 1977, opening for The Dickies, The Nuns, and The Eyes. This was the last Masque show I went to with my wife. The official nail in the coffin of my marriage was divorce papers in the mail, but before that a more potent declaration came with Bonnie’s father arriving in a truck by himself to pick up the big double bed that technically belonged to them. Bonnie’s father was a tall, rangy self-made millionaire, a poor guy with a gravelly voice from the Mississippi hill country who married a senator’s daughter (really) but made his fortune while doing research at Lockheed, inventing on the side, with his business partner, one of the early versions of Krazy Glue. I was always grateful to him for not thrashing me within an inch of my life for the way I’d treated his daughter. By this time I was a week or two away from moving to new digs in Hollywood on Fairfax between Willoughby and Waring. When I finally arrived in Hollywood I was already on the first of many “outs” in my new relationship with Judith Bell (soon to become an artistic collaborator), which made it awkward, as she was close friends with the three gay tenants who shared two of the
other apartments. The fourth apartment, the one right above me, was inhabited by a scary, very cranky Korean War vet everyone had nicknamed Lurch. Lurch was a handyman and seemed perpetually drunk. I was soon to torment Lurch—unintentionally —on a nearly daily basis with my stereo cranked high. At first I had virtually no furniture except for the mattress on the floor in the bedroom and the stereo and red leather-upholstered easy chair in the living room. I remember falling asleep on the living room floor that first night there, cold winds howling outside down the narrow driveway alley (the apartment building was set back from the street, located behind a kitchen cabinets shop run by the landlord.) I was slightly drunk and in a funk, using my father’s rolled up WW2 sleeping bag as a pillow while I drifted in and out of consciousness. Judith and I were soon back on good terms, and we could be found at the Masque at least twice a week and sometimes at the house and rehearsals of our new friends, John and Exene, of the band X. Judith also wrote for Slash mag, and I can best describe the newsprint tabloid as a unifying force, something that inspired people and spawned other homemade, Xeroxed fanzines (Judith and I even had a two-issue enterprise called the Upsetter that featured all kinds of detritus, including interviews with bands like The Germs, The Bags, The Dils, X, and irreverent graphics spoofing various trendy fashions and music styles popping up in the subterranean subculture). I’ve mentioned Claude and Philly, who tended to the editorial content (i.e., verbiage) of Slash mag, but two other people, artist and graphic designer Steve Samiof and photographer Melanie Nissen, were responsible for the iconographic masthead and striking visuals, aided and abetted by soon-to-belegendary artists like Gary Panter, best remembered for his back-page comic strip about the super, subhuman punk Jimbo as well as the Slash mag logo that replaced the beautifully executed initial dripping blood one after thirteen or so issues. Melanie Nissen remembers, “Steve and I used to put the mag together, paste it up— this was before computers, of course—out of our dining room or bedroom, wherever we were living. Steve had seen some newspaper stories about what was going on in London and said, ‘Hey, why don’t we do a magazine about this?’ It was never about money. So in the beginning it was just Steve and I and Claude and Philly.” Were there ever any problems with the printer about content? “Oh, no. They didn’t care. Who knows if they even really looked at it. We just found the cheapest place we could. It was way out in the Valley, kind of funky. But we were just happy to get it printed every month. You know, it was a really special time. There was no one around to tell us, ‘You can’t do that.’ We were young and didn’t have all that crap in our heads yet, you know? I think that was one of the most special things about it.” Midway through Slash magazine’s lifespan Steve and Melanie and Claude and Philly got to move into a real
office on the southwest corner of Santa Monica and Fairfax. This DIY spirit Melanie mentioned was crucial to the scene, and I don’t think one can overestimate Slash magazine’s ripple effect on, at first, dozens, then hundreds of little mini-scenes on the punk front that carried on the torch to new, sometimes seemingly incongruous frontiers. There were other newsprint tabloids and magazines too, such as Bruce Kalberg’s No Mag (with its emphasis on avant-garde art as well as punk), Hudley and Al’s Flipside (with its egalitarian participation of band and audience members alike), Greg Shaw’s Bomp magazine (with its catholic taste running the gamut from punk to power pop), and the pioneering Back Door Man (1975!) with such alumni as Don Waller, Phast Phreddie Patterson, and D. D. Faye, all making an impact along with Slash. Other mags like San Francisco’s Search and Destroy and, from the East Coast, New York Rocker (edited by swell guy Andy Schwartz) and Boston Rock were also influential. Surprisingly, too, enormously significant UK rags like Melody Maker, Sounds, and New Musical Express could be found on many local Hollywood newsstands as well as at hip record stores, and they had their own collision of styles and tastes rubbing off on the local scene. Slash was relatively successful, considering the competition it was up against on magazine racks, in record stores and newsstands across the country. Not that people got paid, but it always seemed that the magazine was able to secure advertising from various major record labels looking to hawk their “new wave” acts as well as the smaller indies who were promoting the “real thing,” thus breaking even. I started recording various versions of the initial Flesh Eaters songs at Randy Stodola of The Alley Cats’ house down in Lomita. I believe it was in January 1978. He had a four-track recorder. It may have been low-tech, but Randy was a whiz with that four-track. Shortly after the first session of three songs, we lost guitarist Tito Larriva, who gravitated to devote his full time to his own band, The Plugz. Following his departure, Stan Ridgway (later of Wall of Voodoo) joined the band for a couple of months. Finally, around the beginning of the summer, I was back to square one and, despairing of ever holding a semipermanent lineup together, I asked another local trio, The Fly Boys, who were a bit more pop flavored, if they’d join me for a limited time, backing me on a four-song 7” EP and doing a few shows. Thus, the first Flesh Eaters recordings, once again recorded at Randy’s, were unleashed on my own label, Upsetter Records. One of my most vivid memories I have is of how cold and windy it was on the autumn and winter nights of 1978. I had one of those bronchial coughs that wouldn’t go away. Partially surviving on unemployment and the largesse of my parents, I was getting to devote most of my time to writing for Slash and making music. I got a job in the tape library of Century City’s CBS Records HQ in late 1978 through a temp agency Judith
worked for, and I toiled away in the salt mines of their master vault, carting around multitracks of artists like Barbra Streisand and Toto. I always resisted some of my friends’ suggestions to toss a couple of magnets into select boxes of analog twenty-fourtrack tapes. The year 1979 saw the genesis of Tooth and Nail, one of the first—if not the first— Los Angeles punk compilation LPs, along with Dangerhouse’s Yes L.A. one-sided album. I must give credit to Judith for really being a prime moving force behind making Tooth and Nail happen. I can’t remember who came up with the title for the compilation, but she secured the financing from Rocky Stevens, a gay Oklahoma millionaire who was a friend and loved punk rock. It’s hard to believe we did the whole thing—the recording and mixing, the pressing and manufacturing—for so little. Still, no one made any money beyond breaking even. Of course, looking back on it now, some of the recordings don’t live up to the more polished productions coming out of London or even local labels Dangerhouse or Posh Boy. Selection of the bands was partly based on who were our friends and also who we felt deserved exposure and hadn’t gotten their share yet. In a classic example of DIY self-interest, that included my current lineup of The Flesh Eaters. Originally X was also scheduled to be included, but after their experience with Dangerhouse, guitarist Billy Zoom nixed any more involvement with small indie labels, including us, choosing to wait for a bigger label to take notice. Exene stayed tangentially involved, codesigning the Tooth and Nail record labels with Judith. The Controllers, Middle Class, and The Germs were all Southern California bands, and Negative Trend and UXA were originally from San Francisco. Negative Trend was the only band with previously recorded material, and their inclusion was heavily influenced by the presence of their then new vocalist, Rik L Rik. I was a big fan of Rik’s previous aggregation, F-Word. By late 1979 I had a part-time job with Slash magazine at their new offices on Beverly and Martel, working as circulation manager in the downstairs storeroom. Current and back issues of Slash resided in organized heaps on the dirty linoleum floor. Upstairs, in addition to housing the new studio for laying out the templates for the tabloid’s printing, Bob Biggs had taken over financial and creative control of the fledgling Slash Records. Slash had already released a single by The Plugz and a 7” EP by The Germs, and Slash’s first album, The Germs (G.I.), produced by Joan Jett, was about to be released.
Photos by Gary Leonard
Bloodied fan
Top Jimmy and Luci Diehl wedding, 1981 (from L-R): Luci Diehl, John Pochna, Top Jimmy, Exene, Lydia Ortiz, Junco, unknown, Dig the Pig, Chris D., the rest all unknown, John Doe at lower right
The Alley Cats backstage (from L-R): John McCarthy, Dianne Chai, Randy Stodola
Gina Schock and Jane Wiedlin from The Go-Go’s
Chris Morris and Phil Alvin at the Zero Zero
From L-R: David Hidalgo, unknown, Cesar Rosas, Michael Wilcox, unknown, Bruce Barf, Dave Alvin, Conrad Lozano
Hardcore Invasion
Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Texacala Jones at the Whisky, 1981
Luci Diehl and Gerber
LAPD’s finest
Photos by Melanie Nissen
Darby and Exene, Slash Records rooftop
John Denney of The Weirdos meets LA’s finest
The Zeros in another rented hall, 1979 (from L-R): Hector Penalosa, Javier Escovedo
Black Randy at the Whisky
The Weirdos being shut down at Larchmont Hall, 1979 (from L-R): Dix Denney, Nickey Beat, Dave Trout, Cliff Roman (obscured from view), John Denney
Photo by Rick Nyberg
Dinky and D. J. Bonebreak at the Starwood, 1980
Photos by Ruby Ray
LA Line-up, West Hollywood, 1977 (from L-R): unknown, Hellin Killer, Trudi, Pleasant Gehman, Bobby Pin, Nickey Beat, Alice Bag, Delphina, Lorna Doom, Pat Smear, Jena
Welcome to Los Angeles, 1977 (from L-R): John Doe, Rand McNally, Exene, Black Randy at the Palladium-Punk fashion show
The Zeros, San Francisco, 1977 (from L-R): Robert Lopez, Baba Chenelle, Hector Penalosa, Javier Escovedo, Hellin Killer
Photos by Ann Summa
The Adolescents’ Tony Cadena in his backyard in Fullerton, CA, 1982
Pat and Alice Bag at the Hong Kong Café, 1979
The Plugz (from L-R): Chalo Quintana, Tito Larriva, Tony Marsico
Circle Jerks at the Country Club in Reseda, CA, 1982 (from L-R): Keith Morris, Greg Hetson, Roger Rogerson
Tito Larriva of The Plugz at the East LA studio of graphic artist Richard Duardo, 1979
John and Exene post-show, Troubadour
I wound up my tenure at CBS Records’ tape library around the same time. I remember giving a copy of The Flesh Eaters’ EP to an A&R secretary I knew on the sixth floor, which was largely Epic Records label turf. She was nice and cool, but I honestly didn’t think it was going to be her cup of tea. Then again, she was familiar with The Clash’s Give ’Em Enough Rope and London Calling, both of them on Epic. I never did find out what she thought before I left. A weird memory from that job: at one point a few people in the building had tested positive for hepatitis B, and gamma globulin shots were pretty much mandated by a temporary medical station in the big boardroom off the downstairs lobby for everyone before leaving work for the day. Strange. A t Slash, down in the first-floor vault (or, once again, in less glamorous terminology, storeroom), I toiled going through the binder with the circulation sheets, a notebook with the accounts of every newsstand, record store, and bookstore that carried Slash magazine in the United States. I took out the required number of copies (usually five, ten, fifteen, at most twenty) of the current issue from the piled stacks, rolled them up, and wrapped them in plain brown paper. Once the orders were filled, the oblong parcels went flying out to their far-flung destinations on successive trips to the local post office on Beverly Boulevard and Spaulding. In the coming years those piled heaps of mags would gradually be replaced by columns of boxes of Slash Records releases
(promotional copies and what-have-you). For a brief period—I think in 1982 or 1983— the storeroom, because it had a bathroom, even played host to a couple of band members of Aussie garage kings The Lipstick Killers, who took over my stockroom job once I’d been kicked upstairs. No Questions Asked, the first Flesh Eaters album, was recorded in a real mix-andmatch mode of personnel all through the beginning of 1980. Released on Upsetter Records the same year, it was written up, along with The Germs (G.I.) LP, by Richard Meltzer in his infamous “blabbermouth lockjaw of the soul” review in the Village Voice. But No Questions Asked was dwarfed, as were so many other Los Angeles band releases at the time, by Slash Records’ second album out, Los Angeles, X’s debut LP. The production and material (already familiar to X’s live audience) was startling not only in its competitive professionalism but also in its uncompromising attitude and lyrical imagery. One could hear distant echoes of other past California bands in the vocals and melodies (e.g., The Doors and Jefferson Airplane), yet it blazed new territory by incorporating the hard edge of the UK’s Sex Pistols and The Clash as well as the chaotic, bourbon-fueled rockabilly swirl (on heavy metal steroids) of such artists as Billy Lee Riley, Hasil Adkins, and even Johnny Cash. I don’t remember the exact date, but somewhere in, I think, the spring of 1980, Bob Biggs hired me as his third employee at the record company, nominally an A&R rep for the label. There was always a creative tension between Biggs and I, and it gradually escalated through my term there, from 1980 through the last months in the spring of 1984. But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. More on that later. The magazine was still going, and as Steve and Melanie became less involved with the production side, I spent almost every other day running to the photography place over on the corner of Curson and Wilshire Blvd where they shot the halftones and line shots for our photographs and artwork that would end up in paste-up. You must remember this was before computers, before Photoshop and the advent of such futuristic inventions as JPEGs and desktop publishing. In some respects I’ve felt the need to render everything here in this chapter in as chronological a fashion as possible, but I think with the remainder I’m going to have to break it up into a scattered mosaic jumping back and forth in time. Slash magazine’s days were numbered, what with the crush of the new record label and the diffusion of energy from contributors getting involved in various other creative endeavors. The last issue went out with a bang near the end of 1980, and it was the closest we got to a “slick” publication, with staples (instead of folded layers) and approximately twice as many pages. Judith and I were still reviewing singles, LPs, and live events, but we also conducted a mammoth interview with Hollywood maverick director Sam Fuller (Pickup on South Street, Shock Corridor, The Naked Kiss), who
was just gearing up for release of one of his final films, a magnum opus about his military exploits in WW2 in the invasion of Sicily and, much farther north, liberation of a concentration camp, called The Big Red One. It was one of the longest and best interviews we had done for the mag. Late in the year I began readying the material for a different kind of album as The Flesh Eaters’ second LP. I was fortunate enough to corral friends John Doe and DJ Bonebrake of X, Dave Alvin and Bill Bateman from The Blasters, and Steve Berlin from Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs (who would go on to join Los Lobos) into a lineup for an eight-song extravaganza, a mélange of seventies-style garage band punk, Link Wray–meets–Bo Diddley rhythm and blues, and African roots music. The lyrics were French symbolist-inspired mixed with voodoo-hoodoo/tragic country blended with imagery from transgressive cinema. The title, A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, was also the moniker of a favorite spaghetti western from the sixties. Recorded in January of 1981, this was a prime example of the kind of fruitful creative DIY tension that was starting to rear its head between honcho Bob Biggs and me. Rather than bring out the unique effort on Slash, Bob decided to generate a subsidiary label called Ruby Records that would be primarily, though not exclusively, my province. A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die was released in the spring of 1981, right around the same time as X’s second celebrated effort with Slash, Wild Gift. Things were moving fast with the labels, and many of the events, gigs, and releases tend to blur together in my memory, partly no doubt to a haze of incipient alcoholism. The creative tension of working at Slash was a challenge and sometimes frustrating experience for someone like me who was and is, to this day, still a basically impatient person. Robin Weiss, Bob Biggs’s secretary and Slash receptionist, and I were good friends with Jeffrey Lee Pierce and were fierce champions of the material he was starting to demo under the band name The Gun Club. It took months for Robin and I to whittle down Bob’s resistance, playing for him the songs Jeffrey had already recorded with producer Tito Larriva to get him to agree to finance a second outing in the studio with me producing to complete a releasable LP. Finally, in the late summer of 1981, The Gun Club’s debut album, Fire of Love, was unleashed to universal acclaim. About the same time when Fire of Love was accumulating accolades, The Blasters were preparing their first phenomenal Slash record (they’d already had one LP, American Music, released by rockabilly label Rollin’ Rock). Their newest album was so well received, it cracked Time magazine’s Top Ten albums of 1981 and peaked at number thirty-six on Billboard’s charts. This was something unheard of for an indie punk-rock label, and along with X’s success, it was a major impetus in getting Slash Records picked up for distribution by Warner Brothers. Simultaneously I was putting together a new lineup of The Flesh Eaters. This was
going to be a slightly smaller unit and, as it turns out, have a bit different dynamic as far as composing the music. Don Kirk on guitar, Robyn Jameson on bass, Chris Wahl on drums, Steve Berlin on saxes (on the recordings only), Jill Jordan on backing vocals, and I recorded The Flesh Eaters’ third album, Forever Came Today, on St. Valentine’s Day in 1982. Once again we did the tracks at Quad Teck, engineered by Pat Burnette (whose father was country star Dorsey Burnette) on 6th Street, just two blocks west of Western Avenue. All of The Germs (G.I.), all of A Minute to Pray, and roughly half of Fire of Love were also recorded there, and so was The Dream Syndicate’s Days of Wine and Roses and Green on Red’s Gravity Talks, both still to come in 1982 and 1983, respectively. The studio is now long gone. Perhaps this is a good place to wind down my saga in some closing paragraphs. Things were becoming increasingly clique-ish. A huge party thrown near the close of 1981 in Slash’s upstairs lobby was the first scrawl of that writing on the wall. Or maybe it was just me being uptight. I remember having to throw Derf Scratch from Fear and John Belushi out of my office because I didn’t appreciate them closing the door and snorting co*ke off my desk. There was a grassroots Hollywood-doing-music-businessas-usual vibe that was very gradually, almost imperceptibly creeping in—and I was intent on ignoring it as long as possible. There were personal disappointments along the way during those years, nothing too big on its own, but the number of small setbacks at Slash had a cumulative effect on my morale. Some of this, to be fair to Bob Biggs, was self-generated by my two-margaritadoubles-a-day for lunch. In general, I felt no one at the label—except for maybe friend and publicist Susan Clary (who had her office next to mine)—was on the same wavelength. Sometimes I felt we had our own little separate cabal there sequestered across the large entry hall. I increasingly had to fight for the bands I wanted to produce and release on subsidiary Ruby Records. My friends in X and The Blasters were constantly on tour. X decamped for a major label, Elektra. When it came to re-sign on either Slash or Ruby, both The Gun Club and The Dream Syndicate declined, opting for major label deals. It was nothing personal, but you know how that goes. Fear and Los Lobos came on board, but though I thought they were super-great, I didn’t really connect in the same way with them on a personal level as I did with X and The Blasters. Other bands that I didn’t care for, like The Violent Femmes, got signed. A group I really fought to get signed, Boston’s The Neats, did not pass muster with Biggs. I was also having diverging inner conflicts between my ambitions at Slash and my vision for my band, The Flesh Eaters. Many times after returning from lunch, around three in the afternoon, I quietly closed the door to my office and lay my head down on the desk. One thing, though, that changed all of us early on—a rite of passage, a coming of age, shedding any last vestiges of youthful illusion giving way to full-blown adulthood
—happened in the spring of 1980. Exene’s sister, Mirielle (aka Mary Katherine) and her husband, Gordon Stevenson, had come to town from New York City to promote and screen Ecstatic Stigmatic, an indie underground feature they had made. Gordon had written and directed it; Mirielle had starred. Mirielle and Gordon along with a number of other mutual friends down from San Francisco were staying at my apartment on Fairfax while I temporarily moved in with Judith at her digs a couple of miles away on Beachwood just south of Melrose. On Friday, April 11, I drove to work at Slash and arrived at about 10 a.m. I parked on the side street Martel, right outside the storeroom. No sooner had I stepped out onto the pavement then another car, going perhaps sixty miles an hour, missed me by literally inches and sheared off my door. They never stopped. I was so shaken, I had to go back to Judith’s and chill out for an hour or two. Around noon we drove my car to a body shop on Gower across the street from Paramount Studios. Just as I was about to turn left into their parking lot, I realized a car coming in the opposite direction was driving faster than I’d thought, and I stopped to let it go by. The driver, however, thought I was going to follow through and, panicking, jumped her car up on the sidewalk, taking out a parking sign. What the f*ck was going on? The next day X was headlining at the Whisky, doing two sets. I don’t remember the opening act. Steve Nieve, keyboardist for Elvis Costello’s Attractions, and his wife, Fay Hart, good friends of Mirielle, were in town, having taken an apartment across from Paramount. The three of them—Mirielle, Steve, and Fay—had been doing their laundry earlier that night. They were supposed to meet Judith and me at Judith’s place before we all went to the Whisky to see X. However, many minutes, then an hour ticked by. We hadn’t heard from them, and it was getting late. You have to remember this was at least a good fifteen years before people had cell phones. So Judith and I left a note on the door and headed for the Whisky. In between the first and second set we were upstairs, backstage with the band, when a couple of uniformed LAPD officers made their way through the punks who lined the hallway. We saw them speak to Exene, and she almost immediately slumped to the floor. On the way to Judith’s neighborhood Steve, Fay, and Mirielle were crossing on the green on the street of Willoughby at Vine when a drunk woman in a muscle car was barreling south on Vine and ran the red light, hitting the trio’s Volkswagen, spinning it around, and turning it on its side. Steve and Fay both had broken bones, but Mirielle, sitting in the backseat, was killed instantly. John and Exene, bereft though they were, decided to go on and do their second set. Judith and I left early, homing in on the supermarket, determined to buy up as much hard liquor as possible before the 2 a.m. cutoff for sales. We headed over to John and
Exene’s apartment (one half of a tiny duplex on Genesee, half a block north of Santa Monica Blvd) and waited for people to show up. That night everyone—and there were quite a few friends there—got blind drunk, staging an impromptu wake, trying unsuccessfully to obliterate our feelings and blunt the edges of a sharp, all-consuming grief. The night climaxed a couple of hours before dawn with several of the men chasing after an unbalanced, disgruntled next-door neighbor, and one or two of them ended up in jail overnight. There were other deaths still to come—Darby Crash, Paul Zacha, Jules Bates, Robin Weiss, Jeffrey Lee, and so many more. But for me and, I think, many of us, this was the weekend that would stick with us like no other. I’ve long swung back and forth between believing in astrology, fate, signs from God, but this was one of those weekends that was a life-changer, shaking us all to the core, a demarcation point from youth to adult that seemed to be barely harboring us from some malevolent curse, and all of us who lived were somehow lucky we had come through it on the other side. Growing up and becoming an adult, dealing with very real, inescapable things like death, that was a big part of punk rock too.
CHAPTER 17
Stuff Gets Twisted Up by Mike Watt
I met d. boon some three or so years after coming to san pedro, ca, from norfolk, va, when he jumped out of a tree and landed on me in peck park, thinking I was a friend of his, nicknamed “eskimo”—I told him I wasn’t eskimo, that I was someone who just moved from the navy housing to this proj that was just built next to the park. I told him I’d show him and, on our way walking there, he started reciting all these bits, really funny and trippy stuff. I thought, “man, this is the smartest dude in the world!” now I was only twelve years old and had never heard of george carlin—that’s right, when the next day d. boon took me to his pad, a few blocks away in an older proj called “park western” (mine was called “park western estates”), he played me some of this comedian’s act he had recorded from tv, and damn if those bits I thought he was making up on the spot yesterday were actually right from this man! after removing my palm from my forehead I realized this didn’t matter cuz it was too late; I was way into him. now, the reason I had to move from navy housing and, in fact, the reason I was in san pedro in the first place is cuz my pop was a sailor in the navy; he worked in the engine room as a machinist mate. california was a lot closer to vietnam than virginia was, and that was the war that was going on then. in the service, families gotta move lots; as soon as “the orders” arrive you’d have, like, thirty days to reinvent your whole world. well, when my pop got transferred from the uss long beach to our first atomic-powered aircraft carrier, the uss enterprise (my pop worked in nuke engine rooms), the word came to move north to alameda and my ma said, “f*ck that.” so we stayed in pedro but had to leave the navy housing. trippy how ‘pert-near right away of leaving there I would meet d. boon and then his family took me in like they did. his pop, danny, was like a second father to me—I mean all the tours my pop did in vietnam (yeah, they had “tours” too!) made for me hardly seeing him, but now it was even more that way. danny boon treated me like a son. d. boon’s ma, too, was very kind to me. she was upfront about her thinking and didn’t airbrush w/ words, but I liked that. it was her, too, who decided prolly one of the biggest decisions in my life: I would be on bass. yeah, she decided me and d. boon should be in a band and I would be on bass. hell, I didn’t even know what a
bass was. she played guitar when she was younger, so of course d. boon would be on guitar, but a band needs a bass, so that was for me. now, her thinking wasn’t, I believe, cuz of careering but more like econo childcare or something. it was the early ’70s, and there wasn’t a lot of guns and stuff, but there was some fighting, so I think she wanted us to maybe be in the pad after school doing music and off the streets where we might get into trouble. hey, I was into it cuz I got to be w/ d. boon, that was good enough for me. thank you much, margie boon! when I met d. boon, the only rock band he knew about was creedence clearwater revival—he knew nothing about cream, the who, steppenwolf, or t-rex cuz I think his pop was way into buck owens (even though danny boon was from nebraska, the boons had lived in bakersfield before coming to pedro), and that might’ve been a factor. but anyway, d. boon had all those first six ccr albums. they’d be laying on the hardwood floor w/out being in their jackets, grape juice and sh*t spilled all over them, and the econo record player needed, like, five quarters above the stylus to try and keep it from skipping. let’s put it this way: it was hard to hear what the bassman was doing—hard for me anyway. hell, I can hear stu cook (ccr bassman) real good now but then, no way. actually, I was playing a cheap guitar from a pawn shop w/ only four strings on it, that’s what I saw in the pictures on album covers—something like a guitar but w/ just four tuners. I really thought basses were guitars w/skinnier necks and two fewer strings! I didn’t really comprehend that the word bass meant lower; what a dumbf*ck I was. anyway, it stressed me so much not knowing what to play when we tried to copy ccr tunes, so looking at their album covers, I decided to wear shirts like their guitar/singerman john fogerty wore—flannels. I thought this was his kind of rock ‘n’ roll shirt and maybe if I wore shirts similar to his that d. boon still would like me, even w/ my inability to figure their bass parts out. d. boon had a big heart, though, and let me stumble through w/ whatever, and luckily we moved on to trying to learn tunes by the who and cream, where I could definitely hear the bass parts. a lot of the bass in rock coming from england had the bass way up and it helped much; r & b stuff, too, like james jamerson and larry graham—that would have a big impact later now that I think of it. anyway, there was some u.s. rock like blue öyster cult and alice cooper, where I learned much too, but what really helped us both was a man who lived in his car named roy mendez-lopez. this guy gave lessons to d. boon out of chuck’s sound of music in our town, a pad where they sold music stuff and albums too—it was like that in those days. roy was an incredible cat who was a very singular individual who built his own instruments, studied music constantly, and lived econo. he was way into prac and instilled that much in us, especially d. boon but me too. the way he brought it to us wasn’t like the “b” word burden but more like the “o” word opportunity—to play for the love of it. it wasn’t just talk: he lived his ideas out. he had an incredible impact on
us. I got my first real bass at fifteen. it was a kay that looked kind of like a gibson eb-3 —kind of. I couldn’t believe how big the f*cking strings were. “no wonder there’s only four of them,” I was thinking. this bass had action like maybe william tell’s bow— terrible and gave me much hurt—but eventually it did get my fingers stronger. damn, would they f*cking hurt, but I wanted to be d. boon’s bass player so I kept at it. the real problem I see looking back now was the culture or maybe I should say lack of culture when it came to composing your own stuff, using music as a form of expression. remember this is the era of arena rock—the first “concert” we went to was t-rex, and though we dug that and stuff like blue öyster cult (the band we saw live the most), it was nothing like the club gig culture we would find out about w/ the punk movement. actually we had never been to a club until our first punk gig. we graduated san pedro high school in 1976, which is right around when creem magazine had these pictures and stories about “punk” stuff. we never did gigs, just played at the pad and then later in a garage near the junior high school w/ three other pedro guys and called ourselves the bright orange band even though we didn’t have one original song (why have an original band name, why not cover that too?!). wait, we did have one gig when we were in tenth grade after a football game on a portable stage near the jetty at cabrillo beach. we were so terrible that everyone started throwing sh*t at us, and d. boon’s pop drove his pickup right up to the stage so we could jump in and escape. some older guys had us borrow their stuff so we didn’t lose anything except our spirit—that band was crushed. me and d. boon then started jamming w/ an old buddy named marc weiswasser at one of the barracks the army was renting out as they were closing down the lower reservation of fort macarthur (it’s been dug out, w/ boat slips put in, and now is the cabrillo marina). of course we were copying songs, stuff like “dust in the wind” and “tie your mother down,” w/ a singer-lady named erin we met one day when we stopped for a breather. outside this pad came walking by this guy w/ wild hair like in those punk pictures and what looked like a kotex around his neck. he told us there was a scene up in hollywood where people wrote their own songs. he said he was in one of the bands and we should check it out. d. boon and I did just that. we saw a band called the bags, and the first thing that fell out of my mouth w/out thinking when I saw them was to say to d. boon, “we can do that!” it was just a such a mindblow; it’s hard for me to put how clearly profound this moment was. it’s right up there w/ d. boon’s ma putting me on bass. we started going to as many punk gigs as we could. it was a trip how these cats weren’t afraid. you could tell ‘pert-near all of them were just learning how to play, learning how to play in public, but it didn’t matter cuz it seemed the main point was to express yourself any way you could. this is why we never felt punk was a style of music —that was up to each band. what it seemed to us was the movement was more about a
state of mind. maybe some kind of funny karma, cuz I do think the hippie movement had lost its humor and the insights that come w/ that. remember, we were boys during the ’60s w/ the civil rights and antiwar stuff and people taking issues into their own hands, and now in the ’70s, arena rock seemed like the nuremberg rallies to me. I really wanted to start a band that was part of this movement w/ d. boon, but he told me to hold on. I got impatient and answered an ad in the recycler, where three people were looking for a fourth to make a band. they had prac in the drummer’s pop’s electric shop on santa monica boulevard, and I brought my bass and amp in my vw bug up from pedro (about thirty miles, we’re the west part of the los angeles harbor) and jammed the stooges’ “I wanna be your dog” for like three hours w/ them. they were very kind to me, nice people. I was so excited when I got home that I immediately told d. boon, and he told me, “ok, let’s make a punk band.” whoa, I didn’t expect that—I never jammed w/ those people in hollywood again. this was the beginning of the reactionaries. d. boon picked that name from a list I had made up of all kinds of stupid sh*t, but he never wrote one song for the band. looking back, I think he did the band for me cuz he always had plans for another band in his mind; he just wanted to be ready for it. we never had a pad to play w/ a drummer, and this made it a blessing to find george hurley, who wanted to play drums after a bunch of years of surfing and even making surfboards. the shed where he did that across from the high school is where we did prac. another high school friend, martin tamburovich, made us a quartet. this was the first time I ever wrote songs, and they were terrible. the other guys in the band had very big hearts to let me do that to them, to foist these feeble efforts. actually, I did write one song in secret as a teenager called “mr. bass king of outer space,” where in the lyrics I blow away the rest of the band w/ a bass solo—obviously I was having inferiority issues, as discovering bass was like playing right field in little league, like where you put your ‘tard friend in the band, that hierarchy sh*t that, happily, I didn’t have to deal w/ so much w/ the punk movement cuz of a much more level playing field. everyone was learning, drummers and guitarists too. this band really didn’t play that many gigs; most were a few times w/ the suburban lawns at their prac pad in long beach, but the first one was very important to us, big time. it was in pedro at a “teen post,” which were these places set up for young people that a guy from a band called black flag, the bassman chuck dukowski, rented out for a gig. it was a trip how we got the gig. a band from england called the clash were finally playing so cal near the beginning of 1979, and we went to see them, bo diddley, and the dils at the santa monica civic center. in the parking lot were these dudes handing out flyers. the gig on the flyers was gonna be in pedro, and we couldn’t believe this was gonna happen. when these guys handing out the flyers asked why (obviously they were in this band black flag), we told them that we lived in pedro. “you do?” they said, w/ us replying, “yeah, and besides that, we’re the only punk band in pedro.” they could not
believe there was such a thing as a “pedro punk band” and asked us to open up. can you believe that sh*t? I think it was their third gig, but also on the bill were two bands we saw a bunch up in hollywood, the alley cats and the plugz. right after us doing their first gig were the descendents, drummer billy just having broken his collarbone. the lapd (harbor division) actually had to lock everyone in the venue cuz the neighborhood, which was a kind of rough part of pedro, didn’t have any idea of “this punk stuff,” and one gig-goer w/ the words “white riot” on his jacket (the name of a tune by the clash) really got things boiling. man, that was a nightmare, but everyone made it out safe. after those gigs w/ the lawns, d. boon bailed, but he did find a replacement, a nice man named todd. however, I didn’t wanna be in the band w/out d. boon, so it soon crumbled. in january 1980 d. boon had just found an apartment in the alley between 19th and 20th. turns out joe baiza (originally from wilmington, the other part of the l.a. harbor) was living in the apartment downstairs. understand the old punk scene in late-’70s so cal was pretty tiny. you would see the same cats at the gigs week after week, and though you didn’t really know these people, actually you kind of did. there really wasn’t a “uniform” yet, and lots of folks from the old days were very individual about both their dress and their character—yeah, there were a lot of characters in those days, and I loved it. old punk was about people. if you fly over so cal, you think it’s all one connected trip, but the reality is there’s some very big-time balkanization, so we ain’t in reality all that connected; it’s all down to little neighborhoods. the movement for someone like me and d. boon transcended all that. we now had connections w/ folks who knew nothing about our pedro town, the only world I knew since virginia. and now I was meeting people from the valley, inland empire, orange county, downtown, west side—even the beach towns. yeah it was funny how some people at the hollywood gigs thought anything south of ktown was “the beach” and that we were all kind of from the same tribe. the black flag guys from hermosa beach and us in pedro—actually the alley cats were from lomita but they never got the same kind of tag, but it was geography that brought us together unless you count flag having their third gig in pedro maybe—we’re both by the water, but they’re definitely beach and we’re definitely harbor. gotta say that billy from the descendents was fishing for work as a teenager is pretty pedro, and he was there in redondo beach—things ain’t ever black and white or simple like maybe people would like, but hey, that’s the reality on the dealio. I will say the man who had and still does have much impact on me, second only to d. boon, is a man from hermosa beach named raymond pettibon. he’s the first one to play john coltrane for me, learned me about all kinds of stuff. that’s the thing about those days—the movement had lots of trippy people, but they were deep and intense about stuff. they just didn’t fit in w/ the square-john world. the cats in the bands too—gigs were like people taking turns playing for each other. I never saw anything like it. the slash editor (zines were a big fabric of
our scene) kickboy didn’t mind a bit to talk w/ a total mook from pedro (me) about anything. you could rap to darby or pat or lorna or whoever from whichever band was playing. since I’m mentioning germs, don bolles could tell you tons about all kinds of esoteric music released and realized. I asked pat if he listened to anyone cuz I found him so original, and he told me he listened to queen! once at the hong kong café I was bourboned up and got darby to holler “pedro!” at the end of one of their gigs. I later wrote a tune about that called “drove up from pedro.” but anyway, the point is this whole bunch of people I kind of knew but kind of didn’t (which means they had tons they could teach me) were incredibly profound for us, both me and d. boon. we found the movement very empowering, so when it came time to do the “real band,” we were raring to go. joe baiza later would tell me he heard all this stomping around when we were putting together the first batch of minutemen tunes—actually he thought we were dancing like crazy for hours at a time! see, there was no drummer, though d. boon had a plan: he’d met a welderman named frank tonche, and we’d work w/ him as soon as we both got our sh*t together. So we’re up in his apartment, and of course we don’t wanna make too much noise, so were using our electric guitar and bass w/out amplifiers. we’re stomping on the deck to hold time—that’s what joe baiza was hearing, the stomping but not the spiel (we’d whisper it) or the unplugged instruments. we didn’t realize you could hear that stomping—we thought we were being so careful! anyway, like some of these cats at the gigs, we became friends just cuz we saw each other so much. I think it was easier to trust punk people in the old days cuz it was such a hated movement by so many, so many rock ‘n’ roll people especially—maybe more than square-johns! we painted on our clothes like richard hell (my first punk hero, a bassman who led his band!) and had them all wild, but then went back to high school clothes after so much hell from peckers—we decided to keep punk “up in the head” and not get added grief cuz of the clothes. gotta say, though, we loved the clothes, we really did, especially the unique and really wild stuff. oh well. at least we were gonna use music as expression and not compromise that a bit. it was big decision time for us. I remember me and d. boon doing one of our many “thinking sessions” and deciding to divide the world up into two categories: flyers and gigs. everything that wasn’t a gig was a flyer to get people to the gig. because punk gigs first and foremost for us were total mind-blows reacting to nuremberg rally arena rock, why not make that our focus? now, there was lots that was punk we found out about, such as making records, fanzines, and stuff like that, but our first focus was on gigs and, of course, jamming econo—remember we’re from working people. but the good thing about the movement was that econo was ok and not something to be embarrassed about. the main mission was to find our voice and bring it to people at gigs.
one last thing I like to explain is our idea of what econo meant. of course we got it from the old ford econoline vans we did out-of-town gigs in; the first one we did, we borrowed black flag’s. but what econo meant to us was not just finding what, at the time, might seem the least amount of coin. econo to us was finding the most bang for buck, look down the road at what we had to get done and find the way that made most sense—the “econo” way that guaranteed our autonomy and, at the same time, helped us work as many gigs as we could cuz that what’s we loved doing. it was about not letting the lack of coin dictate to us what could and could not be done. of course, there’s material stuff, and that’s the reality on the dealio, but c’mon, we were from working families: we knew the score on that kind of scene, no prob! in this way we never had to “fake” our way, not one second, in the movement—like what popeye said, “I am what I am.” hear hear. econo was not a slogan but a way of life for the minutemen, inspired by the movement. we got our first minutemen tunes together—oh, we got minutemen for a name cuz d. boon picked it from a list again I made for him. actually I had down “minute men,” as we were way tiny compared to an arena rock band, so minute as in very small (pronounced my-noot). but d. boon liked the name cuz he heard of some extremist kind of people using patriotic stuff to shill, so he thought if we used words or a name like that, then it would confuse things and give those people maybe less power. I liked his reasoning. I have to say we were very influenced by these gigs we were seeing up in hollywood in the late ’70s, bands like nervous gender and screamers who didn’t have a guitar (didn’t need one!), as well as records we’d get at zed of london in long beach. two dollars for seven-inch singles of bands we’d never heard (and never seen) like the pop group, wire, the fall, alternative television, cabaret voltaire, the lemon kittens, birthday party—stuff like that. we’d buy them cuz of the band name, cuz of the record art —just roll dice and take a chance. we’d wait ’till we had time off from work and stuff (at this period I was working three different low-paying jobs while putting myself through college—I ended up w/ an electronics degree I never used!) and then eat so we could hear these records for the first time while frying our brains out. I would do this on saturdays late when richard meltzer had his hepcats from hell show on kpfk—that was a trip—as well as on the Fridays, when I could, during imaginary landscape w/ carl stone on the same station (great resource). d. boon and I really found our minutemen voice actually and it big-time opened our minds. we learned about the movements and connections w/ older stuff like futurism, dadaism, and surrealism—all this went into our idea of the band. definitely the shortness of the tunes was a wire influence. and the pop group gave us the confidence to put parliament-funkadelic w/ captain beefheart—f*ck, we could do whatever we wanted to: it was our band—let the freak flag fly! something I was aware of then and still am now if not even more grateful for was the openness we had found in the movement, the fact that all these creative people had no
prob letting me and d. boon take something that was so personal like making music together and letting us be part of their scene. as I already described, they’d let us interact as gig-goers w/ no prob, talking to us before/after they played, or just gig-goers themselves who weren’t playing that night or whenever but didn’t feel part of the mersh world so much, like us. I can’t relate how big-time empowering this was to us, and in fact, I don’t believe there would’ve been a minutemen w/out the movement that came out of hollywood in the later ’70s. sure, there would’ve been the fact that two guys growing up in pedro shared making music as part of being together, but I don’t ever think we would’ve been inspired to make a band, write songs, and do gigs/make records w/out the influence of the movement; I just don’t, and I have to acknowledge that. the minutemen did not come out of a vacuum; they were a product of the movement. of course, a big tenet of this movement was no rubber-stamp cookie-cutter xerox sh*t (or like what raymond taught me emma goldman said: “no coercion”), so we weren’t clones being pumped out of a shill machine, but it was the idea that we had permission to be all crazy regarding expression that we took to heart by seeing it firsthand as an example that propelled us, f*cking corndogs, as we were looking for their voice. we worked out our first batch of tunes w/ the welderman frank tonche and did our first gig opening for black flag in the spring of 1980. we had still had the connect w/ them from a year before w/ the reactionaries at the teen post. man, it was a pants-sh*tter, but we did it. this was not the reactionaries; you could tell d. boon was involved at a whole other level. he was singing his songs (mine too) for the first time. it was very inspiring. d. boon called his lyrics “thinking out loud,” and I dug that cuz in fact that’s what we were doing. he also didn’t like the hierarchy of where he saw rock ‘n’ roll going, the domination of the electric guitar, so he wanted to do something “political” w/ our band’s makeup and decided to play really trebly like we learned from the r&b guys when we were younger. that way it opened it up for the bass and drums to come through more. d. boon said that real politics ain’t really just using words, and he wanted to put into action some egalitarian ideas in our band structure. we did our second gig, and the drummerman said maybe that’s enough for him, so when that gig ended, he left the band. now, at this gig was sst records’ greg ginn, and wouldn’t you know it, but he asked us to be sst-002—he wanted us to make a record! luckily george hurley had left the band hey taxi!, which is who he had joined when the reactionaries were finished. georgie joined us and learned the tunes we wanted to record, and damn if in july we didn’t do the whole paranoid time ep in one night, recorded and mixed. me and d. boon were very grateful to frank tonche for helping us get off the ground but also to george hurley for doing like he did also. two great drummermen helped us much, let me tell you. we got closer w/ the black flag people. I started working there at sst in old downtown torrance and the minutemen started doing prac there. first I wound antenna
tuner toroidal transformers (sst stood for “solid state transmitter”; it was not a record company at first), and then they had me calling college stations to get the label’s records played. they had me use the name “spaceman” so the stations wouldn’t know I was one of the guys from one of the bands. we were harassed so much by the local police. flag had been dealing w/ this since the church (where they first practiced in hermosa beach), and we eventually got ran out. sst and black flag tried some deal w/ unicorn in hollywood, and we ended up practicing in long beach w/ nice cats in secret hate and outer circle, us sharing a space w/ them. of course, the label thing was a punk part of punk, so we did one called “new alliance records,” and d. boon did a zine called the prole (he had me do a column called nitt’s picks w/ record reviews!) d. boon also put on gigs in pedro at the star theatre, which he would rename the union and have the gigs start earlier for us cuz we had to work early the next day. we had just finished our second seven-inch (joy) and first twelve-inch (the punch line) and even started to do our own club gigs. we had been labeled a “violent sst band” and could not play the whisky or the roxy—the former we finally got to play cuz of fear and the latter cuz of x. I tell you, old punk was about people. greg ginn did ham radio when he was younger, and, hence sst. I also think this gave him ideas about getting outside your locality, and by that, I mean touring. I once heard only the dils had a van in hollywood, though that might not be true. I do know black flag liked to tour and taught it to us. in early 1983 they took us through europe and the u.s. in what was our first big tour—and our first time in europe. we took a lot of hell. that wild and crazy late-’70s punk, where anything goes kind of got stomped out or at the least not tolerated. there were now a lot of “rules” to be correctly w/ the movement. what? we couldn’t believe this sh*t. now, I gotta say a lot of the people in the older days were older—it wasn’t really a kid movement, maybe more like runaways—but by the early ’80s a lot of the “folks who were first” were burning out and from the suburbs came younger and younger cats, like out of high school and younger. how many of the old hollywood bands had ladies in them? tons. later the movement had fewer and fewer, and that even went for the audience. my early take on the first influences of the movement was glitter and glam, which ladies always were strong in, even if it wasn’t a huge scene. even the dancing changed from up-and-down pogo into side-to-side slamming— no more personal space, even if it was kind of vertical—things were definitely going horizontal, w/ fight after fight making what was called “the pit,” and of course, the desired “background sound” to this was faster and faster, added to more of the same ol’ same ol’. all that “no coercion” talk was over and “uniform” was very much in. I didn’t totally get bummed cuz at least there was some scene, but damn if so much wasn’t squandered like it was and all warped up. but hey, that’s humans. hell, pat boone sold more copies of “tutti frutti” than little richard did, and how long ago was that? stuff gets
twisted up, dumbed down w/ knuckleheads, and all the reasons involved for the movement getting started in the first place get forgot and stomped. damn. in some ways the minutemen turned inward, recording “what makes a man start fires?” and then “buzz or howl under the influence of heat” (w/ the latter we made more than fifty dollars!). but I addressed some of this stuff w/ a tune like “fake contest,” where some letter-writing thing in the flipside fanzine (letters from readers) was pitting us against t.s.o.l., which was crazy cuz I love jack, mike, and ron. the next album we did was actually a double one cuz the huskers (hüsker dü) had come to town and did one, prompting us to write more tunes to turn our just-recorded single into two. it came w/in only a year and then left for the band, which though unknownst to us—I think it was our high point. I paid the eleven hundred dollars to do it myself, but damn if ethan james didn’t mix the whole baby in one night! yep, forty-five tunes, but yeah, they were little ones. there’s a song on it I wrote called “history lesson, part II” where I call out john doe from x’s name, again trying to deal w/ this weird thing w/ no tolerance creeping into our movement, which was at times so frustrating. we did a big two-month tour for it, all minutemen—headlining all through the u.s., “the campaign trail 1984” tour. after this, though, georgie stopped writing words for the band. I always counted on him for that cuz it helped me be a little more original w/ my writing cuz I’d get into ruts, and both his and d. boon’s words would help me bust out. but the next two recordings were missing his lyrics. musically I don’t know how strong project: mersh and 3-way tie (for last) were except for the d. boon tunes, which I really dig, but I definitely was in kind of a not-too-interesting place as far as my tunes when I look back at what we did. oh well. I think we were headed for a second wind anyway; we had some big plans coming up: a triple album w/ half of it live to fight the bootleggers! I was writing better too, being inspired by the first side band I ever had, dos w/ k. our last tour turned out to be w/ these guys from georgia called rem. when we got asked, we had to buy one of their records to see what they sounded like. it was sure kind of them to have us aboard. when we met them it was easy to tell they knew about a lot of music, that they were deep like dudes in the old days. the crew and the label w/ them, though, didn’t dig us at all, and we got much disrespect. well, that’s the way it goes— that’s why we got in the movement in the first place! the four guys in the band, though, they were righteous. respect to them. the last tune I ever played w/ d. boon was w/ them in north carolina. it was us all doing television’s “see no evil,” and damn if me and d. boon weren’t both on guitar, laughing at the whole trip. a few days or so after that tour ended, d. boon passed away in a van accident in arizona. our equipment was still aboard. I had just given d. boon some lyrics richard meltzer had written for us—ten of them. he was collaborating w/ us, doing singing and sax—a dream come true for us! I gave him those words and asked him to think of music for them. he was so red from
fever; he had a flu. oh man, it’s hard for me to write any more about this, but I will say the minutemen ended like it began: w/ d. boon. big huge love to him. on bass, watt
CHAPTER 18
Unvarnished, Detailed, West Coast by John Doe
Punk rock songs are not: all screaming & yelling 3 chords (most Ramones songs are not) 2 minutes long stupid lyrics w/ no leads fast, loud & atonal Punk rock songs are: provocative immediate hook driven (title usually repeated many times) specific fast, slow & in between Misconceptions about punk-rock songwriting are as wide & flat as the city of Los Angeles itself. Maybe it even begins w/ the definition of punk rock. What it was & what it became are two vastly different things. Even by 1982 that definition had changed from anything that wasn’t “old & in the way” to “faster/louder.” Provocative? Yes. Fast? Not necessarily. Simple? Yes. 3 chords? No. Not too serious? Definitely. Culturally significant? Always. It’s a small wonder that the Los Angeles basin didn’t partially lift off the ground w/ all the songwriting going on between 1977 & ’82—or maybe it did. Just as in NYC & London, the differences between writers, bands & subjects were spread all over the map. Blondie & The Ramones came from the same minimalist pool, went to the beach, but you would never be confused who it was when listening to them. In Los Angeles the same went for Black Randy & the Metro Squad, The Germs, The Weirdos, The Alley Cats, Fear, The Dickies, The Go-Go’s, The Plugz, etc. Blondie had beauty, camp,
melody & power. The Ramones had power, camp, speed & minimalism. Black Randy had camp, humor, funk & cynicism. The Alleym Cats had cynicism, technique & beauty. Black Flag had power, violence & message. X had poetry, power, ability & violence. All had similar traits but w/ different emphasis on each part of the overall sound. The binding element was that all were searching for something, something beyond that invisible line that had been drawn between “then” & “now.” You would never listen to Black Flag & mistake them for The Weirdos, The Dickies, X, or The Plugz. You may not even have known who it was, but you would damn well find out. We told real stories, exaggerated the facts, or just plain made them up. We commented on a world that, to us, had become unbelievably crass & stupid, a world that was just recognizing the separation between rich & poor. We had been told that the neutron bomb could be the end of us all, so The Weirdos wrote a song about it, using all the power without the destruction. We wanted to cut loose & have fun. This was a lesson learned from The Ramones, The Damned & Blondie & perhaps why Television or Patti Smith weren’t as influential in LA. Devo knew how to poke fun & blaze a totally different trail. There was a fascination w/ mental illness because we all could identify w/ being abnormal. Maybe that’s where jerking around while playing started? These were teenagers or recently post-teens who still had no idea what they were “going to do w/ their lives.” Because we didn’t think any of us would be around, creatively or otherwise, in 2 or 3 years, we certainly didn’t take any of this sh*t seriously. But that didn’t keep everyone from meaning every bit of what we played, sang, or said. These were songs that were simple enough for any musicians to hear & think, “I could write something like that.” These were songs you could hear once, probably catch the title & possibly remember the next morning. These songs were meant to be played live, loud & sloppy. Having an actual record that someone could put on their turntable was still off in the distance for most of us. I imagined early rock ‘n’ rollers with the same creative guts, cranking out the basics in sweaty clubs where underage drinking & carrying-on happened every night. The same probably went for early British Invasion, psychedelic, and garage bands as they figured out their individual sounds. They kept things uncomplicated but intuitive & real. Yes, there was the advance guard—MC5, The Stooges, The Modern Lovers, Velvet Underground, The Sonics—and they were heroes we could grasp. But more important to our small circle were the originators—Little Richard, Bo Diddley, Chuck Berry, Eddie Cochran, Wanda Jackson, Jerry Lee & every Sunrecord, Big Joe Turner, & Fats Domino. Others looked up to David Bowie, Roxy Music, New York Dolls & to most of us in Hollywood that’s why we accepted everyone’s sexuality & style, but that’s another chapter. Punk-rock songwriting brought songs back to “the people” because Fleetwood Mac,
The Moody Blues, The Eagles, The Beatles, etc. had gotten so full of themselves & full of pompous art that no amount of “Get Back” could encourage an average guy/girl to believe they could start a band & make songs that would communicate. Maybe it wasn’t those established groups’ fault, but after so many years, so much money, so many songs, so much insulation from reality, such ridiculously long jams & trying to write the most general subject matter so that the maximum stadium size audience could “relate” to what you were “laying down, man,” it was just too much bullsh*t to still call it rock ‘n’ roll. I wanted to tell stories about this city that filled my eyes w/ decay & anonymity. A place where random violence breathed in & out like the ocean. I didn’t want to tell stories like Bob Dylan but like Bukowski (w/out the lurid sex but a suggestion of it)— minimal, unvarnished, detailed West Coast, filled w/ the kind of darkness The Doors and Love had promised. We dug for images & sounds opposite to what everyone in America thought of Los Angeles at the time. Our melodies were simple & chord changes oftentimes went one half step off of what was expected. We were contrary & always reached for something just left of center. But at least we always had two verses & a chorus you could identify over the sh*tty sound system and the audience jumping all over each other. These were the first songs I’d written that were actually any good. Exene was a partner, coconspirator & if not the lyricist, then the catalyst. She would write a line like “Johnny Hit & Run Pauline,” tape it to the door & a few months later that story would come to me. Even though she’d never written a song, Exene could write lyrics on a page, top to bottom, as if the music was already there. All I had to do was match some music I’d been working on to the cadence of the words. Other pages were more impressionistic, scattered poems w/ whole pieces of songs waiting to be excavated & expanded on. Some of those scattershot poems became songs anyway. We didn’t care about rhyming. We loved to set a scene that didn’t follow a linear story & if we could poke fun at pop culture, even better. I still marvel at the trust she put in me to allow me that artistic freedom. Billy, however, demanded that the music kept to his definition of rock ‘n’ roll. He kept us from getting too strung out on “arty sh*t” as he would call it. He loved The Ramones’ “dumb lyrics” & wished we would write more like that. But as long as he could lay rockabilly riffs over my unconventional chord changes, he was happy. Our general contrary attitude, that rules were meant to be broken, and Billy’s dogged refusal to include anything more than the basics & purity in his definition of what was & wasn’t rock ‘n’ roll made X songs what they became. As ’79, ’80, ’81 rolled around, the cynicism got deeper, songs got faster & the music became more of a soundtrack for the audience to whirl around the dance floor. Those unfamiliar w/ punk rock will use this period to judge all punk-rock songs as crap. But dozens of new bands & their songs created their own version of what would
overtake the first wave of LA punk & define what most people think of as punk rock. Everyone had witnessed the new wave groups like The Knack and even the punkrock party band The Dickies get signed to major labels. It was clear that safer-sounding groups like The Pretenders, Elvis Costello, The Go-Go’s, and Blondie could score airplay & hits w/ something the existing music business could wrap their corporate heads around. Punk rock need not apply. Independent labels began to mirror the fierce spirit of the newer hardcore bands. SST and Alternative Tentacles provided diversity w/ even more contrary attitude but a lot less humor. The songs became more linear, more stream of consciousness, fewer hooks & more overall chaos & distortion. The sound of The Germs and Fear were templates for so many like The Stains (from East LA), T.S.O.L. (from the beach), or China White (from OC). But more eccentric groups like The Minutemen, The Crowd & Middle Class kept the crazy up front & still seemed to have a great time doing it. Black Flag went through several incarnations, became the flag bearer & w/ Henry Rollins began developing a nationwide underground network that allowed indie bands in the ’80s to reap the rewards. Black Flag’s original singer, Keith Morris, would form the Circle Jerks to continue his brand of fast, loud, hooky punk rock. And The Minutemen would distinguish themselves by releasing an epic double LP, Double Nickels on the Dime, displaying their mastery of jazz, beatnik & punk rock from San Pedro. In their own way they would all prove that hardcore bands encouraged their own kind of diversity & originality. The song landscape was still vast like the S. California basin. Although it was on its way to becoming more codified & uniform, its branches were growing all over the United States & the world. Many are still discovering what came before & just how diverse it was & can be.
CHAPTER 19
The Almighty Song by Charlotte Caffey
I felt like I was moving in slow motion, aware of every little detail, as I walked down the alley and descended the stairs into that basem*nt. My senses were in overload— from the graffiti, to the sounds bouncing off of every surface, to the dog collars, safety pins, multicolored hair, crazy makeup, and wild clothing, to the toilets overflowing, to the feeling of the sticky walls and floors, to the nonventilated dense mixture of smells. The air would become so thick that with each breath, it tasted like a bong hit of piss, sweat, booze and drugs. It was 1977, and I was at the Masque. I knew that I had arrived at some sort of Mecca. Somewhere between the blaze of the California sun and that basem*nt of the puss*cat Theater on Hollywood Boulevard I became a songwriter. I had always been obsessed with songs. I came from a large Catholic family of thirteen kids. What I remember mostly about growing up was being in the midst of total chaos all the time. Also, I was never allowed to show or speak any of my emotions. So I started listening to music via the radio—that was my refuge. That was my salvation. There were two pop stations, KHJ and KRLA. The earliest song I remember is “Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley.” I was five years old. And from then on, song after song, for as many hours of the day as I could, I would have my ear to the radio. In 1962 my grandfather took me to Wallichs Music City on the corner of Sunset and Vine and bought me one of my first singles, Brian Hyland’s “Sealed with a Kiss.” This song haunted me—I couldn’t stop listening to it. I recently read that Frank Zappa used to work at Music City right around that time—I wonder whether he sold me that record? A few years later I saw my first concert: the Beatles. I sat there silent and riveted in a sea of thousands of screaming fans, my eyes fixed on the stage as I listened intently to the songs. Hearing the songs performed live was a whole other experience. That night, as I watched my beloved Beatles, a thought crossed my mind: “I want to do that when I grow up.”
I started working at Woolworth’s on Vermont and Hollywood Boulevard when I turned sixteen. The whole reason I wanted a job was so I could buy records. I had
finally gotten my own bedroom and had saved up enough money to buy my very own record player at Zodys. My mom and dad got really mad that I had spent my money on the record player, but I didn’t care. I started building my record collection with The Beatles and Led Zeppelin and added Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Stones, The Who, to name just a few. I’d buy as many as the amount of money that I had on hand. I would sit in my room by myself and listen to the records and stare at the album covers and read the lyrics. It was at this point when I first attempted to write songs. I had two older brothers who liked to torture me, so I had to be really covert about my songwriting. I would go to the garage where the piano was, press the soft pedal, and try to play as quietly as I could. Melodies came very easily for me. I started writing lyrics but was afraid to keep a notebook for fear of being found out and mercilessly teased, so I kept everything in my head. My introduction to “art rock” and avant-garde music was in high school. I attended Immaculate Heart High School right in the middle of Hollywood. It is an all-girls Catholic school. I had an English teacher named Mr. Vliet. His cousin was Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart. One day he brought inTrout Mask Replica to class and played a couple of songs off this notorious record. I heard a whole different take on songwriting in a matter of a few minutes. That album led me to Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, which segued into joining my first band, Manuel and the Gardeners. I was seventeen and had just graduated high school when I met this superhyper guy name Joe Ramirez who asked me to join his band. Manuel and the Gardeners was an early progressive art-performance rock band. The lead singer, Mick, had a hot plate that he used to fry women’s underwear—live onstage—and would run around in outlandish outfits. The music was avant-garde with heady, surreal lyrics. We played any and every show we could—a biker bar in Venice, a coffee house at Pitzer College, and even a Mexican restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard. I only played keyboards—I didn’t sing or write—but I got to experience the genius of Joe firsthand. He was one of the smartest, funniest, most talented guys I had ever met, and he would play an important role in my early songwriting life. We bonded over albums like Fragile by Yes, Tyranny and Mutation by Blue Öyster Cult, and too many others to mention. And we became inseparable best friends. All I wanted to do was play in a band and write songs, but my parents were hassling me about what my plans were now that I was out of high school. At the eleventh hour I decided to go to Immaculate Heart College, a small music and art school in LA. Sometimes they would have lunchtime concerts where I once saw Father Yod and the Source Family, who were way beyond avant-garde. During that time of my intense classical piano education I was listening to Tapestry (Carole King), Aqualung (Jethro Tull), Led Zeppelin IV, Jesus Christ Superstar, and the Clockwork Orange soundtrack,
as the movie had just come out. One of my professors brought the soundtrack into class. He was very upset by the revolutionary use of the Moog synthesizer with Beethoven’s legendary “Ode to Joy.” I had just seen the movie and thought it was one of the most f*cking brilliant things I’d ever seen. All the innovation in this soundtrack opened up my musical spectrum, and these influences showed up later in my songwriting. I graduated with a bachelor’s of music degree. I moved out of my parents house—FREEDOM! I had a job at a hospital and was able to get a cheap apartment and buy an old upright piano. I didn’t have the threat of my brothers anymore, so I started writing down my songs. I told Joe that I had written a few songs. He wanted to hear them—I was horrified. I had never played anything for anybody. I sat down at the piano but couldn’t bring myself to play. Joe saw the potential in me and proceeded to coax, prod, plead, and beg it out of me. Finally I got the courage and played him a song called “Oh Daddy-Oh.” It was a demented beatnik love ballad. He absolutely loved it. That moment changed everything for me. Joe and I spent all of our spare time listening to records—Radio City by Big Star, Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, Cheap Trick, The Move. My whole songwriting world was opening up even more. Joe was my first songwriting collaborator. We wrote songs that were a mix of Joe’s weirdo stuff and my pop melodies. It was a good combination. He wrote unconventional and outrageous lyrics and played his guitar, “Rosie,” a Telecaster with a rosewood neck in open E tuning, which added to his unique style of writing. We started a band called The Eyes with Don (DJ) Bonebrake in 1976. We met Don at a gig at one of the Immaculate Heart College shows where he was playing in a band called Rocktopus. He totally blew me and Joe away. I acquired my first bass, an electric blue Rickenbacker, even though I didn’t know how to play it yet. I just started bashing away when the song started. I ended up breaking a lot of strings. We were going to tons of shows and seeing a lot of bands and were totally inspired. These were prepunk bands that had finally made their way to the West Coast, paving the way for what was to come in the Hollywood punk scene. We saw Patti Smith, The Flaming Groovies, and Television. And in early 1977 Blondie opened for The Ramones at the Whisky. We stood right in front, watching The Ramones, getting our eardrums blown out by their Marshall stacks, and having the time of our lives. Something was unleashed inside of me that night. The Eyes’ songs had evolved into what I would call “progpunk”—progressive punk. There were elements of punk but also more sophisticated chord changes and song structures. But as Joe and I were witnessing all this intense energy at live shows and listening to all these new bands, we had an idea. We decided to write an album in one hour: no editing, just pure, raw emotion—whatever came out of us. Well, it ended up taking us a couple of hours, but we wrote ten songs, including the manic “Kill Your
Parents” and “Don’t Talk to Me,” a favorite of young punkers even today. We played one of our first gigs at the Masque. It was ground zero for the small Hollywood punk scene and run by this crazy and lovable Scottish guy named Brendan Mullen (R.I.P.). There was a large room with a stage where the weekend punk shows took place, and there were also smaller rooms where bands would rehearse during the week. The stage was in the big cement room, so the sound from the amps, drums, and speakers bounced all over the place—it was a sonic train wreck. There were rivalries between different bands and drama between members of the same groups, all of which I pretty much ignored, but I was mesmerized by what people would do under the banner of selfexpression. For instance, Bobby Pyn (Darby Crash) would smear peanut butter on himself onstage or Alice Bag and The Bags would wear paper bags over their heads when they performed . . . or just strutting down Hollywood Boulevard. I loved all of it! It was pretty clear from our first show that The Eyes were an “out crowd.” I looked like a full-on surfer chick, with waist-length blond hair, and Joe had a short afro. So right there we didn’t fit in. But on the inside we were filled with latent teenage angst and untapped raw energy. One night I was at The Avengers’ show at Larchmont Hall in Hanco*ck Park, and it happened to be my birthday. I remember running into Pat Smear and Darby Crash (Bobby Pyn) of The Germs, and they asked me, “How old are you?” I told them that I had just turned twenty-two, and they said, “You’re too old to be a punk!” I laughed at them because they were only a few years younger than me. I never hid my age—I really didn’t care. But our outcast days came to an end one night when Joe kicked Darby in the head for heckling us during a set at the Masque. I guess Darby must have loved it, because after that we were no longer the “out crowd.” We played more shows at the Masque and got asked to play at the Whisky and the Starwood. But The Eyes were about to come to an end. Exene and John Doe asked DJ to join X. I was bummed and okay with this at the same time. I couldn’t imagine the band without DJ, and I felt like Joe and I had taken this band as far as we could together. I also valued our friendship too much and knew in my gut I had to leave the band because we weren’t getting along. And artistically Joe was going in one direction and I was moving in another. Oddly enough, one of the last shows Joe and I saw together was Edie and the Eggs, led by John Waters’s superstar Edith Massey at the Nuart Theater in LA. Little did I know that the following year I would be in a band with the person that was drumming that night. On April 14, 1978, I was sitting backstage at the Starwood, writing a song list for our second set that night. The Eyes were third on the bill, opening for The Jam and The Dickies. As I was writing, two pairs of spiked heels walked up in front of me. I heard a voice say, “Hi, Charlotte . . . ” I started looking up, past the ripped fishnet stockings, to a Hefty bag cinched at the waist and then to a head of bright purple hair. “I’m Belinda.
Do you play lead guitar?” I lied and said, “Yes!” even though I had never played lead before. The other girl, Margot, was wearing a torn vintage dress and had pink-and-green hair and very heavy makeup. “We’re starting an all-girl band and want to know if you’d like to join.” “Okay,” I said without a second thought. We exchanged phone numbers. And in that moment telling one teeny white lie changed my life forever. I went to England with The Dickies (Leonard Phillips was my boyfriend) and missed The Go-Go’s’ first gig, which was at the Masque in May 1978. But when I got back we were able to get a rehearsal room at the Masque, which we ended up sharing with X (and subsequently moved to another one that we shared with The Motels). The rooms were not soundproofed, so we could hear what every other band was playing and vice versa—we couldn’t have cared less; it just added to the chaos and fun. Our first rehearsal together was classic. I had met Belinda and Margot at the Starwood, and then I met Jane Wiedlin, who was a super-smart, pixie-like girl, and our drummer, Elissa Bello, who was very intense. I was the only one who really knew how to plug the amps in and turn them on. This kind of helped break the ice. On the outside I was plugging in amps and joking around, but on the inside I felt so awkward. These girls were in the scene. Jane lived at the infamous punk-rock apartments, the Canterbury, and Belinda lived at the equally notorious Disgraceland just a few blocks away. They dressed really cool and were outrageous and funny as hell. I was thinking, “These girls are real punks. I still look like Marcia Brady.” I started learning songs that Belinda, Jane, and Margot were writing—“Robert Hilburn,” “Blades,” “Over Run,” “Living at the Canterbury,” “Party Pose.” I loved these songs. They felt really rebellious and dark. They had heard “Don’t Talk to Me,” so when I said I had a song that needed to be finished, they wanted to hear it. Now I was really terrified because the song I decided to bring in was so pop and the lyrics were so boy-girl and the melody was very sixties. It was called “How Much More.” Well, Belinda and Jane loved it. “How Much More” changed the direction of The Go-Go’s. Shortly after this we learned a cover of “Walking in the Sand” by The Shangri-Las. We started out slow just like the original, then blasted into a full-on powerful punk version. We had fused our sixties influences with our punk rock—and we were on fire. None of us were very proficient on our instruments and we sounded pretty horrible, but that didn’t stop us. I had to covertly figure out how to play lead guitar. I just figured it was going to be easy because the strings were thinner than the bass strings and the guitar wasn’t as heavy. Boy, was I wrong. I bought a red Fender Duo-Sonic guitar—I liked it because it was red. I started playing it at rehearsals, and my fingers were bleeding because the tiny steel strings were cutting into them. It was pure pain, but I kept playing. I also had no idea how to get a good sound on my amp. I kept turning the reverb up because I was trying to get a sustain for my guitar parts, and I inadvertently created a
punk/surf hybrid that became my sound. This sound inspired many of the guitar lines that I wrote. Belinda worked at a magazine publishing company that published things like Guns and Ammo. She booked gigs for the band and was writing lyrics as well while she was at work (that was some good multitasking!). She showed me “Skidmarks on My Heart” (lyrics). They were about her brother. I immediately fell in love with them and took them home to try to write them music. I was listening to a lot of Cheap Trick and Ramones at the time, so this was where my inspiration for the music for this song came from. Then I brought her an idea I was working on. I had come up with a rad surf-guitar intro riff, but I needed help finishing the song. Belinda finished the lyrics for “Beatnik Beach.” Jane had also written a song with Don Bolles of The Germs called “London Boys,” which quickly became a fan favorite. Joseph Fleury (R.I.P.), the manager of The Mumps (Lance Loud, Kristian Hoffman), showed me some lyrics and asked me to write the music. The song “Fashion Seekers” was born. These songs were staples in our early sets. In addition, there were two songs Jane had written that just blew my brains apart— one she had written with all minor chords, which, in my music theory mind, was something you couldn’t do (cannot remember the name of it), and the other was one of the band’s favorites, “Fun with Ropes”—I didn’t know you could stuff that many chords in one song. Right around this time we had a personnel change. Jane met a girl named Gina Schock at a party. She was a wise-crackin’ kick-ass drummer from blue-collar Baltimore. She told us that we had to rehearse at least five times a week. We followed her advice and became so much better live. Gina was the drummer for Edie and the Eggs, who I had seen the year before. The first time I met Gina she had a perm, aviator glasses, a baseball cap, and a pair of overalls—I suddenly didn’t feel so bad looking like Marcia Brady! There was a heck of a lot of songs being written in that one square block in Hollywood at that time. I didn’t have any kind of rules for songwriting, and it didn’t seem like anyone else did either. I don’t recall actually being influenced by any songs per se from our little punk scene; it really was more about the collective energy, the visuals, the experimentations, and sonic assault that inspired me. I fed off of it. Don’t get me wrong, there were some great songs, like X’s “We’re Desperate,” “Lexicon Devil” by The Germs, “You’re So Hideous” by The Dickies, The Screamers’ “Peer Pressure,” and “We Got the Neutron Bomb” by The Weirdos. But the songs that inspired me and knocked me on my ass were right in my own band. The moment Jane finished “How Much More” we started a writing collaboration between us that was nothing less than magical. We discovered we had this sort of telepathic writing relationship. We had only known each other for a short time, yet we
were bringing in music and lyrics that just happened to fit perfectly with each other. We were collaborating but weren’t in the same room. Jane and I wrote “He’s So Strange” about a guy that we knew, but what we didn’t know was that he was dating both of us behind our backs. We also wrote “Screaming,” which was inspired by Tomata du Plenty. It opens with a frenetic guitar riff and ventures into raga rock–sounding verses with a surf-inspired chorus. At one point I had finished three songs that I was working on and knew that none of these were very good. But each song had one really good part. So I combined those three parts and came up with music I loved. Shortly after that Jane gave me a set of lyrics that were a cool twist on a love song and were just so beautiful and haunting. It just so happened that my music matched perfectly with her lyrics—it gave me the chills. The song was “Lust to Love.” “Lust to Love” It used to be fun was in The capture and kill In another place and time I did it all for thrills Love me and I’ll leave you I told you at the start I had no idea that you Would tear my world apart And you’re the one to blame I used to know my name But I’ve lost control of the game ’Cause even though I set the rules You’ve got me acting like a fool When I see you I lose my cool Lust to love Was the last thing I was dreaming of And now all I want is just to love Lust turned to love Every night consisted of one of three things: playing a show, rehearsing, or partying. I’m not sure if Jane and I deliberately set out to write an anthem-like song, but we did with “Tonite.” She showed me a set of lyrics she had been working on, and I loved the idea because the words captured the feeling of exactly what we were doing every night. I had music for a verse I was working on that fit perfectly, and we finished the chorus
together. I wrote a guitar intro that had a drone note in it—I think it was the first time I did this in one of our songs. Not only was Jane a brilliant lyricist, but she also wrote amazing music. I remember how blown away I was when she brought in “Automatic.” It was this really sparse, eerie love song. The riff that I came up with was very staccato-robotic to go along with the way the word “au-to-ma-tic” was pronounced in the lyric. The Go-Go’s were really against doing a “ballad,” and this was the closest thing we ever got to it. Then one day she asked me to come over. She wanted to show me a new song she had written. I remember clear as day walking into her room in Agora Hills. She was sitting on the carpeted floor with an acoustic guitar and proceeded to play me a song called “Our Lips Are Sealed.” It was incredible. Jane had had a mad love affair with Terry Hall, the lead singer of Madness. He had written her a letter, and Jane took some of what he had written and transformed it into a masterpiece. The song was in a 3/4 (waltz) timing, and my only suggestion was that she try it in a more straight 4/4 beat. That is how we started rehearsing it, and I knew at that point that we had a hit song on our hands. “Our Lips Are Sealed” was so great that it inspired me to come up with what would become one of the quintessential Go-Go riffs. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was truly becoming a lead guitarist. I was learning that being a lead guitarist had little to do with noodling solos at breakneck speeds and everything to do with elevating the song with strong melodic riffs. I came up with melodies and runs that would uplift a song like George Harrison did with The Beatles. It was my natural instinct to play this way, coming from the era of classic pop I grew up in. I liked to write counterpoint melodies that wove in and out of the main melodies—this was a result of me learning about counterpoint from the hours spent playing the Bach inventions in college. “Our Lips Are Sealed” Can you hear them They talk about us Telling lies Well, that’s no surprise Can you see them See right through them They have no shield No secrets to reveal It doesn’t matter what they say In the jealous games people play
Our lips are sealed There’s a weapon That we must use In our defense Silence reveals When you look at them Look right through them That’s when they’ll disappear That’s when we’ll be feared It doesn’t matter what they say In the jealous games people play Our lips are sealed Give no mind to what they say It doesn’t matter anyway Our lips are sealed Hush, my darling Don’t you cry Quiet, angel Forget their lies I’m a natural collaborator, as it is one of my strengths. But in the case of “We Got the Beat,” it was definitely an act of solitude. It was New Year’s Day 1980, and I really wanted to write a beat-centric song. So I locked myself in my apartment, got as high as a kite, and listened to a ton of Motown while the annual Twilight Zone marathon played in the background on TV. I sat down a couple of times and tried to write something, but nothing happened. I gave up, did more drugs, and started watching TV. Around midnight this idea came to my mind. I scrambled to turn on my cassette player, and the entire song came to me in just a few minutes. I remember thinking, “Oh sh*t” because I believed I had just written a hit song. I still have that original cassette. “We Got the Beat” See the people walking down the street Fall in line just watching all their feet They don’t know where they wanna go But they’re walking in time They got the beat They got the beat
They got the beat, yeah They got the beat See the kids just getting out of school They can’t wait to hang out and be cool Hang around ’til quarter after twelve That’s when they fall in line They got the beat They got the beat Kids got the beat, yeah Kids got the beat Go-go music really makes us dance Do the pony puts us in a trance Do the watusi just give us a chance That’s when we fall in line ’Cause we got the beat We got the beat We got the beat, yeah We got it “This Town” is the best song Jane and I ever wrote. When she showed me the lyrics, I knew I was looking at perfection. Instead of inviting the listener to join us, the lyrics sarcastically let the listener know that they will never be one of us. And “We’re all dreamers, we’re all whor*s” is hands-down one of my favorite lines of any of The Go-Go’s’ songs. The music writing was a full collaboration. We wrote a darkersounding verse that soars into a strangely uplifting anthemic chorus. I had the intro guitar part. Jane suggested that instead of a two-bar intro we make it longer into a four-bar intro. She came up with the idea of cutting the last bar in half, thereby making it a 2/4 bar rather than a 4/4 bar, and I started jumping up and down, saying, “Oh my God! We are prog-rock now!” We both laughed so hard, but let’s just call it The Go-Go’s version of progressive rock! “This Town” We all know the chosen toys Of catty girls and pretty boys Make up that face Jump in the race Life’s a kick in this town
Life’s a kick in this town [Chorus:] This town is our town It is so glamorous Bet you’d live here if you could And be one of us Change the lines that were said before We’re all dreamers, we’re all whor*s Discarded stars Like worn out cars Litter the streets of this town Litter the streets of this town Jane and I and the rest of the band knew we had really good songs. That is what kept pushing us forward through all of the obstacles we faced. We kept trying to find a record deal, but no one would take a chance on us. They would say, “You’re an all-girl band—we can’t sign you!” even though we had great songs and continued to sell out every show. There was even an article in the Los Angeles Times about how we couldn’t get a record deal. After our performance opening for British supergroup Madness in early 1980, we were asked to join them on their next UK tour. We were beside ourselves. We figured out all the logistics and were on our way. Returning from that tour in July, we played the Starwood to an overcapacity sold-out crowd. Miles Copeland was there that night and also at our New Year’s Eve run at the Whisky later that year, which included Kathy Valentine’s debut as our new bass player. It was then that he offered us a record deal on his small independent label, I.R.S. Records. We started recording in April of 1981, and our record came out July of that summer. “Our Lips Are Sealed” was the first single released from the LP. I remember exactly where I was when I heard it on the radio for the first time. I was driving down Laurel Canyon and had to pull over because I burst out into tears of joy. “We Got the Beat” was the second single, which put us over the top and pushed our record to number one. And just as I had done when I was younger, I’d have my ear to the radio for as many hours as I could, listening to songs. But this time it was to the songs from my band, The Go-Go’s.
CHAPTER 20
Sunglasses & Cool Cars by John Doe
Cars, rock ‘n’ roll & sunglasses are inseparable. This is where Los Angeles tapped into something much darker & more dangerous than NYC’s or London’s punk rock. Young Hollywood movie stars’ lives were cut short in car crashes. People got laid in backseats. You could escape to the desert or drive up the coast w/ the windows rolled down & blow out all those dark, sad thoughts that crushed you in the city. In 1977 in Los Angeles you could drive w/out constant gridlock. Park pretty much anywhere. Because it was California & there was no rust to speak of, you could buy a drivable 1950s or ’60s car for $500. Take it to East LA or Echo Park & get the seats completely redone for $200. And Billy Zoom might teach you how to fix them w/out making you feel like too much of a dummy. We would change oil, point & plugs, adjust the timing, replace brakes or transmissions & even convert a step-van/bread truck to a tour bus on the curb outside 1118 N. Genesee Ave. This was all part of the DIY movement & was also cheaper. It seemed like Falcons (both Chris D. & Alice Bag), Delta 88s (Nickey Beat), Sport Furys (Gil T), Coupe de Villes (Bill Bateman), or even humble Dodge Darts were so available that anyone who didn’t live at the Canterbury, walking distance to the Masque & Hwd Blvd, could make them into their own magic punk-rock carpet. These rides & the punishing sunlight also provided everyone w/ plenty of opportunity for wearing the ’50s & ’60s sunglasses so plentiful at many thrift stores that weren’t yet curated or picked over. Other sunglass wearers, even silly new wave ones, were those who took the most unreliable mass transit in any metropolitan center, the LA bus system. Their reward for this sacrifice was encountering the craziest of crazies in all of metro LA, great material for songs or stories at parties. All of this distance & freedom gave Los Angeles punk rock more gasoline (leaded), exhaust fumes, rumble, muscle & smoking tires than the punk rock that came before. New York bands, as influential as they were on LA, had art galleries & London, who also spun our heads & inspired, had the dole. But LA freeways, California auto culture & that freedom, that speed, the horizon w/ the windows rolled down on warm nights connected us to Chuck Berry, The Doors, Sun Records & Eddie.
CHAPTER 21
Descent by Jack Grisham
I sleep with the light on. There was a moral code, unbeknownst to me, and I violated it, stepped over the line, and now the minute the sun goes down, the nightmares arise. Kicking an eye out is all good fun in your teens, but when the offending orb rolls into your thirties, forties, and fifties and hangs like blood-speckled gelatin from the ceiling, it gets real old. They didn’t like us. They said we were violent, that we ruined their scene and brought in an element of muscle-headed beach thuggery. It hurt my feelings. I wasn’t a thug. I was a gentleman. The cut of my coat was clean. The zippers on the back of my pants were eighteen-inch razor-sharp lines descending into silk-smooth lizardskin boots—the spurs, polished silver. I guess if you wanted to dance all by yourselves, you shouldn’t have played the music so loud. Your hard chords ran wicked along the edges of the freeways and stumbled onto our beaches—spoiled our suntanned Kashmir beliefs. To be honest, I could’ve done without your influence and your cold shoulder. I preferred the parties by the piers, the drunken cheerleaders getting ready to lose their virginity to some asshole they couldn’t believe they’d slept with, but if you were a young punk from the beach and wanted to see The Germs, X, or The Bags, you had to drive into the city.
Los Angeles was a distance—a 1-Adam-12 see-the-woman through a mist of colored faces and filth. I hated it. The LA punks had a cooler-than-you vibe—although I
wasn’t sure how drug addiction and homelessness gave them the right to feel so superior. I stood at the edges and watched. The dancing, which the music press had dubbed “slamming,” was nothing more than a polite art-school hop or pogo not meant to harm—more pose than pop. The boys from the beach brought life to the dance floor: tanned muscular bodies that were made to be hurt, suburban hybrid robots that thought bleeding was fun. The headlines read “Punk Rocker Carves Swastika in Baby’s Forehead!” and we did our best to live up to the hype. The first night I went to Los Angeles I wore black. I look good in it still. My grandmother said I looked like a storm trooper—handsome and serious. She said nothing about the swastika armband that adorned me. Why would she? Her politics ran, without apology, hard right—my politics, by contrast, were nonexistent. I didn’t give a f*ck about those who thought they were in charge. I was a kid living with my parents. I didn’t vote, work, or pay taxes. I greased what was left of my hair with a handful of brilliantine and jerked off thinking about the city—fantasizing about the rough punk girls, with their torn fishnets and their dirty Converse. There’s something about chipped nails and a used-condom hairbow that turns me on. I’ve always been a fan of strong women—I’ll f*ck the weak ones, but I love being destroyed. There were eight of us that first evening. A local crew who rolled close together for preservation. The punks in Hollywood lived inside walls—a circle of human-trafficked miscreants who let them pogo around the neighborhood without too much static. At the beach we stood out like dirty diapers on the sand—displeasing trash that the police and the concerned citizenry tried their best to remove. We had to travel in packs. Have you ever been hated and chased, stumbling frantically over lush green lawns as you were hounded by a mob? Have you ever been arrested, thrown into a holding cell with forty lice-ridden criminals who thought “punk” meant “fa*ggot” and thought your split-colored mohawk looked like a great target for their cum? A punk in the suburbs was guilty by the sheer nature of his look. A dyed head was a black flag of piracy flown valiantly as you sailed down Main Street. When you slapped on your homemade Germs T-shirt, you were saying that you were willing to take a beating and that you were well aware that your trip to the liquor store to pimp beer and play a game of Pac-Man could go horribly south at any time. And when things did go down, no matter what your involvement, it was always your fault. f*ck. Those Hollywood punks should have printed a disclaimer on that Yes L.A. EP, one that read, “By listening to this music and believing these lyrics and adopting these fashions you acknowledge that you are willing to put yourself in danger and that at any time some blockheaded f*ck might attempt to beat you senseless.” Looking back, I find it amusing that those earlier punks considered us violent when their lives, their words, and their beliefs all influenced the way we behaved. It was their fault
—not ours. That first night made me a believer. I thought I’d been sucked into a family of those with like minds, sideways-torn rebels whose willingness to take a beating mimicked my own. I was standing in an alley. The salt from that day’s surf was still coating my skin. I was talking to a young man—maybe twenty-three or twenty-four. He was wearing a pair of leather pants and a jacket—no buttons, no badges, no bondage straps. Other than the words of sedition that spewed like aural cocaine from his mouth, he could have been a used-car salesman. The police pulled up—two black-and-whites—lights, no sirens. I started to walk away—cow-like behavior that’d been learned from the white teen kegger parties: when the man in blue arrived, you grumbled and made your way like a good hippie to the car. My alley companion laughed. He stood fast. He downed the last few gulps from his beer and then fired the bottle overhand, hurling glass-flashing anarchy into the face of one of the officers. I came in my pants. I wish you could feel what I felt—the satisfaction, the connection, the brotherhood. I was angry. I grew up with a father who was a military man. I had to salute him when he returned from work. I wanted people to hurt. I wanted to be big enough to grab the plastic cord from my father’s hand and use it to tear his own skin. I wanted him to grovel on the ground, attempting to cover his ass and legs while I inflicted crisscrossing, bloody, raised welts across them. And here he was, the image of my father, wearing the dark blue uniform of the LA police, and he’d gone down on his knees bleeding before the Mickey’s Big Mouthed assault of my new companion. I followed suit. I fired all I had. This was a now-declared war against anyone that wasn’t with us. There were punks that night who complained about our behavior. They cried over the closing of their club, the crackdown from the man. “They’re ruining it for everybody,” they whined. I was shocked. Could you imagine a group of freedom fighters crying because the tanks of their oppressors had bulldozed their clubhouse? f*cking bitches. I wanted to line them up against that alley wall and, one by one, deposit a hotlead slug between their Gary Gilmore eyes. They seemed like police sympathizers to me. Not real. Losing the club was part of the deal—a war-torn casualty that gave credence to our struggles. It was “us against them.” There was no safe ground, no “free zone.” My violence was never directed at other punks—I thought we were family. My anger was directed at those who said we can’t or we should not, and I had no problem with the oppressor’s reflection of my hate bouncing back against me. The first show I played was at the Fleetwood in Redondo Beach—my band, Vicious Circle, opened for The Middle Class and The Germs. I wore a straightjacket. It was hard to be on stage. I didn’t like the exposure. I preferred to be in the crowd, immersed in the energy. My manners didn’t match my look. I was afraid to move, to let go, to swing. I stood behind the microphone and squeezed the thin metal stand. The music
started slow—a few bent guitar notes escaping from the tears in the speakers. The sound traveled across the stage and into my body, but like vein or lash or spleen, I was unconnected to its presence. It was buried. I screamed and lay upright—a verbal stiff f*ck unwilling to wrap my legs around the crowd, but they defiled me. They slammed into each other. They fought. They hurt. They took whatever I was willing to give— anything I had—and then they moved on. I was raised with rules—guidelines defined by our society: don’t take what doesn’t belong to you; keep your hands to yourself; honor your mother and your father; men sleep with women, boys with girls; and, above all, respect authority. I was never comfortable there. I desired to be honorable, and I suppose in some f*cked-up way this desire materialized toward my peers. But I was a creep, a deviant pretending to be civilized. Have you ever held your piss until your stomach cramps with the pain and then maybe just a squirt trickles out in your pants or panties and it feels good? But you know you can’t let go, you can’t wet yourself here, but then another squirt, and another feels good, and then more pain until you finally say f*ck it and you release. I held in my desire to strike back until it hurt so bad that I had to let it go, and then after that first blast, the pain came again, so I released more, and then more, until the stream of my hate and my hurt cascaded onto those around me. It was the same with crime, with disrespect, and with sex. Action by action I released my willingness to be good, to be principled, and to be restrained. The next time I crawled onstage I was a c*nt—a syphilitic whor* willing to do any trick for the crowd. I was completely unbridled and unthinking. I had violated the instilled moral code—and there was no return. People ask me about the music, what I liked about it, what my favorite bands were, but I don’t know what to tell them. Yes, I saw X, The Germs, The Bags, and The Controllers. I played backyard parties with Black Flag and the Circle Jerks. I came from an area that spawned Social Distortion, The Adolescents, T.S.O.L., and The Crowd. I was part of a scene that has influenced millions with its style and its sound, but I really couldn’t give a f*ck. You might as well be asking me what color pants I wore when I threw my first Molotov co*cktail or built my first bomb. The punk scene and the sound was just a bedspread that I f*cked on; for me it was never about the music. It was about the pathway of letting go. Now, if you wanted to ask me something, you could ask me about the backlash from the violence. You could ask me if I mind the night terrors and the inability to be close to another. You could ask me whether I could ever live vanilla when I had raped and slashed my way through the soft flesh of a rainbow. I apologize for nothing. I refuse to stand as some repentant f*ck while the crimes of my past are read aloud in the court of post-punk history. I love waking up afraid, and although I no longer hold to those beliefs, I don’t regret them.
CHAPTER 22
No Slow Songs Tonight: 1979–1982 by Dave Alvin
“Those of us who are about to die . . . salute you!” With those words Lee Ving, the lead singer of the ferocious punk band Fear, raised a beer to us Blasters as he stopped by our open dressing room door. We laughed nervously, raised our beers, and saluted him back. Then he walked down the long, smoky hallway and on up to the stage of the gritty, old Olympic Auditorium just south of downtown LA to face five thousand restless and agitated punk kids. It was New Year’s Eve 1981, and we were sharing a bill with not just Fear but also the relentless noisejazz-punk of Saccharine Trust, the art-punk veterans Suburban Lawns, and, most intense of all, the headliners were the fierce, brilliant kings of hardcore, Black Flag. There was no applause as Fear was announced, but in those days there rarely was any applause at real hardcore shows. This wasn’t really a show for people who came to clap, cheer, and celebrate their musical heroes; it was more like a gathering of people alienated from polite consumer pop culture, who wanted to get f*cked up past the point of feeling pain, ready and willing to beat each other into bloody pulps in the mosh pit or even attack the bands onstage as a primitive initiation rite into an exclusive alternative society of pain. I couldn’t help but hear the crazed roars, insane boos, and threatening catcalls of the audience upstairs echoing through the cavernous, cement halls of the underground backstage. Mr. Ving’s first words to the audience were simple enough: “We’re Fear. f*ck you!” This sent the crowd into a rage of even louder boos that quickly grew into throat-ripping shouts and booming death threats. Something ugly was going on up there or was just about to. Between the drunk, unruly crowd and the overzealous security guards, more than a few people were probably going to get the living sh*t kicked out of themselves that night.
Unlike the modern, clean LA sports venues like Dodger Stadium or the Fabulous Forum, the Olympic was a large, dingy concrete bunker built in the 1920s for the 1932
Olympics. Fifty years later, though, it had become a legendary, rundown bucket of blood. For decades it had been the historic home for such blue-collar sports as wrestling and roller derby, but the Olympic was especially famous for its boxing matches. It was a well-known fact among locals that the prizefights in the ring were often much tamer than the fights outside of the ring out in the crowd, and so it was now a perfect place for a night of drunken mindless violence and guaranteed teenage mayhem. “No slow songs tonight,” my brother Phil commanded as I wrote our set list. I agreed wholeheartedly. There would be no arguments between the Alvin brothers on this night. I looked around the dressing room at bassist John Bazz, pianist Gene Taylor, and drummer Bill Bateman and announced, “All right. We open up with ‘High School Confidential’ and then don’t stop playing even if someone gets killed.” I smiled, but I was only half joking. Bill stared back at me with a blank-stone face and said, “Anybody f*cks with me and I’ll kick his f*cking ass.” Gene just laughed: “If any trouble starts, Bill, you’re gonna have to kick three thousand crazy motherf*ckers’ asses. Good luck with that.” “Hey, f*ck you, Gene,” Bill shot back. Then we drank more beer and prepared to die. We’d been in similar surreal and borderline violent situations before, though. The front of my 1964 Fender Mustang guitar has many shards of glass permanently embedded in it from beer bottles thrown at us by pissed-off audience members at punk shows. These wounds were badges of honor to me back then. One is a long gash from a beer bottle thrown at me by a dissatisfied patron at an early 1980 show with the Angry Samoans at the Shark Club in San Diego, while another is an almost delicate spray of tiny brown glass fragments from a beer bottle hurled at the stage when we played with The Weirdos about a month later at West LA’s Club 88. The deepest, most dramatic slash running across the front of my guitar was from when we opened in late 1979 for Orange County hardcore heroes The Crowd at the Cuckoo’s Nest (a particularly vile former industrial Quonset hut turned punk-rock dive bar in Costa Mesa). The kid who threw that bottle had a pretty damn good arm and great aim, but I was just fast enough and lucky enough to see it coming, so I had a split second to raise my guitar in front of my face and deflect his projectile. Over thirty years later these lacerations are still visible on the front of my long-retired Mustang, and yes, I still view them proudly as badges of honor. You might be asking: How did this happen? How did The Blasters, a pompadoured blues/R&B/rockabilly band from sleepy old Downey, California, end up playing shows with the legendary LA punk groups? How did we wind up hanging out with, getting bombed with, becoming close friends with, and, in a small but meaningful way, being proudly linked with the glorious LA punk/new wave rock world of the late seventies and early eighties? It’s not a bad question, really. The full answer is sort of
complicated, but one simple reason was, despite all the anger, desperation, and alienation in the air, we really f*cking loved it. Growing up in the late sixties and early seventies, my brother and I were odd ducks among our teenage peers. We certainly heard the underground rock music of the time and enjoyed much of it, but we hated most of the Top Forty hits of that era. Listening to Jimi Hendrix, among other artists, helped us become aware of and deeply fascinated by older American music, especially the blues. Because so much of that music wasn’t available anywhere at that time, we searched thrift stores and swap meets for hard-tofind old 78s and 45s. Soon we discovered music by more and more obscure artists as we were self-educating ourselves in not only the blues but also jazz, R&B, folk, country swing, rockabilly, and early rock ‘n’ roll. It wasn’t too long before we learned that some of the older blues musicians lived and still performed relatively nearby, so we started sneaking into neighborhood bars to see them perform. Eventually we became underage regulars at a funky little club about twenty miles away in Los Angeles called the Ash Grove. It was a unique place that mixed blues and bluegrass with politics and social consciousness. Even though I was only fifteen, I felt I’d found a second home among the Ash Grove’s eclectic crowd of blues singers, hippies, folkies, artists, radicals, truck drivers, card sharks, and record collectors. When it closed down in 1973, I felt more than a little lost and searched for years afterward for some place, some social scene where I could feel that sense of community again. By the late seventies all the future members of The Blasters were working day jobs and figuring that life had passed us by, but then we discovered that we were the same ages as the guys in The Clash and the Sex Pistols. So before we even thought of starting The Blasters, we began cautiously venturing from Downey and Long Beach up to Hollywood to see the local underground punk shows at the Masque, the Whisky, and the Elks Lodge, just to check out what all the buzz was about. We were completely blown away by the stunning variety of the first generation of LA punk bands we saw. Some bands, like The Weirdos and The Dickies, were loud guitar combos pounding out Ramones-influenced eight-note bar chords with clever, ironic lyrics. Some were hilarious pranksters like Black Randy, Arthur J. and the Gold Cups, or The Deadbeats. Some were full of angst and conceptual art dogma like the early techno squall of The Screamers, while the tough Plugz and The Bags sang Chicano street poetry and the very early, sweetly amateur Go-Go’s played a noisier, sloppier punk/pop than their later million-record-selling slick hits would show. Some bands, like The Germs, were highly literate with low musical skills, while others were highly literate with very high musical skills, like X, The Alley Cats, and The Nerves. Each of them had their own look, attitude, sound, and almost cult-like fans. The groups and the audience who followed them were a wide cross-section of
nonconformists, oddballs, rejects, and visionaries who couldn’t fit in to mainstream society and had finally found a wild home in the developing punk scene. It was a unique community of people who’d come from Venice Beach and East LA, Beverly Hills and Highland Park, Torrance and Pacoima—poor, middle class, rich, the innocent, the guilty, loners, social butterflies, runaways, gays, students, poets, artists, actors, hustlers, bad musicians, great musicians, surfers, Anglophiles, Anglophobes, dealers, addicts, former glam rockers, former hard rockers, prostitutes, strippers, scam artists, older survivors of the sixties Sunset Strip era, whites, Chicanos, blacks, Asians, phony nihilists, wanna-be anarchists, pretend communists, progressives, apoliticals, and even a stray Republican or two, all united by this new music and the seemingly adventurous lifestyle that went with it. Even the mosh pits at the early punk shows were less about beating the sh*t out of somebody and more of a slightly rough physical expression of communal celebration of being with other misfits just like yourself who had somehow found each other. In 1979 I was a failed college student in my early twenties working as a cook, and after many years of feeling lost and confused about my future, I saw this inspiring—if a bit intimidating—scene and thought that maybe I belonged there as well, just like I had felt at the Ash Grove. One reason The Blasters sort of fit in to this new scene was how we played our version of old roots music. Unlike most of the great but mellower blues bands making a living working the then-jumping beach-town bar circuit or the very talented country combos grinding out a living in the then-still-thriving California honky-tonks, The Blasters played really fast and really loud. We happily and proudly bashed our tunes fast enough and loud enough to compete sonically with most of the cutting-edge groups on the LA scene. We didn’t want the music we love to become a delicate and dusty museum piece. We sincerely felt—and I still do—that older American music could be as artistically challenging and viably contemporary as the latest disco and soft-rock hits on seventies and eighties Top Forty radio or whatever was the latest hip trend coming across the Atlantic from England. If that meant playing fast and loud, then so be it. Phil and the other guys, because they were better, more experienced musicians than I was at the time, could easily play the blues slower, softer, and more traditionally than we did in The Blasters. They certainly could have gotten a technically better guitarist than me, but there was some sort of undeniably manic, energetic magic that occurred when the five of us played together that most roots-revival combos didn’t have. It may have been because there were two close brothers in the group, but, as we’d all grown up together, listening to the same old records, going to the Ash Grove together, getting into and out of trouble together, we were actually five close brothers. When we started to play, the intensity came easily and naturally. With the veins in my brother’s neck straining almost to the point of exploding as he sang and Bill Bateman pounding his
drums as if he were trying to kill the damn things and bassist John Bazz pumping decades-old walking bass lines like they were brand new and pianist Gene Taylor hammering his piano like Vladimir Horowitz on methamphetamines, we were one tough, passionate, and more-than-a-little-insane orchestra who could proudly hold our own with anyone. When we hit the stage I would go into a near-transcendental state from a primal rush of playing music with the older guys who I’d grown up admiring, cranking up the amps, bashing on my guitar, drinking a lot of beer, jumping around the stage, sweating through my clothes, making dumbbell musical mistakes, and rushing the tempo as the band pushed the music, the audience, and ourselves to the limit. I’d never been happier in my life. A big part of our band philosophy was that, despite being partial to playing with punk bands like X or raw local pop masters The Plimsouls, we would accept just about any show playing with just about anyone, anywhere. We believed American Music was for all Americans. We wanted the scenesters at the Whisky or the Starwood to like us, but we also wanted truck drivers at honky-tonks like the Palomino Club or the shufflegroovin’ crowd at the Long Beach Blues Festival to dig us as well. This attitude led to some wonderful shows but also an absurdly bizarre gig or two. In our effort to make a name for ourselves and win over converts to our cause, we opened shows for an abnormally wide variety of punk, power pop, and roots acts from late 1979 up to the 1981–1982 show with Black Flag. Besides X and The Plimsouls, we also shared bills with The Cramps, Asleep at the Wheel, The Go-Go’s, Ray Campi and his Rockabilly Rebels, The Plugz, The Motels, The Weirdos, Wall of Voodoo, The Ventures, Levi and the Rockats, Sir Douglas Quintet, Split Enz, Rubber City Rebels, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, and The Boomtown Rats. The strangest without a doubt was when we opened eight arena shows for the monstrously popular rock band Queen in the summer of 1980. Some of the members of Queen had seen us playing a ridiculous gig at an old Hollywood roller rink that had turned into a new-wave venue/pick-up bar called Flippers. They liked what they saw and nicely asked us to open their West Coast tour. We’d certainly heard of Queen, so of course we said yes, but we had no idea how hugely popular they were or how, let’s say, vocally opinionated their fans were. We went from playing little two-hundred-seat dive clubs to facing seventeen thousand angry Queen fans in sports arenas who had no idea why some pompadoured guys from Downey who bashed out old three-chord American rock ‘n’ roll were opening for their glamorous English heroes. Oddly enough, having seventeen thousand pissed-off classic-rock fans booing and throwing anything they could get their hands on at us did not deter us in the least. If anything, it only strengthened our brotherly Blaster bond and our “us against the world” mentality. From then on, whatever scorn five hundred punk kids in a club could spew at us was nothing
compared to the venom of thousands of Queen fans. Well, at least I felt that way until we were about to go up against five thousand riled-up Black Flag fanatics. It was very difficult at first, though, to overcome the prejudice many Hollywood club bookers and promoters had against a rockabilly/blues band from Downey. We weren’t cute enough or well connected enough socially for most of them to bother with. One woman who booked a legendary Hollywood club flatly told me that if we weren’t f*cking somebody famous, she would never give us a gig. Thankfully The Blasters’ reputation and coolness profile was helped immensely when LA scene heavyweights like John Doe and Exene from X, Belinda Carlisle of The Go-Go’s, and Peter Case from The Plimsouls gave us opening slots at their shows. Many other bands, plus nonmusicians yet hip tastemakers like Pleasant Gehman and Anna Statman or enlightened club bookers like Mac at the Club 88, generously spread the news about us around town or gave us much-needed shows. After the initial period of struggling to get booked, we slowly started building enough local notoriety to get more and better gigs and then, eventually, to make enough money to quit our damn day jobs. Within a year of denying me a show, that club booker who was so interested in The Blasters’ nonexistent sex life with celebrities was happily offering us shows at her club without asking any ridiculous personal questions. Bands’ willingness to help each other was one of the great attributes of the LA scene in those days. There certainly were petty feuds between bands for whatever personal reasons or between punk rockers versus new wavers or between bands who didn’t have record deals against bands who did. Overall, though, most of the groups felt a sense of unity against the record labels that wouldn’t sign us, the radio stations that wouldn’t play us, the clubs that wouldn’t book us, and the promoters that might rip us off. My favorite example of this band solidarity was when we were scheduled to open for The Plimsouls at their sold-out show at the Cuckoo’s Nest in 1980. I got into a heated, physical argument with some blockheaded security guys over whether I could bring a harmless bottle of milk into the club. They insisted I couldn’t bring it inside. In my righteous and perhaps silly anger, I said, “f*ck you. Tell your f*cking boss that we ain’t playing your f*cking club.” Three security goons grabbed me and threw me and my bottle of milk out of the club. One of them said, “Big f*cking deal, asshole. You’re a f*cking piece-of-sh*t opening act.” When Peter Case heard this, he instantly declared, “f*ck the Cuckoo’s Nest. We ain’t f*cking playing unless The Blasters play.” I was astonished by Peter’s hard-line stance. I’d only met Peter once before, but he knew and enforced the unwritten code of the underground scene: don’t f*ck with the bands. Within a few minutes the owner and the security crew profusely apologized, and with my bottle of milk in my hand, I proudly walked in and played the show. As The Blasters made the transition into being a headlining act at the Starwood,
Whisky, and Roxy, we tried to return the favors shown us by giving opening slots to new or unknown bands like Rank and File, The Gun Club, or Phast Phreddie and Thee Precisions, bands we thought deserved attention. Some of those then-little-known opening acts, like Los Lobos and Dwight Yoakam, would move on to greater fame and success than we ever imagined for ourselves. We also gave gigs to some of our blues idols from our Ash Grove days like Big Joe Turner and Roy Brown, or we put together shows at Hollywood clubs where we would be the back-up band for Big Joe, Bo Diddley, John Lee Hooker, and Hank Ballard, exposing them to a brand-new audience. It wasn’t until much later, after venturing away from the protective cocoon of the LA scene, when I sadly discovered how cutthroat and self-serving many musicians/songwriters out in the cold world of the music business actually were. Despite the fact that we were now selling out the Whisky for two or three nights in a row and had accumulated a decent amount of good, original songs, no major label was remotely interested in signing us. Eventually we signed a recording contract with the local independent LA label Slash Records. We owed some of Slash’s interest in us to our friends in X, who were also on the label and had been prodding Slash’s owners to give us a deal. Slash was a spinoff of the groundbreaking punk music/art magazine of the same name and had already released, to unexpected commercial success, the seminal first Germs album as well as the first two masterpiece albums by X. This certainly sold me on being on the label, despite some trepidation from my brother and other Blasters. Plus, they had smart, passionate people working in their office, like the enlightened A&R staff of Mark Williams and Chris D. plus committed publicists like Susan Clary and Bill Bentley. It was also a nice bonus that their employees were also our friends. Over the next few years Slash (and its subsidiary, Ruby Records) gathered a remarkable stable of important bands, both local and national, like Los Lobos, The Violent Femmes, The Flesh Eaters, Fear, The Del Fuegos, The Gun Club, Rank and File, The Misfits, Dream Syndicate, and Green on Red. To say I was proud to be associated with Slash would be a major understatement. Sadly our relationship with Slash was a mixed bag. On the plus side, Slash was a sympathetic environment that gave us more creative freedom than any major label ever would have given us. Unfortunately the two charming rascals who owned Slash were first-class purveyors of high-end cultural revolutionary sweet talk. At the time that sort of rebellious rhetoric meant an awful lot to me, though it certainly didn’t mean quite as much to the other members of The Blasters. The depressing realization that, perhaps, the owners of Slash really weren’t quite as interested in cultural revolution as much as the big money that can be made by telling people that they were interested in cultural revolution didn’t become clear to me until much later. It seems to me the rascals at Slash also weren’t terribly interested in accounting to us either. You live and you learn.
About a year before The Blasters signed with Slash I was invited by poetsongwriter Chris D. to be part of the latest lineup of his band, The Flesh Eaters. I’d gotten to know Chris a little through my friendship with John Doe and was honored but slightly intimidated when he asked. I felt I might not be good enough, but I quickly lost my initial sense of trepidation when Chris said that this new version of The Flesh Eaters would be a combination of members from X and The Blasters. Chris would be singing and John would be playing bass, DJ Bonebrake would be on marimba, timbales, and assorted percussive noisemakers while Steve Berlin would play various saxes and Bill Bateman would be the drummer. All I had to do was be the loud guitar player. All right, I thought, I can certainly do that. Chris, who didn’t play any instruments, had been driving around town, singing his new songs into a cheap cassette recorder he kept in his car. Chris gave me and John these rough tapes, and we divided the songs up between the two of us. We then separately figured out the chord changes and modulations of each song and devised loose arrangements to take to the band. As each musician added their own musical twists and Chris started singing his complex lyrics with his very distinctive voice, we were thrilled to discover that we had come up with a sound unlike any of the bands any of us had ever been in before. Instead of X’s razor-sharp punk or The Blasters’ pounding roots rock, our one Flesh Eaters album, A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, sounded like the murky soundtrack to a midnight voodoo ceremony being performed by junkies in an East Hollywood alley. It was a crazy blend of Catholic and Santeria liturgies, sixties garage rock, free jazz, swampy rhythm and blues, surrealist poetry, and zombie movies, but somehow it all worked together. The album and the few live shows we played did confuse some folks back then. Some punks didn’t like the slow, trance-like drones of certain songs, while some rockabilly purists didn’t dig the modern jazz stuff, and even a few religious evangelists held the album cover up on TV and denounced us as evil Satanists doing the devil’s work. However, we did have many passionate fans and admirers. The respected underground music scribe Byron Coley boldly stated that it was “the greatest rock album ever made.” That might be going a bit too far, but many younger bands over the years, like Mudhoney, have been profuse in their praise of our album as a major stylistic influence. Not long after the album’s release I read a very positive review of it in which the writer called the music of The Flesh Eaters “postpunk.” I’ve never been quite sure what that term actually means, but it seems like as good a description as any other. Whatever punk rock in Southern California was or wasn’t by late 1981, it and the scene around it were changing quickly. Many of the older, initial LA punk scene makers were starting to stay away from the shows or moving off into different musical directions, from funk to western swing. Some of the original LA punk bands like The
Go-Go’s and X had signed major label deals and were spending as much time touring out of town as they were playing in LA. Many of the newer punk bands were less quirky and individualistic and more stereotypically what most folks thought of as punk. For The Blasters it was becoming apparent that, as we were then achieving a measure of local fame and headlining once-out-of-reach clubs like the Whisky, that our future ahead was one of hitting the highways to become roots-rock road warriors. Violence at shows was now becoming commonplace, both inside and outside the clubs. High school kids who had just discovered punk rock were driving up to Hollywood from outlying towns just to get wasted, look for fights, and, as we used to say, f*ck some sh*t up. They also became the arbiters of what was and what was not punk rock. This may have been the proper course of things or it may not have been. I certainly didn’t know. I’m not a psychologist nor an anthropologist. I’m not sure what drove the LA punk scene to become a violent world with kids beating the f*ck out of each other. Blame Reagan or a lack of spiritual direction or the lack of meaningful work. Blame drugs or alcohol. Blame The Eagles or disco music. Blame the boredom of the suburbs or sh*tty fast food diets. Certainly some of the shoving and fighting kids in the Black Flag Olympic crowd would end up in jail, while others would tragically die young due to one sad reason or another. Most would probably finish school, maybe join the Armed Services, then get jobs, buy houses, raise families, become regular solid citizens, paying taxes and mowing lawns. A lucky few, though, might leave the Olympic Auditorium inspired by the music they heard and walk into the new year of 1982 to start their own bands, playing whatever the hell kind of music they wanted, creating their own new scenes and their own new worlds. When Fear ended their set it was our turn to face the ominous Olympic crowd. Lee Ving, who had just survived the onslaught, was laughing as he passed us in the narrow hallway that led to the stage: “Heads up, Blasters. They’re throwing a lot of f*cking sh*t out there tonight.” Though I actually heard more than a few people clapping and cheering as we walked on the stage, the bulk of the crowded auditorium erupted into a cascade of boos and angry screams. Some big guys were still fighting in the mosh pit, even though there wasn’t any music to encourage it, and a few skinhead kids smashed against the front of the stage and screamed, “Rockabilly Sucks!” as they flipped us off. Bill glared at them and flipped them off as he stood behind his drum kit, taking a long pull from his beer bottle. John stood stiff and straight by his bass amp, ready for whatever nonsense might soon happen. Gene Taylor, built like a Sherman tank, stopped at the edge of the stage and stared down at the offenders, his beer bottle gripped menacingly in his fist, daring them to start something. They shut up. He took a long swig off his beer, walked to his piano, and sat down. My brother stepped up to his microphone and calmly yet proudly announced, “We’re The Blasters from Downey,
California.” As I walked onto the Olympic stage that night I had no idea what would happen with the crazed audience waiting for us. I had no idea what would happen in the coming years. I had no thought that I would ever leave my Blaster brothers or that there would be new scenes for me to be a part of, with different brilliant musicians to make glorious noise with. I had no thoughts of the different highways I’d soon be traveling on and no thoughts that I’d soon be mourning the deaths of friends, fellow musicians, and family members. All I thought at that moment was, “Yeah, we are the goddamn Blasters from goddamn Downey, California, and nobody is ever going to stop us from playing our goddamn music.” Then I just turned up my guitar even louder, walked to the front of the stage, and faced the unruly audience as my brother confidently counted off “High School Confidential” at a tempo as fast as any punk song Fear had just played. There would be no slow songs tonight.
CHAPTER 23
How to Build a New World Then Tear It Down by Kristine McKenna
The first generation of punk rock in Los Angeles? First, I have to tell you about the city at that time. Let’s say our story begins in 1976—that’s when the players in this particular drama started drifting into town from all corners of the country. It was the year I arrived in Los Angeles, and what did I find? In my memory it was like a ghost town. It seemed like there just weren’t that many people around! You could sail down the freeways and pull up and park right in front of wherever it was you were going, and it felt spacious and quiet. You could do your thing in private, and the city would courteously ignore you. I loved it. That world is gone now, and the locations and venues that gave shelter to LA’s first punks, stretching from downtown LA to the beach, are mostly gone too. The Masque; the Starwood; the Anti-Club; the house where X lived at the corner of 6th and Van Ness; Licorice Pizza, across the street from the Whisky (mercifully, the Whisky hasn’t been demolished yet, but it seems kind of creepy now); Club 88; the offices of Slash magazine on the second floor of an office building at the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Fairfax; the second Masque, at the corner of Santa Monica and Vine; the Stardust Ballroom; the Hong Kong Café; Madame Wong’s; the Nickodell; Vinyl Fetish on Melrose; the Atomic Café; and LACE, on Broadway, downtown. They’re gone, as is the Greyhound bus station on 5th Street in Santa Monica, where Exene arrived from Florida on a rainy morning in 1976. John and Exene’s house on Genesee, where they birthed their fantastic song “In This House That I Call Home” is still there, but I feel sad when I see it. A few weeks ago I found myself winding across town through the city streets, clogged with traffic, of course, and I passed some of these absent landmarks and actually cried. It’s not my city anymore. But maybe that’s how it works—cities belong to the young and are transformed from one generation to the next for use by the new breed. Good luck to them. By the time the Sex Pistols released their first single, “God Save the Queen,” in May
of 1977, the LA scene was already percolating, so we found our way to the mountain without a map. We weren’t copying anybody else, and from the start there were things that distinguished LA’s punk scene from the scenes in other cities. The first generation of LA punk was literate and really smart, for starters, and each band had its own sources of inspiration. Much of the punk that came in its wake wasn’t very smart at all, nor was it particularly original. A tremendous amount of diversity coexisted under the rubric of early LA punk too, and there was a surprising degree of parity between men and women—it was not a sexist scene, and women were treated as equals. Latinos and gays were welcome too, as were old people: your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to be? It was that way for a brief spot in time. There was a period, from the mid- to late seventies, when punk existed, but the punk fashion industry had yet to co-opt it, so if you saw a punk-looking weirdo on the street, it probably was an authentic punk weirdo. There was no blueprint to work from, so dressing in an interesting way demanded real imagination. People rose to the occasion too, taking personal style in any direction they chose. Everybody in the first generation of punk was a star, whether onstage and off—it really was a fascinating hodgepodge of people. You’d see a girl in a prim, secretarial-type cotton shirtwaist dress next to a dude with a mohawk, next to a girl dressed like a hooker. All kinds of people materialized, and anybody who’d gone to the trouble of showing up had a right to be there. It took a while for all this to start cooking, though, which brings me to the scourge known as social media. LA’s first punk community took a while to get up to speed because things didn’t “go viral” then. The jungle drum of word-of-mouth was how information got around, and measured against the lightning speed information travels today, LA’s first punk community coalesced at a glacial pace. People had to physically be in rooms together and talk to one another to learn about things then, and that world was intimate and tactile and visceral in a way texting can never be. I was a journalist covering the “new music” for various publications, and as such, I stood slightly apart. I wasn’t one of the people getting drunk in an alley with misbegotten mascot Darby Crash—there was something genuinely mad about him, and frankly, he kind of scared me, which I assume was his intention. I felt straight and responsible compared with members of the community who were truly living on the edge—and some of them really were—but I had my place in the scene, and people respected it, as I did theirs. It wasn’t, however, a user-friendly crowd. This was, after all, a community of very young people, so there were feuds, misunderstandings, grudges, warring factions, and lots of dialectical discussion about who was and was not a “poseur.” People tended to be a little gruff with one another, but if an outsider went on the attack? First-generation punks were fiercely loyal to the community in that case, and
mainstream opposition only made the scene more cohesive. A few names survived that time and achieved varying degrees of immortality, but so many amazing supporting players disappeared into the past. Every single one of them was a crucial thread in a shimmering tapestry, and in my mind the famous and the forgotten alike remain as pure and incorruptible as they were the first day I saw them. There was Rik L Rik, scuffling around barefoot, looking like he’d just hitchhiked into town from Appalachia; his manager, Posh Boy, a.k.a. Robbie Fields, in his cheap, shiny suit—Posh Boy always seemed to be selling something; fancy-dancing heartthrob Spazz Attack, who served as janitor at the Masque and lived there too, I think (a rather gruesome thought, as the place was filthy); rockabilly vixen Kitra; Belinda Carlisle, dressed in a billowing, belted, black Hefty bag, with bee-stung lips and baby fat that made her seem soft and sweet; Lee Ving, a stevedore who looked as though he could kick anybody’s ass but was a lovely man and never would; K. K. and Trudi, who were like king and queen of the prom—there was something regal and dignified about them. And, of course, there was impresario Brendan Mullen. Equal parts P. T. Barnum and the absentminded professor, Brendan always seemed to be in a kerfuffle of some sort. There were dozens more, and somehow they all hung together and created some beautiful things. So why did it end? Where did it go? In retrospect it’s obvious that LA’s first generation of punk was an exotic flower meant to bloom for a short time; these things aren’t supposed to last, and that’s what makes them precious. The forces that brought about its demise are beginning to be clear to me now too. Darby Crash’s death by OD, in December of 1980, has been cited as marking the end of something (an era? A life?), but the evaporation of the scene was more complicated than that. Cyndi Lauper (yes, I know—how did she get in here?) has a song called “Money Changes Everything,” and it says a lot about what happened to LA’s first generation of punk rock. It’s easy to have ideals when there’s little at stake, and it’s very hard to say no to money. Poverty is tolerable, even romantic when you’re young, but it gets wearing in fairly short order, and given the chance to leave it behind and live the high life? People just don’t say no. This is America, after all, and temptation crept into LA’s world of Baker Street irregulars. Some people got, others did not, and that bred animosity. MTV invaded public consciousness in 1981, and that took everything down a notch too. It’s almost impossible to make a three-minute video, conceived to promote a song and sell records, that doesn’t reek of inauthenticity, and MTV made music stupider. Anything you see on television is harmless and familiar—we’ve been sucking our thumbs to television for decades—and mass culture has a terrifying ability to absorb and neutralize everything in its path. MTV did that to punk, to a degree. Revolutions need something to kick against, and you can’t rebel against somebody who’s hugging
you. There were defections in the original tribe too. When X released its debut album, Los Angeles, on Slash Records in 1980, it was like the hometown team won the Super Bowl. But when The Go-Go’s turned their backs on punk the following year, transformed themselves into harmless sorority-type chicks, and had a best-selling record with Beauty and the Beat, it was more a case of what the f*ck? This really did seem like the beginning of some kind of end, and things began to sour right around then. Some punks retreated to depressing living rooms to shoot heroin, and we all know what that leads to: apathy and drool. Others returned to the “straight” world because they were able to. There were plenty of serious misfits who couldn’t possibly function in mainstream society, though, and god knows what happened to them. They started falling away in the early eighties and simply vanished. The official scribe for LA’s first generation of punk, Claude Bessy, summed up the community nicely when he wrote, “We’re just a pack of off the wall weirdoes with fringe leanings,” in the pages of Slash magazine. There was lots of adrenaline churning around, yes, but mostly we were a ragged pack of kooky people in pursuit of genius and fun. This came to a screeching halt when Black Flag and the rest of the South Bay crew on SST Records came roaring onto the scene. Greg Ginn founded SST in 1978, but it wasn’t until the early eighties that its ascendancy began, and when it did, it unleashed a furious wave of testosterone on the scene that was crushing. Women were the first to leave—there was no place for them in the world of hardcore punk; gays and sensitive artist types went next, and the audience began to change. People who went to punk shows in the early days were respectful, they listened, and they were genuinely interested in the band onstage, even if they’d seen the same band four nights earlier. We knew we’d always see something new, partly because these were mostly not professional musicians, and nobody did the same show twice, because they weren’t able to. Professionalism came later for some, but in the beginning the scene was truly experimental, and the audience was tolerant and supportive. With the arrival of hardcore, punk became a blood sport, and the mosh pit was colonized by sixteen-yearold boys with plaid flannel shirts tied around their waists, determined to transform themselves into human cannonballs. The entire scene became about one thing, aggression. Claude Bessy was long gone by then—he’d moved to England in 1980—but I imagine he would’ve found the whole thing boring because the undercurrent of humor that originally made punk so brilliant disappeared completely when hardcore took over. So many members of this community are dead now—I won’t recite the R.I.P. list of LA punk’s first generation because it’s too long and too sad. We’re all like trees, and the leaves that are the people we love flutter to the ground one by one. Time is a brutal, devouring force, and until it’s begun to do its handiwork, it’s impossible to comprehend
how very beautiful it is to be young, how privileged and innocent it is. You may think you know the score when you’re twenty-four years old, but you never do, for the simple reason that you can’t: life lobs curveballs that are unimaginable at twenty-four. We believed we were dangerous and subversive back in the day, but in fact, we were babies, yet to rub the fairy dust from our eyes. Time takes a heavy toll on ideals, and looking back, it all seems unbearably idealistic and sweet. So the scene is gone, and many of the people who created it are gone too, and I suppose that’s how it’s meant to be. Great art is immutable and eternal, though. I recently attended an X show where I watched young people—yes, they were young— crowding the lip of the stage, mouthing the words to “White Girl” and “Year One.” The music continues to mean something to those who need it, and those who need it will continue to find it.
CHAPTER 24
My Only Friend, The End by John Doe
No harsh screeching of wheels at dawn, no soft whimpering late at night, no roaring wind as the sun went down or moaning as the back door closed. None of these sounds were heard at the close of the first LA punk-rock era somewhere in 1981 or ’82. What was heard was quiet at the center of the music scene. A center that in 1977 through ’79 was louder than hell w/ people running here & there & back again. Now that center— which included art rock, hard rock, punk rock, funk rock, performance art, roots rock & all manner of rock that had influenced beginners & more experienced—had moved off into different genres at the fringe of the core. It was quieter now, w/ loud pieces on the outside. The rockabilly or roots scene & what was sadly named “cowpunk” had one audience where it was a bit safer, a place where nonviolent or ethnic types didn’t need to worry about getting threatened or punched. The hardcore scene pulled some of the other original Hollywood punk bands & fans & hundreds of new people from the beach & San Fernando Valley into a swirling vortex. The truly adventurous art crowd went to downtown LA, found lofts & galleries, quieter roots music or experimental music bars & created more of an East Coast environment. By 1980 most of the core group of bands—The Weirdos, The Screamers, The Germs, Fear, The Go-Go’s, F-Word, Rik L Rik, The Bags, The Alley Cats, The Plugz, The Skulls, The Nerves, The Dickies, The Deadbeats, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, The Controllers, The Gears, The Gun Club, The Flesh Eaters, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, The Minutemen, Rhino 39, Catholic Discipline, The B People, The Eyes & a few I might have missed—had moved on, swapped members, or quit altogether. Each of these groups had an identity that may not have been completely original or different from each other but, as a whole, made up an incredibly diverse & broad style of music. And though they didn’t always hang around w/ each other, they shared camaraderie in that they had been there at the beginning. That beginning may have been inspired by others, but it grew into something unique & extremely influential. There’s no doubt that San Francisco & San Diego influenced & contributed a great deal to this stew of California punk rock.
We had ripped through what seemed to be so very much in such a very short time. Somehow people from all over the US had found each other in Hollywood, California,
the land of fruits & nuts. Each arrival & story had uniqueness. There were few enough of us so that we all stood out in some way. We gravitated toward the kindred souls that could make a band. The Canterbury parties before & after the Masque or for no reason but to hang out, make noise, get drunk & argue about ideas were always on. It happened late at night on the picnic tables outside Oki-Dog on Santa Monica Blvd. It happened hungover at Duke’s Coffee Shop beside the Tropicana or at Peaches Records on Hollywood Blvd or a corner pizza joint on Hollywood Blvd where we competed for high scores on the Playboy pinball machine. Sometimes it was only seven or eight people, sometimes 30 or 40. Everyone talked loud, smoked & drank & made outrageous claims about what might happen & what they might do. And somehow, through sh*tty jobs & asshole bosses, we found time to rehearse & places to perform those half-baked songs. Of that original “Hollywood 200,” everyone did something, whether it was make a fanzine, front a band, simply look outrageous, or all three. It took collaboration & will & maybe that’s why even now those survivors are proud & protective of that honor. By 1979 the Masque had been harassed out of existence by the cops from a couple of different locations. Five or six private halls had had their toilets or sinks ripped out by Black Randy or someone too high, too emotionally damaged, or just too pissed off to care. We had driven up & down the state to visit our rivals San Francisco & San Diego because no other opportunities existed in the middle of the state, or the country for that matter. The Masque promoted two infamous benefit shows at the Elks Lodge near downtown LA. One of them turned into an all-out police riot, clubbing dazed punk rockers as the cops stormed the building & the auditorium. More legit clubs like the Starwood & Whisky a Go Go had allowed some of us into their golden kingdom, where we didn’t have to bring our own PA systems, only to ban the more adventurous for bad behavior. Slash magazine came & went along w/ more than a few of its celebrities, but not before it inspired hundreds to start their own band, fanzine, art project, or at least take a stab at finding something to do that wasn’t status quo. As Slash became a record company, some found a home for their music. But when the magazine closed & Claude Bessy moved to England, it seemed there were fewer times for those spontaneous gatherings. Some of the groups & individuals who seemed poised for greatness just faded, either from lack of ambition or maybe talent or possibly lack of attention from the music business that we all didn’t care for in the first place. Maybe most of us were too weird & misfit for the world at large. Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t do more than make a bonfire in Hollywood for a few years, then pass the torch to a version of punk rock that was more uniform & willing to sleep on anyone’s floor, touring relentlessly under the SST or another DIY banner. In 1978, after the Dangerhouse single “Adult Books” b/w “We’re Desperate,” X drove to & from New York to play only 3 shows (CBGBs, Max’s Kansas City & Studio
54) because we didn’t know of any other & there may not have been any other place to play in between. (Except one very sad pick-up “gig” w/ a broken-down Xmas tree—it was November—in Schwenksville, PA. Above the bar where we played for 20 or so people was an “apartment” where we could spend the night.) From ’78 to ’79 Club 88 & the Hong Kong Café opened & gave LA punk rock a more consistent home. Fear, The Germs, The Alley Cats, The Bags, The Go-Go’s, etc. all worked out the missing pieces of their songs in these 150-capacity bars. LA’s Chinatown, its broken-down courtyard, hokey wishing well, and Golden Pagoda Bar where we learned about the drink the scorpion became another hangout, a testing ground for punk rock. Seventy-five to a hundred punks hung around that courtyard every weekend for a year or two. Madame Wong’s welcomed the new wave bands. Blackie’s in Santa Monica also let some of the roots bands make a racket. The Whisky & the Starwood finally reopened its door to bands who could draw more than 100 people, but only after all these other venues proved that a movement was in their backyard. We thought that moving into legit clubs was what we wanted, but by walking into their world, we probably lost something in the bargain. The LA Times, LA Weekly & Los Angeles Reader picked up on the new music & urged people to go out & find a style of music or band to love & they did. Now that the audience was bigger, they & the bands could afford to break off into genres & the bills where all manner of misfit bands playing together was becoming a thing of the past. Somehow amidst all this, Exene & I got married in Tijuana, where among the 25 friends who accompanied us, a couple of hotheads went to jail. Some local free newspaper ran a sensationalized account of the “crazed punk-rock wedding in TJ” & we were stung. A little more than a week later her sister was tragically killed in a car accident. Everything changed that night, though we didn’t realize it all at once & we began to pull inward. Six months later we released our first LP, Los Angeles, & X began touring the US regularly. The Go-Go’s finally got signed & released their debut. Then in December of 1980 Darby Crash ended his life at 22. We went on a US tour a week later. We weren’t even around for the memorial & that hurt. For a few groups who had more ambition & opportunities, tours became longer & more frequent. There didn’t seem to be the same people around when we returned. We all had grown tired of night-afternight parties & had seen the toll it took. We began to rely more on each other & a few close friends. We didn’t go to the after-hours club Zero Zero as much, a place where both The Germs and The Blasters could hang around w/ transvestites, artists, or other bands and desperate characters, a place where more than once I tried to talk Darby out of his final solution. By the end of ’82 X had two critically acclaimed records on Slash & were about to sign w/ Elektra Records, the home of Love, MC5, The Stooges & The Doors. We were sure we were on our way, but we had left more behind than we knew.
Acknowledgments JOHN DOE SPECIAL THANKS Kristina Teegerstrom, Veronica, Elena & Amelia Nommensen, Kenneth F. Duchac, Gretchen B. Nommensen, Fred Duchac, Joelle Shallon, Alfred Harris, Michael Blake, Ray Manzarek, Grace Cavalieri, Michael Mogavero, Jack Chipman, Mike Rouse, Dave Alvin, Cynthia Wasserman, Dave Way, Viggo Mortensen
TOM DESAVIA SPECIAL THANKS The DeSavias (Tony, Terry & Natalie), The Whites (Nicky, Corey, Ethan & Aaron), Cathy Kerr, Richard Edwards, Matt Messer, Joyce Caffey, Dave & Nicki Bassett, Matt Pincus, Carianne Marshall, Rob Guthrie, Frank Handy, Amanda Tufeld, Mitch Wolk, Rachel Jacobson, Ken Bethea, Murry Hammond, Rhett Miller, Philip Peeples, Eric Gorfain, Sam Phillips, Jenny Oppenheimer, John Vlautin, Lance Ummel, Jeff Boxer
JOHN DOE & TOM DESAVIA SPECIAL THANKS John and Tom would like to thank all the authors and all the photographers who contributed to this project, our agent Lynn Jones Johnston of Lynn Johnston Literary, all at Perseus/Da Capo (especially Ben Schafer, Matty Goldberg, Maha Khalil, Kevin Hanover, Lissa Warren, Sean Maher, Justin Lovell, and Amber Morris), Richard Scheltinga and Christine Langianese from Kessler, Schneider & Co., Scott Sherratt John Doe and Tom DeSavia would like to thank each other.
About the Authors JOHN DOE Born in Decatur, Illinois, John has lived in California for forty years. Graduated from Antioch College in Baltimore, Maryland, he remains a member of the band X, has made ten solo records & acted in over fifty films & television shows. He is the proud father of three daughters & currently lives with his sweetheart in Richmond, California.
TOM DESAVIA A Los Angeles native, music industry veteran, and longtime record and music publishing A&R man, currently of SONGS Music Publishing, DeSavia started his career as a music journalist. He loves LA punk rock more than just about anything.
EXENE CERVENKA Exene Cervenka is a member of both legendary LA punk band X and alt-country pioneers The Knitters. She has been writing songs, music, poetry, prose, and fiction since 1976. Her collages have been exhibited in galleries and museums in LA, NY, Austin, Miami, and Copenhagen.
JANE WIEDLIN Jane Wiedlin is a founding member of The Go-Go’s. The band was the first-ever successful all-girl group to write their own songs and play their own instruments. Jane has released six albums of her own. Besides being a songwriter, guitarist, and singer, she is also a playwright, the world’s first atheist minister (licensed to perform weddings), a comic book author, an actor, and an animal rights activist. She lives in Hawaii and San Francisco.
PLEASANT GEHMAN Pleasant Gehman is a writer, dancer, actor, musician, and painter. She is the author of eight books, including Showgirl Confidential: My Life Onstage, Backstage and on the Road(2013) and The Belly Dance Handbook (2014). Her latest books (Super) Natural Woman, a memoir about her paranormal experiences, and Journalista!, a collection of her rock ‘n’ roll articles from 1977 to 1997, will be published by Punk Hostage Press in 2016. www.pleasantgehman.com
CHRIS MORRIS Morris has been writing about music in Los Angeles since 1978. He was a senior writer at Billboard (1986–2004) and music editor at The Hollywood Reporter (2004–2006) and served as the music critic at the Los Angeles Reader (1978–1996) and LA CityBeat (2003–2008). Morris’s writing has also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, and other national publications. His roots music radio show, Watusi Rodeo, aired on the legendary Indie 103.1
and Scion Radio. His book, Los Lobos: Dream in Blue, was published by the University of Texas Press in 2015.
HENRY ROLLINS Born in Washington, DC, Henry Rollins moved to California in the summer of 1981. For over three decades Rollins made albums with Black Flag and The Rollins Band, wrote over twenty books, and performed in bands and on his own all over the world. He continues to write for magazines and newspapers, publish work on his imprint, 2.13.61 Publications, and speak to audiences in up to twenty countries a year.
CHRIS D. Born in Riverside, California, Chris D. graduated from Loyola Marymount University, Los Angeles. Singer/songwriter for Divine Horsem*n as well as for all incarnations of The Flesh Eaters, he is also a writer, actor, and teacher. He wrote record reviews for Slash magazine (mid-1977–1980), was an A&R man for Slash Records (1980–1984), and was a film programmer at the American Cinematheque, Hollywood (1999–2009). His books include five novels, a short story collection, and two nonfiction film books.
MIKE WATT son of a sailor, was born the year sputnik was launched. came from virginia as a boy and has lived in pedro town ever since. started the minutemen w/ d. boon after becoming involved with the punk movement. works bass and also paddles kayak in the los angeles harbor near his pad. got to learn for 125 months serving w/ the stooges. more information on him and other stuff is at the mikewatt.com website he runs himself.
ROBERT LOPEZ Robert Lopez is an actor, comic, musician, and songwriter for stage musicals, theater, and film soundtracks (yes, that Robert Lopez). He has been performing since a child in punk-rock music. He still performs with The Zeros and other music projects in the United States and Europe. He’s most renowned for his over-twenty-five-year career as El Vez, the Mexican Elvis. Recording dozens of albums, he has toured all over the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and Japan. He has been presented on Oprah and The Tonight Show, and has even been a question on Jeopardy! He has had the honor of having his music and gold Mariachi suit displayed at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC.
TERESA COVARRUBIAS Teresa Covarrubias is a native of Los Angeles, California. Born and raised in Boyle Heights, she is a Chicana, educator, poet, and perpetual outsider. She was the lead singer and songwriter for The Brat and currently works as an elementary school teacher in East LA, where she shares her love of art, music, and lifelong learning with a rambunctious group of second graders.
CHARLOTTE CAFFEY Charlotte was born and lives in Los Angeles and remains a member of The Go-Go’s. She continues her intense passion for song-writing, composing for artists, and theater. She has been married to Jeff McDonald for twenty-three years. She is the fiercely proud parent of her twenty-one-year-old daughter, Astrid McDonald.
JACK GRISHAM Jack Grisham currently lives in a haunted old schoolhouse with his wife and five kids. He writes. He tours. He refuses to play well with others. He is the vocalist for the punk band T.S.O.L.
DAVE ALVIN Grammy Award–winning singer-songwriter Dave Alvin formed The Blasters with his brother, Phil, in 1979. After leaving that band in 1985 and playing guitar for X for two years, he has released multiple solo albums, including King of California, Public Domain, Eleven Eleven, and Ashgrove. He lives in California and on the national interstate highway system on his way to the next show.
KRISTINE MCKENNA A native of Dayton, Ohio, Kristine McKenna moved to Los Angeles in 1976 and began writing about music for various publications. She’s published two volumes of collected interviews and twelve books on different aspects of the West Coast counterculture between the years 1920 and 2001. She continues to live in Los Angeles.
CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS Ed Colver Frank Gargani Michael Hyatt Debbie Leavitt Jenny Lens Gary Leonard Melanie Nissen Rick Nyberg Ruby Ray Ann Summa
Permissions Lyrics reprinted with permission: “We’re Desperate”: Written by John Doe/Exene Cervenka. Published by Lockwood Valley Music. Administered by Pacific Electric Music/Grosso Modo (ASCAP). “Living at the Canterbury”: Written by Jane Wiedlin. Published by MGB Songs/Universal Music (ASCAP). “Lust to Love”: Written by Charlotte Caffey/Jane Wiedlin. Published by MGB Songs/Universal Music (ASCAP). “Our Lips and Sealed”: Written by Jane Wiedlin/Terry Hall. Published by MGB Songs/Universal Music (ASCAP)/Plangent Visions Music LTD (PRS). “This Town”: Written by Charlotte Caffey/Jane Wiedlin. Published by MGB Songs/Universal Music (ASCAP). “We Got the Beat”: Written by Charlotte Caffey. Published by MGB Songs/Universal Music (ASCAP).
Index Adkins, Hasil, 156 Adolescents, 75, 215 “Adult Books” (X), 40, 63 Alexander, Nickey. See Nickey Beat Alice Bag, 26, 49–50, 92, 103, 195 Alice Cooper, 34 Allen, Kittra, 238 Allen, Steve, 128 Alley Cats as part of first generation punk scene, 245 at the Masque, 18, 148 description of, 64–65, 222 “Escape from Planet Earth,” 64 “Nightmare City,” 64 “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore,” 64 “Too Much Junk,” 64 Al’s Bar, 64, 85 Alternative Tentacles, 188 Alvin, Dave early musical interests, 221–222 with The Flesh Eaters, 157, 230–233 See also Blasters Alvin, Phil, 219, 224 See also Blasters Amato, Will, 145 American Music (Blasters), 158 Anders, Alison, 69 Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine, 31 Angel Baby, 103 Angelyne, 43 Angry Samoans, 74, 220 Antioch College, 124 Aqualung (Jethro Tull), 193 Arguelles, Trudie. See Trudi Armendariz, Alice. See Alice Bag Arthur J. and the Gold Cups, 147, 148, 222 Arthur J’s coffeshop, 35 Ash Grove, 221–222 Ashford, Chris, 44 Asleep at the Wheel, 225 “Automatic” (Go-Go’s), 201 Avengers, 42, 50 Ayala, Carlos aka Carlos Guitarlos, 81–82 Azatlan, Hecho, 94
B People, 245 Baby Blue, 43 Baccalero, Sister Karen, 114–115 Baces Hall, 71 Back from Samoa (Angry Samoans), 74 Back Room, 35 Backdoor Man fanzine, 37, 69, 97, 152 Backstage Pass, 37 Bags, 26, 50, 65, 195, 222 See also Alice Bag; Pat Bag; Terry Bag Baiza, Joe, 172, 174 Baja Bugs, 103 Ballard, Hank, 228 Bangs, Lester, 87 Barrett, K. K., 40, 41, 48–49, 55, 61–63, 238 Bassett, Dave, 75 Bateman, Bill, 157, 220, 224, 230, 233 Bates, Jules, 162 Bazz, John, 220, 224, 233 BDSM, 21 Beahm, Paul. See Darby Crash “Beat Your Heart Out” (Zeros), 97, 105 Beatles, 186, 191 “Beatnik Beach” (Go-Go’s), 198 Beauty and the Beat (Go-Go’s), 73, 240 Bell, Judith, 150, 153, 154, 157, 161 Bell, Michelle “Gerber,” 37 Bello, Elissa, 197 Belushi, John, 73, 159 Bentley, Bill, 229 Berle, Marshall, 65 Berlin, Steve, 157, 159, 230 Berry, Chuck, 63, 185, 208 “Berserk Town” (Plugz), 65 Bertha’s, 123 Bessy, Claude. See Kickboy Face “A Better World” (Screamers), 62 Big Joe, 228 Biggs, Bob, 154, 156, 158 Billy Idol (William Broad), 39 Billy Zoom (Tyson Kindell), 2, 11, 63, 128, 154, 187, 208 Bingenheimer, Rodney, 15, 43, 46, 134 Black Flag Damaged, 74–75 description of, 184, 217 friendship with Minutemen, 178–179 logo, 74, 88 objectives of, 137–138 photo of, 80 restructuring of, 72, 188 violence at shows, 117, 240
Black Randy and the Metro Squad description of, 66, 133, 184, 222 friendship with The Screamers, 42 at Save the Masque benefit, 50 violence at shows, 246 Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie, 66 “Trouble at the Cup,” 66, 133 Blackie’s, 64, 248 “Blades” (Go-Go’s), 197 Blasters American Music, 158 musical style, 223–225 at Olympic Auditorium, 217–220, 232–233 philosophy of, 225 Queen, opening for, 226 sponsorship of other bands, 73, 228 success of, 158–159 violent situations, 220–221 Zero Zero, as a favorite hangout, 249 Blessed, 108 Blondie, 8, 184, 185, 188, 194 Blood on the Saddle, 73 Blue Öyster Cult, 71, 168, 192 Bo Diddley, 185, 228 Bo Weavil Jackson, 69 Bobby Pyn. See Darby Crash Body, Genny, 37 Bolles, Don, 106, 173, 198 Bomp! Magazine, 152 Bomp! Records, 37, 43, 44, 65, 105 Bonebrake, Donald J. “DJ,” 2, 63, 148, 157, 194, 230 Boomtown Rats, 225 Boon, Dennes “D.” meeting Matt Watt, 165–166 discovering punk rock, 170–171 learning to play guitar, 167–168 with the Reactionaries, 170–171 Black Flag, association with, 177–179 death of, 182 See also Minutemen Boston Rock magazine, 152 Bowie, David, 14, 34, 186 Bradley, Mayor Tom, 81–82 The Brat, 66, 93–94, 112–114, 116, 118–120 Braun, David aka David Brown, 41, 61 Braverman, Kate, 126 Broad, William aka Billy Idol, 39 Brown, Roy, 228 Bukowski, Charles, 9, 21, 123, 126, 186 Burnette, Pat, 159 Burns, Raymond aka Captain Sensible, 46
“Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat” (Minutemen), 180 Byrne, David aka David B., 124 Caffey, Charlotte classical music background, 193 early interest in music, 191–193 with The Eyes, 194–196 at Immaculate Heart College, 193 with Manuel and the Gardeners, 192–194 Jane Wiedlin, as songwriting collaborator, 24, 199–206 Joe Ramirez, as songwriting collaborator, 193–194 See also Go-Go’s Can, 62 Cannibal and the Headhunters, 111 Canterbury apartment building, 19, 22–23, 27, 107 Capallero, Lee. See Lee Ving Capitol Records, 120 Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet), 192 Captain Sensible (Raymond Burns), 46 Carlisle, Belinda description of, 23, 37, 39, 45, 238 relationship with Pleasant Gehman, 50 rockabilly, conversion to, 51 See also Go-Go’s Carlos Guitarlos (Carlos Ayala), 81–82 cars, 207–208 Case, Peter, 44, 45, 227–228 Cash, Johnny, 156 Castration Squad, 26 Cathay de Grande, 52, 64, 73 Catholic Damage, 22 Catholic Discipline, 109, 245 Cavaleri, Grace, 124 CBGBs, 108, 124, 247 Cervenka, Exene. See Exene Cervenka, Mirielle, 11, 24, 160–162 Chai, Dianne, 64, 65 Champs, 111 Cheap Trick, 54 Chenelle, Baba, 97 Cherie the Penguin, 48, 55 Childers, Leee Black, 51 China White, 188 Chipman, Jack, 125, 129 Chloe (hairdresser, makeup artist), 18, 41 Chris D. (Chris Desjardins) at CBS Records tape library, 153, 154 close calls with cars, 161 description of, 68 as English teacher, 146 personal life, 145–147, 149–150
as producer of Fire of Love, 70 punk rock definition, 143 at Slash magazine, 145, 150–152, 154–158 at Slash Records, 156–160, 229 as Upsetter Records founder, 68, 153 See also Flesh Eaters Chuck (roadie), 11 cigarettes, 140–141 Circle Jerks, 75, 188, 245 Clarksville, Connie, 51 Clary, Susan, 160, 229 Clash, 43, 155, 156, 222 classic rock, 5 Clichés, 118 Clockwork Orange soundtrack, 193 Club 88, 64, 67, 91, 220, 227, 247 Club Lingerie, 64 Cobain, Kurt, 68 Cochran, Eddie, 185, 208 co*ckettes, 41, 62 Coconut Teaszer club, 75 Cohlmeyer, Dave, 60 Coley, Byron, 231 Colver, Ed, 75–77, 79 Conehead, Miss, 25–26 Contortions, 108 Controllers, 18, 71, 154, 245 Cook, Paul, 50 Cook, Stu, 167 Copeland, Miles, 206 Covarrubias, Teresa Chicano roots of, 120–121 early interest in punk, 111–112 Vex, importance of, 116–117 See also The Brat Cramps, 37, 51, 64, 70, 108, 225 Creedence Clearwater Revival, 71, 167 Creem magazine, 31, 59, 87, 96, 168–169 Creeping Ritual, 70 Crosby, Dennis, 36, 47 Crowd, 188, 215 Cruising soundtrack, 67 Cuckoo’s Nest, 220, 227 Curland, Lisa, 47, 48, 50 Curtis, Tony, 31–32 Cutler, Paul, 106 Daalder, Rene, 62 Damaged (Black Flag), 74–75 Damned, 8, 33, 40, 43–46, 86, 185 Dangerhouse Records, 41, 61, 86, 153, 154
Danielle’s coffee shop, 35 Darby Crash aka Bobby Pyn (Paul Beahm) alcohol abuse, 44 description of, 67–68, 237 peanut butter smearing, 98, 195 relationship with Pleasant Gehman, 33, 50 death, 8, 52, 239, 248 See also Germs David B. (David Byrne), 124 Days of Wine and Roses (Dream Syndicate), 159 Dead Boys, 64 Deadbeats, 148, 222, 245 Dean, Johanna “Spock,” 37 Decline of Western Civilization (documentary), 11, 52, 67, 109 Del Fuegos, 229 Del Rey, Marina, 37 Delaney, Pat, 100 Delphina, 92, 102, 147 Denny, John, 3, 46 Derf Scratch (Frederick Milner), 159 DeSavia, Tom acid-taking experience, 75–77 album covers, attraction to, 74–75 photo of Exene, fascination with, 80 Desjardins, Chris. See Chris D. “Destroy All Music 7” (Weirdos), 71, 131 Devo, 47, 54, 185 Dexter, Levi, 50–51, 72 Dickies major label contract, 187 at the Masque, 149 musical style, 222 at Save the Masque benefit, 50 at the Starwood, 196 “You’re So Hideous,” 199 Dils, 50, 72, 148 Dinger, Klaus, 62 Disgraceland, 197 Divine Horsem*n, 145 Doe, John in Baltimore, Maryland, 123–125 Exene’s sister’s death, reaction to, 24 with Flesh Eaters, 157, 230 introduction to The Brat, 114 living on his own, 129–130 meeting Billy Zoom, 128 moving to Los Angeles, 125–126 partying at Pleasant’s house, 48 at performance by The Brat, 93 photo of, 85 relationship with Exene, 9–11, 126–127, 248
at X performance at Whisky a Go Go, 1–3 See also X Don Vinyl, 42 “Don’t Push Me Around” (Zeros), 97 “Don’t Talk to Me” (Eyes), 194–195 Doors, 6, 8, 123, 139, 156, 186, 208, 249 Dotson, Ward, 70 Double Nickels on the Dime (Minutemen), 188 Dream Syndicate, 159, 160, 229 Duardo, Richard, 94, 118 Dub, Debbie, 19, 21 Dukowski, Chuck, 137, 171 Dunning, Brad, 50 Eagles, 186 Edie and the Eggs, 196, 199 El Vez. See Lopez, Roberto Electrify Me LP (Plugz), 65 “Electrify Me” (Plugz), 65 Elektra Records, 160, 249 Elks Lodge, 50, 71, 85, 222, 246 Elvis Costello (Declan McManus), 188 English Disco, 15, 34 Epic Records, 155 “Escape from Planet Earth” (Alley Cats), 64 Escovedo, Alejandro, 65, 72 Escovedo, Javier, 65, 97, 99 Escovedo, Mario, 103 Exene (Christine Cervenka) apartment behind Circus Books, 40, 53–54 at Club 88, 91 as codesigner of Tooth and Nail record labels, 154 description of, 38 hand-lettering technique, 88 influences on, 63 introduction to The Brat, 93, 114 John Doe, relationship with, 9, 126–127, 248 partying at Pleasant’s house, 48 photos of, 79, 85 sister Mirielle’s death, 24, 160, 162 songwriting, 186–187 See also X Eyes, 71, 148, 149, 194–195, 245 Fabulous Thunderbirds, 225 Factory, 35 “Fake Contest” (Minutemen), 180 Fall, 68 Farrah Fawcett Minor aka Fay, 40, 53–55, 141 “Fashion Seekers” (Go-Go’s), 198 Father Yod, 193 Fatima Records, 94
Fats Domino, 186 Faye, D. D., 98, 152 Fear, 73, 160, 188, 217, 229 Fenders, 116 Fernandez, Vincent, 103 Fields, Robbie. See Posh Boy Fire of Love (Gun Club), 70, 158 Flaming Groovies, 194 Fleetwood (club), 214 Fleetwood Mac, 186 Flesh Eaters at the Masque, 149 description of, 68–69 musical style, 72 early recordings, 152 Forever Came Today, 69 A Hard Road to Follow, 69 A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, 68, 157, 158, 230–231 No Questions Asked, 68, 155 Fleury, Joseph, 198 Flipside magazine, 152 Fly Boys, 153 Fogerty, John, 167 Forever Came Today (Flesh Eaters), 69, 159 “Forming” (Germs), 67 Fowley, Kim, 37, 43, 47 Fragile (Yes), 192 Friedkin, William, 67 Fuller, Sam, 157 “Fun With Ropes” (Go-Go’s), 199 Funhouse (Stooges), 146 F-Word, 3, 245 “A Gain A Loss” (Plugz), 65 Gallup, Cliff, 63 Gamboa, Harry, 118 Gargani, Frank, 80, 81, 83, 85, 89 Garrett, Pat “Rand,” 40 Gaye, Marvin, 1 Gear, Tommy, 41, 48, 61 Gears, 245 Gehman, Pleasant alienation from 70s pop culture, 34–35 as club booker, 52 Darby Crash and Pat Smear, 32–33 epic party at mom’s house, 48–49 favorite hangouts, 35–36 with Hellin and Trudi, 38–39 Jane Wiedlin, friendship with, 17, 38, 50 Levi Dexter, relationship with, 72 make-out companions, 49–50
out all night with The Damned, 46 prurient interests, 36 as publisher of Lobotomy, 52 rockabilly, conversion to, 51 Screamers, fascination with, 41–42 in Screamin’ Sirens band, 52 writing career, 47, 51, 52 Generation X fanzine, 38 Genzale, John Jr aka Johnny Thunders, 108 Germs debut at Orpheum Theater, 44–45, 98 description of, 222 fans of, 66–67 at Whisky a Go Go, 47 death of Darby Crash, 133 penultimate show at Starwood, 54 Zero Zero, as a favorite hangout, 249 “Forming,” 67 GI, 51, 67, 133 “Lexicon Devil,” 67, 199 “Shut Down,” 133 GI (Germs), 51, 67, 133 Ginn, Greg, 87, 137, 178, 179, 240 Give ‘Em Enough Rope (Clash), 155 glitter rock, 14, 16–17 Go-Go’s beginning of, 22, 22–23, 28 songwriting by, 28, 198–205 success of, 73, 188, 240, 248 recording contract, 206 “Automatic,” 201 “Beatnik Beach,” 198 Beauty and the Beat, 73, 240 “Blades,” 197 “Fashion Seekers,” 198 “Fun With Ropes,” 199 “He’s So Strange,” 200 “How Much More,” 197 “Living at the Canterbury,” 197 “London Boys,” 198 “Lust to Love,” 200–201 “Our Lips Are Sealed,” 201–203 “Over Run,” 197 “Party Pose,” 197 “Robert Hilburn,” 197 “Screaming,” 200 “Skidmarks on My Heart,” 198 “This Town,” 204–205 “We Got the Beat,” 203–204, 206 Goblin, 104 Gold Cup coffee shop, 35
Gorilla Rose, 42, 108 Gormé, Eydie, 103 Graham, Terry. See Terry Bag Granny Takes a Trip punk rock clothing store, 17, 38 Grapes, Jack, 126 Grasso, Bob, 148 Graves, Rob, 106 Gravity Talks (Green on Red), 159 Green on Red, 159, 229 Grisham, Jack backlash from violence, 209, 216 discovery of hardcore punk, 212–213 father, hatred of, 213 hostility toward authority, 213–214 LA punks, opinion of, 211–212 as member of Vicious Circle, 214–215 release of hate and hurt, 215 Gun Club, 37, 70, 72, 158, 160, 228, 245 Hal Negro and the Satin Tones, 42, 100 Hall, Terry, 201 “Hand Grenade Heart” (Zeros), 97 A Hard Road to Follow (Flesh Eaters), 69 Harrigan, David. See Tomata du Plenty Hart, Fay, 161–162 Hauser, Fayette, 41 Heartbreakers, 124 Hellin Killer alleged loss of virginity, 50 hanging out at the Whisky, 40 meeting Pleasant Gehman, 38–39 meeting The Damned at Bomp!, 44 partying at Pleasant’s house, 48 in the Plunger Pit apartment building, 55, 105 Screamers, friendship with, 42 Henry, Blaze, 128 heroin, 28, 52, 140, 142 Herron, Willie, 115 “He’s So Strange” (Go-Go’s), 200 “Hey Joe”/“Piss Factory” (Patti Smith), 59 hippies, 18, 25 “History Lesson, Part II” (Minutemen), 178 Hoffman, Kristian, 96, 198 Holiday, Chase, 107–108 Hong Kong Café, 64, 65, 70, 114, 247 Hooker, John Lee, 228 Horses (Patti Smith), 59, 124 “How Much More” (Go-Go’s), 197 Howie Pyro (Howard Kusten), 108 Hurley, George, 170, 178, 181 Hüsker Du, 181
“I Got a Right/Gimme Some Skin” (Stooges), 145 “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (Stooges), 170 “I Wanna Hurt” (Screamers), 62 Iggy and the Stooges. See Stooges Iggy Pop (James Osterberg, Jr), 15, 96, 145 “In This House That I Call Home” (X), 236 I.R.S. Records, 73, 206 Jackson, Wanda, 185 Jam, 112, 196 James, Ethan, 181 Jameson, Robyn, 159 Jefferson Airplane, 156 Jerks, 108 Jesus Christ Superstar soundtrack, 193 Joan Jett (Joan Larkin), 15, 37, 40, 47–50, 51, 67 Jones, Steve, 50 Jonze, Spike, 63 “Joy” (Minutemen), 179 Kalberg, Bruce, 152 Kaye, Randy, 36, 40, 43, 47, 50 Kereakes, Theresa, 38, 50 Kickboy Face (Claude Bessy) friendliness of, 173 giving speed to John Doe, 142 move to England, 241 as writer for Slash, 60, 86, 100, 109, 145, 147, 240 Kid Congo aka Kid Congo Powers (Brian Tristan) as clerk at Bomp! Records, 37, 43 joining The Cramps, 70 as member of The Gun Club, 37, 47 name change to Kid Congo Powers, 70 as president of Screamers fan club, 41, 92 return to roots rock, 103 “Kill Your Parents” (Eyes), 194 Kindell, Tyson. See Billy Zoom Kinman, Chip, 42, 72 Kinman, Tony, 42, 72 Kipper Kids, 100 Kirk, Don, 69, 159 Knack, 187 Kraftwerk, 34 KROQ, 15, 111, 118, 134 Krusoe, James, 126 Kusten, Howard aka Howie Pyro, 108 “La Bamba” (Plugz), 65, 219 La Penna, Jim, 38 LA Weekly, 51, 52, 109, 248 Langland, Jane aka Jade Zebest, 38 Larkin, Joan. See Joan Jett
Larriva, Tito with The Flesh Eaters, 148 interview with Los Angeles Reader, 65 introducing Los Lobos to punk, 66 as producer of Fire of Love, 70 return to Latino roots, 103 See also Plugz Larry the Scientologist, 25 Led Zeppelin, 96, 191, 193 Lee, Arthur, 1 Lee, Craig, 51, 100, 109 Lee Ving (Lee Capallero), 217–218, 232, 238 Lens, Jenny, 81, 83–84, 87 Leonard, Gary, 82–85 Levi and the Rockats, 72, 225 Lewis, Jerry Lee, 185 “Lexicon Devil” (Germs), 67, 199 Liebezeit, Jaki, 62 Lipstick Killers, 155 Little Richard (Richard Penniman), 185 “Living at the Canterbury” (Go-Go’s), 197 Lobotomy fanzine, 50, 52 “London Boys” (Go-Go’s), 198 London Calling (Clash), 155 Lone Justice, 73 Lopez, Robert aka El Vez early interests, 95–96 in New York City, 107–108 as part of Los Angeles punk scene, 99–103 Tomata du Plenty, admiration for, 104 return to Latino roots, 103 See also Zeros Lorna Doom (Terry Ryan), 11, 23, 37 Los Angeles counterculture in, 84–86 in 1970s, 85, 207, 235 Los Angeles album (X), 156, 240, 248 Los Angeles Reader (alternative weekly), 64, 65, 71, 87, 248 Los Angeles Times, 24, 70, 86, 87, 206, 248 Los Angeles Trade-Technical College, 14 Los Illegals, 66, 93–94, 113, 115, 116 Los Lobos, 66, 73, 103, 116, 118, 160, 228, 229 Loud, Lance, 96, 198 Love, 186, 249 Lucas, Sue aka Soo Catwoman, 39 “Lust to Love” (Go-Go’s), 200–201 Lydon, John aka Johnny Rotten, 66 Madame Wong’s, 85, 118, 248 Madness, 112, 206 “Main St. Brat” (Zeros), 97
Manuel and the Gardeners, 192 Manzarek, Ray, 1 Masque opening of, 33–34, 49 description, 18, 49, 148, 189, 195 featured bands, 65, 149, 196 Save the Masque benefits, 50, 246 closing of, 63, 246 Massey, Edith, 196 Max’s Kansas City, 35, 51, 108, 124, 247 MC5, 185, 249 MCA Records, 64 McCarthy, John, 64 McDonnell, Allen “Basho Macko,” 145, 147 McKee, Maria, 73 McKenna, Kristine, 87 McLean, Ann, 47, 51 McManus, Declan aka Elvis Costello, 188 McNally, Rand, 41 Medina, Rudy, 93, 112 Medina, Sidney, 93, 112 Melody Maker (music paper), 152 Meltzer, Richard, 71, 156, 176, 182 Mendez-Lopez, Roy, 168 Mercury Records, 59 Middle Class, 154, 188, 214 Thee Midniters, 111 Millar, Christopher aka Rat Scabies, 46 Milner, Frederick aka Derf Scratch, 159 A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die (Flesh Eaters), 68, 157, 158, 230–231 Minutemen band name, 176 econo lifestyle, 175, 188 musical style, 71, 176–178 rehearsing, 174 touring, 181–182 Black Flag, association with, 178–179 “Buzz or Howl Under the Influence of Heat,” 180 Double Nickels on the Dime, 188 “Fake Contest,” 180 “History Lesson, Part II,” 178 “Joy,” 179 Paranoid Time, 178 Project: Mersh, 181 Punch Line, 71, 179 Three-Way Tie (For Last), 181 “What Makes a Man Start Fires?”, 180 Misfits, 74, 229 Mitchell, Joni, 191 Modern Lovers, 185 Mohr, Bill, 126
Moody Blues, 186 Morris, Chris avoidance of certain bands, 66–68, 71–72 Chris D., description of, 68–69 as DJ, 57–59 hardcore bands, opinion of, 71–72 Jeffrey Lee Pierce, meeting, 69–71 as LA Reader columnist, 87 at Parallax Theatre Systems, 58–60 punk rock scene, discovery of, 61–63 at Rhino Records, 61 on roots-punk wave, 72–73 Morris, Keith, 70, 188 Morrison, Jim, 1 Motels, 33, 197, 225 Mudd Club, 108 Mullen, Brendan, 33, 60, 63, 195, 238–239 Mumps, 96, 198 Murphy beds, 53–54 Muskadine Records, 69 Myron’s Ballroom, 68 Nagler, Nancy, 50 Nanos, Jimmy, 128 Natasha, 38 Neat Neat Neat (Damned), 40 Neats, 160 Negative Trend, 154 Negro, Hal and the Satin Tones, 42, 100 Nerves, 44, 222, 245 Neu, 62 New Musical Express (newspaper), 152 new wave music, 46 New York Dolls, 35, 96, 97, 98, 99, 186 New York Rocker magazine, 52 Nickey Beat (Nickey Alexander), 26, 49–50 Nieve, Steve, 161–162 “Nightmare City” (Alley Cats), 64 Nissen, Melanie, 82, 86–87, 151 NME music paper, 37 No Mag magazine, 152 No Questions Asked (Flesh Eaters), 68, 155 Nomi, Klaus, 108 Norte, Marisela, 118 “Nothing Means Nothing Anymore” (Alley Cats), 64 Nuns, 42, 65, 149 Odd Squad, 113, 116, 118 Offs, 42 Olavarria, Margot, 23, 107, 196, 197 Olympic Auditorium, 219 “122 Hours of Fear” (Screamers), 62
Orpheum Theater, 33, 44, 45, 97 Osterberg, James Jr. See Iggy Pop “Our Lips Are Sealed” (Go-Go’s), 201–203 “Over Run” (Go-Go’s), 197 Page, Bettie, 21 Panter, Gary, 42, 100, 151 Paranoid Time (Minutemen), 178 “Party Pose” (Go-Go’s), 197 Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie (Black Randy), 66 Pat Bag (Pat Rainone), 38, 44, 50 Pat Smear (Georg Ruthenberg), 33, 44, 68, 195 Patronette, Rosemarie “Wyline,” 51 Patterson, Phast Phreddie, 37, 48, 69 “Peer Pressure” (Screamers), 62, 199 Penalosa, Hector, 97, 103, 106 Penniman, Richard aka Little Richard, 185 Perloff, Marsha, 40 Persons, Billy, 51 Pettibon, Raymond, 75, 87–88, 173 Phast Phreddie Patterson, 37, 48, 69, 97, 152, 228 Phillips, Leonard, 196 Pierce, Jeffrey Lee aka Ranking Jeffrey Lee, 37, 51, 69–71, 145, 147, 158 Plimsouls, 225, 227 Plugz musical style, 222 treatment of “La Bamba,” 103 at the Vex, 116 “A Gain A Loss,” 65 “Berserk Town,” 65 “Electrify Me,” 65 Electrify Me LP, 65 “La Bamba,” 65, 219 Plunger Pit, 55, 105 Plungers, 105 Poly Styrene, 112 Population: One (musical), 62 Port of LA, 71 Posh Boy (Robbie Fields), 154, 238 Thee Precisions, 69, 228 Pretenders, 188 Project: Mersh (Minutemen), 181 Prole magazine, 179 Public Image Ltd., 66 Punch Line (Minutemen), 71, 179 “Punish or Be Damned” (Screamers), 62 punk rock band solidarity, 226–228 changes in punk scene, 28, 43, 51–52, 71–72, 109, 113, 117–119, 180–181, 188, 231–232, 239–241 clothing styles, 38–39, 44, 174, 237 compilation LPs, 131, 153
deaths, 6, 138, 162 defined, 184–185 diversity in, 101–102, 236 drug and alcohol use, 25, 27–28, 48, 73, 135, 137, 138, 140–142 in East LA, 113–119 first generation bands, 222 first generation punk scene, 7, 22, 33–34, 169–170, 172, 177, 184–185, 189, 195, 223, 236, 239, 246 flyers, 88 hangouts, 247–248 hardcore, 71, 116, 117, 121, 188, 217, 218, 240–241 hippies, attitude toward, 18, 25 “Hollywood” influence on, 136 joke bands, 100 Latino/Chicano musicians, 91–94, 102–103, 111 logos, 74–75 magazines about, 152 night clubs, 64 (See also Masque; Whisky a Go Go) Orange County fans, 28, 51, 109, 117, 209–215 photographers of, 79–89 pre-punk bands, 194 roots of, 6 roots-punk wave, 72 sexual relationships, 49–50 song-writing, 183–188, 194, 199–205 violence at shows, 71–72, 74, 117–118, 220, 232 Punk Rock Prom, 115 Pure Hell, 64 Quad Teck, 159 Queen, 225–226 Queens of Noise (Runaways), 40 Quick, 33, 46 Quintana, Charlie “Chalo,” 65, 92 Rainone, Patricia. See Pat Bag Raji’s, 52 Ramirez, Joe, 148, 192–196 Ramones, 7, 184, 185, 194 Randoms, 50 Rank and File, 72, 228, 229 Rat, Mary, 44, 55 Rat Scabies (Christopher Millar), 46 Raw Power (Stooges), 146 Ray Campi and his Rockabilly Rebels, 225 Record Plant, 6 Recycler, 127, 170 Redding, Otis, 1 Reed, Lou, 34 R.E.M., 181–182 Rhino Records, 61, 69, 245 Richard Hell (Richard Meyers), 174 Richey, John, 148
Ridgway, Stan, 153 Rik L Rik, 3, 154, 238, 245 Rilly, Billy Lee, 156 Ritter, Rob, 70 Rivers, Johnny, 8 “Robert Hilburn” (Go-Go’s), 197 Rock Scene magazine, 31 rockabilly, 51 Roessler, Kira, 37 Roessler, Paul, 37, 61 Rollin’ Rock Records, 158 Rollins, Henry early interest in punk rock, 131, 133 reaction to Los Angeles music scene, 134–137 development of underground punk network, 188 See also Black Flag roots-punk wave, 72 Roxy Music, 14, 186 Roxy Theatre, 62, 118 Rubber City Rebels, 225 Rubell, Steve, 108 Ruby Records, 158, 160, 229 Runaways, 33, 37, 40, 67 Ruthenberg, Georg. See Pat Smear Ryan, Gary, 11 Ryan, Terry. See Lorna Doom Saccharine Trust, 93, 137, 217 Samiof, Steve, 47, 59, 86, 151 Santana, Carlos, 103 Saturday Night Live (TV show), 73 Schwartz, Andy, 152 Screamers description of, 61–62, 104, 136, 222 originality of, 3 at Orpheum Theater, 45 photos of, 81, 86–87 reaction to, 40–41 Save the Masque benefit, 50 “122 Hours of Fear,” 62 “A Better World,” 62 “I Wanna Hurt,” 62 “Peer Pressure,” 62, 199 “Punish or Be Damned,” 62 “Vertigo,” 62 “Wilton Hilton,” 18, 41–42 Screamin’ Sirens, 52, 73 “Screaming” (Go-Go’s), 200 Search and Destroy magazine, 152 Seeds, 97 Selecter, 112
Self Help Graphics and Art, 114–115, 117–118 Seventh Heaven (Patti Smith), 59 Sex Pistols, 50, 101, 156, 222, 236 Shark Club, 220 Shaw, Greg, 37, 65, 98, 152 Schock, Gina, 199 “Shut Down” (Germs), 133 Silverhead, 15 Siouxsie Sioux (Susan Ballion), 39, 112 Sir Douglas Quintet, 225 “Skidmarks on My Heart” (Go-Go’s), 198 Skulls, 71, 148, 245 Slash magazine, 47, 59, 86–87, 145, 150–152, 155, 157, 240, 246 Slash Records, 65, 67, 154, 156, 228 Slits, 112 Smith, Frances, 126 Smith, Patti, 34, 59, 124, 185, 194 Snowden, Don, 70 Social Distortion, 215 Sonics, 185 Soo Catwoman (Sue Lucas), 39 Sounds music paper, 37, 152 Source Family, 193 Sparks, 14 Spastics, 148 Spazz Attack, 238 Spheeris, Penelope, 67, 109 Split Enz, 225 Springsteen, Bruce, 108 SST Records, 87, 137, 178, 188, 240 Stains, 93–94, 116, 121, 188 Standells, 97 Stardust Ballroom, 72 Starwood Club, 33, 43, 46, 54, 112, 206, 246, 248 Statman, Anna, 37, 51, 52, 69 Stevens, Rocky, 153 Stevenson, Gordon, 160 Stodola, Randy, 64, 152 Stone, Carl, 176 Stones, 191 Stooges, 34, 96, 145, 146, 170, 185, 249 Strummer, Joe, 143 Studio 54, 108, 247 Suburban Lawns, 217 Sugar Shack, 35 Suitcase, 42 Summa, Ann, 81, 83, 86 Sun Records, 105–106 sunglasses, 208 Suquette, Joe “Vex,” 115 “Survive” (Bags), 65
Suspiria soundtrack, 104 T-Rex, 14 Talking Heads, 124 Tamburovich, Martin, 171 Tapestry (Carol King), 193 Taylor, Gene, 220, 224, 233 Teenage Jesus, 108 Television, 185, 194 Terrell, Tammy, 1 Terry Bag, 21, 27, 70 “This Town” (Go-Go’s), 204–205 Thomas, Dean, 50 Three-Way Tie (For Last) (Minutemen), 181 Tomata du Plenty (David Harrigan), 3, 41, 48, 62 Tonche, Frank, 174, 177, 178 Tony the Hustler, 48 “Too Much Junk” (Alley Cats), 64 Tooth and Nail (compilation LP), 68, 153 Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs, 73, 157 Tristan, Brian. See Kid Congo Trixie, 100, 105, 107 Tropicana Motel, 46, 51 “Trouble at the Cup” (Black Randy), 66, 133 Trout Mask Replica (Captain Beefheart), 192 Trudi (Trudie Arguelles), 38, 42, 44, 48, 49, 50, 55, 105, 238 T.S.O.L., 75, 188, 215 Turner, Big Joe, 186, 228 Tyranny and Mutation (Blue Öyster Cult), 192 Under the Big Black Sun (X), 11 Undertakers, 113, 116 Upsetter fanzine, 150 Upsetter Records, 68, 153, 155 Urban, Peter, 42 Urinals, 71 Valens, Ritchie, 65, 92 Valentine, Kathy, 206 Van Halen, 33 Van Vliet, Don aka Captain Beefheart, 192 Vandals, 74 Vanian, Dave, 44, 46, 86 Velvet Underground, 97, 98, 99, 185 Venice Poetry Workshop, 126 Ventures, 225 “Vertigo” (Screamers), 62 Vex club, 64, 94, 115–117, 119 Vicious Circle, 214 Village Voice, 156 Vincent, Holly, 37 Violent Children, 121
Violent Femmes, 160 Wahl, Chris, 159 Waits, Tom, 46, 126 Wall of Voodoo, 153, 225 Waller, Don, 37, 152 Warhol, Andy, 35 Wasted Youth, 75 Waters, John, 123–124 Watt, Mike Black Flag, association with, 177–179 death of D. Boon, 182 discovering punk rock, 170–171 econo defined, 175 learning to play bass guitar, 167–168 meeting D. Boon, 165–166 with the Reactionaries, 170–171 See also Minutemen “We Don’t Need the English” (Bags), 65–66 “We Got the Beat” (Go-Go’s), 203–204, 206 “We Got the Neutron Bomb” (Weirdos), 71, 199 Weirdos description of, 3, 44, 46, 71, 98, 222 as kings of LA punk scene, 18 at the Orpheum Theater, 97 at Save the Masque benefit, 50 “Destroy All Music 7,” 71, 131 “We Got the Neutron Bomb,” 71, 199 Weiss, Robin, 158 Weiswasser, Marc, 169 Went, Johanna, 100 “We’re Desperate” (X), 199 West, Nathaniel, 123 Westwood, Vivienne, 21 “What Makes a Man Start Fires?” (Minutemen), 180 Whisky a Go Go, 24, 47, 61, 112, 194, 246, 248 Who, 191 Wiedlin, Jane at the Canterbury, 19–22, 25–28, 106–107 Charlotte Caffey, songwriting collaboration with, 24, 199–206 drug use, 20, 25, 27 glitter rock obsession, 14–17 hairstyles, 18 at Los Angeles Trade Tech, 14 parents’ reaction to, 14, 16, 19 Pleasant Gehman, friendship with, 17 punk rock fashion, 16–17 suicide attempt, 15–16 Terry Bag (Terry Graham), relationship with, 21–22, 27 See also Go-Go’s Wild Gift (X), 11, 158
“Wild Weekend” (Zeros), 105 Wiley, David, 106 Wilhelm, Shannon, 26, 28 Williams, Mark, 229 Wilton Hilton, 18, 41–42, 104 “Wimp” (Zeros), 97 Winogrand, Garry, 83 Winstanley, Philomena, 145, 147 Winterland Ballroom, 50 Women’s Wear Daily, 16 “The World’s a Mess (It’s in My Kiss)” (X), 143 Woronov, Mary, 42 X description of, 184, 222 performing in New York, 247 promotion of the Blasters, 228 release of Los Angeles, 156, 240 at Save the Masque benefit, 50 signing with Elektra, 160, 249 on tour, 248 at the Vex, 115 “Adult Books,” 40, 63 “In This House That I Call Home,” 236 Los Angeles album, 156, 240, 248 Under the Big Black Sun, 11 “We’re Desperate,” 199 Wild Gift, 11, 158 “The World’s a Mess (It’s in My Kiss)”, 143 X8, 102 Yes, 192 Yes L.A. (compilation album), 153 Yoakam, Dwight, 73, 228 Young, Neil, 191 “You’re So Hideous” (Dickies), 199 Zacha, Paul, 162 Zandra, 38 Zarkons, 65 Ze Whiz Kidz, 62 Zero Zero club, 73, 225, 248 Zeros, 33, 44, 45, 65, 97–99, 105–106 Zolar X, 15
