Outwardly, I might have been a character in a Gun Club song, thankfully absent all the mayhem, betrayal, and sex killing. The film will cover the singer/guitarists life and career through his death in 1996 at age 37 from causes related to heroin addiction, alcoholism, and HIV. He was very hard work. After the gig, Jeffrey Lee came up to me and started talking to me and he just wouldnt let me go, says Romi Mori, then a Japanese fan and later Gun Club bassist. Jeffrey Lee Pierce's been dead and buried for some years 3 now. Jeffrey Lee Pierce And The Gun Club - The Life And Times Of Jeffrey Lee Pierce And The Gun Club. He has written about music for Music365, Yahoo! His health had been poor for some time. 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After punk and post-punk, the next logical step was for us to have a band.. By subscribing, I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. See the article in its original context from. Musically, most of the pieces were in place very early. That was part of his charm. 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.). With the release of the Death Party EP in 1983, more line-up shifts saw the departure and return of Terry Graham and the inclusion of Jim Duckworth, formerly of Tav Falcos Panther Burns, on guitar. Youre really pushing everyone away from us.. Its like we had this idea that the band would repeat Fire of Love ad infinitum and wed all go home happy, so when expectations were dashed, much of the critical world scowled petulantly and turned away, never to turn fully back. With the first line-up imploding, Pierce and Powers were joined by Rob Ritter (bass) and Terry Graham (drums) from LA band The Bags, whose contribution was instantly felt. Dax Riggs, former front man of Acid Bath, Agents of Oblivion, and Deadboy & The Elephantmen, frequently performs a cover of the Gun Club's "Mother of Earth" at his live shows, always crediting Pierce and expressing admiration for his song-writing. 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. [6] Becoming disillusioned by the evolution of punk rock into what he saw as strict formality, and feeling that reggae was an import, Pierce developed a keen interest in and extensive knowledge of the Delta blues, taking influence and inspiration from his own culture's history. Whether consciously or not, echoes of The Gun Club are keenly felt by contemporary practitioners of punk-rock blues such as Daddy Long Legs, Guadalupe Plata and The Bonnevilles as well as more established musicians such as Mark Lanegan, Nick Cave and The Black Keys. In 1987 Pierce reformed Gun Club, recording with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins as producer. Garnering much critical acclaim, it would prove to be an influential album, not least on the UKs nascent psychobilly scene and the 80s garage band revivalists that followed. He did me first before the rest of the band and I loved that. 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. 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). We were all very relaxed and all good friends and we all really wanted to do it. Somewhere in that bled-out hellhole there is room however small and cramped for actual love: Really, this is what the Gun Club achieved as they crawled westward, south-by-southwest, the recurring astonishment of beauty amid the horror, running from flashlights on the back roads, a New Mexican mirage, an Arizona dream, as if the murderous pedophile Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthys Blood Meridian had abruptly renounced his appalling ways, emerging gore-soaked and penitent from the heat shimmer one day, proceding into a new life of domestic contrition. By now Pierce had begun to take his health more seriously and took up an unconventional method to lose weight. Powers was the west coast head of The Ramones fan club and Jeffrey was the head of the Blondie fan club. "It was Jeff's musical misery tour.". "He was the star of the show, and we all just jumped on and off," says Terry Graham. Send us a tip using our annonymous form. It is the only official release of the Jim Duckworth and Dee Pop line up of the band which existed for about eight months. He still made ends meet by working hard in a record store and contributing to music fanzines but, by 1981, he was at the helm of Gun Club, an impressive fourpiece (also featuring Kid Congo Powers on guitar, Rob Ritter on bass and Terry Graham on drums) who seemed to create their own brand of swampy, ramshackle, psychotic, blues- influenced music. Though the audiences were small at first, Pierce tried to create a scene by adopting different personas. When he was a teen-ager, he was president of the Blondie fan club. Probably even The Cramps were better known. Pierce is mentioned in the Gallows song, "Everybody Loves You (When You're Dead)", from their 2012 self-titled album. Pierce's autobiography, Go Tell The Mountain, goes into detail about the personal turmoil he experienced during the late 1980s and early 1990s. In July 2014, Australian musician Spencer P. Jones argued that the blues influence in Pierce's music was largely the result of his access to the record collection of Canned Heat frontman Bob Hite, who allowed Pierce to come to his house and choose ten albums from Hite's vast blues record collection as he was dying. 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. I take away that I had an amazing friendship with Jeffrey. Or Kansas. Released in 1987 to much critical acclaim, Mother Juno and its subsequent tour became the most successful period of The Gun Club. The album featured tribal beats ("Walking with the Beast") and slide-guitars ("Eternally is Here"), and other tracks included "My Dreams", "Bad America" and a cover of "My Man's Gone Now". Inscription. 4 references. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Rock Musician, 37 New York Times", "Obituary: Jeffrey Lee Pierce People News", "in exile: the rootless cosmopolitanism of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club", "Preaching The Blues: Remembering The Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce", "Returning to the supposedly troublesome 'Miami', "Rockbrat Remembers: When Spencer Jones played with The Gun Club", "NEW YORK NIGHT TRAIN issue 1: Kid Congo Powers Oral History Pt. Born in Montebello, California to a Mexican mother, he felt alienated growing up and considered himself a half-breed. Almost beyond language. We were not a band that was poker-faced; you could see what was going on. 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. If he hadnt have been so tenacious then nothing wouldve happened for the band. Hed say, Always tell the people what they dont want to hear.. 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. With Pierces persona in place and a fascination for roots music that saw radical re-workings of Tommy Johnsons Cool Drink Of Water Blues and Robert Johnsons Preachin Blues (Up Jumped The Devil), The Gun Club soon developed a reputation for being a bands band and in turn attracted the interest of The Cramps, who offered Powers the job of replacing recently departed guitarist Bryan Gregory. [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. And move! 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). But The Gun Club made things happen on their own terms. Formed in 1979 and based around the core of frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club drew deeply from the well of American vernacular music and infused it with the stripped down energy and elemental values of punk rock. By Gregg L. Friedman MD, I really miss the great musical groups of the 1960's. Hypothetically it couldve worked but then he passed away a week or two later.. By coincidence, Robin and Liz were walking towards us, remembers Mori. Fucking, murdering, leaving (I will fuck you til you die / Bury you and kiss this town goodbye). Anyone can read what you share. Jeffrey Lee Pierce. [41][45][44], The third album from the project is Axels & Sockets, released by Glitterhouse Records on May 2, 2014, with contributors including Iggy Pop, Cave, Harry, Lanegan, Race, Thurston Moore and Primal Scream. Certainly the two bands share an intertwined history, not least thanks to Kid Congo Powers, the scrawny primitive-intuitive guitarist who initially joined Pierce after getting drunk together at a Pere Ubu concert before defecting to his idols once they summoned him (with Jeffreys magnanimous blessings). Something was really happening there.. and a flock of chickens. An obsession for record collecting in his early teens led to him meeting fellow music fan and future Gun Club guitarist and co-founder, Kid Congo Powers (ne Brian Tristan). They were going to be playing that night and I said, Jeffrey! With the band ready to board a connecting flight bound for Australia, Duckworth and Graham quit thanks to Pierces unreasonable demands. It is revered by many. Label:Retro Deluxe - RDBX004, Vibrant Records Ltd. - RDBX004: Format: 4 x CD, Compilation. BA1 1UA. By this time, Pierce had become obsessed with the ethereal music of the Cocteau Twins via Mori, and a chance encounter with the bands guitarist Robin Guthrie and singer Liz Fraser in the Hollywood Hills would lead to the reformation of The Gun Club with Guthrie in the producers chair. An incredible musician who loved Blondie as much as he did Delta blues, when he died in 1996, the world was left without one of its most unique artists, and his loss left a void that has never been healed. [33] He described Pierce in 2010 as "not only one of my heroes, he's totally inspirational to me. [31] The World/Inferno Friendship Society also paid tribute to Pierce in their song by the same title. The Gun Club have themselves informed and inspired many artists, including The White Stripes, Screaming Trees, Calla, The Pixies, Henry Rollins, and PJ Harvey. Edit. He tragically died of a brain hemorrhage on March 31, 1996. And yet, subject matter aside, there is nothing nihilistic about the effect of their music. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was an American punk, and a bluesman lead singer and guitarist for that most contradictory of bands, The Gun Club, whose erratic embers smoldered and sputtered fitfully during the 80s and the first half of the 90s, rarely if ever catching fully in fames spotlight, yet illuminating the margins with a deep fire that, since their passing long ago now, feels richer and more blood-red the older we all get. 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. He tragically died of a brain hemorrhage on March 31, 1996. Jeffrey Lee Pierce July 2, 1959 July 28, 1975 Reflecting the singer's burgeoning interest in the blues, Fire of Love, Gun Club's debut album, included possessed covers of Robert Johnson's "Preaching the Blues" and Tommy Johnson's "Cool Drink of Water" alongside Pierce's own compositions ("Sex Beat", "She's Like Heroin to Me") which already reflected his unhealthy fascination for the seamier side of rock 'n' roll. He was 37 years old. But, just as Gun Club seemed about to capitalise on this early critical acclaim, the Cramps pinched the guitarist Kid Kongo (ne Brian Tristan) to replace the departing Brian Gregory. The cause was a stroke, said Kim White, his manager. His obsessions crawled all over him. . The three songs were "Ramblin' Mind", "Constant Waiting", and "Free To Walk", with further material uncovered over time to support the tribute project. Recruiting bassist Don Snowden and drummer Brad Dunning, the quartet named themselves The Creeping Ritual before changing their name to The Gun Club at the suggestion of The Circle Jerks Keith Morris. He was difficult to get close to because he was changing personas so much. 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. 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". All Rights Reserved. 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. Using a pick-up drummer, The Gun Club road-tested material from what was to become their third album, The Las Vegas Story. On top of Pierces fascination with Tom Verlaine, elements of be-bop and beat literature found their way on to the album. Pierce fronted the Gun Club from 1979 through to his death in 1996 . Pierce returned to Los Angeles before relocating to Utah to stay with his father and write. With The Cramps on indefinite hiatus due to ongoing legal wrangles with their label, Powers re-joined The Gun Club. And I also think that the records speak for themselves and Im really proud to be on them. Nick Cave based his whole universe on Jeffrey. It was juvenile but very dramatic and the seeds of what would follow, says Powers. Toward the end of his life, Jeffrey Lee Pierce increasingly embraced a more traditional blues, as if hed lost interest in the future altogether. Find a Grave. The latter acted as producer on Miami, the second Gun Club album, which also featured Debbie Harry on backing vocals. 1999-2021 PopMatters Media, Inc. All rights reserved. Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee is a kind half-pseudonym that Pierce took on four years before he died. If he liked something, say, like a type of food, then hed eat that for months and months and then drop it and move on to something else.

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