The album was originally slated as a country-influenced album but eventually transformed into a blues recording. As the Deputy Online News Editor at Xfm he revealed exclusively that Nick Caves second novel was on the way. 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. He was the child of a multi-ethnic marriage. Hed play the songs to me and Id learn the bass parts. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, Start your Independent Premium subscription today. Pierce was also known for his strong admiration for Debbie Harry of Blondie, and was president of the Blondie fan club. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Rock Musician, 37 New York Times", "Obituary: Jeffrey Lee Pierce People News", "in exile: the rootless cosmopolitanism of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club", "Preaching The Blues: Remembering The Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce", "Returning to the supposedly troublesome 'Miami', "Rockbrat Remembers: When Spencer Jones played with The Gun Club", "NEW YORK NIGHT TRAIN issue 1: Kid Congo Powers Oral History Pt. LIVE "Jeffrey Lee Pierce" (10/13/2010)", "OFF! The Gun Club had truly arrived. Jeffrey's mother Margie Pierce is a stay-at-home mom; Jeffrey's father Robert Pierce is employed as a union organizer and arbitrator (Local 1710 Electrical Workers Union). Its fair to say that the band fell almost completely off my radar at some point after 1985 (having picked up, and loved, that years excellent solo release Wildweed, one of my emigration casualties, sadly), so the news of Jeffreys death at age 37 of a brain-hemorrhage on March 31,1996 eluded me entirely. Outwardly, I might have been a character in a Gun Club song, thankfully absent all the mayhem, betrayal, and sex killing. Not to mention the dark cross-pollination between Pierce and good friend Nick Caves many projects. [13] Pierce relocated to England with Mori and concentrated on his solo career. The album is dedicated to Debbie Harry, "for her love, help, and encouragement".[12]. date of death. EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Lee Pierce, frontman singer of seminal LA punk rock band The Gun Club, is the subject of a new feature documentary. Beneath the attitude, there was always a sweetness, a reverence. 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Still, the most critically lauded of their albums, it roared out of ramshackle blocks we hadnt yet built even in our imaginations, an inconceivably twisted fusion of blues, punk, and country, a mixture of Robert Johnson, Skip James, Son House, Howlin Wolf, Huddie Ledbetter, the Blasters, X, Black Flag, Blondie, The Sex Pistols, Burning Spear, Smokey Robinson, Canned Heat, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Marty Robbins, and Hank Williams. Powell. The Parisian rock elite, always in love with tragic figures like Morrison, Thunders and Iggy Pop, had found a new hero. Jeffrey Lee Pierce Wikipedia "[9], In September 1983, as the Gun Club prepared for an Australian tour, two band members quit due to financial concerns and ongoing frustration with Pierce's behavior. retrieved. Sometimes hed be like Robert Mitchum in Night Of The Hunter where hed take a Bible on stage and throw it to the floor. Jim Duckworth has this big, archtop semi-acoustic Gibson and he was getting feedback to go from his monitor and into his amp, and Id never heard anything like it. 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. The Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce Gets New Documentary The Las Vegas Story is a farewell of sorts to an LA and America changing under the Reagan administration, but whether they knew it or not, The Gun Club wouldnt be returning to the US to live. Jeffrey adored Debbie Harry and carried a signed note in his wallet from her which included hair dye instructions. May 18, 1961 Jacqui Pierce, Jeffrey's . Elvis From Hell will tell the story of Pierce, a. He was one of the founding members of the band The Gun Club, and released material as a solo artist. So bookends of sorts: one darkly prosodic, the other starkly prosaic: one running frenzied from the swamp-demons of the past, the other recoiling in vain from the keening horror of an unspeakable future. And then it happens. [39], Henry Rollins, another friend of Pierce, played the Gun Club song "Bill Bailey" during his first show for the "Artist in Residence" feature on Australian national radio station Double J. Rollins stated before playing the song: "Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a very good friend of mine and I miss him horribly. The maddening part for me is that I missed most of it. Digging into layers of hopeless desperate acts, excavating strata for singular sacred artifacts, aching to merge the atavistic with the advanced. 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. Country:UK: . It kind of sounds like a Christmas song but Jeffrey always described it as a love song.. Jeffrey Lee Pierce (June 27, 1958 March 31, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and author. The blues was an anchor but we were very much into seeing what would happen if you mixed up different things. Garnering much critical acclaim, it would prove to be an influential album, not least on the UKs nascent psychobilly scene and the 80s garage band revivalists that followed. The Gun Club Documentary 'Elvis From Hell' Coming In 2020 - Stereogum It was juvenile but very dramatic and the seeds of what would follow, says Powers. We need you now. The other two just quit on the spot but I thought, I want to see Australia, so I went with him.. In November 1994, Pierce was arrested for brandishing a Samurai sword in his local pub in Kensington after an argument. According to Jones, the note was "written out in beautiful handwriting and 'with love, Debbie' at the bottom" and was Pierce's "most prized possession". Kid Congo Powers chuckles when asked what hes proudest of: Many things. Then wed get together with the rest and they picked things up quickly.. The future was acknowledged, however grimly envisioned. This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. We already had Sex Beat and For The Love Of Ivy, but having guys that could really play was a really big step up, says Powers. Springheel Jack. "He was the star of the show, and we all just jumped on and off," says Terry Graham. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression was still half a decade in my future, but the low-grade torment had already begun. With Meg White pumping her bass drum, Jack stomps on those overdrive pedals again and hollers, You look just like an Elvis from hell! For those older heads it all clicks into place and at the same time The White Stripes acknowledge forebears every bit as important to their oeuvre as Robert Johnson, Lead Belly or Son House: the song is For The Love Of Ivy and The White Stripes are paying dues to The Gun Club. At the age of 23, she hit NYC nightlife, working at music venues, bartending, and writing about all of her adventures along the way. 4 references. writer: "The Stranger in Our Town" TV Series; 2012; 1 episode; Personal details. But Im also amazed that you can make such great music when youre that fucked up on drink and drugs. Jeffreys idea was to be as antagonistic as possible. I take away that I had an amazing friendship with Jeffrey. Come back, Frankie Venom. Fire Of Love: A Jeffrey Lee Pierce Retrospective - The Quietus By now Pierce had begun to take his health more seriously and took up an unconventional method to lose weight. 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." EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Lee Pierce, frontman singer of seminal LA punk rock band The Gun Club, is the subject of a new feature documentary. Somewhere in that bled-out hellhole there is room however small and cramped for actual love: Really, this is what the Gun Club achieved as they crawled westward, south-by-southwest, the recurring astonishment of beauty amid the horror, running from flashlights on the back roads, a New Mexican mirage, an Arizona dream, as if the murderous pedophile Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthys Blood Meridian had abruptly renounced his appalling ways, emerging gore-soaked and penitent from the heat shimmer one day, proceding into a new life of domestic contrition. I was fortunate enough to catch them live at Loughborough University in late October, featuring if not their greatest line-up, certainly their most iconic Pierce on vocals and guitar, Kid Congo Powers on guitar, Patricia Morrison on bass, and Terry Graham on drums (Throughout the bands life, Pierces unpredictability led to constant disruptive personnel rotations.). Jeffrey was so into it and even asked if we wanted to split the writing credits, but we stupidly declined and just accepted a recording fee!, Powers concurs: It was like a completely new band and it was the strongest version that I was in.. It's a pity this peripheral figure found the bottle and the needle instead instead of a wider audience. On top of Pierces fascination with Tom Verlaine, elements of be-bop and beat literature found their way on to the album. One of his best qualities, was encouraging his friends to make music, even insisting that they do. How about a title like Shes Like Heroin To Me? Gun Club looked like serious contenders but, by 1984's "Las Vegas Story" (which would have formed an apt soundtrack for the Mike Figgis Oscar- nominated Leaving Las Vegas movie) Pierce's boozy and druggy life-style had started to overshadow the music. And I also think that the records speak for themselves and Im really proud to be on them. English Wikipedia. Bluntly, they never quite got famous enough to sustain themselves in the down times, of which there were many. Ive waited 13 years to say goodbye to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. cerebral . After the Fur Bible offshoot and the bassist Patricia Morrison's departure for the richer and more bombastic pastures of Sisters of Mercy, Pierce went solo and released Wildweed, a pretty focused collection which included the strangely prophetic "Portrait of the Artist in Hell". But it was with a depressing sense of inevitability that the band would collapse once again. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was an American punk, and a bluesman lead singer and guitarist for that most contradictory of bands, The Gun Club, whose erratic embers smoldered and sputtered fitfully during the 80s and the first half of the 90s, rarely if ever catching fully in fames spotlight, yet illuminating the margins with a deep fire that, since their passing long ago now, feels richer and more blood-red the older we all get. Co-edited by Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil, the authors of, The Knack had an amazing sound. Biography [ edit] Early life [ edit] Pierce was born on June 27, 1958, in Montebello, California. [citation needed], The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project is a tribute initiative launched after Cypress Grove, one of Pierce's musical collaborators, cleaned out his loft following Pierce's death. [43], In 2010, The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project launched We Are Only Riders, the first of a series of four albums featuring Pierce's previously unreleased "works-in-progress". By this time, Pierce had become obsessed with the ethereal music of the Cocteau Twins via Mori, and a chance encounter with the bands guitarist Robin Guthrie and singer Liz Fraser in the Hollywood Hills would lead to the reformation of The Gun Club with Guthrie in the producers chair. This is what The Gun Club and Jeffrey Lee Pierce at their best managed: they showed us that all the loneliness of the world can be if for only a song length, for a propulsive drum beat, for the wail of a slide guitar, for the few precious seconds it takes for a defiant and fleeting shriek to disperse into the night all that apparent abandonment by the world can be momentarily defeated by spirit, by the fire spirit, by Jack on Fire, by the Indian wind along the telegraph lines. (Shes Like Heroin To Me.). Because hed stopped drinking, he found that he couldnt perform, because it was always about him being pissed. And finally, if you dig up the latters How Long, the version with Sonny Terry on harmonica, you will be struck not only by the unloved outcast yowl toward the end, but by its chilling kinship with Jeffreys own airless planetary howl as well. Stack O Lee. He was 37 years old. Apparently his health had been very bad again but it was a step in the right direction. Mr. Pierce is survived by his father, Bob, of Salt Lake City, his mother, Margie, and a sister, Jackie Faretra, both of Los Angeles. Patricia Morrison agrees with Mori on this point. [29] Blondie paid tribute to Pierce in its song "Under the Gun", from the 1999 album No Exit. 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). From reinventing the blues for a punk crowd to the demise of frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club were magnets for chaos, but they influenced the generation that followed. By subscribing, I agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. As were The Gun Club as a live draw, and their popularity increased in Europe, especially Britain. The Gun Club and perhaps this more than anything explains their continued marginalization were rarely if ever fun. So we went and kept in contact, and it was decided that the next album should be recorded with Robin., She continues: Jeffrey had been wanting to record The Breaking Hands and he knew that he wanted loads of bells on it, so he figured that Robin would be perfect for it. Mr. Pierce, a singer and guitarist, began his career in music as a fan and critic. There was very little funny about The Gun Club, certainly not intentionally (Although Pierces bitter comment about Cave attending a better class of rehab than himself could be seen as humorous if you squint hard enough.). In addition to directing the documentary, Andree and Lange will serve as producers alongside Scott Crary , Anahita Nazemi, Katrin Sandman and Alexander von Sturmfeder. 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. That became the title of their album. Jeffrey always used to say, Hey, lets think like jazz! We werent jazz players but we could make our own version of it.. Sexual rage. "[7], The Las Vegas Story (1984) was the band's third album, seeing the return of Kid Congo Powers, drummer Terry Graham and a new bassist, Patricia Morrison. Recording wasfine but live it all changed.. THE SHOCKING LIVE TELEVISION SUICIDE OF A NEWS ANCHOR! I knew the situation he was in: he couldnt drink and he so he needed something else. The Gun Club frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce is the subject of a forthcoming documentary called Elvis From Hell, as Deadline reports. At the center of everything was Jeffrey Texas-born, Los Angeles raised a music fanzine writer, an obsessive Blondie stan (as a teenager, he was president of their fan club and was fairly regularly ousted from hotel rooms by members of the Blondie contingent for overstaying his welcome) with an unscratchable reggae itch and a compulsion for Delta blues as well as country murder ballads. He was being deported and he needed somebody to take him to the airport. The confluence of tragedy and a type of bleak, resigned comedy. When I told Jeffrey that Id been asked to join The Cramps, he said, Do it, but get us gigs! With Powers joining The Cramps to record their second album, Psychedelic Jungle, The Gun Club recruited slide guitarist Ward Dotson and set about making their debut album, Fire Of Love. Wildweed's monochrome cover shot, of Pierce stood in a windswept barren landscape with a shotgun over his shoulder, was photographed on the south coast of England, as Pierce told a Swedish interviewer, but intended to "look like Texas. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was born on 27 June 1958. Whether consciously or not, echoes of The Gun Club are keenly felt by contemporary practitioners of punk-rock blues such as Daddy Long Legs, Guadalupe Plata and The Bonnevilles as well as more established musicians such as Mark Lanegan, Nick Cave and The Black Keys. Yet don it and suffer it and die from it he most certainly did. [3] He started learning guitar at the age of 10. 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. In fact, as ragged a fit as it is, the closest they came to a scene in the UK was probably goth (which, again, couldnt have exactly helped), especially as they werent really a goth band either, outward appearances notwithstanding. He touches on Nick Cave, The Cramps, and how R.E.M. It stopped him doing what he wanted to do. Something was really happening there.. This contained forgotten preliminary recordings for a further . No two gigs were ever the same on that tour.. His last TV appearance was with the Bad Seeds on Later with Jools Holland, recorded on May 14, 1994.[21]. The three songs were "Ramblin' Mind", "Constant Waiting", and "Free To Walk", with further material uncovered over time to support the tribute project. Jeffrey Lee Pierce: Age 37 | Cause Of Death: CEREBRAL HEMORRHAGE Gun Club (Born:1958, Died 3-31-1996) Pierce fronted the Gun Club from 1979 through to his death in 1996 . Hollywood star Johnny Depp is also a massive fan, who has previously called The Gun Club his favourite band. His Anglo father worked as a union organizer. [6] Becoming disillusioned by the evolution of punk rock into what he saw as strict formality, and feeling that reggae was an import, Pierce developed a keen interest in and extensive knowledge of the Delta blues, taking influence and inspiration from his own culture's history. It must have been so hard for him. They were deadly serious, for one thing. It was while he was there that he suffered a fatal brain haemorrhage on March 31, 1996. [citation needed], Pierce's life is the subject of the documentary, Ghost on The Highway: A Portrait of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and The Gun Club, directed by Kurt Voss, and produced by Voss and editor/composer Andrew R. Indeed it was. I See a Rainbow: An Interview with Award-Winning Songwriter Brenda Russell, Working on Not Feeling Alone: An Interview With Josh Ritter, Living Colours Vivid Turns 35: An Interview with Vernon Reid, Satirical Miniseries White House Plumbers Is an Uneven Glimpse into Proximity to Power, PopMatters Seeks Film Critics and Essayists, PopMatters Seeks Television Critics and Essayists. Id gone down the skids again and Jeffrey was in Utah staying with his father and cleaning up again.
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