Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon

by Des Barres, Pamela

  Kurt Struebing was charged with first-degree murder as well as rape and sent to Western State Hospital for evaluation, where he tried to kill himself by leaping from his bed and landing on his head on the cement floor. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder when several mental-health experts found that he was psychotic at the time of the crime. He was then sentenced to twelve years in the mentally ill offenders’ unit of the reformatory at Monroe, Washington. The prosecutor’s office recommended that Kurt serve eight years, and the judge agreed. “We believe that at the time of the crime Struebing suffered from mental disability. His capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law was significantly impaired.” When Kurt was released in April 1994, he got himself a job making pizzas, re-formed N.M.E. with most of the original members, and started playing clubs and looking for a record deal. N.M.E.’s album, Unholy Death, has recently been rereleased.

  CHUCK BERRY

  My Ding-a-Ling

  It’s pretty scary that one of rock’s premier forces is seventy years old. But for an old guy Chuck Berry still seems to have plenty of sex drive.

  When he was honored at the Twenty-seventh Annual Grammy Awards show with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Chuck Berry was heralded as “one of the most influential and creative innovators in the history of American popular music, a composer and performer whose talents inspired the elevation of rock and roll to one of music’s major art forms.” No doubt about it. But Chuck Berry isn’t a very nice guy. I saw him in a Vegas bar a few years back; I was very excited and went over to thank him for being so brilliant. He gave me an evil look, then just stared straight ahead as if I didn’t exist. I can understand that he might not want to be bugged, but that was just plain mean.

  Charles Edward Anderson Berry was born in San Jose, California, in 1926, though in his autobiography he claims to be from St. Louis, Missouri. After spending three years in reform school for robbery, Chuck got his cosmetology degree, then formed a trio, playing clubs at night while working at St. Louis’s Poro School of Beauty Culture by day. He married Themetta Suggs and would eventually have four children with her. In 1955, at age twenty-eight, Chuck met the great Muddy Waters, who put him in touch with Chess Records, where he cut his first single, “Maybellene,” which went straight into the Top Ten. The legendary guitar-driven bluesy-country-rockabilly three minutes would influence rock-and-roll artists right up to right now. “The big beat, cars, and young love,” said Leonard Chess, “it was a trend and we jumped on it.” Next came “Roll Over Beethoven” and a part in the movie Rock, Rock, Rock. Chuck continued to record smash after influential smash, selling multimillions of records, taking his famous duckwalk around the world.

  In December 1959 Chuck was arrested and charged with violating the Mann Act after “transporting a minor across a State Line for immoral purposes.” He had hired a fourteen-year-old Apache Indian as a hatcheck girl in his nightclub, but didn’t know she had been working as a prostitute. When he found out, Chuck fired her and she called the cops on him. Convicted and sentenced to five years, Chuck eventually served two years in the Indiana Federal Penitentiary.

  A boost from the Beatles, who recorded “Roll Over Beethoven,” brought Chuck back into the mainstream spotlight and he had another spate of success with “Nadine” and “No Particular Place to Go.” In 1972 he recorded his biggest-selling album, The London Chuck Berry Sessions, and the naughty “My Ding-a-Ling” became his most successful single.

  In June 1978 Chuck performed for President Jimmy Carter at the White House. A month later he was sentenced to five months in prison for tax evasion. Although no more hits were forthcoming, Chuck traveled the world, successfully making the rounds on the oldies circuit. In 1986 he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Keith Richards, got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and was featured in the movie Hail! Hail! Rock ‘n’ Roll. In 1988 Chuck released his autobiography, in which he proudly hints at the shadowy side of his nature: “Now that I know much more about the writing of a book, strangely enough I intend to go for another. One that I will enjoy, the true story of my sex life. It shall not infringe on anyone or thing but me and my excessive desire to continue melting the ice of American hypocrisy regarding behavior and beliefs that are now ‘in the closet’ and only surface in court, crime, or comical conversation.”

  In the early seventies my friend Mercy melted some ice with Chuck Berry at Disneyland, of all places. A huge fan of his for years, she was waiting in the backstage area for his arrival. “The whole area was foggy. I was all by myself back there, and an old black Cadillac drives up, something like Mae West ran around in, something from another dimension, and out pops Chuck Berry, and I said, ‘I’ve been waiting for you.’ He said, ‘Come with me,’ and we went into his trailer. I was so high I don’t remember if I had sexual intercourse with him,” Mercy admits, “but I know he asked me to go to the bathroom in a bucket … number two. He wanted to watch me in the act.” He then took a photo of her for “his book.” “I was naked with a big rainbow wig.” When I ask Mercy how she was able to perform on cue, she laughs. “I don’t knows. I probably had to go to the bathroom and he got lucky!”

  On December 27, 1989, it was reported in the St. Louis Post Dispatch that a civil suit for invasion of privacy had been filed in St. Charles County Circuit Court by Hosana A. Huck—a former cook at Southern Air, a Wentzville, Missouri, eatery owned by Chuck Berry—alleging that Berry had installed video cameras in the women’s restrooms, secretly taping her as well as many other women. The confiscated tapes revealed quick cuts of hundreds of women, all white, in the act of relieving themselves. One of the cameras must have been built right into the toilet, because it captured, close up, the moment of defecation and urination, while overhead cameras displayed the toilet’s contents before they were flushed. Most of the women seemed to be of legal age, but some were little girls.

  A class-action suit was later filed by ten women, who were representing at least two hundred others who were videotaped while using a bathroom at Chuck’s restaurant or Berry Park. Other women claiming they had been secretly videotaped filed separate suits.

  Tapes also were found by police during a raid on Berry’s home after a tip led to suspicion that Chuck was trafficking in cocaine. One informant quoted in the affidavit police filed to obtain the search warrant had told police that Chuck had carried twenty-five kilos of the drug in his guitar case. According to the affidavit, Chuck had allegedly netted nine million dollars over the years from drug trafficking. But no cocaine was discovered in the raid and no charges of drug trafficking were ever filed by authorities against Berry. Some marijuana was found in the police raid and money was seized, along with pornographic slides and fifty-nine videotapes. Chuck was charged with one count of marijuana possession and three counts of child abuse—Missouri law states that the filming of nude children under the age of seventeen for sexual gratification constitutes child abuse. When he arrived back from a tour of Sweden, Chuck turned himself in, but denied making the tapes, using or selling any cocaine.

  Three months after the raid, the U.S. Attorney’s Office returned Chuck’s money, and on November 3, 1990, Chuck sued county prosecutor Bill Hannah, calling the criminal charges against him “maliciously baseless and politically motivated.” After the child abuse charges were dropped, Chuck dropped his suit against the prosecutor, agreeing to two years’ probation for the misdemeanor marijuana charge and a five-thousand-dollar contribution to local substance abuse programs.

  Chuck later settled the suits brought by the women claiming to have been secretly videotaped. According to his lawyer, Chuck paid $1.2 million altogether in settlement, but has continued to deny any involvement in the videotaping.

  Somehow one of Chuck’s personal X-rated tapes surfaced, and after scrounging around underground I was able to buy the thing for twenty dollars. I watched it between my fingers, like I was seven years old at a horror movie. There’s a whole lot
of what Mercy doesn’t remember doing with Chuck, and then as his buxom blond partner is having a bubble bath, Chuck steps into the tub, holding his ding-a-ling. “See this here? This is what you’re gonna bathe in.” “It is?” she queries, wide-eyed, before he demands that she “kiss it.” “Do you love me?” he asks as he begins to urinate. “Put your hands down!” he demands. “Take it! Take it! Open your mouth!” Pulling her hair off her face, she does as Chuck says. He passes a long blow of gas before the last drop falls. The blonde starts to weep, but Chuck doesn’t seem to notice, asking her, “How’s that piss taste? Salty, ain’t it?” He wants to know if she loves him. She wants a kiss. “Baby, I can’t kiss you. You smell like piss. Stand up and take a shower.” After the shower, cameraman Chuck says, “Now it’s time for my breakfast.” Then they’re back in the tub, the blonde straddling Chuck’s beaming face, doing what Mercy did in the bucket at Disneyland.

  G. G. ALLIN

  Public Animal Number One

  “To me comfort and conformity are the two biggest enemies. I want to die in tragedy. That really excites me.” G.G.’s big plan was to off himself onstage, but he died in an all-too-common OD on June 28, 1993, after being chased out of another one of his outer-limits performance at the Gas Station club in New York.

  When asked what kind of music he played, G.G. responded, “Mud, rot, cunt-suckin’ sleaze trash. It can’t be described at all. We don’t fit in with anybody and nobody wants anything to do with us.” Answering the question why he started a band, G.G. said, “Just to fuckin’ bother people, for revenge. I don’t give a fuck what you think of me. I wanted total destruction and I didn’t and don’t care if everyone hates it. Fuck you. I wanted to be the total self-destructive animal, and I am. I don’t like or trust anybody really. When I’m onstage nothin’ fuckin’ matters. You could fuckin’ shoot me, but I might fuck you up first, and I’ll definitely rape some bitches.” Arrested over fifty times for attempted murder, assault and battery, public lewdness, inciting a riot, indecent exposure, endangering lives, etc., G.G. made sure his audience knew how much he hated himself and all of them through nudity, assault, defecation, urination, masturbation (himself and others), oral sex, rape, eating and flinging his feces, sex with dead animals, bashing out his teeth, eating his own flesh, breaking bones (his own and others), setting himself on fire, slicing himself up with broken bottles and ripped aluminum cans, and knocking himself completely unconscious. But G.G. Allin had a surprisingly dedicated following. “You’d have the real fans who knew G.G. and understood, they would stand right there and exchange punches and get covered with blood and love it,” G.G.’s brother and band mate Merle tells me. “It was the greatest thing they had ever experienced—‘Here I am covered with blood. I love you, G.G.’”

  In 1988, G.G. released a song called “Expose Yourself to Kids”-“Let’s fuck some kids/They can’t say no/Molest them now/Before they grow.” Was this guy serious?

  Merle is the keeper of his younger brother’s flame—a fascinating combo of outrage and charm. He provides G.G.’s devoted fans with an astonishing number of live videos and taped concerts.

  I watched one of G.G.’s videos, Hated, and was so repulsed when he got down on his knees and ate his own feces that the ghastly image stayed with me for days. I’m sure that would have pleased G.G. no end. I ask Merle when and why G.G. started this charming practice. “It was in ’86 that G.G. first defecated onstage. As things progressed, he had to have an answer for it, so his answer was it was a communion to his people. If you were a Christian, you ate the body of Christ. If you’re a G.G. Allin worshiper, you ate the body of G.G. Allin. It was a communion to his people. His blood, his piss, all of that was for his people. “How was he able to do it on call?” I inquire sweetly. “That’s a talent right there! When he started defecating onstage, he would use Ex-Lax before a show. I don’t know what it was. It seemed like he could do it whenever he wanted to! Ha-ha-ha … .”

  In an article for Naked Aggression Magazine, written by a friend of G.G.’s, Joe Coughlin, he describes one of G.G.’s shows:

  G.G. owns the place. The hype, it turns out, was true all along. This is war … . He turns his back to them and squats. They seem to’ve been expecting it … . He pumps out a chain of dark, wet turds, spins around, drops to his knees … . They know he’s gonna do it, but they’re praying he won’t just the same … . He starts gulping down the pile, spits mouthfuls at the crowd, barking out lines of the chorus between bites. The room is choking on its own dread. Then of all things, a fucking guitar solo. G.G. scoops his poop, grunts, drops the mike, takes a whiff and smears it over his face with both hands, down his chest, around his cock, and runs back into the crowd. He gets up and smacks his head into the nearest wall a few times … .

  It took a lot of digging, but when I finally located G.G.’s brother, Merle, he invited me to his wicked New York loft (his kitchen is painted blood red, decorated with skulls and severed body parts made of some scary, unrecognizable substance), where he reflected on the mad/tragic life he shared with his little brother. “We had a really strange childhood. We lived in a log cabin in New Hampshire, no shower, no bath. You couldn’t drink the water or flush the toilet. We didn’t socialize with other kids, go to their houses. My dad was … a religious fanatic. When G.G. was born my dad named him Jesus Christ Allin.” (His mother later changed it to Kevin Michael.) In the sixth grade G.G. started playing drums, graduating to guitar, preferring music to girls or drugs. “The first time G.G. tripped was when I stuck a tab of acid in his French fries at McDonald’s,” Merle insists. “He wasn’t into drugs. He never had girlfriends in high school. The only sex G.G. had when he was a kid was me and him masturbating each other as young teenagers. He was heavily into masturbation.”

  I’m a bit apprehensive at first, but soon warm to Merle. He’s actually quite appealing in a curious way, covered in leather, his beard in braids. He proudly walks me over to a colorful, childlike painting done by mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, who was brother G.G.’s pen pal. It seems the two men shared a perverse kindred spirit. Merle then continues on with G.G.’s life story.

  G.G. played in local bands, recorded with small labels, married his only girlfriend in high school, and settled down. “I was totally disgusted with G.G. at that point,” Merle says. “Sandy had him pussy-whipped. He was wearing button-down shirts and taking out the garbage.” But since G.G. hadn’t sown his wacky oats, after five years of marital bliss he was off with a thirteen-year-old (“G.G. liked ’em young,” says Merle. “Ha-ha”), living off people, crashing in cheap boardinghouses. Merle moved to Boston and G.G. worked with two different bands, the Jabbers and the Scumfucs, cutting many records on many different labels, teetering closer and closer to the edge.

  “G.G.’s big thing was getting women’s panties, getting a bottle of their urine and drinking it or having them pee in his mouth and masturbate. He wasn’t into sex, not at all,” Merle told me.

  Merle returned and briefly formed the AIDS Brigade with his brother, but G.G. was arrested in 1989 and spent eighteen months in prison. Merle calls it “the Ann Arbor incident.” A woman, who had invited the band to stay with her while they were performing a gig, accused G.G. of having assaulted her when she passed out after drinking with the band. Apparently G.G. went to town on this girl after she woke up, carving her breasts, face, and stomach, dripping hot wax into her wounds, putting cigarettes out on her and choking her for three days. In her statement to investigators, the victim said, “He was cutting at my chest. He said it was beautiful. Like painting a picture. He wanted my breasts to bleed more. He gouged at my left breast … and when it began to bleed more he said … that my breast looked like crying eyes.” “What happened was,” Merle recalls, “she had to go to the hospital and the police made her fill out a report. Originally she accused a bunch of black guys.” However, the victim says that she was initially afraid of retaliation by G.G., so she didn’t name him at first.

  After pleading no contest to fe
lonious assault charges, G.G. spent eighteen months in prison. When he was released in 1991, he formed the Murder Junkies with Merle and continued to tour. Joe Coughlin recalls a show in Atlanta: “In a stark moment I saw him standing under a severe white light, his bandanna off, his face knotted in a rage, a trickle of blood running into his eyes. I was sad and drained to think he’s endured fifteen years of this. I thought of the million bands I’d seen and suddenly they meant nothing, a fluffy bunch of notes. This was uncool, a threat, what rock and roll was meant to be, but it was more than that. G.G. hit me as everything both right and wrong with being alive all at once: all of the power and all of the sickness working together. There wasn’t one possible emotion not being felt in that room. That in itself was dangerous. It was huge, and it was real.”