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Apocalypso: Watch Stiv Bators & the Lords of the New Church implode during their infamous final gig
07.30.2018
06:10 pm
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Although they never really seemed to quite enter the posthumous pantheon of great late and lamented post-punk bands like, say, the Gun Club, and are unlikely ever to inspire any sort of critical reappraisal, the Lords of the New Church—a “supergroup” formed in 1981 by Dead Boys vocalist Stiv Bators, original Damned guitarist/songwriter Brian James (he wrote “Neat Neat Neat,” “New Rose” and most their first two albums) and the insanely tight and powerful rhythm section of former Sham 69 bassist Dave Tregunna and ex-Barracudas drummer Nick Turner—are, in my opinion, pretty worthy of it. Well at least their first album is.

The group’s rhythm section originally consisted of Generation X bassist Tony James (later of Sigue Sigue Sputnik) and two-time Clash drummer Terry Chimes (he was a member of the only band that matters both before Topper Headon joined and after his sacking) and the Damned’s Rat Scabies had also played drums for a single gig before Turner replaced him. The classic line-up of the Lords, a brash, trashy punk tornado of a band in the mold of the Stooges and the Dolls had all the subtlety of a flame thrower. I saw them live on their first tour and they were utterly awe-inspiring. Their messianic revolutionary street gang warlord “message” was original for the time and spoke to kids like me who were tired of their parents’ religion during the early Reagan years, an epoch that felt like the end of the world was just around the corner from a nuclear attack launched by a senile Republican president…

Perhaps sniffing something similar in the air, the first Lords of the New Church album was re-released by Blixa Sounds Records last week as a deluxe two CD edition along with a blistering 1982 live set included. I’ve had a review copy for about the past two months and I must say, hearing that album again for the first time after… what… 36 years… every single note and every word was still etched in my memory like something by the Stones or Led Zeppelin. That album—practically every single song—is fuckin’ catchy. These riff-heavy songs stick in your craw like the catchiest things on the Nuggets comp and indeed they cover Balloon Farm’s “A Question of Temperature” so this isn’t exactly a coincidence that one might note this. After all those years, it sounded really really good to me and once The Lords of the New Church went into my car’s CD player several weeks ago, well, I still can’t find any reason to hit eject on it. It’s a short album—just over 30 minutes and a frantic burst of energy from the start to finish—and I’ve played it over and over and over again and I’ve yet to grow tired of it. If you fondly recall this album like I do—I mean, to be honest I had practically forgotten that it had ever existed—or even if you’ve never heard of it, I highly recommend it to you either way. It’s an unsung classic and it’s really fucking good…

After that first one the Lords got a bit too Billy Idol meets Hanoi Rocks for me and I stopped following them.
 

 
Now here’s a tale about the end of the band: The Lords were dropped by their record label, IRS, in 1986. They got a new drummer and continued gigging around England and Europe sporadically for a few years. During one show at London’s Astoria Theater, Stiv—a physical performer who once became unconscious and nearly died after a theatrical onstage “hanging” went awry—badly injured his back. The band was set to play another show at the Astoria on May 2nd of 1989, but Bators was apparently not being very cooperative and Brian James placed musician wanted ads in various UK music papers to find someone to replace him.

Bators heard about the “NAME BAND” help wanted ad and he was furious. With a black felt-tipped marker he reproduced the ad large on a white tee-shirt, and agreed to perform with the band at the Astoria not letting on that he knew about the move to turf him from the group he led.

During the encore, Stiv comes out with the tee-shirt on, making sure that both the audience and his fellow band members can clearly read it.

More after the jump…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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07.30.2018
06:10 pm
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Never before seen photos of Stiv Bators and the Dead Boys, 1976. A Dangerous Minds exclusive
05.19.2015
08:12 am
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This is the good stuff, good people, a genuine once-in-a-blue-moon recovery of a lost treasure trove. You, Dangerous Minds’ readers, are literally the first people in the word to see these photos, apart from the photographer and a tiny handful of others.

In 1976, Dave Treat, a student at the now defunct Cooper School of Art in Cleveland, Ohio, lived in a Lakewood apartment building that also hoveled the members of a rock band that had just re-christened itself from Frankenstein to the Dead Boys. As he was both the nearest accessible art student who owned a camera and a close friend to singer Stiv Bators, Treat was recruited to shoot publicity photos of the band, and while one of them may have been used (it remains unclear, but we’ll get to that), the rest have sat unseen since then. They became obsolete quickly, as Jeff Magnum would be added as the band’s bassist shortly after these were shot. In the last year, their existence became known to art historian Brittany Mariel Hudak and photographer/gallery owner Bryon Miller, who are working to release them in a book, and preparing them for exhibit in Cleveland, with the possibly of a New York exhibit later in the year. What the photos reveal is a band unknowingly on the cusp of achieving legendary status, and a sensitive, vulnerable Stiv Bators very, very unlike his self-consciously bratty public persona.

From Hudak’s introduction to the forthcoming Stiv 1976: Lost Photographs of Stiv Bators & The Dead Boys:

This is not about the onstage, very public Stiv or his antics – you can visit that guy on YouTube, read about his New York shenanigans in Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me, or watch him wield a baseball bat as tough guy “Bo-Bo Belsinger” in John Water’s film, Polyester.  In contrast, these photographs taken by his neighbor Dave Treat in 1976 capture a different Stiv altogether – what they capture is “Stiv” in the making.  They offer a rare glimpse into the private life of a young man on the brink of something, with a marked sense of unfettered opportunities and grand plans. There’s an unquestionable eagerness in his eyes, a what-do-I-have-to-lose attitude – and even hints of the onstage Stiv being built. He poses quite consciously for the camera, wearing the soon to be comfortable guise of the seductive rock star – lanky, languid, oozing sex appeal and confidence, complete with outrageous platform boots.

But if you look closely you can detect another, more vulnerable side of the performer. Crouched in a corner or staring off into the distance, at times there’s a palpable sadness – a peculiar malaise. This too could be a pose – the tortured artist suffering for his art, another familiar component of the rock-star myth. But one gets a sense that this side is genuine, and for Stiv rarely seen, which makes these photos all the more special.

The negatives for these amazing photos were buried in a closet for almost 40 years, and most have been printed for the first time this year by Miller, a gallery proprietor and photographer for High Times and Billboard, who, out of respect for their origins and provenance, actually printed them old-school gelatin silver style. In an actual darkroom. Some of those still exist. The photos will be exhibited at Miller’s Gallery 160 in Cleveland beginning on Friday, June 5th, to mark the 25th anniversary of Stiv’s death from injuries sustained when he was hit by a car, with an opening reception beginning at 6:00PM. Apart from Treat, Hudak, Miller, myself, and the Dead Boys’ Cheetah Chrome, nobody has ever seen these images before you, right now. Clicking on an image spawns an enlargement in a new browser tab.
 

 

 
More unseen Dead Boys, after the jump…

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Posted by Ron Kretsch
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05.19.2015
08:12 am
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John Waters eulogizes Dead Boy Stiv Bators in heartfelt video tribute
03.27.2015
10:00 am
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The untimely passing of Stiv Bators is one of the most unexpected deaths in punk history. After years of onstage self-mutilation, brutal falls, and even an incident of theatrical hanging gone wrong that left him medically dead for several minutes, Stiv was hit by a car in Paris in 1990. He even walked away from the ER feeling fine, without seeing a doctor, only to die in his sleep later from a concussion. Bators, by all accounts a sweet guy, was mourned by many, including John Waters, who directed his brilliant performance as the dirtbag Bo-Bo in Polyester. The video eulogy you see below is a sincere moment of tenderness for the Pope of Trash, and a fitting tribute for such a lovely, disgusting punk legend.

In the director’s commentary on the Polyester DVD, Waters remarks that Bators’ girlfriend Caroline—who sprinkled his ashes across Jim Morrison’s gravesite in Paris—confessed to him that she snorted a bit of Stiv’s ashes to feel more connected to him

(Iggy Pop’s tearful videotaped condolences to Stiv’s parents are also quite moving, if you’re near a box of Kleenex.)
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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03.27.2015
10:00 am
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Before The Dead Boys were the Dead Boys, they were the oh so glamorous ‘Frankenstein’
09.03.2014
12:17 pm
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The line from Rocket From the Tombs to punk rock is one of the shortest and straightest that can be drawn. RFTT were a boisterously aggressive, unruly, and weird band of Velvet Underground devotees that appeared in the early ‘70s. When they broke up in 1975, their singer and guitarist formed the long running art-punk ensemble Pere Ubu (who, by the way, have a wonderful new LP coming out this month), and the drummer and other guitarist teamed up with a scrawny sparkplug of an Iggy-inspired frontman called Stiv Bators to form the raunchy, scummy, guttural ur-punks the Dead Boys.

But tellings of that well-known history typically omit an amusing detour. Before they moved to NYC, changed their name to the Dead Boys, and went down in history, Bators and company briefly took the form of the glammy, fuzzed out Frankenstein. Almost nothing survives of them, but what does found its way to an EP back in the mid-‘90s. Eve of the Dead Boys contains early recordings of three songs that would end up on the Dead Boys’ immortal debut Young Loud and Snotty. A short and illuminating piece by Jack Rabid on AllMusic sheds some light on the recording’s history:

The great Tim Sommer once played a tape of Cleveland quintet Frankenstein (who would later become the Dead Boys) on his WNYU “Noise the Show” punk radio show in 1981. It was three fascinating songs they recorded two years later when the same five members moved to New York for the first Dead Boys’ LP, Young Loud and Snotty. It was super raw, supremely garagey, and great. I always wondered if I would ever hear it again. Years later, it’s a great little artifact, with liner notes from Dead Boys’ bassist, Jeff Magnum. This live-to-two-track document, recorded in the loft of the legendary Rocket From the Tombs, the pre-Pere Ubu group they also had roots in, and remixed for release, is slightly submerged, but the performance is delightfully dirty and the playing crackles like a big, burning log. Best of all, since these versions of “Sonic Reducer,” “High Tension Wire,” and “Down in Flames” weren’t altered after the group moved to New York and got into the brand-new, thriving punk scene, this wild, wild, wild sound proves they were not bandwagon-jumpers. Instead, like Pere Ubu, they were true mid-‘70s “bad old days” pre-punk rock revolutionaries, the genuine heirs to MC5, Stooges, and tough ‘60s garage.

Despite the audio fidelity, the three songs on the EP seriously rip. Compare the early version of “High Tension Wire” to the canonical LP version:
 

”Hight Tension Wire” by Frankenstein

”Hight Tension Wire” by the Dead Boys

If you’d like an astonishing look at a seriously glammed-out Dead Boys, these photos of Frankenstein were posted on the Cash From Chaos Tumblr over the weekend. Bators’ stockings-as-pants move surely raised some audience hackles, to whatever degree an audience was actually present.
 

 

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds
Young, loud, certainly snotty: the Dead Boys in 1977
Stiv Bators, pop crooner
Dead Boy Cheetah Chrome’s ‘Sonic Reducer’ guitar lesson

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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09.03.2014
12:17 pm
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Stiv Bators, pop crooner
11.19.2013
04:18 pm
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The late Stiv Bators is equally well known for his leadership stints in pioneering rust belt punks The Dead Boys and trans-oceanic glam/goths Lords of the New Church, but in between those bands, Bators briefly attempted a career as a pop singer, more or less in the “Paisley Underground” vein.
 

Was every L.A. rocker issued a Rickenbacker back then?

That effort began in 1979, when he recorded a remake of the garage-pop gem “It’s Cold Outside” as a single for Bomp Records. This choice may have been an overt nod to Bators’ Northeast Ohio roots - the song was written and originally recorded by The Choir, a precociously popular band of Cleveland teenagers who would go on to form the much more successful Raspberries in 1970. Check out Bators’ version and compare with the original.
 

Stiv Bators - “It’s Cold Outside”
 

The Choir - “It’s Cold Outside”

Stiv positively nailed the song, did he not? The sound is as far from The Dead Boys’ tuneless glory as it is from the Lords’ preening Batcaveisms, but still, he was really great at it. This poppier phase, though brief, lasted long enough for him to make the album Disconnected, also on Bomp. Though it leans a hair more towards punk rawness than the single’s overtly jangly pop-psych, Bators continued to prove his mettle as an interpreter of garage classics with a fantastic cover of the Electric Prunes’ “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night.”
 

Stiv Bators - “I Had Too Much to Dream Last Night”
 

 
The entire album is worth a listen. Much of it was written by Blue Ash refugee Frank Secich, and it comprises some of Bators’ most accessible work, including great tracks like “A Million Miles Away” (not the contemporary Plimsouls song) and “I Wanna Forget You (Just The Way You Are).” And while you’re listening, get a load of this review of the LP comparing Bators to Tom Petty!
 

Stiv Bators, Disconnected, full LP
 
Bonus: enjoy “Stiv-TV,” a wonderful full-length interview from 1986.
 

Posted by Ron Kretsch
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11.19.2013
04:18 pm
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Dead Boy: Stiv Bators talks about his onstage near-death-experience (and love), 1988
08.27.2013
10:22 am
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After Bators injured his back, Lords of The New Church guitarist Brian James secretly put out an ad for a new singer. When Stiv found the ad, conflicting sources say that either Stiv or James wrote it verbatim on a t-shirt and wore it onstage for a gig. For the encore, Stiv fired the entire band.
 
Stiv talking about when he actually died for a minute after a routine performative self-strangulation went awry (don’t you hate it when that happens?). If he hadn’t pissed himself, alerting bandmates and crew members that something had gone wrong, he might not have lived.

As Bators (who will be portrayed in the CBGB movie by this guy) is carried into the backstage area after a Lords of The New Church show, he is a complete physical wreck, barely able to stand. He’s revived by a security guard and his girlfriend, who he openly adores. An incredibly sweet guy by most accounts (as you can see in this interview with Brooke Shields, or this heart-wrenching eulogy from Iggy Pop), Bators was also clearly a romantic, professing his love in the most naked and emphatic way.
 

 

 

Posted by Amber Frost
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08.27.2013
10:22 am
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TV anarchy: Stiv Bators and Brooke Shields together on Manhattan cable in the mid-70s
05.17.2013
02:39 am
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As punk rock was throbbing in the clubs downtown, Manhattan cable TV was experiencing its own kind of anarchy. D.I.Y programs from cats like Efrom Allen were offering some demented and surreal stuff to get us energized before hitting the clubs or to soften the crash as we wound down from a night on the Bowery. The coaxial pipeline was sending signals into our decrepit little apartments that were raw, spontaneous and often exhilarating, punk rock’s cathode equivalent.

In this episode of The Efrom Allen Show (1978?), a 12-year-old Brooke Shields does a fashion shoot with Stiv Bators while discussing her career with the wisdom of an ancient soul. Stiv seems to enjoy just going along for the ride.

Efrom, a Realtor these days, should try to clean this video up and release it, along with his footage of The Ramones and Marilyn Chambers, on DVD. This is pop culture history and there’s so little of Manhattan cable programming available for viewing. Someone should do a book on this wild era when the TV eye was bloodshot and beautiful.
 

 
Part two after the jump….

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Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.17.2013
02:39 am
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Iggy Pop’s emotional condolences to the parents of Stiv Bators
09.24.2012
07:03 pm
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Edward Colver’s photo of Stiv
 
When I think of Iggy and Stiv together, I might think of their mutual penchant for self-mutilation and animalistic performances. That it was supposed to have been Stiv who passed Iggy that famous jar of Skippy. Or maybe I think of midwestern punk and my heart swells with vulgar, snotty pride. At the very least, I think of their unbelievable drug stories I read about in Cheetah Chrome’s book. What I tend to forget is that they were friends and colleagues. It’s an unsettlingly earnest moment to watch, but when you get past the creeping threat of voyeurism one tends to feel at such a naked display of emotion, the warmth and sincerity of the eulogy is one of the most loving moments in punk rock.
 

Posted by Amber Frost
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09.24.2012
07:03 pm
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Stiv Bators interview from 1986: Confessions of a Catholic boy
05.02.2012
09:22 pm
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Lapsed Catholic Stiv Bators with Brooke Shields.
 
A must-see interview with Stiv Bators which aired in March of 1986 on Cleveland’s longest running cable music show, VidMag Television.

Danny Reed of Syl Sylvain & the Teardrops is the interviewer and his casual and open style results in something less like an interview and more like a chat between two friends. As an ex-Catholic boy, I am particularly empathetic with Bator and Reed’s Catholic school recollections.

Stiv is very candid, sexually explicit, politically incorrect and totally entertaining - a close-up look at one of punk rock’s sweetest bad boys.

Video kicks off with about 45 seconds of silent footage of The Lords Of The New Church before getting into the interview.
 

Posted by Marc Campbell
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05.02.2012
09:22 pm
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Wonderful punk and post-punk era photographs by David Arnoff


Stiv Bators, 1980
 
David Arnoff‘s post-punk era photography appeared in the NME, Melody Maker, Trouser Press, N.Y. Rocker and many other publications. The Cleveland-born, but London-based photographer and disc jockey’s work captures iconic bad boys and girls, relaxed and at their most playful. Arnoff is currently readying his photographs for a book and is looking for a publisher. I asked him a few questions over email:

Tara: Tell me about the Stiv Bators shot.

David Arnoff: I was hanging around with Stiv and his post-Dead Boys band in their hotel—pretty sure it was the Sunset Marquis—and we decided to do some shots of him on his own. He’d been messing about with a new air pistol, so we brought that along and just stepped out into the hall, after which it occured to him to maybe go back in the room and put some shoes on, but I said not to bother.  We started out doing some rather silly and predictable 007-type poses before he chose to just sit on the floor and look disturbed. I always thought the stripey socks made him look even more so.


Nick Cave, 1983
 
Tara: You worked with Nick Cave several times. He seems like a guy very concerned about his image, yet playful, too. What’s he like as a subject or collaborator?

David Arnoff: Nick is very easy and unaffected to work with. That shot with Harpo is the result of what started out as another cancelled session at the Tropicana Motel. He apologized for being up all night and indicated all the empty bottles on the TV as evidence, but was perfectly happy for me to carry on regardless even though he was not looking his best. The only downside was he was trying in vain to play “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” not really knowing the chords and the guitar was painfully out of tune.  Not an enjoyable aural experience. He was quite happy with the photos though.


Jeffrey Lee Pierce, 1983
 
Tara: Maybe it was the era, but several of the people you shot were junkies. Any “colorful” anecdotes about the likes of Cave, Jeffery Lee Pierce, Nico or Johnny Thunders?

David Arnoff: Far be it for me to say whether or not any of these people were actually junkies, but it’s funny you should mention Nick and Jeffrey together because I did squeeze all three of us into my little Volvo p1800 to go score on the street—Normandy, I think, around 3rd or somewhere. We then went back to my place in Hollywood, where Jeffrey became convinced they’d been ripped off. But Nick seemed more than happy with his purchase. Afterwards we went to that lesbian-run Mexican place near the Starwood. Nick tried to remember what he’d had previously and proceeded to attempt to describe what he wanted it to the baffled staff. I think they just gave up and sold him a burrito.

More with David Arnoff and his photographs after the jump…

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Posted by Tara McGinley
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09.06.2011
01:03 pm
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‘Very close to salvation’: Birthday boy punk-daddy Stiv Bators vs. the Rev. Dr. Hands

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Steven John Bator (a.k.a.  Stiv Bators) and his Dead Boys blammoed out of the post-steel paradise of Cleveland and landed in New York’s East Village to help jump-start the punk movement in the bowels of clubs like CBGBs. Soon after the Boys broke up in 1979, Bators formed the post –punk supergroup Lords of the New Church with the Damned’s Brian James and Sham 69’s Dave Tregunna.

That was the band Bators was riding in 1983 when L.A. artist Jeffrey Vallance—who’d scored a miraculous gig as a host of MTV’s underground music showcase (yeah, something like that actually once appeared on MTV!!) The Cutting Edge—grabbed him to “debate” the head of the Southland’s Last Chance Rescue Mission, whose name happened to be, yes, the Reverend Dr. Hands.

As you’ll see, Bators took the path of least resistance, but this segment stands as a fun, somewhat campy artifact of the other side of the Reagan ‘80s. Seven years later, Bators will have become a literal dead boy at 41 after getting hit by a taxi in Paris.

He would have turned 61 years old today.
 

 
Bonus clip after the jump: the Dead Boys give CBGB’s the “Sonic Reducer” in ‘77…
 

READ ON
Posted by Ron Nachmann
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10.22.2010
06:36 pm
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