Dead Boys

The band’s origins lay in the legendary Cleveland band Rocket From The Tombs which would spawn the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu. Their best songs would also come from RFTT’s.

Left – Rocket From The Tombs in 1975 – Peter Laughner, Wayne Strick, David Thomas, Cheetah Chrome, Craig Bell.
Right – Frankenstein from a photo sent into Creem magazine by Stiv.

Stiv Bators Me & Jimmy met over a Kinks Greatest Hits record at a party in January 1975. The big thing was Iggy…Met Cheetah in the summer of 75. He & Blitz were in a band called Slash, then they joined Rocket From The Tombs with Crocus Behemoth from Pere Ubu.

I came to New York in Easter of 76. Thunder’s band was playing so he invited me up. On July 4th I went to see The Ramones. Joey helped me jive Hilly Crystal that we had a band. We got a job booked the 22nd of July…hadn’t seen the guys since January. We met them at the airport, rehearsed 4 times and played.

We were all into Iggy, that’s what brought us together… we kept going up once a month until Hilly was interested enough to put money in for a demo tape. Search & Destroy #4, 1977

Coming to the fore as the UK punk scene was starting to make ripples across the ocean, they took the vehemence and aggression of the Sex Pistols and applied it to American themes. In no sense politically motivated, where the British sung about ‘No Future’ the Dead Boys anthem was ‘Nothing To Do.’

What they were kicking against in Cleveland was ‘hopeless boredom’ as Jimmy Zero described in Sounds 27.8.77. They reflected the frustrations of kids in those days. They looked new and sounded new, they were fresh dangerous and exciting and conformed to the image of what punk rock should be.

Dead Boys CBGB’s – Photo Credit – Ebet Roberts

By the time they arrived in New York they had a ready-made audience in CBGB’s and within 6 months in January 1977 had secured a deal with Sire already home of The Ramones.

The band were on a roll. Mid 1977 their first album was released – Young Loud & Snotty. While containing a fair smattering of punk classics they found, like The Ramones, that they received no commercial success. The media – press and radio – were scared of punk rock and while the outrage could be used as publicity in the UK the US was a different story and just didn’t want to know.

At the end of 1977 the Dead Boys toured in England supporting The Damned who had supported them at CBGBS. Sadly for our punk rebels the label pulled the strings and demanded a more commercial album.

To that end Felix Pappalardi was brought in to marshal the sound and attitude. It was a disaster. If they disliked the first album’s production, they hated We Have Cum for your Children.”The record was awful. No bass, and you couldn’t hear the guitars.” Jeff Magnum, Please Kill Me

“He (Cheetah) would be on the phone to James Williamson from The Stooges, like, ‘Please will you come here and rescue this album? They’re destroying The Dead Boys.’ Gyda Gash, Please Kill Me

The band split up in 1980. In later years recognition came from three of the era’s biggest bands doing or using Dead Boys songs – Guns N’ Roses Ain’t It Fun, Pearl Jam Sonic Reducer and The Beastie Boys sampled Sonic Reducer in An Open Letter to NYC). 

WARNING GRAPHIC CONTENT

The Dead Boys were all poor white trash…They grew up very fierce. They grew up in gangs, they were the real thing. It was more than just an attitude with them, it was a lifestyle. Gyda Gash, Please Kill Me

I was the one that instigated Stiv getting blown onstage…Genya Raven, ‘Snotty’ Producer, Please Kill Me

Someone threw a shoe at Johnny Blitz, the most violent member of the band. He took what was described as his “spiked cock ring” wrapped it around his fist and punched the kid’s face in. Sounds, 27.8.77

Stiv Bators We took her up to my attic, hog tied her and beat her with a riding crop, fist fucked her in the ass and that, pouring hot candle wax up her cunt. I made her blow my cat.

Quotes from Search & Destroy

What goes around comes around. A run-in with some Puerto Ricans left Johnny Blitz for dead. “…I thought he was dead. He was cut from his fucking groin to his neck. And he was open across his chest.”  Michael Sticca, Please Kill Me

Amazingly they all got through this period alive.

Stiv Bators of The Dead Boys and friends at CBGB’s, NYC. May 1978. © Bob Gruen

It’s fair to say that their best songs came from Rocket In The Tombs – Ain’t It Fun, Sonic Reducer, Down In Flames and Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth and purists can argue over that statement. It’s also fair to say that one of the Dead Boys’ key strengths was Stiv Bators’s vocals – a rasping sneering voice that takes those songs to a new level.

Signing to Sire should have been a launch pad but selling punk in the US, as The Ramones found, was not easy. Two poor-selling albums and the band were dropped. The Dead Boys were unlucky and they don’t get the credit they deserved in the history of punk.

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Sonic Reducer / Down In Flames
(Sire December 1977)

No if’s, no buts’ no maybe’s…a genuine 24 carat punk rock fucking classic. Magical riff at breakneck speed with Stiv’s trademark rasping sneering vocals overlaid on top. Sonic Reducer is a swaggering monster of a punk song that reeks of magic

‘The song is about adolescent alienation and the desperation that results.’ Jimmy Zero, 2001 Mojo Yeahh!

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Young Loud & Snotty
(Sire October 1977)

Patchy but classic punk album. Why Young Loud & Snotty? A folk singer was querying why Bowie wanted to produce The Stooges whom she described as ‘Young Loud & Snotty’. Cheetah liked that description!

Stiv Bators We did it in 3 days it was supposed to be a demo…While we were on tour they remixed the album and said: Too late! Here’s your album cover, here’s your album! Search & Destroy #4, 1977

“Sounds the way punk should sound, really crude and rough. Cheetah’s guitar is right in ur throat from the first note, and Stiv’s maniacal Iggy on a bad day vox are perfect for this mess.

All songs on this torch you like an outta control flame thrower. “Sonic Reducer” is the covered-to-death classic, but everything else kills too. The S&M anthem “What Love Is” , the boredom oozing “Ain’t Nothing to Do” the drugged out, hungover desperation of “High Tension Wire” or my personal fave, Stiv yelping and screaming his way thru “Down in Flames”.

This album is a must have for anyone who claims to dig punk rock.” Amazon Review

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We Have Come For Your Children
(Sire October 1978)

Originally to be called Down To Kill and to be produced by Lou Reed. Instead, it was produced by Felix Pappalardi of Cream and Mountain fame. He made them play for up to 14 hours a day to get tighter. Having complained about Genya Raven’s rough production on their debut, Stiv enthused in Record Mirror (6.5.78) that they now had “….a pop sound that is much cleaner than the material on the debut album.” 

Unfortunately, the magic certainly didn’t happen and the end result was a weaker watered down Dead Boys with Stiv’s vocals buried in the mix. That said there are some decent tracks like Son of Sam, I Don’t Wanna Be No Catholic Boy and Ain’t It Fun.

Stiv Bators was rock’n’roll through and through and was blessed with one of those great rock’n’roll voices. To top it all he modelled himself on Iggy in presenting an over-the-top live performance. The Dead Boys came and went in a very short period leaving at least some classic punk tunes.

I never saw The Dead Boys but I sure saw The Lords Of The New Church on several occasions and fuck were they good with Stiv at the helm at their peak in full flow. The Lords at their best were rock, punk, sleaze and glam combined and where Stiv was perfectly at home. They should have been massive.

So sad that Stiv died in 1990 hit by a car and died later from internal injuries in Paris France. He was aged 40. His ashes were to be scattered on Jim Morrison’s grave. Some of them were to be kept back for his friends to snort.

The below photo by Brian Shanley in 1978 is an eerie premonition of Stiv’s fate.