My Life As The Plasmatics Drummer – Stu Deutsch Punk77 Review Oct 26 ***

There’s a real lack of information on the legendary Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics, and I was hoping that My Life As The Plasmatics Drummer by Stu Deutsch might help fill the gap. The answer is yes, but just a bit.

The trouble for Stu Deutsch is that he was brought in as a backing musician on drums, and that pretty much sums up his worldview of the band.

Rod Swenson was the main man behind the Plasmatics, having moved into music after new laws curtailed his porn enterprises. He wrote all the lyrics, showed Wendy what to sing, produced the records and architected the stage show. He has a credit on every song they wrote.

There’s a bit of sniping at Rod for taking 75% and splitting the other 25% between the rest of the band. But someone had to pay for all those explosives, the guitars that were cut up, the cars that were blown up, the record releases and the studio time, so I’m not sure how much money Rod ever made himself.

The end result was that everyone in the band needed a second job to eat. Stu worked in a record shop, and Wendy did live porn shows.

Stu lasted just one album, New Hope for the Wretched, which is one of my favourite punk albums, but he gives little away about it.

You don’t get much sense of Wendy as a person either, which is a shame given the force of nature she was on stage. She outperformed any male performer at the time, and the dangers she put herself through, with explosions and jumping out of cars, could never happen today. She broke all kinds of stereotypes, and various establishment types found her threatening.

She was really into her health and fitness and was a vegetarian, but she also suffered from deep depression and had tried to take her own life twice before. It’s just so sad that in the end she succeeded.

I prefer to remember her in full flight, and I’m heartened that quite a few bands are now citing the Plasmatics as an influence.

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