Issue 13
The Germs
By Anne KeehnPhotography By Albert Sanchez
B/W Photos: jennylens.com
Hair By Marylle Koken for M A D
Prop Styling By Pedro Zalba
Makeup By Christopher Del Castillo and Cynthia Rivas for M.A.C.
Styling By Max Smith
WHEN DARBY CRASH, THE SINGER OF ONE OF THE FIRST LOS ANGELES PUNK BANDS THE GERMS COMMITTED SUICIDE IN 1980, IT SIGNALED AN END TO A VIBRANT YOUTH MOVEMENT. THE MOVEMENT WAS SMALL—PERHAPS NO DIFFERENT FROM ANY OTHER OUTSIDER TEENAGE CLIQUE THAT WAS EVER FORMED. BUT THIS MOVEMENT TOOK PLACE IN LOS ANGELES, THE ENTERTAINMENT CAPITAL OF THE WORLD, WHERE DREAMS ARE BOUGHT AND SOLD LIKE STOCKS ON WALL STREET, AND SOMETIMES—IF THE STARS ARE ALIGNED—EVEN A GROUP OF SNOTTYNOSED, IMPETUOUS TEENAGERS CAN BECOME THE BIGGEST ROCK STARS IN ONE OF THE BIGGEST CITIES IN THE WORLD.
There is something about punk rock that is perfectly suited for adolescence. It is solipsistic. It is “me, me, me.” It is fast, angry and impatient. It is the childish outburst of a teenager on the brink of adulthood—to be infantile one last time, and let out a cry of anguish for the horrific growing pains and the fear of adulthood.
Even at the end of his life at 22, Darby Crash was the physical embodiment of adolescence; in manner and appearance, he meandered between child and adult, and he was sexually ambiguous—he had relationships with both men and women. Crash was lean and muscular, but also stocky and soft, like a toddler. He had a gap-toothed grin and a speech impediment— “Gimme a beeya”—that evoked a kid whose baby teeth were falling out. He had a traumatic childhood: his half brother died of a heroin overdose, perhaps intentionally given to him by a disgruntled dealer; he voraciously took drugs from a young age. With such instability in his young life, it is no wonder that Crash set out to become the ringleader of his teenaged posse— to exert control over those around him.
He reinvented his friends by giving them pseudonyms. Theresa Ryan became Lorna Doom, the bassist for the Germs; Georg Ruthenberg became Pat Smear, the band’s guitarist; another high school friend became Hellin Killer. Crash’s own name went through several incarnations. He was born Jan Paul Beahm, after his family’s neighbor’s baby who died of congenital heart disease shortly before his birth. He went by his middle name, Paul, until in high school, he decided to go by Bobby Pyn. Finally, he settled on Darby Crash. For a brief and intense few years, Crash and the Germs were at the center of L.A.’s underground zeitgeist. They were instrumental in building the punk scene and in effect, altering the evolution of L.A. rock. Unlike the poppy, glamtinged sounds of New York punk or the anthemic rhythm of the London sound, the Germs’ punk music was hard and fast—a precursor to the hardcore scene that blossomed in their wake.
And, without the edgy aesthetic of these first Hollywood punks, there may never have been the 1980s hair metal boom on the Sunset Strip; Motley Crue and Guns N’ Roses owe just as much to the raw debauchery of the Germs as they do to arena rockers like Kiss and Aerosmith. It is no coincidence that the first two installments of Penelope Spheeris’ three-part film series The Decline of Western Civilization focused on punk and hair metal, respectively. (Part III of the series, which came out in 1998 focused on the “crust punk” movement.)
But Darby Crash did not live to see the spread of his influence beyond his circle of friends. He died of an intentionally lethal injection of heroin. It was meant to be a double suicide. With his roommate and fellow junkie Casey Cola, he took a lethal hit and closed his eyes—but Cola survived. In Lexicon Devil, The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs, written by Brendan Mullen (former owner of Hollywood’s Masque club, where much of the early L.A. punk scene was played out), Don Bolles (drummer of the Germs) and Adam Parfrey, Cola says, “I woke up in the arms of a dead man, still wrapped around him.” According to those who knew him, Crash was unusually intelligent and calculating. Perhaps if he had survived, he would have matured into adulthood and overcome his addictions. Instead, he left more trauma in his wake; the remaining Germs and other young L.A. punks who were in his circle of friends were left with the devastation of a dear friend’s suicide lodged permanently in their hearts.
Crash’s death marked the death of the Germs and the first L.A. punk scene. But it also marked the start of a new era—Hellin Killer became pregnant with her first child, Alex, the day after Crash died; Lorna Doom moved to New York. Doom says, “It forced us to grow up and go on to the next thing. The good part about [the band] breaking up—and abruptly—is that you’re forced to grow up. And, it’s a good thing. In our case, it was meant to be, so we can come back in a different place.”
FORMING THE LEGEND
Like the Japanese novelist Yukio Mishima who said, “Even the most beautiful body is soon destroyed by age. You must devise an artist’s scheme to preserve it. You must commit suicide at the height of your beauty,” and killed himself in an elaborately staged seppuku suicide in the headquarters of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces, Darby Crash’s death was a narcissistic performance. Many believe that it was a futile, tragic cry for attention—an attempt at rock ‘n’ roll immortality a la Sid Vicious, who had died the year before. While still in high school, Crash had come up with his five-year plan—to become famous, then cap it off with a spectacular suicide that would cement his place in the rock pantheon. Ironically, Crash’s suicide occurred on December 7th, 1980, the day before John Lennon was fatally shot. This stole the thunder from Crash’s narcissistic act, to say the least. Yet, it was an eerily congruous end for a musical career fraught with thwarted possibility.
The Germs are often credited as the band that cut the first Los Angeles punk record, Forming in 1977. But they had a frustrated existence. They only played a handful of shows in their three-year existence, and never performed outside of California. Back in the nascent days of the scene, it was nearly impossible for a punk band to book a show—and when the Germs played, their fans wreaked so much havoc that they were often shut down in the middle of their set. They cut one album, (GI), produced by Joan Jett, which has become a cult classic, but by no means a top seller. Just as they were getting into a creative groove—finally mastering their instruments and gathering a sizeable following—Crash created an irreparable rift in the band by firing Don Bolles, the drummer and replacing him with his gay lover, Rob Henley. The Germs quit on Crash, who temporarily defected to London. When he returned to L.A., he created another band with Pat Smear, The Darby Crash Band, and performed in Adam Ant style makeup, confusing and alienating his fans. Finally, four days before Crash committed suicide, the Germs came together to play one last show at the Starwood Club in Hollywood.
But the zeitgeist moved on. As the first wave of L.A. punk bands began to disperse and grow up, hardcore music took over. The Germs became an underground memory, chiefly remembered by locals who saw them firsthand, and punk history buffs.
But now, almost 30 years later, all the unrealized potential, the adolescent futility—all of this, in hindsight, was the way it was supposed to be. True to their name, the Germs were a Petri dish of bacteria that germinated and blossomed into viable art.
The band’s first drummer was a girl who called herself Dottie Danger—the moniker of Belinda Carlisle, who would go on to front the Go-Gos and garner worldwide fame through her solo work. Her international power pop chart topper “Heaven Is a Place on Earth” is one of the most iconic songs of the 1980s. Brendan Mullen became a prolific archivist, documenter of So Cal alternative culture and a formidable presence in the city’s underground intellectual scene; Don Bolles became a journalist and a permanent fixture in L.A. rock; Pat Smear became the break out star of the Germs. In 1993 he was invited to join Nirvana as a rhythm guitarist—a year before Kurt Cobain’s own suicide. Smear was a founding member of The Foo Fighters, a host of MTV’s House of Style and an actor in several films, including Howard The Duck and Blade Runner.
MEMORIES FOR SALE
In the decades following Crash’s death, the original L.A. punks have matured and the Germs’ legacy has snowballed. One reason for this, perhaps, is that so many in the band’s inner circle became writers. Brendan Mullen has churned out countless articles documenting the history of the band and L.A. punk in general. He has accumulated a treasure trove of interviews from virtually everyone in the scene. Lexicon Devil and We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story of L.A. Punk, which he wrote with Marc Spitz, are considered to be among the most important books written on the history of Los Angeles punk. And Don Bolles says that over the years he has overseen or written numerous articles on the Germs—often anonymously.
There have been posthumous album releases: Germicide: Live at the Whisky in 1998, MIA: The Complete Anthology in 1996 and Media Blitz in 1993. There was a tribute album in 1996, featuring various bands performing cover version of Germs songs. More Germs albums have been made since Crash’s death than were made when he was alive.
And recently, What We Do Is Secret, a feature film on the Germs has been completed. Directed by Rodger Grossman, this film has been a decade in the making.
The film, so far, has garnered mixed reviews, and there is controversy over its production. Grossman says, “I originally started working on the movie with [sic] Brendan Mullen. We just started going around and interviewing people, we just did hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews. We had our whole disagreement about how this whole thing should go down. We went our separate ways. I continued with the movie, and he did the book.”
Later, Don Bolles, who coincidentally was also working on his own book about the Germs, came into Mullen’s book project, helping to write, edit and compile hours and hours of interviews into Lexicon Devil, which was written as an oral history. Don Bolles: “What happened was, I was already starting to think about writing a book about the Germs, and what I was finding out was, I was having a real problem getting people to talk. People didn’t want to talk about it—they didn’t want to share their memories… and Brendan already had all these interviews from people— many of whom were long since passed away.”
Their collaboration yielded an almost 300-page tome—a nuanced and exhaustive study of Darby Crash’s life and death. It is the definitive book on the subject, delving into Crash’s childhood, his years at the Innovative Program School at University High School of West Los Angeles—a program whose teachers unofficially espoused Scientology onto its pupils—the glam rock roots of L.A. punk and interviews with approximately 100 people from the scene.
Grossman says that the film did not draw from Lexicon Devil. He brought in many people from the original scene as consultants and did his own research, separate from Mullen. But, according to Bolles, “everyone on that movie set was carrying around that book with post-it notes sticking out of every single page.”
Before What We Do Is Secret, another Germs film was in development. Allison Anders, who directed Gas Food Lodging and Sugar Town, tried for years in the ‘90s to make the movie. But it was near impossible to get the cooperation of the people who lived the scene. Pat Smear says, “Instead of being supportive and into [the film], people were all very possessive of their memories. I think Allison thought, ‘These people don’t want this, so fuck it.’ It was probably the coming of age thing. People get weird about their youth movements.
“You just let it go. If you took the four Germs and sat us in a room— even the dead one if he were alive today—we would all remember things completely differently. I read somewhere that most of our memories, we embellish to make us feel better about ourselves.” Hellin Killer says, “Everyone wants to own [the memory]. But it’s better to share. It’s better to put it out there.”
Eventually, Anders abandoned the project, and almost a decade later, Grossman succeeded in wrapping a Germs biopic. All surviving members of the band were brought on as consultants. Michelle Baer Ghaffari, who was in The Decline of Western Civilization with Darby Crash, became a writer and producer for What We Do Is Secret.
The result of all this is an uneven film. If Lexicon Devil is a lush oil portrait of Darby Crash and the Germs, What We Do is Secret is a crude caricature. But, movies often have an influence that far outreach the scope of books. Grossman’s movie—as patchy as it is—was a labor of love for several people involved. And, most importantly, it brought about the unprecedented second incarnation of the Germs.
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