The Gun Club went on to release 11 other live and studio albums, and Mr. Pierce recorded two relatively straightforward solo albums. The multi- talented Pierce wrote for Slash magazine as a Reggae reviewer and even lived in Jamaica for a bit. WERE WE ALL BRAINWASHED BY THE CIA WITH SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL? [citation needed] The final Gun Club album, 1993's Lucky Jim, includes the song "Idiot Waltz". After contacting Mark Lanegan to get involved with collaborating on a new recording of these work-in-progress tapes, he realised that many other artists were willing to get involved too. The ultimate beginner's guide to Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Far Out Magazine All rights reserved. It was just punk rock.. [7][46] Axels & Sockets opens with a rendition of "Nobody's City", for which Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and Thurston Moore used an original Gun Club demo recording from the Berlin demo tapes from the Mother Juno album in 1987. Jeffrey adored Debbie Harry and carried a signed note in his wallet from her which included hair dye instructions. His guitar had arrived and ours hadnt come yet, sighs Morrison. Pierce attended Granada Hills High School, where he participated in the drama program, acting in plays and writing several short experimental theater pieces. At this point, Jeffrey was a musical archaeologist; he even began to dress on stage like some squat Indiana Jones, at once furtive and feral, his search for something priceless within the buried sediments of ages almost a holy one. Great Jeffrey Lee Pierce interview from 89. Physically, however, he was as unlikely a candidate to don the mantle of rock and roll clich as anyone; he was just a childs drawing of abject gloom, a stocky fireplug frame, dark, insomniac eyes skittering beneath the damp straw tangle of his anime-angular hair, an upside-down sorrow-mouth. He was one of the founding members of the band The Gun Club, and released material as a solo artist. Come back, Frankie Venom. Pierce had a relationship with singer Texacala Jones, and together they formed the band Tex and the Horseheads, with Pierce providing arrangements of traditional songs and playing the guitar in some of their initial performances. . Jeffrey Lee Pierce Birthday and Date of Death Jeffrey Lee Pierce was born on June 27, 1958 and died on March 31, 1996. His relationship to the blues, in particular, is complex. Id gone down the skids again and Jeffrey was in Utah staying with his father and cleaning up again. The album featured tribal beats ("Walking with the Beast") and slide-guitars ("Eternally is Here"), and other tracks included "My Dreams", "Bad America" and a cover of "My Man's Gone Now". Hed play the songs to me and Id learn the bass parts. We were all very relaxed and all good friends and we all really wanted to do it. But The Gun Club made things happen on their own terms. I have great memories of being on stage and looking at the audience who all had massive smiles on their faces. Instead of falling to the floor screaming, hed play the guitar and hide behind that. And move! writer: "The Stranger in Our Town" TV Series; 2012; 1 episode; Personal details. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was the brilliant frontman of The Gun Club. That was my audition! she laughs. [50] The documentary received mostly positive critical reception, but was criticized for not including any of Pierce's music or interview footage with him.[51]. We need you now. Hed say, Always tell the people what they dont want to hear.. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). https://www.nytimes.com/1996/04/02/arts/jeffrey-lee-pierce-rock-musician-37.html. date of death. With the first line-up imploding, Pierce and Powers were joined by Rob Ritter (bass) and Terry Graham (drums) from LA band The Bags, whose contribution was instantly felt. Labeled by many as psychobilly, they repelled the punk dogmatists; as blues-punk, they lost the traditionalists; as country-punk-blues, pretty much everyone else who might have been sympathetic turned away it was the genre-war 80s after all. [49][bettersourceneeded] In the documentary, Voss interviews Pierce's former collaborators, Kid Congo Powers, Ward Dotson, Terry Graham, Jim Duckworth, and Dee Pop, in addition to his high school friend Steven Tash, former publisher of Pierce's work, Henry Rollins, and Lemmy, lead singer of Motrhead. Elvis From Hell will tell the story of Pierce, a tragic but influential figure who died at 37, due to complications from heroin addiction, alcoholism and HIV. Find a Grave. He remained in a coma until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 31 at the University of Utah Hospital. He played a London gig on January 17, 1985, as 'Astro-Unicorn Experimental Jazz Ensemble', before recruiting Murray Mitchell, John McKenzie and Andy Anderson to record tracks which became the album Wildweed, the first on which Pierce played the majority of guitar parts,[14][15] and material released later in the year as the "Flamingo" E.P. Elvis From Hell, a U.S./German co-production, is directed by Heiko Lange (B-Movie: Lust and Sound in West Berlin) and Jessica Andree (The Noise of Cairo) and is produced by Kobalt Productions Anahita Nazemi and Katrin Sandmann (Midsummer Nights Tango, Dancing Dreams) and Hunger Artist Productions Scott Crary (Kill Your Idols, William S. Burroughs: A Man Within, Fire Music). Though the audiences were small at first, Pierce tried to create a scene by adopting different personas. Cave and Harry perform a duet of the song "The Breaking Hands", a song that is also performed by Lanegan and Isobel Campbell on the album, while Tex Perkins and Lunch perform together on "In My Room". He tragically died of a brain hemorrhage on March 31, 1996. It stopped him doing what he wanted to do. We really liked the songs. It will feature original interviews with the likes of Cave, Harry, Jack White, who has said Pierces songs should be taught in school, Jim Jarmusch, Iggy Pop, Mark Lanegan, Moby and Kid Congo Powers as well as never-before-seen archival footage and reenactments. Elvis From Hell is directed by Heiko Lange and Jessica Andree, and it features interviews with artists including Nick Cave, Jack White, Debbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Jim Jarmusch, Mark Lanegan, Moby, and more. -Amy Haben Great Jeffrey Lee Pierce interview from '89. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. Reviews of Fire of Love usually cite Son House and Robert Johnson as touchpoints, which is understandable given their choice of covers/thefts, but I believe Jeffreys true musical soul mate (blues mate?) One minute he'd be talking about the fall of Saigon and the next minute hed be talking about the size of a dinosaur's brain. Four months after the Gun Club frontman had passed away, the article labeled him as the true victim of what Engelshoven interpreted as "the American disease." The moment was certainly right for Pierce. At no point did The Gun Club ever really break into the broader public consciousness. [30], Pierce is honored by Thstrm in a 2005 song recording. But this isnt the place for either masochism or specific reviews, even of the thumbscrew/thumbnail variety, so Ill merely hint at an entry point: go listen to a song that didnt make the cut originally, only showing up on the reissues, Secret Fires. Clocking in at just over two-and-a-half minutes, at first glance its a boilerplate country-folk waltz that pits an open-sky acoustic strum against the mating-cougar wails of a lap steel, all dry arroyo echo-sketches, yet within its weary concision it exemplifies the wild mercury allure of the best Gun Club music, transient and indelible as the ozone dance of summer night lightning. Texacala Jones noted that Pierce carried a handwritten note from Harry in his wallet with instructions on how she dyed her hair, including the types of products she used. Something was really happening there.. Featuring five songs, the material on the EP sounded thicker and bolder than anything that had previously been released, with a far stronger emphasis on the songwriting. Jeffrey Lee Pierce: Age 37 | Cause Of Death: CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE Gun Club (Born:1958, Died 3-31-1996) Pierce bildade The Gun Club 1980 och de albumdebuterade ret efter med Fire of Love. But it was with a depressing sense of inevitability that the band would collapse once again. He was very unusual and a very unique guy. I realize Im straying toward an authenticity-rockism I dont even believe in here, but I ought to note that however much I admire and even love Jeffrey Lee Pierce as a musician/artist, that by no means extends to any equivalent esteem for the train wreck of his personal life. Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee is a kind half-pseudonym that Pierce took on four years before he died. EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Lee Pierce, frontman singer of seminal LA punk rock band The Gun Club, is the subject of a new feature documentary. Growing up in the wild So Cal punk scene formed Amy's aesthetic and broadened her horizons. He got back in touch with his initial blues roots, began dressing like a rambling cowboy, and finger-picked a resonator guitar. It had a great feel and it was special.. Certainly the two bands share an intertwined history, not least thanks to Kid Congo Powers, the scrawny primitive-intuitive guitarist who initially joined Pierce after getting drunk together at a Pere Ubu concert before defecting to his idols once they summoned him (with Jeffreys magnanimous blessings). The Gun Clubs 1981 debut Fire of Love was rarely off my turntable in those days. At the point that final album dropped, his wife and bassist Romi Mori had left him for his then-drummer (Nick Sanderson), and Pierce had probably realized how indifferent the wider world had become to his music, let alone his pain. Hed say, Always tell the people what they dont want to hear. So whats going to really annoy people? We were talking about doing something in New York and calling it The Gun Club and getting some local players. I learned 30 songs and I had one 10-minute rehearsal where Jeffrey was completely pissed, and then I played the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in front of 5,000 people. 13 October 2015. stated in. Cypress Grove decided to launch the Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project on uncovering lost tapes he'd earlier recorded with Pierce in his attic. It was too painful. [3] He started learning guitar at the age of 10. The maddening part for me is that I missed most of it. Its like we had this idea that the band would repeat Fire of Love ad infinitum and wed all go home happy, so when expectations were dashed, much of the critical world scowled petulantly and turned away, never to turn fully back. His Anglo father worked as a union organizer. Jeffrey Lee Pierce (1959-1975) - Find a Grave Memorial If nothing else, the presence on Miami of the mutant-country Carry Home, a succinct storm-threat with swing, alone justifies its existence. He was being deported and he needed somebody to take him to the airport. Not that I was free from my own special demons. With his tousled blond-dyed hair, Jeffrey Lee Pierce was in many ways the archetypal American cult musician, at the crossroads of many musical styles (the goth scene, the swamp blues now revived by G-Love & Special Sauce) which later came to prominence. Recorded in 1984 at Hollywoods Ocean Way Studios and using Ry Cooders gear during the graveyard shift, The Las Vegas Story saw the band now with Terry Graham back on board incorporate a variety of influences. Jeffrey Lee Pierce. The Gun Club have themselves informed and inspired many artists, including The White Stripes, Screaming Trees, Calla, The Pixies, Henry Rollins, and PJ Harvey. Long before anyone coined the term mosh pit, my enduring memory of that concert, aside from its sheer mesmeric ebullience, is of the ripe full-body bruising I got to gingerly explore at my hungover leisure the following day. Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? and a flock of chickens. He had the idea that he wanted a Cocteau Twins kind of sound for it. Yet don it and suffer it and die from it he most certainly did. The singer lived for a time in London and gigged fitfully around Europe, doing strange versions of jazz standards (John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme", Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit") and releasing disappointing albums of past and recent concerts on many labels (Two Sides of the Beast on Dojo for instance). Titles like "Walking With the Beast", "Bad America" and "Wildweed" now seem sad portents of what was to come. I was already living in New York and I got as far as asking people, because there was a great music community in New York. It was while he was there that he suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage on March 31, 1996. Around this time Pierce met Los Angeles musician Phast Phreddie Patterson, who introduced Pierce to American roots music. They were musical geniuses. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the leader of Los Angeles punk band The Gun Club, is the subject of a new documentary, as Deadline reports. Sex Beat, their introduction to the world, weve already discussed, but contrast it with the bands final song Anger Blues, and we can see the parabola of their musical journey, an ass-backwards shedding of raw punk attitude for well, the actual blues. By subscribing, I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. By the late 1970s, Pierce was also performing as a musician. So that first Gun Club album, he was really into blues music, The Las Vegas Story he was into Television, Wildweed was Bob Dylan and Mother Juno was the Cocteau Twins., The new band gelled particularly well. Obituary: Jeffrey Lee Pierce | The Independent | The Independent It was an even trade! laughs Powers. Music, The Quietus, The Guardian, NME and Shindig! 2023 Deadline Hollywood, LLC. Youd go places and everybody was in on it, she says. But fantasy bled into reality and it was annoying to the band. After punk and post-punk, the next logical step was for us to have a band.. She would soon discover that life in The Gun Club around Pierces personality would be far from easy. With Pierces persona in place and a fascination for roots music that saw radical re-workings of Tommy Johnsons Cool Drink Of Water Blues and Robert Johnsons Preachin Blues (Up Jumped The Devil), The Gun Club soon developed a reputation for being a bands band and in turn attracted the interest of The Cramps, who offered Powers the job of replacing recently departed guitarist Bryan Gregory. "It was Jeff's musical misery tour.". During the mid-1970s, after attending a concert by Bob Marley, Pierce became an avid fan of reggae, and subsequently traveled to Jamaica, where he met Winston Rodney and others, but also "got beat up there too", as he later recalled in an interview.[5]. Im glad that those records mean something to people and I hear that all the time, and Im really proud of that.. He did me first before the rest of the band and I loved that. Hed have a few drinks at lunchtime first and then do a few rounds at the Holland Park running track. [4], The Gun Club's debut album, Fire of Love featured the songs "Sex Beat" and "She's Like Heroin to Me". This was a more ambitious offering, from the reworking of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle" to the voodoo feel of "Like Calling Up Thunder" and "Devil in the Woods". Rock music has had its beautiful losers (Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain) but the American singer and songwriter Jeffrey Lee Pierce was more in the mould of the late Johnny Thunders (of New York Dolls and Heartbreakers fame) and Malcolm Owen (of Britain's Ruts), one of those musicians who never quite fulfil their potential yet follow their destiny to its inescapable conclusion. Jeffrey digressed a lot. [43] The found recordings were too rough to release, and Glitterhouse Records, the label responsible for the project, used digital technology to allow artists to record their contributions from around the world. Pierce encouraged his friend Brian Tristan, aka Kid Congo Powers, to play the guitar and develop his style, eventually recruiting him to form the band Creeping Ritual, which evolved into The Gun Club with the addition of drummer Terry Graham and guitarist Rob Ritter. But for those who played in The Gun Club and suffered the outrageous behaviour, demands and whims of Jeffrey Lee Pierce, there remains an enormous sense of pride at what was created. We were recording in Holland and, as you can imagine, you could get hold of anything you wanted. The Gun Club became the seminal swamp-blues, post punk band that had come screaming out of the LA club scene during the 1980 s. In 1982 Creeping Ritual Music was created by Pierce and later became the soul source for his music publishing. Powers was the west coast head of The Ramones fan club and Jeffrey was the head of the Blondie fan club. Says Powers: The concert was great and at the end of the night, in a fit of inspiration, I suppose, Jeffrey said, Why dont we have a band together? So I said, Well, okay, but I dont play any instrument or do anything. So he said, Well you can be the singer and Ill play the guitar, and Im like, Im not going to be the singer. And hes like, I could show you how to play guitar. And now, because frankly its weird talking to dead people, Im casting around awkwardly for the right words, so maybe just some facts for now. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was born on 27 June 1958. Pierces self-interest, combined with the theft of Terry Grahams personal effects after a gig in Manchester, led to the departure of the drummer. In a 2012 interview with Gun Club biographer Gene Temesy, Nick Cave, a great admirer of the frontman, said: "With Jeffrey, you pretty much entered his world when you saw him. [7], In March 2012, Nick Cave gave an interview to Gun Club biographer Gene Temesy, researching for a book on the history of the Gun Club, which was published on the Australian web-based magazine Mess and Noise, noting Pierce's obsessions with the Vietnam War, dinosaurs, and Japanese horror movies. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, singer, guitarist, composer: born Texas 27 June 1958; married Romi Mori;. Recruiting bassist Don Snowden and drummer Brad Dunning, the quartet named themselves The Creeping Ritual before changing their name to The Gun Club at the suggestion of The Circle Jerks Keith Morris. So returning later, at some point before I left the land of my birth, to the supposedly troublesome Miami, whose admittedly thin Chris Stein helmed production is nowhere near as problematic as history has decreed, I discovered a perfectly fine album.