Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard (54 page)

Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:

It’s funny, when those rock documentaries on PBS last year did punk rock, they couldn’t deal with the ‘80s. They were like, “Oh, the Pretenders and reggae became a big influence on the new wave. And not much happened until later, there were some bands in Seattle.” And Steve [Shelley, Sonic Youth’s drummer] turned to me and said, “The ‘80s are still a secret.” Nobody knows what happened. We know, we were there. And all those people like Kurt [Cobain] and Krist [Novoselic, Nirvana’s bassist], they were the kids in the fucking audience.

THE GERMS

Pat Smear, the Germs / Nirvana / Foo Fighters [from liner notes to
A Small Circle of Friends
]:

I can’t believe anyone’s even interested anymore. I haven’t been bothered by it for years myself, but sometimes these famous guitarists will come up and tell me I’m the reason they started playing guitar... I never even owned a guitar the whole time I was in the band, I bought my first guitar for the reunion gig.

While the Germs weren’t the first L.A. punk band, they were certainly one of the most celebrated – and the first to leave an undeniable legacy on subsequent punk music. Too shortlived and erratic to ever reach their potential, the Germs nevertheless played a crucial role in translating British-style punk back into American terms. By making the look, attitude, and energy of punk American, the Germs opened the doors for the hardcore bands that would soon develop nearby. From there, a definitively American style of punk would spread – east to Washington, north to Seattle, and everywhere in between.

Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:

At first, we thought the LA. scene was completely copying British bands, like dress-up punk, and New Yorkers thought that was silly. But at some point L.A. developed its own identity. They weren’t singing about the death of their social system like in England, it was mostly, “I don’t wanna grow up and be a rich banker like my daddy, because that’s boring.” It was a whole American thing New Yorkers didn’t even think about, and it related much more to middle America. That’s why hardcore was more influenced by the Germs than by [New York band] 8 Eyed Spy.

Jan Paul Beahm and George Ruthenberg formed their first band while attending an experimental high school for troubled kids. Called Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens, it was more a concept than actual group since neither played nor owned an instrument. In early 1977, Jan (who’d take the punk name Darby Crash) and George (who became Pat Smear) met two young ladies while waiting in a hotel for the chance to the meet the members of Queen. The four – Darby, Pat, and the equally inexperienced bass player Lorna Doom and drummer Dottie Danger – decided to form a band, which they named the Germs. Despite their lack of musical ability, they soon debuted at the Orpheum Theater, opening for the Weirdos and the Zeros. (By then, Dottie had been replaced by her friend Donna Rhia; the following year Dottie reclaimed her given name, Belinda Carlisle, and formed the Go-Gos.)

In a matter of months, the Germs had emerged as the most notorious band on the burgeoning L.A. punk scene. With stage moves, audience-baiting, and peanut butter-flinging antics borrowed from the
Stooges
’ Iggy Pop, Darby was ringleader of his band’s unrefined chaos. He slurred his words, showing little concern for lyrics or melody or whether he was singing into the microphone, while the rest of the Germs – Smear’s noisy untuned guitar, Lorna’s erratic and lumbering bass, and Donna’s precariously uneven drum tempos – sounded about as loose as a band could be without actually falling apart.

Nevertheless, the Germs became L.A.’s equivalent to the Sex Pistols; just as the Pistols had their loyalists, the Bromley Contingent, Germs fans were dubbed the Germs (or Darby Crash) Contingent. As the group’s notoriety (fueled by riots and food fights) escalated, though, gigs were increasingly difficult to secure. Few clubs would agree to book the Germs a second time. To trick venues into booking them, the group began billing themselves under a code name: G.I. (for Germs Incognito).

Mike Watt,
Minutemen
/ fIREHOSE:

It was funny, some of the early Hollywood [punk] bands were like, “We’re going to be stars, this is the new rock and roll.” But the Germs were like, “We’re going to make our own music.” They were coming up with their own sound, and were copied by all the Orange County bands. A lot of the Hollywood bands had elitism, but Darby was into expanding it out. In a way he was kind of an ambassador.

By the summer of ‘78, Rhia had been replaced by a succession of drummers – including Nicky Beat of the Weirdos and future X drummer D.J. Bonebrake – and the Germs had earned the right to be called “most improved band.” They’d tightened up and increased the tempo of their songs in keeping with the high-speed hardcore trend that was emerging from the L.A. suburbs. The band didn’t settle on a (relatively) permanent beat-keeper, though, until Don Bolles arrived from Phoenix. In 1979, with their strongest and most stable lineup in place, the group entered the studio with producer Joan Jett (who they idolized from her days in the Runaways) to record their first and only album,
(GI)
[actually self-titled and credited to Germs (GI)]. Featuring a black cover with the band’s blue circle logo, the record was an instant punk classic, hailed by fans and critics alike as the first great post-Sex Pistols American punk album. The band managed to turn out dynamic and confident performances on songs like
What We Do Is Secret
, with Crash’s throaty growl setting the standard for punk vocalists of the future.

Ian MacKaye,
Minor Threat
/ Fugazi:

The Germs, and the whole L.A. punk scene, were a big inspiration for us. It was so totally insane, but their music – and particularly Darby’s lyrics – can’t be replicated. The Germs were the center of an intense crew of really fucked-up kids in L.A., and this was their art. I think that Germs album is close to perfect.

As it turned out, though, the American version of the Sex Pistols would implode just as quickly as their British counterparts. Darby, while borrowing vocal affectations from Johnny Rotten, more closely resembled Sid Vicious with his heroin habit, dumb nihilism, and fascist flirtations. As Darby fostered his own cult of personality by encouraging followers to wear the Germs logo on armbands and scar their arms with cigarettes (Germs burns), he seemed to lose touch with reality. Toward the end of 1979, Darby fired Don Bolles and took off to London. Having seen Adam and the Ants there, he returned to L.A. a few months later sporting a mohawk and Indian face paint. By then, Lorna had quit the Germs and the band had folded.

Darby and Smear soon formed the Darby Crash Band, but the group fell apart after a handful of gigs. In December of 1980, Darby convinced Pat, Don, and Lorna to re-form the Germs for one final gig. Having earned enough money from the show to buy a lethal dose of heroin, Crash overdosed and died – one day before John Lennon’s assassination – at age 22. While Lorna Doom did not continue as a musician, Don Bolles has played in a number of bands, including Celebrity Skin.

Pat Smear played with Nina Hagen and the Adolescents – as well as original Germ turned pop star Belinda Carlisle – then made records in the late ‘80s as a solo artist and half of the duo Death Folk. After recording with Courtney Love for a Germs tribute album, Smear met Love’s husband and fellow Germs fan Kurt Cobain. Invited to join Nirvana as a second guitarist on their 1993 tour, he remained part of the band until Cobain’s death. Afterward, he and Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl formed the Foo Fighters, which he quit in 1997 to focus on life as an MTV personality and other pursuits.

DISCOGRAPHY

(GI)
(Slash, 1979)
; the only studio release, this can be found in its entirety on (MIA).

What We Do Is Secret
EP
(Slash, 1981)
; collects first two singles and two other songs; found in its entirety on
(MIA)
.

Germicide: Live at the Whiskey
(Bomp / ROIR, 1981)
; a live recording of an early show from June 1977.

Let the Circle Be Unbroken
(Gasatanka, 1985)
; a live recording.

Lion’s Share
(Ghost o’Darb, 1985)
; half live, half recordings from the soundtrack to Cruising [which appear also on
(MIA)
].

Rock N’ Rule
(XES, 1986)
; a live recording.

(MIA) The Complete Anthology
(Slash, 1993)
; the definitive collection which includes all of the studio recordings.

TRIBUTE: Various Artists,
A Small Circle of Friends
(Grass, 1996)
; a collection of Germs songs done by Matthew Sweet, Ly, the Meat Puppets, members of Sonic Youth, Hole, and Dinosaur Jr., as well as others.

BLACK FLAG

King Coffey, Butthole Surfers:

Black Flag’s early records virtually defined hardcore, and their records were required listening, part of the essential syllabus for every U.S. punk, then and now. Few records had as much rage. Few shows were as powerful.
Rise above
is perhaps the ultimate hardcore anthem, a gauntlet Black Flag threw down that inspired U.S. punks to create something indigenous: HARDCORE (‘77 Brit punk seemed tame in comparison). The Butthole Surfers came from the hardcore underground and therefore are indebted to bands like Black Flag for inventing it in the first place.

Black Flag played hardcore punk before there was a name for it. And by the time the genre had been defined, the band could take credit for having influenced just about every group that had formed in its wake. With superfast riffing and all-out fury, Black Flag’s take on punk would, for the first time since the Brit punk explosion, define the style as uniquely American. More than musically, though, the group put forth a hardcore ethic that backed punk’s rebellious rhetoric with an actual rejection of the “system.” By releasing records and booking tours on its own, Black Flag created a model for do-it-yourself bands and started a network for underground music. And by the time they were through, Black Flag – through their record label’s releases, their side projects, and their punk-metal hybrids – had laid the foundation for much of the so-called grunge and alternative rock of the ‘90s.

Scott Kannberg, Pavement:

They were my favorite band when I was 14, 15 years old. The first singles were a huge influence on me. I was scared to play them in front of my parents, it was just a whole different sound I’d never heard before... Their whole aesthetic of working really hard, touring a lot, was inspiring. I think Steve [Malkmus, of Pavement] got a lot of guitar inspiration from Greg Ginn.

Before he’d even picked up a guitar, Greg Ginn had cultivated many of the gifts that would make him a key force in the creation of an entirely new punk paradigm, American hardcore music. As a child Ginn hated the commercialism of pop music, and instead of listening to music he kept busy making things: He built electronics, then wrote and published his own magazine in high school. After studying economics at UCLA, Ginn set up his own company making home radio antennas, which he named Solid State Transformers, or SST.

In college, Ginn started playing guitar and immersing himself in various music styles, from jazz to avant-garde classical to pre-punk bands like the
Stooges
. When he finally decided to form a band, it was 1977 and Ginn was already 24 years old. He recruited Charles “Chuck” Dukowski on bass, Brian Migdol on drums, and Keith Morris to be lead vocalist in the Hermosa Beach-based band he formed, called Black Flag. While inspired by the punk scene brewing in Hollywood, Black Flag began to project a separate musical identity for outlying communities such as theirs.

Unlike the more glitzy city punk, where dyed hair and black leather were the standard, Black Flag was strictly short hair, T-shirt, and jeans. And oblivious to genre classifications, Black Flag owed as much to Black Sabbath’s metal as they did to the Sex Pistols’ Brit punk. While early Black Flag songs like
Nervous Breakdown
and
Wasted
were harder and faster than any punk before, they were for the most part meat and potatoes American-style hard rock. Though it hadn’t yet been named, this was the beginning of hardcore.

To release Black Flag’s first EP,
Nervous Breakdown
, Ginn mutated SST Electronics into SST Records. Despite personnel changes that included replacing Morris (who left to form the Circle Jerks) with singer Ron Reyes, the band’s EP and powerful live shows solidified Black Flag’s reputation. Unlike the intentionally provocative punk bands, Black Flag wanted to play as much as possible and had little interest in controversies that would make it difficult to get gigs. Miles away from the
Germs
nihilism, Black Flag developed a nonstop work ethic.

Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:

Black Flag were the first band that got in a van and just played in people’s rec-rooms all across the country, and they created this whole network of people doing it for themselves. Sonic Youth was just coming of age as far as touring, and we were totally into that: “We’ll book our own tour and put our own records out, and we’ll play with these bands.” A lot of them were great, Black Flag were fantastic.