We Got the Neutron Bomb Read online

  DEDICATION: This work is dedicated to all the original punk ghosts and the crazy legacy that they left behind: John “Jackie” Morris (Black Randy), Jan Paul Beahm (Darby Crash), Claude Bessy (Kickboy Face), Kevin Wood, Rik L. Rik, Margaret Montgomery, Dear Orca, Craig Lee, Mike Doud, Chuck Wagon, Cliff Hanger, Shannon Wilhelm, El Duce, Tomata du Plenty, Leslie Holmes, Liara Goldsmith, Mick Wallace, Tom Ayres, Top Jimmy, Daphne Treibach, D. Boon, Muriel Cervenka, Jules Bates, Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Jane King, Blank Frank, Dennis Dannell.

  And to Joey Ramone.

  contents

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction: Let’s Get Rid of New York

  Prologue: The Boy Looked at Jimbo

  A case is made to declare Jim Morrison of Los Angeles, California, the godfather of punk.

  Chapter 1 “The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man”: Rodney’s English Disco and the Glitter Rock Deca-Dance (1971–75)

  The glitter rock invasion provides L.A.’s outcasts with an alternative to the singer-songwriter’s stranglehold. David Bowie is king. Rodney’s English Disco is his court.

  Chapter 2 Trouble at the Riot House: L.A. Glitter’s Downward Spiral (1974–75)

  The Stooges and New York Dolls burn out on smack and sickness, as Babylon’s glitter kids’ pretty faces go to hell.

  Chapter 3 Back Door Man and the New Order (1974–75)

  From the ashes of glitter and in anticipation of punk, a new hard rock (exemplified by Stooges bass player Ron Asheton’s New Order) and a zine to celebrate it, Back Door Man, are born.

  Chapter 4 “Young Americans” (1975–76)

  The teenagers who missed out on glitter rock’s heyday discover Iggy and the Stooges’ Raw Power and find each other at the Sugar Shack.

  Chapter 5 Queens of Noise: The Rise of the Runaways (1975–76)

  The Runaways, hypemeister Kim Fowley’s all-girl, American teenage Beatles, are formed. Dismissed by most, they’re warmly embraced by the kids in L.A.

  Chapter 6 Radio Free Hollywood (1976–77)

  Rodney Bingenheimer takes a job on the radio at KROQ and begins broadcasting punk. The Motels spearhead a DIY movement, and Kim Fowley’s new find, the Quick, is poised to become the next American teenage Beatles.

  Chapter 7 Forming: The Screamers, the Weirdos, the Zeros, and the Germs Kick-Start the Scene (1976–77)

  As the Sex Pistols’ media blitz reaches southern California, the Germs, the Weirdos, and the Screamers get their own thing going.

  Chapter 8 So This Is War, Eh? Slash Magazine, Flipside, Lobotomy, and the L.A. Punk Zines (1977)

  Slash magazine is launched and soon becomes the new scene’s paper of record.

  Chapter 9 “Punish or Be Damned”: The Rise of the Screamers (1977)

  The origins of L.A.’s great, lost synth punk pioneers. Fronted by the spike-haired Tomata du Plenty and his foil, Tommy Gear, the Screamers blend high-camp theatrics with aggro keyboards. The world catches up twenty years later.

  Chapter 10 Getting Devo-ed (1977)

  Five spud-boys from Akron, Ohio, move to Los Angeles, capture some national attention, and make life hell for every funny-looking punk.

  Chapter 11 “Landlord, Landlord, Landlord, Clean Up the Mess”: The Birth of X (1977)

  A drummerless X, featuring two poets and a former rockabilly star, forms in an old Hancock Park mansion adjacent to the mayoral residence.

  Chapter 12 Pass the Dust, I Think I’m Bowie: A Few Words About Black Randy (1977–78)

  A testimonial to Los Angeles punk’s original demonic prankster coprophile, the inimitable Black Randy: band leader, would-be street hustler, unapologetic worshiper of Idi Amin, and erstwhile office-supplies salesman.

  Chapter 13 Welcome to Liverpool ’77: Punksploitation, the Indie Boom, and the Incredible Singing Dickies (1977)

  Kim Fowley gets his hooks into L.A. punk rock. The media catch on but miss the boat. Discounting the Dickies, the record industry remains indifferent.

  Chapter 14 The Masque and the Plunger Pit (1977)

  The Masque, an illegal basement club off Hollywood Boulevard, becomes L.A.’s first all-punk venue/rehearsal space/crash pad. The Plunger sisters come out.

  Chapter 15 “I’m Darby Crash”: In and Out of Control (1977–78)

  As the Germs learn how to play their instruments, their leader, Bobby Pyn (formerly Paul Beahm), re-invents himself as Darby Crash, L.A.’s most notorious punk.

  Chapter 16 Talkin’ ’Bout the Hillside Strangler (1978)

  A serial killer’s rampage hits close to home.

  Chapter 17 Misfits and Cheerleaders: The Go-Go’s Go Punk (1978)

  Up and down with the early, dirty Go-Go’s.

  Chapter 18 “Ever Get the Feeling You’ve Been Cheated?”: The Sex Pistols in California (1978)

  The Sex Pistols refuse to perform in Los Angeles. A punk convoy heads upstate to witness their very last show at San Francisco’s Winterland Ballroom.

  Chapter 19 Trashin’ and Bashin’ (1978)

  Punk gets a bad rap as the Troubadour is trashed, and Fear injects cartoon violence and metal chops into the genre.

  Chapter 20 The Canterbury Tales (1978–79)

  Dirt cheap and walking distance from the Masque, the Canterbury, a ravaged apartment complex off Hollywood Boulevard, becomes a punk rock dormitory.

  Chapter 21 Mutations: Power Pop, New Wave, Art Punk, Psychobilly, and the Seeds of Hardcore Split the Scene (1979)

  Proto-hardcore acts like the Middle Class and psychobilly transplants the Cramps help L.A. punk mutate. The proprietors of Madame Wong’s and the Hong Kong Café provide venues outside Hollywood while simultaneously trying to destroy each other.

  Chapter 22 Rockabilly Cats at Disgraceland (1979)

  British imports Levi and the Rockats lead a brief rockabilly invasion. Select punks embrace the requisite quiffs, tattoos, and sharkskin suits, then stop.

  Chapter 23 “I Totally Hate Cops to the Max” (1979)

  The LAPD declares war on punk rock at the Elks Lodge riot on St. Patrick’s Day.

  Chapter 24 This Is Hardcore (1979)

  Louder, faster, and angrier, Black Flag makes its mark. Straight outta Hermosa Beach.

  Chapter 25 Strung Out (1979)

  An influx of heroin takes the fun out of everything.

  Chapter 26 GI (Germs Incognito) (1979)

  Slash magazine morphs into Slash Records. The Germs record their first (and only) full-length album, the Joan Jett–produced classic GI.

  Chapter 27 Population One: The Fall of the Screamers (1979)

  The Screamers disintegrate after pouring their energies into a misguided film project.

  Chapter 28 Vicious Circles and Face Plants: Orange County Ultraviolence and the Skate Punk Boom (1979–80)

  Orange County hardcore gets ultraviolent. Skate punk is born.

  Chapter 29 “We Got the Beat”: The Go-Go’s Hit the U.K. and Return as Pop Stars (1980)

  The Go-Go’s travel to England and return a pop act. Founder Margot Olaverra is jettisoned.

  Chapter 30 Los Angeles (1980)

  X records their classic debut album with producer and former Doors keyboard player Ray Manzarek.

  Chapter 31 “Preaching the Blues”: The Roots Revival (1980)

  A booze-soaked roots rock revival hits the scene, fueled by the Blasters, Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs, and Los Lobos.

  Chapter 32 The Vex: Los Lobos and the East L.A. Scene (1980)

  East L.A. goes punk. Los Lobos plays Hollywood.

  Chapter 33 Fire of Love (1980)

  Jeffrey Lee Pierce forms the Gun Club, raises hell, and records another classic debut. The Zero Zero Club.

  Chapter 34 “Amoeba”: The Adolescents, Social Distor
tion, Agent Orange—Fullerton’s Pop Hardcore (1980)

  Bad-rapped as suburban hardcore punks, Fullerton’s Big Three, the Adolescents, Agent Orange, and Social Distortion, have pop chops to burn.

  Chapter 35 The Decline of Western Civilization (1980)

  Penelope Spheeris invades punks’ space and documents the Hollywood scene’s twilight.

  Chapter 36 “I Want Out Now” (1980)

  Darby Crash dies before he gets old.

  Chapter 37 “This Town Is Our Town”: X Sells Out the Greek, the Go-Go’s Hit Number One, and MTV (1981)

  The Go-Go’s hit the top. X sells out the Greek Theater without a record deal. Video kills the radio star.

  Epilogue: No Apologies (1981–2001)

  Pat Smear joins Nirvana. L.A.’s original punks bury their own.

  Source Note

  Cast of Characters

  acknowledgments

  Marc Spitz would like to thank Jim Fitzgerald and everyone at Carol Mann, Carrie Thornton, Jim Walsh, Amelia Zalcman, and everyone at Three Rivers Press, Brendan Mullen, Lisa Corson, Matt Ellis, the world-famous Danny Athlete, Jim Carberry, Sid Spitz, Ricki and Al Josephberg, Alan Light, Tracey Pepper, Maureen Callahan, Sia Michel, Ron Richardson and everyone at Spin, Kari Bauce, Jackie Pants, Johnny Lisecki, James and Camille Habacker, Ultragrrrl, Jaan Uhelszki, Charles M. Young, the Weirdos (for the title), Johanna Went, Ron Shavers, The Library, Pleasant Gehman, Jenny Lens, Cat Tyc, Paige Lipman, Jennifer Schwartz, Amra Brooks, Emma Forrest, Lisa Derrick, Legs McNeil, Susan Clary, John Roecker, “Phast Phreddie” Patterson, Steven Darrow, Jennifer Black, Omid Yaminiand, Ben Edmonds, Greg Shaw, and everyone who offered encouragement and helped us keep our shit together when it was coming apart.

  Brendan Mullen would like to thank Kateri Butler, Jim Carberry, Deborah Drooz, Marc Spitz, Lisa Corson, Doug Cavanaugh, Jim Walsh at Three Rivers Press (for patience and going the extra two miles), and all those who generously contributed their time and memory or allowed us to use source material and photographs. Also shouts to Ron Stringer, Kristine McKenna, John Payne, Adam Parfrey, Kerry Colonna, Dave Alvin, Alan Rudolph, Jerry Stahl, Johanna Went, Stuart Cornfeld, Don Snowden, Europa, and others from the Mullen, Gallagher, Earley, McKeown, and Rainford clans who encouraged me to write things down.

  introduction:

  let’s get rid of new york

  We aren’t experts. We’re basically two record-collecting music geeks, born twenty years and an ocean apart. One of us was there, the other spent the ’70s watching the Muppets. But we shared a common goal: to give Los Angeles punk rock the respect and consideration that it’s due (even if it doesn’t want it anymore). This book was a hard sell. Many editors figured they knew the full story of punk rock because they were able to name-check CBGB and Sid Vicious. This, because too many times the so-called founding punk scenes of New York and London have been autopsied, then crudely sewn and suited up for the big funeral ceremony, where everybody wants to be a pallbearer to seal their own legacy and sustain a quasi-mainstream career as a “professional punk.” To let anybody else in on it, especially a surfer or a skater, would stall the gravy train. See, the aging punker’s shtick is reminiscent of their pre-Elvis forefathers, old men who endlessly recounted their yarns about fighting in World War II. Once punk revisionism hit in the ’90s, the post-Vietnam blank generation was eager to tell their progeny that they fought in a cultural world war whose long-term implications are still surfacing in today’s mainstream. They are right. They did fight in a war… and the kids who can now safely stagger across the food court with their spiked hair and tattoos owe them one. But they didn’t fight alone.

  This book was no easy road. Most old L.A. punks have not mellowed, for good reason. They know that their relatively ignored history will remain pure until pesky pop morticians like us come around to dress up the corpse, collect our fee and our cred before targeting the next movement to plunder (hip hop? grunge?). We knew that with this project, we might pollute the whole thing. But the need to record the history of Los Angeles punk remained, if only to combat those who still deny its existence. So we opted for oral testimony: a forum that gives these fucked-up, brilliant, neglected souls a chance to get it right or wrong along with us. To expose their warts or clam up (and have them exposed by another punk). Primarily, we labored to keep the content as appropriately pure as the requisite editing for space and time allowed (call us enlightened vampires). Still, we admit that our story remains an endless work in progress. A first step toward getting the balance right. There are many bands and key figures missing (the Alley Cats, the Deadbeats, the Decadents, and Spazz Attack come to mind), and to them we offer our apology up front (send your angry e-mail to [email protected] or [email protected] and we’ll have it out and labor to include you in volume two). A definitive work is impossible. Our objective was to simply begin the process of reparation. To get people talking again. To show others what they’ve been missing. To put together enough to inspire a reader to do a Web search on the Screamers, or add a copy of the Germs’ GI to their angry, nu-metal CD collection.

  Did we mention this was not easy? Many original punks guarded their heirlooms, the anecdotes, the gossip, the cabalistic history, and the rare photos with shotguns full of attitude. To those, we say we understand your point of view… and please feel free to write your own fucking book (hard). Others were angels. Those who believed that our project was possible and necessary drank with us. Smoked with us. Supported us. Opened their scrapbooks and diaries for us, and because of them, you are reading this. Some were simply impossible to find. We knocked on strange (and wrong) doors and frightened old women. We drove to Pasadena at night with no headlights to corner Peter Case and Dave Alvin backstage at a sold-out gig. We staked out a tag sale on a Sunday morning at a notorious Hollywood drug pad in search of Rick Wilder of the Berlin Brats (later the Mau Maus) only to find it canceled for fear of hurricanes and tornadoes.

  With the exception of Black Flag’s Greg Ginn and the Germs’ Pat Smear and Lorna Doom, who refused to cooperate with us directly, the rest, the Darby Crashes, Black Randys, Jeffrey Lee Pierces, Tomata Du Plentys, and Claude Bessys, are deceased. Really dead. We include their testimony as respectfully as we can, but realize that they do not have the privilege of hindsight or revisionism (as several of our beloved subjects attempted). Some, like Rik L. Rik and Top Jimmy, passed away shortly after giving us their final interviews, which we are proud to include.

  If you’re still asking, “Why this book? Why now?” read on. Many of the stories we heard and now report stand independent of our thesis. Forget it’s L.A. Forget it’s punk. Appreciate them because they represent the full spectrum of wild youth: from the extreme darkness of original prankster Black Randy and ultraviolent Jack Grisham of TSOL to the pop-sunshine world of the Go-Go’s. If that doesn’t get you either, consider this dubious endorsement from the great demented rock-and-roll carny barker—poet Kim Fowley, “If you have some good photos, you’ll sell some books and everybody will jack off, and smoke a joint and shoot up and there’ll be a couple of ODs. And more kids will be inspired to go onstage and be horrible. It will be wonderful and everybody will cum even more viciously.” Enjoy.

  Marc Spitz and Brendan Mullen

  Los Angeles, California, June 2001

  HARVEY KUBERNIK: I always thought Phil Spector was the first L.A. punk because of the rebel aspect. The attitude first and foremost. He didn’t answer to anybody. It was also the clothing, the hair, the costumes, and he was a tiny little runt. He was the guy at Fairfax High that people told you, “Don’t be like Phil Spector. He dresses weird. You don’t wanna be some weird-assed punk like Phil.” And that only attracted us young’uns more to him, especially when he showed up on the Stones’ first album as a songwriter.

  DENNY BRUCE: There were as many iconoclasts here during the ’60s as there were in New York. The Velvet Underground weren’t the only proto punks. Look at Frank Zappa, who utterly savaged flower power culture on We’re Only i
n It for the Money. Look at Captain Beefheart, an untrained musician who blew free-form bass clarinet solos without even being able to play, or even more extreme… look at Charlie Manson, for God’s sake. Not that I’m comparing Frank or Don (Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart) to a lunatic… but these were not hippie love people, nor were they cranks hammering out folk songs in the East Village about trans-sexuality and shooting dope.

  DON WALLER: L.A. was full of punks in the ’60s. The Music Machine, the Standells, Arthur Lee and Love, Black Pearl—Sky Saxon and Jim Morrison. My definition of punk rock Mach 1 is basically ’60s American garage bands like the Sonics that wanna be a combination of the London bands like the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, and the early Stones.

  SKY SAXON: My band, the Seeds, was a balance between chaos and wonderland. Music was and always will be the great escape from when there is too much reality. “Pushin’ Too Hard” was a battle cry for the young, that we weren’t going to take it anymore.

  JIM MORRISON (FIRST ELEKTRA RECORDS BIO, 1967): I am primarily an American, second, a Californian, third, a Los Angeles resident.

  SKY SAXON: I loved the Doors. The Doors opened for the Seeds in the ’60s. I remember Jim coming to hear the Seeds at the Bido Lito’s club in ’66.

  JIM MORRISON (FIRST ELEKTRA BIO): I’ve always been attracted to ideas that were about revolt against authority. I like ideas about the breaking away or overthrowing of established order. I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos—especially activity that seems to have no meaning.

  DANNY SUGERMAN: Most people associate punk with mindless mayhem, but Jim was a true original artist who refused to compromise for anyone for any reason. It was that attitude that made him a punk, because supposedly he didn’t know what was good for him. Not listening to good advice has always been a characteristic of a punk, I’d say.