Scene: Opening titles.

A group of sunny So-Cal cheerleaders kick and shake: “Give it an L. Give it an I. Give an S. Give it a Zee. Give it…”

They’re going to do the whole fucking alphabet…

“...an O. Give it an M. Give it an A…”

We’ll be here all day….Jesus fucking Sanchez...

“..Give it an N. Give it an I. Give it an A.”

Wait…

“...What does it it spell…LISZTOMANIA!”

Cue Alan Whicker, for it is he…He speaks into his microphone…

Whicker: The thing about Ken Russell’s most misunderstood and most reviled film Lisztomania is that it has some of his best stylistic devices and some of his worst artistic traits. It is a film that shows the best of Ken Russell while revealing the problems involved in ever fully realizing such a febrile imagination on a shoestring budget.

Cut to: Archive footage of producer David Puttnam in a bank vault counting money while reading movie reviews. In the background hundreds of Oompa-Loompahs are making telephone calls to very important Hollywood producers.

Whicker (in voice-over): This man is God. He is a movie producer. He wants to leave his fingerprint on everything he touches…Today he wants people to know he is making the Ken Russell film that will “Out-Tommy Tommy.”

Note that David Puttnam has a beard. The writer Roald Dahl hated people who wore beards because he thought they were hiding something. Ken Russell sported a beard during Tommy. Two beards could be seen as two negatives. But as Woody Allen once noted, two negatives make a positive.

Puttnam hopes Lisztomania will be a positive.

Unfortunately, Russell shaved his beard before filming and tried out a rather dapper mustache…

Suitable music, cue the blog:

Russell had originally intended to make a film about George Gershwin starring Al Pacino. He was under contract with Puttnam to make six movies on six composers. Together they’d already made Mahler starring Rober Powell and Georgina Hale to mixed reviews though some minor success at the box-office. Then came Tommy, the movie version of the Who’s classic concept album. Tommy had been a major hit with both audiences and critics across the world. Russell’s movie kick-started pop promos and whole new way of cinematic storytelling. At Puttnam’s bidding, Russell wrote two scripts. One on sex-mad classical composer Franz Liszt. One on George Gershwin. The latter was dull, The former interesting...

Scene: Exterior Day: Enter Roger Daltrey juggling fish while walking on water and turning it to wine.

Daltrey was at his peak. He was Tommy. He was the frontman for the Who. He was the one name everyone wanted to work with. Russell wanted to make another film with Daltrey. Daltrey wanted to make another film with Russell—despite 32-takes running barefoot through a mustard field for Tommy.

Puttnam liked the idea of Daltrey and Russell making another film together. He opted for Lisztomania and dropped the idea of Pacino as Gershwin.

Cut to: Ext. Day: Archive footage of Ken Russell on location.

Russell: Roger is a natural, brilliant performer. He acts as he sings and the results are magical. He also has a curious quality of innocence which is why he was a perfect Tommy and why he is the only person to play Liszt.

Flashback: Roger Daltrey discusses Liszt in a TV interview from 1974.

Daltrey: Liszt’s music is just like modern day rock. He was a lot like me. He had this religious thing like me but he still went lusting after women.

Cut to Alan Whicker walking on a surf-washed beach.

Whicker: Lisztomania was the term coined by German Romantic poet Heinrich Heine to describe the mass adulation composer Franz Liszt aroused in his fans. Liszt was mobbed by breathy young women, who swooned at his recitals, chanted his name, plundered discarded detritus for keepsakes (cigar butts, coffee cups, gloves) and dared to touch the hem of his garment.

Many Germans considered Lisztomania to be a genuine fever, but no one could find its cause or its cure. Heine later wrote:

What is the reason of this phenomenon? The solution of this question belongs to the domain of pathology rather than that of aesthetics. A physician, whose speciality is female diseases, and whom I asked to explain the magic our Liszt exerted upon the public, smiled in the strangest manner, and at the same time said all sorts of things about magnetism, galvanism, electricity, of the contagion of the close hall filled with countless wax lights and several hundred perfumed and perspiring human beings, of historical epilepsy, of the phenomenon of tickling, of musical cantharides, and other scabrous things, which, I believe have reference to the mysteries of the bona dea. Perhaps the solution of the question is not buried in such adventurous depths, but floats on a very prosaic surface. It seems to me at times that all this sorcery may be explained by the fact that no one on earth knows so well how to organize his successes, or rather their mise en scene, as our Franz Liszt.

The seed was sown in Russell’s brain. Classical musicians like Liszt are the same as pop stars like Daltrey, Mick Jagger or the Beatles.

Cut to the blog:

Actually, Russell originally wanted Mick Jagger to play Liszt. However, the starting point for his script and the film was the novel Nélida by Marie d’Agoult–the “thinly disguised fictional account” of her four year affair with the long-fingered composer Liszt.

Russell saw Liszt, as Joseph Lanza notes in Phallic Frenzy: Ken Russell and His Films,  as “Romanticism’s baby and the precursor to the modern pop star.”

Like other great names that caught Russell’s eye, Liszt fought internal wars. He was torn between love for his music and his prurient desires, his guilt about leading a cushy lifestyle and sitting idly during the 1849 Hungarian rebellion against the House of Hapsburg, his desperation for the kind of commercial success that would belie his artistic integrity, and most important, the queasy fact that Wagner was eclipsing him as Europe’s symphonic superstar.

Russell saw much to play with here and described Lisztomania as not a straightforward biography but coming:

...from things I feel when I listen to the music of Wagner and Liszt, and when I think about their lives.

Russell wanted to make a film about the rivalry between Liszt and Wagner, and how Wagner plagiarized some of Liszt’s work and ended up marrying Liszt’s daughter, Cosima. However, Puttnam wanted another Tommy full of rock stars and great tunes. Tommy was money. Tommy was Oscar-nominations. Puttnam liked both. But Lisztomania was an unknown quantity. Puttnam forced Ringo Starr on Russell. He added scenes and even included some musical cues that had nothing to do with anything. Russell was beginning to feel frustrated.

Sidebar: When I produced stuff for TV, I saw my job as enabling the director to bring their vision to the screen. Puttnam was of the olde school where he thought a producer had his/her vision on the screen, not so much the director. The problem with creative industries is that everyone thinks they are creative. But in truth: Producers are money and editorial. Directors and writers are talent.

Here’s another interesting piece of casting: Russell allegedly wanted Marty Feldman to play Wagner but he settled for Paul Nicholas. Not that there’s much wrong with “Cousin Kevin” Mr. Nicholas, but he ain’t Marty Feldman…

Russell’s screenplay was only 57-pages long. The script was all in his head. Puttnam insisted on having everything down on paper so he could cost it. The budget spiralled upwards but not as much as Russell wanted. What should have been Fellini became end-of-the-pier cabaret. It probably suited Russell as his imagination soared in adverse circumstances. But the different aims of a producer who wanted a pop promo; and director who wanted to make a film about art, music, and rivalry between two composers, were never fully resolved.

Russell fell back on the comic strip format he had used with his (banned) TV biopic on Strauss Dance of the Seven Veils. The film became a series of dreams which highlighted key moments in Liszt’s life. Russell eschewed any realism using references to Universal horror movies, pop concerts, the rise of National Socialism, mensch und übermensch, Pop Art, comedy, and even some of the movies that most influenced the young Ken Russell.

The resulting film may be considered by some as a mess, but it’s a genius mess. A film that offers up more ideas in one sequence than a dozen studio movies with one-hundred times the budget. As Ross Care correctly noted in Film Quarterly:

Ken Russell is an intuitive symbolist and fantasist, a total film-maker who orchestrates his subjects in much the same manner that a composer might transcribe a musical composition from one interpretative medium to another…

Or as Joseph Lanza wrote:

Lisztomania—[was] the film that established once and for all Ken Russell’s refusal to pay any more token favors to biographical “realism.” Lisztomania contains many relevant facts about Liszt—his music, the people who affected his life, his marital problems, his womanizing, his recourse to religion, and of course, his strained relationship with Wagner—but it goes further into the deep end than even the swastika-adorned portrait of Strauss from five years before.

Released in 1975, shortly after Tommy, Lisztomania continues Russell’s harder, more satirical edge, with more lavish sets, more crazed acting, more frenetic plot pacing, and a premise that is simultaneously silly and fantastic.

Cut to: Alan Whicker up to his next in water on a beach.

Whicker: Cinema and TV was never the same after Tommy. And Ken Russell’s career was never quite the same after Lisztomania.

End titles.
 

 

 
More on Ken Russell’s ‘Lisztomania’, after the jump…
 

Photo by Mariexxme
 
King Khan! Man of many bands and many hands. Satanic, shamanic, bananic, messianic and more and more titanic, King Khan spurts to the beat of his own cum drum. He goes in all directions at once (including inward), has made many forms of music on all the coolest labels around with The King Khan and BBQ Show, King Khan and the Shrines, Tandoori Knights, Black Jaspers, Almighty Defenders, Louder Than Death and he’s made records with The Spits, Black Lips and William S. Burroughs! He’s unstoppable, and never stops, well that is and isn’t the same thing really if ya think about it.

I speak with Khan regularly. We’re premiering his new video here today and he’s just starting a tour so I thought to do a little interview as well. Check out the record and tour dates here. Ready? Hold your nose! OK, let’s jump!

Howie Pyro: What makes chicken so psychedelic?

KK: Well I don’t know if you know this but their gobbles are full of DMT, and the challenge is how you smoke it. Chickens don’t appreciate lighting their gobbles on fire…. I know far too many farmers who have lost an
eye trying to get high with a chicken. If I had a penny for each of them I would be the Indian Col. Sanders.

HP: This song has so many layers…. LSD, a goat’s tooth, rats with scabies, birds and bees on fire, even a rabid cook… How did you come up with these lyrics?

KK: I always admired the chef named “Barf” on You Can’t Do That on Television, which was a Canadian kids show that I grew up watching. I would want him to have goats teeth, and be in a kitchen filled with rats with scabies making me chicken. I just imagined him trying to make a romantic dinner for me and my concubine. What would be his version of an aphrodisiac and would it lead to some wild ass baby making? These are the things i fantasize about…. Ever since I accepted the films of David Cronenberg into my life, things ain’t the same…. I neeeed help…. Death to Videodrome… Long live the New Flesh!

HP: Did working with Alejandro Jodorowsky have a permanent effect on you?

KK: Yes, ever since I became one of his spiritual warriors I have this attitude towards art. If art does not mutate you than it has failed. I feel like in order to follow the path of illumination you must seek the path of least resistance, and once that is found, everything that you create must not be feared…. creation has to be a brutal/beautiful experience and if it does not help mutate the viewer than it hasn’t achieved anything that matters.

HP: How have your experiences been with psychedelics?

KK: I started at about 15-years-old with LSD, took a lot of it up until my mid 20s. I did a lot until it suddenly felt redundant. It was like i had figured out the puzzle and didn’t need it anymore to make any profound realizations. I began smoking DMT a few years back, but have only really broke through twice. That was the best experience I had with tripping. The first time I sat and spoke to a praying mantis with a golden crown, she spoke in her language and I could understand it. When I looked around I saw Anubis and other Egyptian deities and they were all sitting at a table like the last supper and I was an honored guest. It was so beautiful, they were throwing me a party, and it was all so real, yet completely bonkers. I think psychedelics are tools for us to use carefully, they make you see things that can be so spiritually powerful that they heal you.

HP: I would have asked if you remembered what the mantis language sounded like!

KK: Yes… it sounds like this…“Khrawk khrawk sss khrawz khrawk scuzzzzzzz carawk…”

HP: And wondered how you kept your wild willie to yourself (therefore not being devoured after)?

KK: Smearing hot mustard on my willie could protect it from non gourmands, and could also induce tears during fellatio which could be kinda romantic.

HP: How long does it take to incubate five acid chicken babies, one for each point of thee pentagram? [See video below] What is the seed that they grew from and who “planted” it?

KK: The seeds were provided by yours truly. I didn’t realize that we placed the acid chicken spawns in a pentagram…. I guess it was really a subliminal message of sorts. I am glad you pointed it out!

It takes a special sort of man to spot the invisible pentagram in poultry.

HP: I’ll put a dirty feather in my cap (cluck cluck)... Any wild outfits/stage wear planned for this big tour starting on 9/11? Wait 9/11? And finally, what is the sound of one mant crapping?

KK: One “mant” crapping? Does said “mant” have a human anus or a “mant” hole?

9/11? That is just a coinkiedink!

HP: A Mant-is ...a half man half ant that appears in a movie within a movie (Matinee), loosely based on director William Castle…

KK: Ahhhh well I ASS-ume it would sound like poetry… bugged out insect rap…I mean sorry C-RAP!

HP: What inspires you to make such glorious punk rock?

KK: I like to always go back to a passage by William S. Burroughs from Cities of The Red Night. I picture him the captain of my ship and I feel like he was the first inspiration for me to seek out the underground and find myself…. I think this passage sums it up the best. It’s quite the mouthful…. the perfect words to end all ends…. and begin all beginnings….

“This book is dedicated to the Ancient Ones, to the Lord of Abominations, Humwawa, whose face is a mass of entrails, whose breath is the stench of dung and the perfume of death, Dark Angel of all that is excreted and sours, Lord of Decay, Lord of the Future, who rides on a whispering south wind, to Pazuzu, Lord of Fevers and Plagues, Dark Angel of the Four Winds with rotting genitals from which he howls through sharpened teeth over stricken cities, to Kutulu, the Sleeping Serpent who cannot be summoned, to the Akhkharu, who such the blood of men since they desire to become men, to the Lalussu, who haunt the places of men, to Gelal and Lilit, who invade the beds of men and whose children are born in secret places, to Addu, raiser of storms who can fill the night sky with brightness, to Malah, Lord of Courage and Bravery, to Zahgurim, whose number is twenty-three and who kills in an unnatural fashion, to Zahrim, a warrior among warriors, to Itzamna, Spirit of Early Mists and Showers, to Ix Chel, the Spider-Web-that-Catches-the-Dew-of-Morning, to Zuhuy Kak, Virgin Fire, to Ah Dziz, the Master of Cold, to Kak U Pacat, who works in fire, to Ix Tab, Goddess of Ropes and Snares, patroness of those who hang themselves, to Schmuun, the Silent One, twin brother of Ix Tab, to Xolotl the Unformed, Lord of Rebirth, to Aguchi, Master of Ejaculations, to Osiris and Amen in phallic form, to Hex Chun Chan, the Dangerous One, to Ah Pook, the Destroyer, to the Great Old One and the Star Beast, to Pan, God of Panic, to the nameless gods of dispersal and emptiness, to Hassan i Sabbah, Master of Assassins. To all the scribes and artists and practitioners of magic through whom these spirits have been manifested….

NOTHING IS TRUE. EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED.”

 

Photo by Mariexxme
 

David Bowie performing under one of the massive, glowing arachnids designed by Mark Ravitz for The Glass Spider Tour in 1987.
 

“I got up on it myself. Anything I design, if I can do it, they can do it. So one day I got up in the head of the spider. Sixty feet in the air. There’s a three-foot square you’re standing on, steel pipe welded to it with weight lifter straps. Foot pedal to make the wings open up. You gotta shit a brick when you’re up there…”

—artist and designer Mark Ravitz on the glass spider he designed from Marc Spitz’s book Bowie: A Biography.

David Bowie’s The Glass Spider Tour in 1987 was his most ambitious outing since the pricey Diamond Dogs Tour. At the cost of one million per week to stage, the set was designed by artist Mark Ravitz, with help from lighting expert Allen Branton and video director Christine Strand. A glowing 64-foot wide spider floated over the stage with its legs (made from vacuum tubes) dangling from its body. Every night, Bowie would descend from the spider and a platform sixty feet in the air (as described by Ravitz above), as long as weather conditions would permit.

Once the 86-date tour hit the U.S. the decision was made to construct two additional identical stages, and a third smaller set for Madison Square Garden (which was too small to accommodate the original stage). This was necessary to avoid any complications that would prevent the set from not being ready at least three times a week. For the first date of the U.S. tour in Philadelphia, it took four days and nearly 300 members of Bowie’s crew to assemble the massive stage in time for the show at Veterans Stadium. The shows were non-stop marathons of entertainment including elaborate, rigorous dance numbers choreographed by Toni Basil. So intense were Basil’s dance numbers, a fan claims to have seen poor David vomit off the side of the stage after a particularly grueling groove session. After playing 44 shows in America, the tour headed to Australia for its last fifteen shows, the final gig set for Auckland, New Zealand on November 28th.

According to those close to Bowie, he was more than ready for the wildly successful, attendance-breaking tour to end and was planning something big to celebrate. His plan? Destroy The Glass Spider set and bury it somewhere in the desert in New Zealand.

Bowie’s story regarding the demise of The Glass Spider set has been documented in a few books including The Complete David Bowie by Nicholas Pegg (2000). The last few shows in Melbourne were plagued by terrible weather—the rain and high winds meant Bowie would not be descending from the spider, and many of the shows dance routines had to be scaled back or eliminated entirely. After the final show in Auckland, Bowie would tell the press what became of his giant spider:

“It was great to burn the spider in New Zealand at the end of the tour. We just put the thing in a field and set light to it. That was such a relief!”

 

One of the Glass Spider’s used for the Glass Spider Tour in 1987.
 
Bowie’s ceremonious burning of The Glass Spider set would become the stuff of legend, and on a certain level, it’s incredibly gratifying to think the Thin White Duke was able to exorcise his spidery demons just as you would expect him to. There are other stories associated with The Glass Spider set and its possible whereabouts, such as some of the remains being buried in a hole at the Auckland airport. Bowie bassist Erdal Kizilcay recalls asking Bowie about the set while they were traveling together from Auckland, to which Bowie responded, “They’re burning it.” At the time, Kizilcay found Bowie’s explanation a bit strange. Later, after getting confirmation from others close to the spider set situation, Kizilcay agreed Bowie’s story was probably true. This brings us to New Zealand promoter Peter Grumley—the man who claims to have recovered many parts of the Glass Spider set.

Grumley disputes the story of the set being buried at the airport in Auckland as well as Bowie’s version. In a 2015 interview Grumley asserted he purchased the set from “friends of his” working on the tour, and put it away in one of his warehouses. What he didn’t buy allegedly went to the dump. The only artifacts currently in Grumley’s possession are two staircases used on the set. Chris Davis, a guitar tech for Peter Frampton (who was a part of The Glass Spider Tour) also had some insight into what happened to the pricey stage set and backs up Grumley’s claim. Here’s Davis’ very specific “But wait! There’s more!” moment on this weird tale…

Continues after the jump…

 
In 1922, T. S. Eliot’s poem The Wasteland was published in the Criterion magazine. It was read by no more than a handful of people. The poem was then republished in book form in a limited edition of 450 copies. Within a decade, The Wasteland was considered one of the greatest poems of the twentieth century and its modernist influence continues to this day.

In December 1977, the sound of the future arrived when a two-piece band called Suicide released their self-titled debut album to little acknowledgement or fanfare except from a few astute record critics in England. The American press mostly reviled it. Record buyers ignored it. Yet, within a decade, Suicide was considered one of the most important and influential album releases of all time.

Suicide consisted of Martin Rev (keyboards) and Alan Vega (vocals). This thirty-something musical pairing of radical mavericks stripped down rock ‘n’ roll into its constituent parts and reinvented it as a new, pulsating, minimalist, electronic sound with a reach that would shape and influence music from synth to techno for decades to come.

There was nothing comparable to this debut release which is why so many rock critics failed to grasp what had just happened.

Now, over forty years on, Suicide’s debut album is set to be re-released by Mute/BMG as part of their Art of the Album series.

In an exclusive interview with Dangerous Minds, Martin Rev discusses his life and work and the making of one of music’s greatest albums

Tell me about your childhood, what it was like, and what were your first musical influences?

Martin Rev: I think I was a fairly happy child as far as possible, you know, with all the ups and downs. I was very lucky to have the family I did. We all played music as it turned out, non-professionally. My brother played, was given lessons. My father played. My mother played, she had lessons as a young girl so she played in the home. They wanted their kids to definitely learn music. My father was one of the most distinctively talented musicians I’ve ever heard in my whole life. He played song after song on a guitar or a mandolin. Never read or studied a note. He was incredible that way. So, it was a musical family. That added to the richness of my childhood.

Otherwise, it was all the usual growing pains and doubts and dreams. It was a fairly lucky period to grow up in between war kind of thing. After World War Two and before Vietnam. America had probably reached its pinnacle of affluence. That whole generation for a while, well, a couple of generations, felt an incredible sense of future potential that anything could happen or be done and the whole future was wide open with possibilities.

A little different than it is now. There wasn’t the pessimism or the awareness of the dark clouds behind the covers as there is now. There was an optimism—even though I didn’t buy all that the country was selling even as a kid. I was a bit of radical rebel already as a teenager. But there’s no complaints there, it was what it was. I was lucky to be given room and the opportunity to discover music which was something I could be thankful for, you know, every day of many lives because there’s nothing else I’d better do.

I grew up hearing all the great songs coming off the radio as a kid. I was bitten, smitten by them as so many kids my age were.  The golden era of rhythm and blues, American rock ‘n’ roll. There was all the rhythm and blues groups at the time, there was the Paragons, the Gestures, Little Richard, Mellow Kings, Danny and the Juniors, the Silhouettes. I mean you can go on and on but a lot of them had only one great song and a few of them had many—the Flamingos, the Students, these were the groups that were really happening. That was the music of the times. That’s what did it.

Were you buying records at this time?

MR: There was 45s. There really wasn’t the album, there wasn’t FM radio. The price of a 45 then was 45c to a dollar. You could buy them easily and some people kinda got into collecting them so when there were parties, things like this, in people’s basements, there was always a couple of people there who had great collections who would be the ones who would spin the records all night.

When did you first consider the possibility of a career in music?

MR: I got serious about music about ten or eleven. At eleven I started figuring out the songs I was hearing on the radio on piano. I started improvising around that time or soon after like boogie-woogie and improvising towards jazz. I think about by twelve, I was pretty much set on making music my life. That’s the way I felt then and still do.

I just wanted to play and make music. I just saw myself as playing live. I envisioned it as a beautiful way to play in clubs and meet girls. That’s a typical thing when you’re twelve or thirteen. The vision of coming off a bandstand in a nightclub and how attractive that could be to girls. I guess the idea of whoever I have evolved into as an artist took shape and form over the years after that but I guess it was all there innately at that time. I just wanted to play, everything around me was great and exciting to me—rhythmically, vocally. I started hearing jazz a couple of years later and I just wanted to learn how to play that stuff and play in bands. I didn’t think much of recording until a little later.

When I was about fifteen, I started playing in little rhythm and blues groups doing one-nighters and things like that. Musically it was ecstatic. The agony and the ecstasy. The agony, it wasn’t difficult except in the economic sense. It was just finding a way to make ends meet and have the time to be free to make music which meant everything

What happened next, how did you meet Alan Vega, and when did you decide to form Suicide?

MR: I left home when I was eighteen. I was married with kids when I was twenty. I met Alan soon after that when I was about twenty-one or twenty-two. I was still very much totally involved in my own artistic evolution, you might say, as Alan was as a visual artist. We were totally dedicated which we both had in common. No risk factor at all. No future factor but to just evolve and create in our fields.

Alan had decided soon before I met him that he had to perform as a visual artist. That was after seeing Iggy Pop and the Stooges play in New York for the first time.

I had my own group called Reverend B when I met Alan. I was doing certain shows in the city. It was a very avant garde, free improvisational group that used electronic keyboard ‘cause that was the only thing available. You had to borrow it, there weren’t a lot of other keyboards in the venues we played.

Alan was working, well, not working but living, he was given the keys to the Museum of Living Artists which was a large loft that was designated for a co-op gallery of artists who did shows on a co-op basis like every month or two. He had the keys to that and that’s where we met. Because both of us were so much in that same place of total dedication. We were the only ones left there at night and talking and playing and thinking about art and music and trying to survive. We were the last ships in the night, so to speak, and we started thinking about putting something together.

Alan at that time was at a crossroads in his life because he was living with friends and he’d just separated from his wife of several years and he didn’t have a place to live either so he was living in the Museum itself. We were both pretty much in that same place and that space was keeping us off the streets. Although I was a little better advantaged at that point because I had a place to go but it was a good travel. Once I would get on the train and go up there that was the end of the night.

How did you come up with Suicide’s powerful distinctive sound?

MR: I think some of it is visceral, it’s just something that’s part of your fingerprint that is given to you by nature the way you approach music.

When I think back, if I was doing a show as a teenager in a jazz band say, as soon I saw the certain facility, it could be any kind of band, I played with a certain kind of an energy and certain kind of commitment. I always did.

Also, as an early teenager I started working in these resorts in the summer playing dancing—older people dancing—square stuff, but the way I played it was like they’d dance like crazy and they’d come over to the bandstand and say, “What the hell was that?” They were going around in circles the way I saw it. And that was kind of the way I am, the way I approach music, my energy. I am involved when I am inside music.

As far as Suicide for me was to work with the potential of electronics in terms of performance. Putting devices together, combining them, I mean really cheap, small inexpensive stuff. But I heard the potential. I heard what that was in terms of a total open frontier and that was a direction and everything I was going into that direction created a certain energy and then rediscovering my roots which was rock ‘n’ roll which was so innate because I was born into it before—it wasn’t something I could analyze it was just the music of of my time as a child. Coming back to that essential force or energy that made it work for me then and still did when I listened to certain things that appealed to me. One can analyze as a certain basic energy and rhythm which is the driving force that made rock work for us. Little Richard a perfect example of many. But able to do that now in a way that was totally fresh to me. Exciting because to me it wasn’t repeating what was done, it was finding a new way to express something that universal energy and drive.

I guess I was printed with a lot of that energy maybe from rock ‘n’ roll too and something who knows maybe ancestral, familial.

What were Suicide’s first gigs like?

MR: I think our first show was at the Museum of Living Artists, if I’m not mistaken. I was playing drums. There was three of us. I don’t think there were that many people there, enough to play the gig.

Alan said after that first Museum gig let’s go to the Ivan Karp OK Harris Gallery. Alan actually had very unexpectedly landed a room to show his sculptures in a group show by Ivan Karp. This was one of the really major galleries of the day, now downtown in Soho.

We always thought where can we go next to get a gig where nobody knows us and there’s very few places to play. Now a lot of the clubs from the sixties were closing, the whole scene is closing down, otherwise they’re too big like the Fillmore, they’re never gonna put us in. By 70-71, it began to feel like a transition as well. The sixties had kinda tapered off. The whole period of Haight-Ashbury, St. Mark’s Place, that was so incredibly vibrant in the sixties, was now starting to fade a bit like any other movement or form of thought. You had kind of a limbo period. Of course, I didn’t register all of that in detail, I was too involved in just me and my life and not that economically, theoretically safe anyway at that point. It was still a vibrant city to me.
 

Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev.
 
 
More from Martin Rev and Suicide, after the jump…
 

 
Marc Bolan said that from an early age he felt he was different from everyone else (don’t we all, dearie…). He believed, like say Churchill, he was born to do something momentous with his life. Something that would have a lasting importance, where his name would be known a hundred years after his death. He claimed when he was a child he didn’t feel like any of the other kids. But how he knew what these kids felt is a moot point. However different Bolan felt from everybody else, he sincerely believed it was in his fate to succeed.

Strange superstitions and odd beliefs the supernatural have caused some mythologizing around Bolan’s life and young, tragic death. This, in large part, has been inspired by the singer’s own words and writing. We all know the story of how Bolan idolized James Dean. This hero-worship led the Bolan’s first manager, Simon Napier-Bell to jokingly suggest he could imagine Bolan dying in a car crash just like Dean, but in a Rolls-Royce rather than a sports car. To which Bolan replied a Rolls-Royce wasn’t his style, a Mini was more in keeping with his image. Two weeks before his thirtieth birthday, Bolan was killed when the Mini his partner Gloria Jones was driving hit a metal fence. A bolt from this fence smashed thru the windscreen, hit Bolan in the head and killed him. The car then crashed into a tree where it came to a halt. The car’s number plate was FOX 661L, which led some fans to suggest this tragic event had been predicted by Bolan in the lyrics to his song “Solid Gold Easy Action” when he sang about “picking foxes from a tree” and sang about a “Woman from the east with her headlights shining.”

Then there was Bolan’s long-held and frequently mentioned belief that he would die young like some poet-artist. Or, the time during the recording in Germany of the (much under appreciated) album Zinc Alloy and the Hidden Riders of Tomorrow when Bolan claimed he saw the ghosts of a dead Jewish family who had perished during the Holocaust. This deeply troubled the singer and gave him an overwhelming sense of death. Not long after, he quit Germany never to return.

Of course, Bolan often embellished the events of his own life. He once claimed he had a met a wizard in Paris during the 1960s who had shown him how to use the power of occult magic to achieve his ambitions. This meeting became the basis for one of Bolan’s early singles “The Wizard.” Napier-Bell later suggested this “wizard” or “magician” was nothing more than a stage conjuror who showed Bolan how to do a few card tricks. Whichever version was true, it’s fair to say there was always something otherworldly about Bolan.

He was born Mark Feld on September 30th, 1947, in Stoke Newington, east London. His Jewish father was a truck driver and his mother worked at a local street market stall. Bolan was named after his uncle Mark, who had been brutally murdered during the war by an army sergeant called Patrick Francis Lyons. Surprisingly, at a time when murder meant the death penalty in England, Lyons received a ten-year jail sentence for the lesser charge of manslaughter. Bolan was well-aware who he had been named after. In part it inspired him to do something with his life. At the same time, it gave him a sense of great sense foreboding that maybe for all his possible future success he might in some way be cursed—as he later claimed “all rock stars are cursed.”

Bolan was the younger of two brothers. He was by all accounts spoiled by his mother and was given anything he wanted. One day, on a trip with his Mother to the cinema, to see Frank Tashlin’s The Girl Can’t Help It, the young Bolan discovered his future destiny. He was to be a rock ‘n’ roll star. 

The Girl Can’t Help It starred Jayne Mansfield (who also died in a bizarre, occult-tinged, road accident) and Tom Ewell. The movie featured a whole roster of rock ‘n’ roll stars like Little Richard, Gene Vincent, The Platters, Fats Domino, and Eddie Cochran. It was Cochran who caught Bolan’s attention. The eleven-year-old Bolan quickly formed a band, well a duet, and managed to blag his way into playing at the 2i’s Coffee Bar—“birthplace of British Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

At fifteen, Bolan was expelled from school for “bad behavior.” But he knew academic qualifications weren’t a requirement to graduate as a rock ‘n’ roll star. He was clocked by photographer Don McCullin who photographed Bolan and his Mod mates for Town magazine. This gave Bolan a brief career as a model for fashion catalogs looking tough in sharp suits for the flash Mod-about-town. But he still chased his dream of a successful career in music. He signed up as a folk singer, changed his name, and became half-Bob Dylan, half-bohemian pixie poet. He was spotted by manager Napier-Bell who suggested he join up-and-coming band John’s Children as “their Pete Townshend.” It was a brief but revelatory experience. Throughout his life, Bolan adapted elements to his personality from characters out of movies or comic books to shape his own persona. From the battling Mighty Joe Young to Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings. From John’s Children Bolan learned how to perform on stage. He then learnt a different approach to stage craft from watching Ravi Shankar perform cross-legged sitting on a rug next to a tabla player. It led him to form Tyrannosaurus Rex. Bolan played his guitar cross-legged on a rug next to a bongo-playing Steve Pergerin Took.

Bolan wrote ethereal songs about nothing much in particular where words were used for their sound rather than their meaning. Tyrannosaurus Rex was championed by DJ John Peel, who considered the band “revolutionary.” It was short-lived infatuation. Peel later denounced Bolan’s naked ambition for fame describing the singer as “a hippie with a knife up his sleeve.” Ain’t no pleasin’ some folks… However, producer Tony Visconti recognized Bolan’s immense talent from the beginning stating in an interview with the Guardian in 2015 that what he saw in Bolan:

...had nothing to do with strings, or very high standards of artistry; what I saw in him was raw talent. I saw genius. I saw a potential rock star in Marc—right from the minute, the hour I met him.

Tyrannosaurus Rex arrived at a time when students were rioting on the streets of Paris and an anti-Vietnam demonstration almost became a pitch-battle between protestors and police outside the American embassy in London. Peregrin Took was more far radical than Bolan. He wanted to take the band in a more political direction…
 
More Marc and Gloria, after the jump…
 

 
Sharon Osbourne came up with the idea for Ozzfest after her Prince of Darkness husband got snubbed from playing Lollapalooza in ’96. The most reputable touring festival of its kind, Ozzfest would reach peak popularity in the new millennium, with break-out artists of the hard rock and heavy metal persuasion. It’s safe to say that bands like Slipknot, Marilyn Manson, Disturbed, and Rob Zombie wouldn’t have achieved the same mainstream success if Ozzfest hadn’t riled up the head-banging degenerates of every American suburbia it blared through.
 
You are probably familiar with the work of Penelope Spheeris, most recognized for directing such films as Wayne’s World, Suburbia, The Little Rascals, and the groundbreaking underground music documentary series, The Decline of Western Civilization I-III. Spheeris is also regarded for the infamous films she declined to direct, This is Spinal Tap and Legally Blonde among them. Her refusal was due to other commitments, and in 1999, it was because of Ozzfest.
 
After releasing the third (and final) installment of The Decline, with its focus on Los Angeles gutter punks of the late-nineties, Spheeris was soon onto a new cultural phenomena, heavy metal in middle America. During the summer of 1999, the Ozzfest roadshow appeared in 26 cities throughout North America, headlined by the original lineup of Black Sabbath—their final “farewell” tour of the nineties reunion (before the next one). On the bill were soon-to-be household names of the burgeoning hard rock and nu-metal scene, including Rob Zombie, Slayer, System of a Down, Primus, Godsmack, and Static-X. And joining them to document the journey was Penelope Spheeris, directing a picture later unknown to many titled: We Sold Our Souls for Rock ’n Roll.
 

 
Envisioned with the same anthropological eye and creative brilliance that executed The Decline, Spheeris left no rock (or roll) unturned on her quest for the cultural core and essence of such a bizarre evolution within the early-internet age. Throughout the film, reckless and inebriated fans are pulled aside, musicians are questioned of their long-term relevance, and anti-satanist picketers are given the opportunity to sound even more insane. Not to mention, there are glimpses of Sabbath jamming backstage, a groupie’s tour of the Slayer tour bus, grotesque sideshow demonstrations, topless bull riding, bonfires, fights with security, and… Buckethead. Remember that scene in The Decline II when Ozzy cooks eggs? Well, in this one, we witness him pissing in the bushes of his Beverly Hills mansion. In just two years, the Osbourne family antics would gain mainstream notoriety, all thanks to MTV.
 
If the documentary had seen a wide release, I imagine it would have been as important as the other Decline films, due to like-minded outsider examination of such a raw subculture. Spheeris’ honest depiction of such a puzzling, yet beautiful, societal abnormality is truly mind-blowing and worth the attention, regardless of your take on the music. Licensing issues prevented the film from making it anywhere else besides YouTube, so I recommend that you watch ASAP before it gets pulled down.
 
Relive the glory (and madness) of Ozzfest ’99 below:
 

 
When I was young, my mom gifted me a subscription to Dog Fancy magazine. It was definitely one of those scenarios that sounds great in theory, enriching even - until the back-issues begin piling up. Oh great, another one? Add it to the stack… I still have about a year’s worth of The New Yorker sitting under my bed. I’ll get to it.
 
The main reason why I was a subscriber of Dog Fancy wasn’t because, at age eight, I wanted to learn the ins-and-outs of the cutthroat canine industry. It was because I thought my two Shetland Sheepdogs would enjoy it. But, guess what? They could not have cared less. I mean, Dog Fancy is sooo “basic.” It’s like a dog reading Martha Stewart Living. Sure, my dogs could barely see, but at least they had class.
 
Years later, I discovered that there had been a few late-eighties parody magazines, specifically Canine Quarterly and Dogue, written for the classy, sophisticated dog of the modern American home. Although cleverly tongue-in-cheek, the content within is presented in an entirely serious manner, as if its audience was wholly made up of trendy, upscale pooches. Topics range from your typical leisure digest fare - relationships, diet, style, travel, home, and fitness. There’s a cover story on Spuds MacKenzie (Bud Light mascot and the “Original Party Animal”), a section on dream doghouses, hound-friendly dinner recipes, canine couture, pet horoscopes, and a gift guide for their favorite human. It is truly, as they say, “paw-some.”
 

 
The most rewarding thing about picking up a copy of Dogue or CQ are its advertisements - mostly just spoofs on popular clothing brands, jewelry, and cosmetics. It is very clear that the author had a lot of fun creating these, especially since a number of other similar satire publications had popped up in the years surrounding, like Cowsmopolitan, Playboar, Vanity Fur, Good Mousekeeping, and Catmopolitan. Just don’t purchase any of these thinking your pet would be interested in reading - it still isn’t food.
 
Take a look at some of the most clever advertisements and other photos from ‘Canine Quarterly’ and ‘Dogue,’ below:
 

 

 
More after the jump…

“Iggy Pop 1970”
 
A new company called Wax Face Toys is launching with a remarkable figurine of Iggy Pop. Wax Face make licensed figures in resin and vinyl featuring cult heroes from the world of music and film. The Iggy figurine was sculpted in London by former Madame Tussauds artists and measures 15.7 inches (40 centimeters). It is based on the well-known photograph taken by Thomas Copi of the Stooges performing at the Cincinnati Summer Pop Festival of 1970. There was a previous Iggy sculpt that was sold via the now defunct Toys ‘R Us website, and although it was done well, it depicted Iggy in his 60s, not his youthful, out-of-his-mind prime. The Iggy depicted here is 23 and obviously full of piss, vinegar and other assorted psychoactive snacks.

There’s an interesting history behind Iggy’s iconic pose:

The Cincinnati music festival—which also included Alice Cooper, Traffic, Mountain, Grand Funk Railroad, Mott the Hoople, Ten Years After, Bob Seger, Tommy Bolin’s band Zephyr and several other acts—took place on June 13th, 1970 at Crosley Field the soon-to-be former home of the Cincinnati Reds. (The Reds would play just a few more games there before moving on to Riverfront Stadium, probably the only reason why the promoters were allowed to hold the event there.)

The leaflet for the event read:

‘Bring blankets, pillows, watermelon, incense, ozone rice, your old lady, babies, and other assorted goodies and do your own thing’

Hippie-flippy and trippy, my finger-poppin’ daddio, but unfortunately a small number of the audience decided to get drunk and break shit, causing over $6000 of damages to the baseball diamond. It was Cincinnati after all!

The festival was shot with three video cameras and cut live like a sporting event with play-by-play commentary. It was later edited down to a 90-minute program titled Midsummer Rock that was broadcast on local television station WLWT and syndicated elsewhere. The producers felt they could tap into the same sort of counterculture youth market as the Woodstock film (which was actually playing in Cincinnati movie theaters the week of the festival) except for television, so they brought in 58-year-old Jack Lescoulie, a square announcer from The Today Show, to make it all seem a little less scary for TV audiences.
 

 
I’m not altogether sure how successful they were with that. Iggy—in what is perhaps the only extant sync-sound footage of the original Stooges—was clearly pumped full of drugs. LOTS of drugs. He paces the stage shirtless, seething, frantic, with silver gloves and a leather collar, like a big cat on meth. He jumps into the audience several times before convincing audience members to hold him aloft as he walks across their hands like he’s Jesus Christ walking on water. You can actually see the moment when Copi got his shot when a bright flash goes off precisely at the right moment. Then all of a sudden Iggy has a large tub of peanut butter that he smears all over himself and gleefully throws into the audience. It’s one of the great rock and roll moments.

Years later Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys took credit for bringing the tub of peanut butter from his parents’ house in nearby Dayton and putting it directly into the Iggster’s hands, knowing fully well what he would do with it. You can hear Jack Lescoulie’s startled reaction to what’s going: “That’s… peanut butter!” he says.

The black resin Iggy figure will be available to purchase from 11AM EST on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2019 online at www.waxface.com. The price is $199 + postage and handling. Orders will ship in June.
 

 
More after the jump…

 
Over the years, legendary New Order and Joy Division bassman, Peter “Hooky” Hook has been collecting almost every single piece of memorabilia relating to his long career in music. From early club and concert tickets to his own numbered ticket, photograph, and recording of the famous Sex Pistols gig at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall in 1976 that kickstarted the Buzzcocks, the Fall, Joy Division and would you believe? Mick Hucknell. Thru to the original master tapes of singles, 7” test pressings, artwork, bass guitars, amps, clothes, records, limited edition boxsets, CDs, right up to the scripts, publicity material, and posters for movies featuring the Manchester music scene (24-Hour Party People) and the Ian Curtis biopic Closer.

Now Hooky has decided to auction off all his prized personal collection of Joy Division and punk memorabilia to raise money for charity for the likes of CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably), the Epilepsy Society, and The Christie. A total of 291 lots are up for grabs consisting of some of the finest punk/new wave memorabilia ever made available in one auction. As Hooky told Louder than War:

Every single piece that I own is in the catalogue. There is nothing else. This is every single thing I own. I only kept one thing back that a wonderful kid I met years ago gave me an art piece – a black felt square with hand wired Unknown Pleasures on it and it’s the only thing I kept and it’s in my office. All the proceeds go to charity. I don’t want to insult the people by keeping the money. I didn’t want to end up like a King Midas figure sitting there on my own cackling, look what I got! That feels nuts.

If you want Hook’s original bass guitar, or the original handwritten lyrics to Joy Division songs, or studio master tapes then get your bid in NOW for Peter Hook: The Joy Division Signature Collection.

The auction commences on 20th March, at 13:00hours (UK time) at Omega Auctions, Sankey Valley Industrial Estate, Newton-Le-Willows. Viewing takes place on 25th February—1st March. However, if you can’t get along have a swatch at some of the items for sale below or check the whole catalog here.
 

Lot 1: 1970s Club Tickets.
 

Lot 3: Hooky’s 7” singles including his first two punk singles.
 

Lot 5: Sex Pistols collection.
 

Lot 6: Sex Pistols Free Trade Hall ticket, recording, and photograph.
 

Lot 10: Joy Division handwritten and signed lyrics.
 
See more of Hooky’s Joy Division Signature Collection, after the jump…
 

 
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the passing of Lux Interior, the great frontman of The Cramps, one of the most influential bands of the last 40+ years. Lux lived up to all expectations and truly walked it like he talked it in such a way that he just might be in a group of one. As has been written by myself and a great many others, this band created a style. Not just music, but in every area of life from film subcultures to sexual freedom and just about everything in between, whether they planned to or not. And it’s showing no signs of stopping.

As we learn over and over again, with the Cramps, when we think there’s nothing left to find, something always pops up! Yesterday on the actual anniversary of Lux’s passing, this rare, very early unheard 1981 interview from radio station KALX appeared! This is an early (and interesting) interview as it was done right when guitarist Kid Congo Powers (who is still going strong and making incredible records) joined the band. So let’s transport ourselves 38 years back in time and listen to the beginning of a journey. Who can conceive of a band like this happening now??
 

 
And to quote that 50s rockabilly song, “Rockin’ Bones,” made popular in the punk era by The Cramps:
 

I wanna leave a happy memory when I go
I wanna leave something to let the whole world know
That the rock in roll daddy has a done passed on
But my bones will keep a-rockin’ long after I’ve gone
Roll on, rock on, raw bones
Well, there’s still a lot of rhythm in these
Rockin’ bones
Well, when I die don’t you bury me at all
Just nail my bones up on the wall
Beneath these bones let these words be seen
This is the bloody gears of a boppin’ machine
Roll on, rock on, raw bones
Well, there’s still a lot of rhythm in these
Rockin’ bones