It was too painful. Pierce attended Granada Hills High School, where he participated in the drama program, acting in plays and writing several short experimental theater pieces. Probably even The Cramps were better known. The demon drink: Pierce gets to grips with his downfall. As a teenager, he moved from El Monte, a working-class industrial suburb east of Los Angeles, to Granada Hills, at the time a white working- and middle-class suburb in the San Fernando Valley. And without the fire to shore us against the cold, the sadness can simply be overwhelming. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, fdd 27 juni 1958 [ 1] i Montebello, Kalifornien, [ 2] dd 31 mars 1996 [ 1] i Salt Lake City, Utah, [ 3] var en amerikansk rockmusiker, frontfigur i det Los Angeles -baserade punkbandet The Gun Club . Not that you can blame him, given Pierces increasingly erratic substance-augmented behavior. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The moment was certainly right for Pierce. With Pierces drinking escalating to the point of blackout, relations within the band rapidly deteriorated. Despite the continued alcohol and drug abuse, Pierces talents were flourishing. I couldnt do it any more; we had too many arguments and disagreements.. In the end, he took me to Amsterdam and when we got there he asked me to wait in McDonalds. "[14] Pierce toured Europe as The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Quartet, and from August 1985 he toured the United States and Canada. To this day, I still havent heard either Pastoral Hide & Seek (1990) or Divinity (1991), and only listened to 1987s Mother Juno relatively recently, which in itself is almost unforgivably neglectful since it was produced by another of my 80s musical touchstones, the Cocteau Twins Robin Guthrie. With Meg White pumping her bass drum, Jack stomps on those overdrive pedals again and hollers, You look just like an Elvis from hell! For those older heads it all clicks into place and at the same time The White Stripes acknowledge forebears every bit as important to their oeuvre as Robert Johnson, Lead Belly or Son House: the song is For The Love Of Ivy and The White Stripes are paying dues to The Gun Club. It is the only official release of the Jim Duckworth and Dee Pop line up of the band which existed for about eight months. Pierce is mentioned in the Gallows song, "Everybody Loves You (When You're Dead)", from their 2012 self-titled album. The film will cover Jeffrey Lee Pierce's life and career through his death in 1996 at the age of 37, using original interviews and archive footage. Produced by The Flesh Eaters Chris D and released in 1981, The Fire Of Love was the perfect distillation of Pierces vision of punk and blues coming together. Guitarist, bass player and photographer Romi Mori was Pierce's longest romantic partner and a member of the second incarnation of The Gun Club. Listen to The Birthday Party before and after Jeffrey. writer: "The Stranger in Our Town" TV Series; 2012; 1 episode; Personal details. He has written about music for Music365, Yahoo! In 1979, following in the footsteps of the Germs, the Dead Kennedys and the Dickies, Pierce formed his own punk band, Creeping Ritual. [17] With Mori now on bass, the band recorded 1987's Mother Juno, produced by the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie, and featuring songs such as "Thunderhead", "Araby" and "The Breaking Hands". I didnt want to do anything like that., Mori: He was heavily into drugs and couldnt keep the tempo. "It was Jeff's musical misery tour.". Los Angeles was one of the few American cities to follow the British and New York punk scene and the young Jeffrey soon became obsessed with Blondie to such an extent that he became president of their fan club (a couple of years earlier, a teenage Morrissey developed a similar unhealthy fascination with the New York Dolls, another proof that fandom sometimes pays creative dividends). Using a pick-up drummer, The Gun Club road-tested material from what was to become their third album, The Las Vegas Story. The singer lived for a time in London and gigged fitfully around Europe, doing strange versions of jazz standards (John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme", Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit") and releasing disappointing albums of past and recent concerts on many labels (Two Sides of the Beast on Dojo for instance). Their problem was that they bamboozled everyone, including themselves in all likelihood. I could feel that he was so lonely. Such an accomplishment, in a world mostly devoid of magic, is damn near miraculous, quite honestly. It was juvenile but very dramatic and the seeds of what would follow, says Powers. Perhaps not their fever-dream best, but neither do I wish to damn it with faint praise any other band and wed probably be talking minor classic. Pierce was a man in constant conflict with his inner demons. By now Pierce had begun to take his health more seriously and took up an unconventional method to lose weight. Perhaps the severing of any ties to that troubled music was a gift from my subconscious. The Gun Club became the seminal swamp-blues, post punk band that had come screaming out of the LA club scene during the 1980 s. In 1982 Creeping Ritual Music was created by Pierce and later became the soul source for his music publishing. He had to pretend being wild; he had to pretend being Jeffrey Lee Pierce. With The Gun Club well and truly over for the time being, Pierce embarked on a short-lived solo career. The confluence of tragedy and a type of bleak, resigned comedy. Pierce arrived in Australia with bass player Patricia Morrison and enlisted two members of support act "The Johnny's", Billy Pommer Jr and Spencer Jones, to fill in,[10] plus Kid Congo, who flew from the United States to join them after being convinced by Pierce. Come back, Darby Crash. Elvis From Hell, a U.S./German co-production, is directed by Heiko Lange (B-Movie: Lust and Sound in West Berlin) and Jessica Andree (The Noise of Cairo) and is produced by Kobalt Productions Anahita Nazemi and Katrin Sandmann (Midsummer Nights Tango, Dancing Dreams) and Hunger Artist Productions Scott Crary (Kill Your Idols, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, Fire Music). In a 2012 interview with Gun Club biographer Gene Temesy, Nick Cave, a great admirer of the frontman, said: "With Jeffrey, you pretty much entered his world when you saw him. I was just sat there having coffee waiting for him to come back from scoring and it just wasnt right any more. The three songs were "Ramblin' Mind", "Constant Waiting", and "Free To Walk", with further material uncovered over time to support the tribute project. And while the new fans are throwing themselves with abandon to the maelstrom emanating from the stage, older heads are sensing a familiarity that hasnt been heard for some time. Id heard that he was an oddball and difficult and all the rest, but when I heard the songs the ones on Miami I just thought they were fantastic., But she also saw another side to him: My favourite bit of being in The Gun Club was when Jeffrey would write songs and hed get a hold of me, and Id drive out to the valley where he lived with his mum and his sister. What can you say about a record that you cut for 2500 bucks in 48 hours, on speed? With The Cramps on indefinite hiatus due to ongoing legal wrangles with their label, Powers re-joined The Gun Club. Pierce returned to Europe to play more shows, culminating in the Quartet's final gig on December 27 in London. But it was after witnessing Pere Ubu at LAs Whiskey A Go Go in 1978 that the idea of band was hatched. Other family and friends of Pierce provided additional material; Phast Phreddie Patterson submitted a copy of a homemade cassette recording of Pierce performing "My Cadillac" and "St. Mark's Place", which were pre-Gun Club recordings, and Cypress Grove obtained the two-inch master tapes of some song ideas they had recorded at the end of the Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee sessions. He was very unusual and a very unique guy. This was a more ambitious offering, from the reworking of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle" to the voodoo feel of "Like Calling Up Thunder" and "Devil in the Woods". This stuff goes beyond appraisals of coolness or even value its like attempting to evaluate the worth of a tornado and suddenly, were asking the wrong questions. The former couplet is from Fire of Love and the latter The Gun Clubs 1993 curtain call, Lucky Jim. We were all very relaxed and all good friends and we all really wanted to do it. Sometimes hed be like Robert Mitchum in Night Of The Hunter where hed take a Bible on stage and throw it to the floor. With the songwriting being dealt with by Pierce and Mori, he began to feel sidelined and interest in the band dwindled along with their performances: It just seemed that after that album the audience was getting smaller and wed have more bad shows than good and that depended on our inebriation and/or interest. The Las Vegas Story is a farewell of sorts to an LA and America changing under the Reagan administration, but whether they knew it or not, The Gun Club wouldnt be returning to the US to live. We really liked the songs. While Jeffrey was slipping into a coma and dying, I lived (totally oblivious) on 16 acres of unfarmed flood plain surrounded by mountains alongside my common law partner, my baby son, two big dogs, a Manx cat, a rooster. Beneath the attitude, there was always a sweetness, a reverence. [22][23] Pierce flew back to London in February to collect his belongings then returned to the United States, having been requested to leave England following his arrest and lack of visa. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, . Or Kansas. Lets cut to the chase: theres a fuck of a lot of life experience that has to occur between Shes like heroin to me / She cannot miss a vein and Your body dont get me off no more / It takes a lot of smack to do that, and quite frankly, not much of it is pretty. Jeffrey Lee Pierce July 2, 1959 July 28, 1975 The Gun Clubs 1981 debut Fire of Love was rarely off my turntable in those days. Jeffreys idea was to be as antagonistic as possible. Come back, Joe Strummer. At his suggestion, their next album, Mother Juno, was recorded at Hansa studios. This is what The Gun Club and Jeffrey Lee Pierce at their best managed: they showed us that all the loneliness of the world can be if for only a song length, for a propulsive drum beat, for the wail of a slide guitar, for the few precious seconds it takes for a defiant and fleeting shriek to disperse into the night all that apparent abandonment by the world can be momentarily defeated by spirit, by the fire spirit, by Jack on Fire, by the Indian wind along the telegraph lines. (Shes Like Heroin To Me.). But this isnt the place for either masochism or specific reviews, even of the thumbscrew/thumbnail variety, so Ill merely hint at an entry point: go listen to a song that didnt make the cut originally, only showing up on the reissues, Secret Fires. Clocking in at just over two-and-a-half minutes, at first glance its a boilerplate country-folk waltz that pits an open-sky acoustic strum against the mating-cougar wails of a lap steel, all dry arroyo echo-sketches, yet within its weary concision it exemplifies the wild mercury allure of the best Gun Club music, transient and indelible as the ozone dance of summer night lightning. Its now 20 years since the untimely passing of Jeffrey Lee Pierce, and his legacy is apparent in any number of current bands now active, as well as his contemporaries who are still performing. It was at this place called The Gala in Norwich, he says. Terry and Rob joined and we pretty much had a ready-made rhythm section. Still, the momentum nevertheless enabled Pierce to sign his band to Animal Records, a label set up by the Blondie guitarist Chris Stein. But Jeffrey did make efforts to stay on top of all that sort of stuff. In fact, as ragged a fit as it is, the closest they came to a scene in the UK was probably goth (which, again, couldnt have exactly helped), especially as they werent really a goth band either, outward appearances notwithstanding. Literally. The 1992 album Ramblin Jeffrey Lee & Cypress Grove with Willie Love was in effect his final paean to that musical style, from acoustic Mississippi Delta to electric Windy City. Cypress Grove decided to launch the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project on uncovering lost tapes he'd earlier recorded with Pierce in his attic. Long-term alcohol abuse had left Pierce with cirrhosis of the liver and his enforced sobriety was having a detrimental personal and musical effect. The sessions were recorded with acoustic guitars in Grove's bedroom using a "boombox" device. Hed play the songs to me and Id learn the bass parts. By this time, bassist Rob Ritter had taken as much as he could of Pierces self-centred behaviour and quit, with Ward Dotson following soon after. Essaying the pop culture that matters since 1999. He was the child of a multi-ethnic marriage. The Gun Club's last ever gig, with bassist Elizabeth Montague replacing Bradbury, was at The Palace in Hollywood on December 18, 1995. Because hed stopped drinking, he found that he couldnt perform, because it was always about him being pissed. I believed in him as a songwriter and I knew the quality would be there but his health always dictated the situation. The blues had provided the kindling, punk the flame. He was very ill. Hed been living on his own in my flat in Shepherds Bush and when I went back there I found that hed drawn all these happy, smiling faces on the wall because hed been so lonely. And in a handful of others Like Calling Up Thunder, The Fire of Love, and Mother of Earth Pierces absorption of all those influences, his near-assimilation by the prevailing ancient creepiness of American roots music spliced with the then-still-novel exuberance of punk, allowed him to hunker down and create something not only timeless but seamless, as if Johnny Cash, Johnny Thunders, and Johnny Rotten had dropped all their differences in order to embrace whatever nameless idolatry secretly united them. In 1993, the last Gun Club album, ironically entitled Lucky Jim, featured his Japanese wife, Romi Mori, on bass. retrieved. 2023 Deadline Hollywood, LLC. His last TV appearance was with the Bad Seeds on Later with Jools Holland, recorded on May 14, 1994.[21]. Between these two lies a solid body of work, though. And I could navigate Jeffrey when he was saner. Pierce continued working despite failing health, and reformed a Gun Club lineup for two shows in Los Angeles in August and September 1995, including guitarists Powers and Mike Martt, formerly of Tex & the Horseheads, and the Wayne Kramer rhythm section of bassist Randy Bradbury and drummer Brock Avery. Yet don it and suffer it and die from it he most certainly did. 2023 Cond Nast. They were musical geniuses. "[7], The Las Vegas Story (1984) was the band's third album, seeing the return of Kid Congo Powers, drummer Terry Graham and a new bassist, Patricia Morrison. Look! Singing then came second for him. [50] The documentary received mostly positive critical reception, but was criticized for not including any of Pierce's music or interview footage with him.[51]. When the singing is this ferally on, you can forgive the slight reduction of everything else in the mix. Elvis From Hell will tell the story of Pierce, a tragic but influential figure who died at 37, due to complications from heroin addiction, alcoholism and HIV. [33] He described Pierce in 2010 as "not only one of my heroes, he's totally inspirational to me. But it was too good to last. His guitar had arrived and ours hadnt come yet, sighs Morrison. He played a London gig on January 17, 1985, as 'Astro-Unicorn Experimental Jazz Ensemble', before recruiting Murray Mitchell, John McKenzie and Andy Anderson to record tracks which became the album Wildweed, the first on which Pierce played the majority of guitar parts,[14][15] and material released later in the year as the "Flamingo" E.P. The Gun Club have themselves informed and inspired many artists, including The White Stripes, Screaming Trees, Calla, The Pixies, Henry Rollins, and PJ Harvey. Hypothetically it couldve worked but then he passed away a week or two later.. (part 1)", "OFF! So returning later, at some point before I left the land of my birth, to the supposedly troublesome Miami, whose admittedly thin Chris Stein helmed production is nowhere near as problematic as history has decreed, I discovered a perfectly fine album. Its fair to say that the band fell almost completely off my radar at some point after 1985 (having picked up, and loved, that years excellent solo release Wildweed, one of my emigration casualties, sadly), so the news of Jeffreys death at age 37 of a brain-hemorrhage on March 31,1996 eluded me entirely. Birthday: June 27, 1958 Date of Death: March 31, 1996 Age at Death: 37 Live Live Death Statistics Worldwide and The United States Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Biography This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. His demise is another sad reminder that the rock 'n' roll life-style can also lead to oblivion. Kid Congo Powers chuckles when asked what hes proudest of: Many things. Joined by his girlfriend, Mori, on guitar and Clock DVAs Dean Dennis (bass) and Nick Sanderson (drums) for his 1985 album, Wildweed, the quartet undertook a US tour that left them penniless after being ripped off by their tour manager. Metallica mix it up on second night of World Tour in Amsterdam, Kids doing well, Slipknot slaying, new record label: Life is pretty great for Corey Taylor right now, Buses for upcoming Avenged Sevenfold tour will cost $2million more than pre-Covid. Gun Club looked like serious contenders but, by 1984's "Las Vegas Story" (which would have formed an apt soundtrack for the Mike Figgis Oscar- nominated Leaving Las Vegas movie) Pierce's boozy and druggy life-style had started to overshadow the music. When Jeffrey Lee Pierce died from the accumulative damage of years of drug and alcohol abuse and a brain aneurism in 1996, he left an impressive and ever changing catalogue of work behind him, both with the Gun Club and as a solo artist. Everybody felt the same and we were there for the music. Youd go places and everybody was in on it, she says. I was already living in New York and I got as far as asking people, because there was a great music community in New York. The thing that I remember most about that show, and Ive never, ever forgotten it, is that they came on and its hard to overestimate the impact this has on you as a kid and this huge wall of feedback emanated from their instruments. Mr. Pierce, a singer and guitarist, began his career in music as a fan and critic. Great Jeffrey Lee Pierce interview from 89. A scheduled recording session for Tex & the Horseheads, the band Jeffrey Lee Pierce had put together around his girlfriend Linda/Texacala Jones was going to go unused. He went on to work in a Los Angeles record store and to write about music for punk-oriented newspapers like Slash. [16] A different line-up including Romi Mori, Dean Dennis and Nick Sanderson also recorded with Pierce, completing the six-track "Flamingo"[16] The EP featured a remix of Wildweed's opening track "Love and Desperation" and two cover tracks. I realize Im straying toward an authenticity-rockism I dont even believe in here, but I ought to note that however much I admire and even love Jeffrey Lee Pierce as a musician/artist, that by no means extends to any equivalent esteem for the train wreck of his personal life. Morris, a friend and former housemate of Pierce, had suggested "The Gun Club" as a band name while they were living together. From reinventing the blues for a punk crowd to the demise of frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club were magnets for chaos, but they influenced the generation that followed. [18] Another album from that period is Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee and Cypress Grove with Willie Love, which consists mainly of cover versions of blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Skip James. It was difficult to do anything because he was using. Prior to his departure and the release of the album, Ritter played Miami to former Bags compatriot Patricia Morrison, who quickly fell for the records charms and replaced the bassist. Thats what I got the most out of it. That became the title of their album. In 2014, Sergio Rotman of the Argentinian band Los Fabulosos Cadillacs edited a special edition of 500CDs with versions of 14 Gun Club and Pierce songs. I play a lot of his music because I miss him and I want people to never forget the Gun Club. In December 1984 the Gun Club played two gigs in London, but by January 1985 had broken up, cancelling an upcoming Australian Tour. [citation needed], Pierce's life is the subject of the documentary, Ghost on The Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club, directed by Kurt Voss, and produced by Voss and editor/composer Andrew R. Hes never name-checked Jeffrey and I think thats a little rude., Rupert Orton is quick to acknowledge where he hears The Gun Club now: Guadalupe Plata are, I think, the people closest to re-inventing it in a way thats interesting. Every generation since the boomers onwards has had a gateway band into the blues, and for those taken by punks brief but seismic blast, that group was The Gun Club. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Still, the most critically lauded of their albums, it roared out of ramshackle blocks we hadnt yet built even in our imaginations, an inconceivably twisted fusion of blues, punk, and country, a mixture of Robert Johnson, Skip James, Son House, Howlin Wolf, Huddie Ledbetter, the Blasters, X, Black Flag, Blondie, The Sex Pistols, Burning Spear, Smokey Robinson, Canned Heat, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, and Hank Williams. How about a title like Shes Like Heroin To Me? Pierce returned to Los Angeles before relocating to Utah to stay with his father and write. That period was a lot of trial and error and luckily more of it was working than not, but that nihilistic streak and antagonism that was coming from him was needed at the time. Apparently his health had been very bad again but it was a step in the right direction. Patricia Morrison: So many bands came from us but we never got the recognition. Its counterintuitive, and often, at its most abject, unforeseen beauty lurks. His obsessions crawled all over him. IN THE LATE 60S! [7][46] Axels & Sockets opens with a rendition of "Nobody's City", for which Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and Thurston Moore used an original Gun Club demo recording from the Berlin demo tapes from the Mother Juno album in 1987. [49][bettersourceneeded] In the documentary, Voss interviews Pierce's former collaborators, Kid Congo Powers, Ward Dotson, Terry Graham, Jim Duckworth, and Dee Pop, in addition to his high school friend Steven Tash, former publisher of Pierce's work, Henry Rollins, and Lemmy, lead singer of Motrhead. Jeffrey adored Debbie Harry and carried a signed note in his wallet from her which included hair dye instructions. Punk had left its mark on both of the young friends, with Pierce and Powers running the Blondie and Ramones fan clubs respectively. 181737469. subject named as. Born in Montebello, California to a Mexican mother, he felt alienated growing up and considered himself a half-breed. During the mid-1970s, after attending a concert by Bob Marley, Pierce became an avid fan of reggae, and subsequently traveled to Jamaica, where he met Winston Rodney and others, but also "got beat up there too", as he later recalled in an interview.[5]. It kind of sounds like a Christmas song but Jeffrey always described it as a love song.. It stopped him doing what he wanted to do. nm1838020. Sometimes I say The Las Vegas Story album as a work. I want his head cut off and his brain taken out. [citation needed] The final Gun Club album, 1993's Lucky Jim, includes the song "Idiot Waltz". [7], In March 2012, Nick Cave gave an interview to Gun Club biographer Gene Temesy, researching for a book on the history of the Gun Club, which was published on the Australian web-based magazine Mess and Noise, noting Pierce's obsessions with the Vietnam War, dinosaurs, and Japanese horror movies. Id gone down the skids again and Jeffrey was in Utah staying with his father and cleaning up again. Thats why I wanted to join the band. Patricia Morrison agrees with Mori on this point. The Gun Club had truly arrived. [44], The Journey is Long, the second album from the project, was released in April 2012 and features The Jim Jones Revue, Barry Adamson, Warren Ellis of The Dirty Three, Steve Wynn of Dream Syndicate, as well as artists from the first album. Theres a clip out there of him performing Alabama Blues by Robert Wilkins, which seems wrenchingly poignant to me, the woe writ large on his face, the naked self-deprecation at the end after he stumbles, the hollow weariness when he looks right into the camera, even his apparent lack of awareness at the questionable spectacle of a white man singing Brownskin women, gonna be the death of [me]. Perhaps he no longer cared.
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