Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard

by Roni Sarig

  Long White Con – The Biggest Score of His Life! (Holloway Publishing); a sequel to Trick Baby.

  The Naked Soul of Iceberg Slim: Robert Beck’s Real Story (Holloway Publishing); a collection of essays in which Beck reveals guilt and remorse for the life he’s led.

  Mama Black Widow: A Story of the South’s Black Underworld (Holloway Publishing); about a black homosexual in the South.

  Airtight Willie & Me: The Story of Six Incredible Players (Holloway Publishing); a collection of short stories.

  Death Wish: A Story of the Mafia (Holloway Publishing); Beck’s attempt to stretch out, this is a largely unsuccessful portrayal of life in the Italian mafia.

  The Game for Squares; Beck’s final work, still unpublished.

  Doom Fox; another previously unpublished work that is being made available for the first time in 1998.

  NEW YORK ROCKERS

  Any city that can claim to be a world capital in the areas of art, literature, theater, fashion, and media inevitably attracts creative people, even if (especially if!) they are outside of the mainstream. In the U.S., in this century, New York is such a city. And, as home to the country’s most-read magazines and newspapers, New York always has plenty of music critics around to take notice of and champion the local scene when necessary.

  The gritty, romantic feel of New York has been a magnet for rock artists for a long time. Musicians in the city didn’t have to invent punk, it was always just part of the attitude. Though it wasn’t the first band to exude New Yorkness, the Velvet Underground is a good starting point in the story of the city’s underground rock. Closely tied to the downtown art scene surrounding Andy Warhol, the Velvets were dark and dirty and amphetamine-paced back when most bands were singing about sunshine and flowers and psychedelic hallucinations. What’s more, they started a tradition for New York bands that produced a string of important developments in rock over the next three decades.

  In the early ‘70s, the remnants of the Warhol/Velvets crowd emerged as a new glam scene, with brash, cross-dressing, hard-rocking bands like the New York Dolls and Wayne County. While remaining outsiders, Suicide mingled with these acts at the Mercer Arts Center and later emerged as the most musically significant of the lot. By the mid-‘70s, a larger scene based around clubs like CBGB and Max’s Kansas City had set punk culture in motion. Though acts like Talking Heads, Blondie, and the Ramones went on to more mainstream success, Television was most central to the scene’s beginnings, while its spin-off band, Richard Hell & the Voidoids, left the clearest legacy for the punk rock we know today.

  By the late ‘70s, the CBGB scene was so crowded and overhyped that the Feelies, a Velvets-inspired post-punk band, took refuge across the river and spawned an important rock scene in Hoboken, New Jersey. Back in downtown New York, a collection of art-punk groups deconstructed rock dynamics to create an entirely new musical movement dubbed no wave. Bands such as DNA, perhaps the most significant of the no wave groups, were way ahead of their time, so far that only recently has no wave started to emerge in the mainstream consciousness as an important precursor to the skronkier post-rock creations of the ‘90s.

  While all of the original no wave groups had disappeared by the early ‘80s, a few underground New York bands carried on the tradition. Though Sonic Youth would bring post-no wave styles closest to mainstream popularity, the Swans also developed an influential sound as a no wave successor. And as those bands pushed the boundaries of punk-based music, a second movement ran concurrently in some of the same New York clubs. Impacted not only by punk, but also by the funk and disco sounds that were giving birth to hip-hop, early ‘80s minimalist funk bands such as Liquid Liquid and ESG were bridging the separated music worlds of uptown and downtown, with arty and adventurous sounds you could also dance to (for that story, see the next chapter).

  It’s important not to overstate the role New York bands played in the development of modern rock music. Key contributions also arose out of Los Angeles, Detroit, Cleveland, D.C., San Francisco, Boston, Washington State, even rural Louisiana. In fact, independent music’s greatest accomplishment in past decades is the development of a network through which good music can be discovered no matter where it originates. Still, for any number of reasons, New York remains ground zero for influential underground American music.

  SUICIDE

  Martin Rev, Suicide:

  Not only did we not have guitars, but no drums either. That was the reason we had the kind of reaction we did. Those were the two sacred cows of rock music. No one used drum machines in bands at the time. And then we had two people. And our name. It was threatening the status quo.

  Suicide were making rock music that sounded like punk and new wave before those genres had a name. Their highly aggressive and noisy beginnings prefigured industrial and post-punk’s unorthodox sound and instrumentation. By their first record, Suicide was an edgy synth-pop duo that anticipated (and outdid) keyboard twosomes from Soft Cell to Tears for Fears, and bands including Depeche Mode (who’ve been known to play Suicide records before concerts) and the Cars (who wrote the song “Shoo-Be-Do” as a tribute to Suicide).

  Suicide was quintessentially New York: gritty and neon-lit, smart and aggressive, alternately cold-eyed and intensely emotional, a mix of punk, doo-wop, electronic avant-garde, and rockabilly. They arose in the no-man’s-land between the ‘60s downtown New York scene of the Velvet Underground and the mid-‘70s punk scene surrounding clubs like CBGB. In 1970 Alan Vega, a Puerto Rican Jewish artist from Brooklyn, was creating neon junk sculptures and experimenting with guerrilla theater at the Project of Living Artists, an art center in the Village that he had co-founded. There he met Martin Rev, a trained pianist from the Bronx whose free-jazz band, Reverend B, played at the Project. Vega, who’d been hugely inspired seeing Iggy Pop’s stage antics and hearing the Silver Apples’ electronic pop music, convinced Rev to quit free jazz and form a new band with him.

  Along with a guitarist they called Cool P, Vega and Rev – renamed Alan Suicide and Marty Suicide – formed Suicide. Though Rev initially played drums, he soon settled on Wurlitzer organ as his primary instrument. Alan added bits of trumpet, but mostly served as the mad ranting vocalist and frontman. After Cool P and a short-lived drummer named Mari left, Suicide became a duo. “We were both trying to make something happen in a very uncompromising way,” Rev says of the partnership. “I think we kind of played off each other. Alan, having very little music background, gave me the room to focus things musically. And he had a little more life experience, and brought the Iggy-inspired side that I wasn’t into.”

  Early gigs were more a combination of manic performance art and experimental sound than rock show. Vega, dressed in leather and swinging a bike chain, would menace the audience while yelling street poetry over Rev’s formless keyboard noise. Many simply considered them a spectacle and took little notice of the music, but by 1971 Suicide was already calling what they did “punk.” “I had gone through the free jazz thing, and it seemed the rock world was the only place left with undiscovered territory,” Rev says. “It was interesting to do free music, but with feedback and electronics and using the voice as a free instrument – all of which was not really acceptable in jazz.”

  Nick Cave:

  Suicide probably influenced me more than any contemporary rock band in the end. My vocal style – even my lyric writing to a certain extent in the early days – was influenced by Alan Vega’s. And the way the music was put together, too. Like [Cave’s song] “The Mercy Seat” begins with this percussive bass rhythm sound, like Suicide’s Harlem. So I know in many ways Suicide were directly influencing our music.

  By 1972, a new music scene – with acts like the New York Dolls and Wayne County – had begun to coalesce around the Mercer Arts Center and Max’s Kansas City. While Suicide occasionally performed at these venues, their dark, confrontational style was clearly in opposition to these escapist glam groups. They remained outsiders and soon their reputation as an unruly live act
made it difficult for them to get gigs. During the next few years, while the Mercer collapsed and Max’s closed, Suicide laid low and continued developing material. When the duo reemerged with a more cohesive set of songs in 1975, Max’s had reopened and CBGB began to emerge as a focal point for the music scene.

  Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth:

  Suicide was the first band I saw in New York. We used to come into the city as teenagers to go to Max’s. I thought Suicide was going to be another rock and roll, Kiss-type band, and that was not the case. They were in their most “accost-the-audience” period. Alan Vega had an old lady’s wig and fake scars on his face, and he was crying on stage, singing Cheree. He’d walk on the tables and tie his mic cord around people’s necks and pour drinks over people’s faces, and lick people on the mouth, and break glass and poke it into his chest. We were like, “My God, let’s get the hell out of here!” They were such an enigma, because they were so unique and had developed their thing prior to the whole scene, somewhat in a void.

  Vega now sang actual songs, while Rev backed him on keyboard and an early $30 drum machine. Though Suicide were still outsiders, the new punk scene of bands like Television and Patti Smith clearly had more in common with the group. “We weren’t really embraced as part of the punk scene,” Rev says. “But because we were already there and our attitude was so punk, we started to get a certain amount of acceptance. At least not total confusion.”

  Finally, in 1977 former New York Dolls manager Marty Thau heard Suicide on the jukebox at Max’s and offered to put out a Suicide album on his new Red Star label. Made in one weekend, the band’s self-titled debut built songs on repetitive low-fi keyboard drones and mechanical beats. Vega sneered gritty lyrics of love (Cheree), nuclear terror (Rocket USA), and working-class frustration (the 10-minute Frankie Teardrop) with a mix of punk intensity and showman croon. Suicide was to become a founding document of the next decade’s synth-based new wave music.

  Henry Rollins:

  I was introduced to the work of Suicide when I bought their first album in 1979. I didn’t know anything about the band, just that any band who called themselves Suicide had to be intense. The picture on the back of the two members... looked menacing. I remember my friend Ian [MacKaye, of Minor Threat / Fugazi] and I playing the album in his attic and not knowing how to take it. It was intense, really strange. I had never heard anything like it in my life. Time went by, and I kept up with the band’s records. The Rollins Band covered a Suicide song Ghost Rider, and it became a staple of our set for years, [from 2.13.61 CD’s Suicide reissue]

  Though Suicide failed to get much notice in the U.S., British critical acclaim led to a European tour supporting the Clash and Elvis Costello. By the late ‘70s, though, punk had become synonymous with guitar-based power-chord rock and audiences universally hated Suicide – riots ensued in several cities. But used to the abuse, Suicide relished it.

  When the Cars, another band that integrated keyboards into punk-inspired music, hit big in the late ‘70s, they invited Suicide to open for them on tour and even insisted the duo be included on a popular television show they hosted. By 1980, the attention led the group to a major label for their second album, produced by the Cars’ Ric Ocasek, Alan Vega and Martin Rev: Suicide. The record’s smoothed edges and higher fidelity reflected a larger budget and better studio equipment, but while it drew comparisons to early synth-pop contemporaries Kraftwerk, the street attitude of songs like Mr. Ray and the epic Harlem was recognizably the work of full-blooded New Yorkers.

  Kins Coffey, Butthole Surfers:

  Dream Baby Dream was the first 12-inch I bought. I played that to death. I saw them on the Midnight Special, when the Cars said they’d be on the show only if they could pick the other bands. They had Suicide on. Alan Vega’s pretence was psychotic, it was scary. I’d never seen anything like it, just a singer and keyboard player, very over the top and confrontational.

  Again, Suicide was warmly greeted abroad but failed to connect at home. Though the duo never officially broke up, they slowed down in the early ‘80s and pursued solo projects. Vega achieved enough success in France to get him on major label Elektra in the mid ‘80s, though his later albums were released only in Europe (recently, they’ve been made available on Henry Rollins’ Infinite Zero label). In 1986, amid the massive popularity in Britain of the Suicide-inspired group Sigue Sigue Sputnik, Vega and Rev reunited for a tour of the U.K. This led to two more Ocasek-produced Suicide records, in 1987 and ‘92. Though not without their merits, neither record ignited much interest in the band. While the possibility of further Suicide material remains, the duo have since returned to separate pursuits.

  DISCOGRAPHY

  Suicide (Red Label, 1977; Restless, 1990); a classic record of New York punk attitude and avant-garde pop vision.

  Alan Vega and Martin Rev: Suicide (1980; Restless 1990); a slicker, more upscale version of the group’s unique sound.

  Half Alive (ROIR, 1981); a collection of early unreleased recordings and live tracks.

  Ghost Riders (ROIR, 1986); a live recording from 1981, of the band’s 10th-anniversary show at Minneapolis’ Walker Arts Center.

  A Way of Life (Wax Trax!, 1989); a respectable but hardly earth-shaking return.

  Why Be Blue (Brake Out / Enemy, 1992); a second reunion album.

  TRIBUTE: An Invitation to Suicide (Munster [Spain], 1994); featuring Luna, Flaming Lips, Mudhoney, Spectrum’s Sonic Boom, and Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.

  TELEVISION

  RICHARD HELL & THE VOIDOIDS

  Matthew Sweet:

  Television’s Marquee Moon really “blew me away. It was really huge for me at the time. I had been really into [British] stuff, and hearing Television I started fixating on American stuff. It seemed more like the way I was trying to make demos and write songs. I was looking for who I was, and this was a band that sort of guided me there. And obviously later on, hooking up with Richard Lloyd, that’s the big Television influence on my record.

  Though less known than New York pre-punk peers such as Patti Smith, the Ramones, Blondie, and the Talking Heads, Television opened the door for all of these groups through their early gigs at CBGB, the club around which these bands coalesced to form one of the most influential music scenes in rock history. Decades later, Television remains one of the best loved “unknown” bands in rock and has earned a mythic status that belies its album sales. The group’s meticulous arrangements are standard texts for post-punk guitarists and art-minded garage rockers everywhere. And Richard Hell – an original Television member who went on to front the also notable Voidoids – invented a gritty street rebel image that would become the standard punk look for generations to come.

  Television formed in 1973 in New York, but its roots go back to Delaware in the late ‘60s, where Tom Miller and Richard Meyers met in boarding school. Sharing an interest in music and poetry, the two became friends and conspired ways to escape their restrictive surroundings. Meyers was first to arrive in New York, where he remade himself as Richard Hell, a modern-day version of French symbolist poet Arthur Rimbaud. After a short stint at college, Miller joined his buddy in Manhattan; taking on the surname of another symbolist, he became Tom Verlaine.

  Chris Connelly, the Bells / Ministry / Revolting Cocks:

  Lyrically, I’d have to say Tom Verlaine is one of my favorites. Very poetic, but very cool as well. At school, I really shone in English literature, and it was great to read the poets. But if my English teacher had come in with the album Marquee Moon, I would be a fucking professor by now. It spoke more to me than Shakespeare’s sonnets.

  While the two pursued literary life, publishing a book of poems under the shared alias Theresa Stern, Verlaine also immersed himself in free-jazz saxophone and then guitar. Inspired by bands like the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the New York Dolls, Verlaine and Hell formed their first group in 1972. With drummer Billy Ficca (a friend of Verlaine’s from Delaware) and Hell on bass by default, the Neon Boys played f
or one year, while they searched in vain for a second guitarist to fill out their ragged sound. After recording a six-song demo, the group called it quits.

  While performing as a soloist, Tom Verlaine met the guitar compatriot he’d been searching for. With Richard Lloyd, a blues-oriented guitarist who’d recently arrived from L.A., Verlaine re-formed the Neon Boys, renaming it Television. Over the next five years, Verlaine and Lloyd rewrote the book on two-guitar arrangements in rock, with poetic styles that both worked together and played off each other in a beautiful marriage of harmony and tension.

  Carrie Brownstein, Sleater-Kinney:

  Corin [Tucker, Sleater-Kinney’s other guitarist] and I have been influenced by how the guitars work in Television. I love Marquee Moon, the guitars cut through in a really different way. They were able to combine two guitars without one being a soloing lead guitar. They intertwined and communicated with each other in a really interesting and dynamic way. Corin and I are conscious of not having one guitar fake precedence over the other. We’re interested in having them overlap, and we’ve become more conscious of the relationship of the guitars to each other.

  In search of a new club where Television could gig regularly, Verlaine and Lloyd chanced upon a little-known bar on the Bowery, frequented mostly by Hell’s Angels. Assuring the owner that Television could play “country, bluegrass, and blues” – or CBGB – the band debuted in the spring of 1974. Soon, as Patti Smith, Blondie, the Ramones, and Talking Heads became CBGB regulars, the club emerged as a focal point for the brewing New York City punk scene of the mid-‘70s, beginning a tradition that was to make CBGB the best known punk-rock establishment in the world.