We Got the Neutron Bomb

by Marc Spitz

  TOP JIMMY: Before my blues band Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs, I was in Top Jimmy and the All Drunk All-Stars. We were at Club 88—the band for the first gig was Billy, Johnny Doe, and D.J. Bonebrake—Brendan blew harmonica on a few tunes, and Jeffrey Lee Pierce also got up… he was onstage waving a Bible about, and the guy who owned the place and his wife were really upset. They were serious Christians and they thought that was real blasphemy, getting up there and waving a Bible and talking some shit.

  BRENDAN MULLEN: I drove Jeffrey crosstown to Club 88 in West L.A., where we were both slated to jam with Top Jimmy and the All-Drunk All-Stars. We sat in the car outside for fifteen minutes while Jeffrey guzzled a whole pint of some cheap nasty bourbon all by himself (I had my own stash of intoxicants), and he was already well soused before he even broke open that bottle. He said he was petrified with stage fright. I did my big number, blowing the blues harp solos on some amped-up punk-rockin’ versions of the Doors’ “Roadhouse Blues” and Dylan’s “Obviously Five Believers,” and then it was time for Jeffrey to go on and for Jimmy to take a leak and get a fresh round in. Jeffrey was staggering. I don’t know why he wanted to do this, but he went into this long, drawn-out version of James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s World,” this bizarrely drunken histrionic drama where he was crawling all over the dance floor in front of the stage, squawking and drooling incoherently into the mic, just like Darby seemed to be doing a lot of these days. All I could do was take it as comedy and laugh. The juiced-up audience seemed totally perplexed, but nobody got really mad.

  TOP JIMMY: After a few gigs with Billy and the other X guys, I had my own band that could rock people, I had Li’l Gary Argyle on bass, the boyfriend of Lorna from the Germs, and this guitar player Eric Amble from the Accelerators, the first punk band out of Wisconsin—they ended up being the Blackhearts—after Joan Jett heisted my whole band in one day. Then I met Carlos Guitarlos, who was the back-door security guy at the Hong Kong or some-thin’, who was backing up some transsexual guy… he wanted to play, and I said sure. He knew this bass player, and I said, “What does he sound like?” and he said, “Look at this.” And it was a picture of Gil T., this big fat bad-ass motherfucker and he was looking for a rockin’ band and we were that band. We thought, “Damn, if this motherfucker can play bass as fat as he looks, we’ll be in real good shape.” We played an awful lot at the Whisky and the Roxy… they never gave us hardly any money but we drank it all up… maybe we did get paid good but we drank it… then we played the Cathay de Grande every Monday night for years. Some of our band and crew were pretty roughneck people, nobody you wanted to mess with for sure… our roadies carried shotguns to gigs when we played in some hard-assed neighborhoods in Long Beach. One of the wilder nights was when Tom the sax player beefed with Carlos, our lead guitar player. Tom went out to the trunk of his car… he had a little Saturday night special there and he let off a round or two into the air, then he said, “No, I’m not gonna shoot you, motherfucker, I’m gonna chop your fuckin’ head off.” And Tom would’ve, too, and Carlos ran for his life. Those were some pretty wild times. The Blasters were definitely the major catalyst for the whole roots thing after the novelty of Levi and the Rockats wore off. The Blasters had better musician skills and they had Dave as their chief songwriter so they could go for a wider range of styles than straight-ahead generic rockabilly.

  DAVE ALVIN: The connection I felt with punk rock was this: I was a fry cook in Long Beach and I saw the Sex Pistols on TV and Johnny Rotten and I were the same age. And I decided, “Well, hell, if he can do this, I can do it, too.” And I thought, “Well, you don’t have to be the greatest guitar player in the world, either—you just have to play guitar.” I have my heroes that I’ve always had, Freddie King, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, and Chuck Berry, that made me want to play, but it wasn’t until the Blasters that I played guitar in a band. In a weird way my biggest guitar influence overall was probably Johnny Rotten.

  LOUIE PÉREZ: The one specific band from the Hollywood punk scene that got all of us in Los Lobos excited was definitely the Blasters. They were the one band that made sense for us to make the trip over the river from East L.A. to play the West Side because when the roots revival began to happen in Hollywood we thought maybe there was a place for us there, too. Rockabilly stuff was happening within this roots thing, and it just seemed to make sense to try to relate musically. Punk rock itself as a musical genre was really exciting music, but it didn’t make any sense to us to try to fit in with that until we heard the Blasters.

  TOP JIMMY: I don’t know how many times in the last twenty years people say I changed their life, that they’d never listened to that kind of music before. They tell me I first got ’em listening to classic American music… blues, folk, country, hillbilly, what have you. If you listen to Howlin’ Wolf and those people, it’s much wilder than anybody out there today.

  DAVE ALVIN: Club 88, this tiny beer and wine dive in West L.A., was the only place we could get a gig.

  EXENE CERVENKA: I fell in love with the Blasters and we became instant friends. Dave and Phil and John and I would stay up all night listening to records. They are legendary for their collections and knowledge. I learned most of my music history from them. I remember lots of Scotch, lots of speed, lots of crazy shit.

  DAVE ALVIN: Then X asked us to do the Whisky. I’d already seen X play. The first thing that bowled me over was Billy’s guitar playing. There were a lot of references in there, almost as if he was deconstructing the history of rock-and-roll guitar: He’d have rockabilly stuff flying around with surf stuff thrown in and Ramones power chord riffing.

  SEAN CARRILLO: In 1980 Willie Herron, who was in the Illegals, and a beer distributor from East L.A. named Joe Suquette started up the Vex with permission from Sister Karen, a nun who ran this arts center, which was owned by the archdiocese, and it still is. It was called Self Help Graphics. They had a hall upstairs which they would rent for weddings and what we call quinceañeras, fifteenth-birthday parties. They told Sister Karen that they were gonna rent the hall and that she wouldn’t have to do anything, they were gonna rent the hall like a normal wedding, and Joe and Willie did up all the flyers and went around East L.A. and hired every band they could find, and very quickly it took off… and all of a sudden bands from Hollywood started coming to East L.A. to the Vex to play, which was previously unheard of.

  WILLIE HERRON: The sisters were so supportive and they thought it was such a brilliant and excellent idea.

  JOE VEX: Self Help Graphics was basically a rentable space in East L.A. There were a lot of visual and performance artists coming and going, so we decided to get a project going together. We tried to get a magazine going, photographers, artists and writers, and bands. Eventually it became a place for the bands from East L.A. to play—Los Illegals, Crush, the Brat, the Stains.

  WILLIE HERRON: The Brat had Theresa, and that’s what set them apart. They were fronted by a Chicana. And then you had the Undertakers, who were more gothic and death metal style. And my band Los Illegals, which dealt with more social commentary issues. And then you had the Warriors, who were interesting because they were all black.

  JOE VEX: We called it the Vex. Willie Herron came up with the name. He looked it up in the dictionary. It means “vexation.” It fit with the space and the time.

  WILLIE HERRON: Basically we wanted to just cover expenses. There was no hard cover fee. It was donation at the door. We really wanted it to be an alternative in every way possible. A cup of beer was 25 cents. Everything was very, very low key so people that didn’t have a whole lot of money could come and enjoy some great shows. It was a perfect idea. We couldn’t do it in Hollywood without the fear about the other clubs, the other people in the industry fearing us or maybe bombing it. So the idea was to get visitors to come to East L.A. to see us without fear of getting shot or stabbed. We did that by putting on great shows.

  JOE VEX: Soon bands from Hollywood started coming down. At the time punk was going big and ther
e was an overload of bands that needed a place to play and eventually when they heard about the Vex, they were just curious about East L.A.—they were curious about East L.A. because back then it was a notorious you-come-into-East-L.A.-you-take-your-life-in-your-own-hands kind ofthing… a total myth, but it was that type of thinking. At the same time, a lot of other groups were really interested and curious to play there—X did a show there, the Punk Prom. So the Vex became the link between East L.A. and Hollywood. Eventually people started giving East L.A. bands recognition. I think we opened the door for a lot of those bands. Los Lobos came to the Vex and shortly thereafter they were playing the Cathay de Grande in Hollywood… they were doing folk and electric stuff. If it wasn’t for the Vex, a lot of East L.A. bands wouldn’t be playing the Whisky and the Roxy.

  LOUIE PÉREZ: Our early gigs outside of East L.A. were great. You’d have punks mixed with the Blasters crowd, and people stage-diving , and we’d go to the Atomic Café to hang out after the gig, and people would be walking in with big blue mohawks.

  BRENDAN MULLEN: Then, of course, there were just as many new punks who didn’t want to know from the blues at all.

  LOUIS PÉREZ: Los Lobos experienced a large punk crowd for the first time when we opened up for Public Image at the Olympic Auditorium. We hung on for about ten minutes until serious projectiles began hitting the stage; finally we were run off. They threw everything they could at us. We felt this incredible rush of adrenaline. We had smiles on our faces, actually. It was like, “Wow, this is different.” Most people would have seen it as an incredibly negative experience. We could have just run back to East L.A. to hide, but we were like, “Let’s keep going with this,” while our poor families and friends were almost in tears. Talk about diving right into the deep end of the pool! It was Tito Larriva’s idea for us to play that show, he pitched it to the promoter, and maybe he just thought that this would be funny or something, but it was cool. I’ve never confronted him with it, and I don’t think I ever would ask him what exactly was on his mind.

  DAVE ALVIN: Still, the roots underground was taking off. The Dils had become a countrified band called Rank and File, and then Los Lobos came out with their EP and it was obvious right away that they were going places.

  LOUIE PÉREZ: The Blasters said to Bob Biggs, the president of Slash, “Hey, you’ve got to sign up this band,” and so Bob came out to see us a couple of times, and he liked it, but frankly, I don’t think he ever had any idea of the full potential. It was pretty easy to confuse anybody with our band, because basically we were playing revved-up Mexican music.

  JOE VEX: Later I booked Black Flag, Circle Jerks, Adolescents… in East L.A. they went over really well ’cause their following followed them no matter where they went. I think the fact that they were in East L.A., the crowds knew not to go out and start trashing the neighborhood—they were respectful of what was going on. There was a lot of negativity that followed some of these bands, but you could tell they knew that you can’t come down to East L.A. and start tearing up the neighborhood. There’s gangs in the neighborhoods and down at the Paramount Ballroom—there was a gang shooting right across the street, a drive-by, they shot a guy in the mouth, right in front of the Jack in the Box, they killed a kid. I was upstairs and one of the punk girls came and told me they shot somebody. I crossed the street and the guy was slowly dying… he was about sixteen, seventeen years old… I looked at death right in his face… it gives me a chill just thinking about it right now, I can still see the guy’s face. So the hardcore punks were pretty respectful.

  TONY CADENA: Bands like the Adolescents, we’d get banned from places like the Starwood, mostly due to our behavior. So we started to play these halls in East L.A. We were playing in the barrios, which was an alien world for us. It was a scary experience, dealing with the gang members who didn’t want us to be there.

  CHRIS D.: The Gun Club’s Fire of Love is probably the definitive record to come out of this roots revival movement. So many people have come up to me about that record. It’s just one of those legendary records. Several people told me that record made them want to start a band and come to Los Angeles.

  PLEASANT GEHMAN: I met Jeff ’cause he was really into Blondie and he was hanging around at the Tropicana where they were staying. He was totally into pop, he’d be wearing a beret and a striped T-shirt with white jeans, or a black T-shirt with white polka dots on it, all mod and pop and beach-party-like. That was before the Gun Club… he was totally into pop… he had a band called the Red Lights that was totally poppy. I remember he had a song that was like an ode to Debbie called “Debbie by the Christmas Tree.” It was about this cardboard stand-up he had of her from the Plastic Letters album, he had it propped up on his TV.

  PHAST PHREDDIE: When I met Jeffrey he was into Blondie, Bruce Springsteen, and Bob Marley more than anything. He also quite liked soul music, having grown up a bit in East L.A. or thereabouts. If I didn’t turn him on to blues and jazz, I certainly turned him on to more blues and jazz than he’d ever heard before.

  PLEASANT GEHMAN: In the midst of this he discovered blues. Phast Phreddie was turning everybody on to blues. He had an amazing record collection of every kind of weird swamp and blues and 78’s and Ornette Coleman and zydeco. He’d go to Phred’s house and get shit-faced and start DJ’ing… he’d put on the Cramps’ first single and it would just segue into like Charlie Christian or something. Jeff started getting into weird swampy stuff. The first band he had was called Creeping Ritual. Before that he forced me to have a band with him called the Cyclones. He wanted me to be a singer. I didn’t really want to but he kept saying it and one time he saw me at a party and said, “When are you gonna start a band?” “I’m not.” And he’d say, “You’d make a great singer.” “I’m not interested.” “Well, too bad, I’m putting a band together for you.” We played one gig with the Go-Go’s and the Last at Gazzari’s. We opened. It was sort of rockabilly and sort of swampy and sort of just weird screaming and we were all completely drunk on Jack Daniel’s and Jim Beam. Brad Dunning, who’s now a famous interior designer, was on drums. Back then he had a fanzine called Contemp Trends. Jeffrey played guitar and I sang. We wrote a few songs and did a few covers… it was a total fucking mess. Jeff got into a fistfight onstage with Johnny Nation, who was Lydia Lunch’s guitar player. Black Flag thought we were so punk rock, they asked us to play with them, but we broke up. Then Jeff started Creeping Ritual with Kid Congo.

  JEFFREY LEE PIERCE: The Creeping Ritual were rehearsing and drinking. Drinking and rehearsing in a cheap studio on Selma Avenue. Kid Congo Powers had bought an amp and a guitar which he did not know how to play.

  KID CONGO POWERS: It was a quick turning point from fan to musician. I picked up a guitar and then I was making records and going on tour. We had several different members at the beginning of the Gun Club, including Brad Dunning and Don Snowden, now a professional music writer. We were very influenced by the Slits and no wave and blues and reggae and dub, but of course we couldn’t play at all, but that was the genesis of us wanting to play… we wanted to do something other than basic punk rock.

  PHAST PHREDDIE: An early gig at Club 88: Jeffrey dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and a black string tie and a black hat, looking like something out of a Flannery O’Connor short story. He had chains in one hand and an old Bible in the other as he sang “Preachin’ Blues.” At one point he threw the Bible down and jumped on it. The owner of Club 88 promptly banned the Gun Club from playing there ever again.

  CHRIS D.: Bob Biggs wanted to do another little label that would be attached to Slash that he thought wouldn’t be as accessible, and that was Ruby Records.

  TITO LARRIVA: I found Jeffrey Lee Pierce after he threw a tape in the back of my amp, a tape of his band jamming with Kid Congo. I said, “What is this? I fuckin’ love this thing.” I said, “Where is this band from?” I’d never heard anything like that in L.A. And I played it for everybody and Exene said, “Oh, that’s Jeffrey.” And I said, �
�Where can I find him? I wanna do a record with him.” She told me he was working at Slash, so I called over there where he was boxing records and said, “I wanna do this record with you. I’ll put up the money.” I worked with Jeffrey for two fucking weeks, on the lyrics, on the structure of the songs, we broke it down. I tore that whole thing apart. He was fucking drunk every day. As a matter of fact, when we cut the tracks, they sucked. When we first got to the studio, he totally froze. He was so stiff. I thought, “Oh my God… disaster.” I went out and bought him a big bottle of cheap champagne, that’s all I could afford. I said, “Drink all that and then we’ll cut it, ’cause I’m not touching the record button until you’re drunk.” And we waited till he drank the whole thing and he drank it and he was drooling and falling down and then I hit record and they started and did every track all the way through. By that time he was so fucking wasted. He’s just screaming the whole fucking time, but they’re beautiful. He was just starting. He was real insecure. We cut it and mixed it in one day. We had sixteen tracks, but we decided to do mono drums. Then I took it to Biggs. I’d run out of money and I couldn’t put it out myself. I said, “Do you want it?” He said no, but Chris D. liked it. We were in the office and Chris said to Biggs, “Well, let me have my own subsidiary label and we’ll put it out on that.” That was the beginning of Ruby Records. Chris went in with the band and cut three more tracks and we remixed the record. Pat kept going, “Where are the drums?” And I said, “They’re on one fader, man. Just turn it up.” He had such a hard time with that. He wanted to tweak for hours and there was nothing to tweak. I thought Chris added a lot… really beefy and lots of reverb and delay.