“I’ve got the Bo Diddley attitude, hey let’s make some records, there’s nothing else to do. I just want to have some fun for a while.”
Jeffrey Lee Pierce
As the Animal Records promo said at the time “THE SECOND ALBUM …and what a monster it is!” The follow-up to 1981’s ‘Fire Of Love’, ‘Miami’ by The Gun Club is indeed a beast of a record, from the storming opener ‘Carry Home’ to the emotional closer ‘Mother Of Earth’. It kicks off with singer, songwriter and band leader Jeffrey Lee Pierce inviting us to “Come down to the willow garden with me” as the band launches in, rock from the swamps: “Come go with me…although I’ve howled across fields and my eyes turned grey, are yours still the same? Are you still the same?” It makes the hairs stand up on your neck, as though the band are live in your room, and over all too soon, then straight into the rockabilly twang of ‘Like Calling Up Thunder’, a frantic ritual dance for more than just rain, Pierce channelling first nation powers while Ritter, Graham and Dotson create the powerful music. The mystic ‘Brother And Sister’ also features psychobilly guitar twang…“You used to say that you’d take me home” sings Pierce on a melody to touch your heart. The first of the two covers, Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Run Through The Jungle’, fits in effortlessly into this collection, John Fogerty’s lyrics chiming with Pierce’s own, in phrasing and subject matter. ‘Devil In The Woods’ bounces along at breakneck speed, augmented by Pierce’s wonderful falsetto parts. The beautiful, gothic ‘Texas Serenade’ ends Side One of the LP, a tribute to a forgotten hero? Pierce reaches inside to deliver his lyrics, like they were wrenched from his soul:
”He’s dead on the lawn
of the house that he owned
what will they say about him?
He had medals
he was in the war
what will they say about him?”
Jeffrey Lee Pierce is the tortured soul who led The Gun Club, the only constant in their history. Pierce was extremely driven, seen by some as a talented wayward genius, but by some of those who were close to him, burned by his fire, as a twisted, insane, domineering character ravaged by substance abuse. Originally called Creeping Ritual, the first line-up of the The Gun Club was Pierce on lead vocals and guitar, Brian Tristan (later renamed Kid Congo Powers) on lead guitar, Don Snowden on bass and Brad Dunning on drums. In April 1980, they changed their name to The Gun Club (allegedly suggested by Keith Morris, singer with punk band The Circle Jerks, who was sharing an apartment with Pierce). Tristan admits that, at the time, he couldn’t play any instruments and says that Pierce even suggested that he should be the singer of the band! The Gun Club’s first gig was a the Hong Kong Café in Chinatown, LA, after Pierce allegedly scammed his way into the booking. “I remember we played some really terrifying music” laughs Tristan “horribly awful!” Drummer Terry Graham confirms that, by the time of Miami, The Gun Club had ‘shifted’ from being an LA band to being a New York band.
There is a strong connection to New York new wave/pop band Blondie: Pierce ran a Blondie fanzine in Los Angeles and was president of the Blondie fan club in LA. Animal Records (described as a ‘vanity label’ by drummer Terry Graham) was a subsidiary of Chrysalis Records, started by Chris Stein of Blondie, who also produced ‘Miami’ and is credited with playing bongos on the album! Debbie Harry also provided backing vocals on ‘Miami’, credited as ‘D H Laurence Jr.’! Kid ‘Congo’ Powers describes Pierce as wearing a white trenchcoat, white ladies cowboy boots and a large Debbie Harry badge when he met him, thinking “this guy is really nuts…What’s going on inside this guy?” As well as Harry, Pierce’s look was also influenced by Marilyn Monroe, and he augmented his bleach blonde hair with make-up and an outlandish dress sense. Gun Club guitarist Ward Dotson remembers that ”Jeff really thought he was Elvis…” and Pierce was described as ‘Elvis From Hell’ on the front cover of magazine ‘New York Rocker’.
As frontman and songwriter, Jeffrey Lee Pierce is responsible for bringing in many of his personal influences into the band’s musical sphere, including the heavyweight literary canon that he delved into, including Joseph Conrad, William Burroughs and the supernatural Americana of William Kennedy. The music of The Gun Club is also heavily influenced by fifties rockabilly, early country music, the black southern bluesmen and sixties bands like Creedence Clearwater Revival and The Doors. A Chrysalis publicity profile at the time of the release of ‘Miami’ describes where The Gun Club took their inspiration:
”Influences on the band include such diverse personages as Creedence Clearwater, Joy Division, Bob Dylan, The Stooges, and The Fall, while Jeffrey stresses in particular the importance of blues men Skip James, Howling Wolf, and Blind Willie McTell, as well as the likes of Jim Morrison, Marc Bolan and Deborah Harry. When Pierce talks about his songs, you can hear literary echoes from Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot….It’s only logical that disappointments in love and personal failures are interpreted by The Gun Club along the same lines as early country and blues singers.”
The line-up on Miami was:
Jeffrey Lee Pierce – vocals/piano
Ward Dotson – guitar
Terry Graham – drums
Rob Ritter – bass
D H Laurence Jr. (aka Debbie Harry!) – backing vocals
This incarnation of The Gun Club unfortunately shattered after the LP, Ritter leaving to ‘concentrate on his other band’ (45 Grave) and Pierce sacking both Terry Graham and Ward Dotson after a fall-out. Only Pierce, Graham and Dotson feature on the cover of ‘Miami’ because Ritter quit before the record came out. Ritter allegedly prepared Patricia Morrison for the job on bass and Morrison later went on to feature in versions of British bands The Damned and The Sisters Of Mercy.
Side Two of the ‘Miami’ LP starts with ethnic tribal drumming and strange sounds before Pierce invites us to “see the Watermelon Man-a-come…” ‘Hi-oh!’ moans Pierce over the atmospheric voodoo blues, shadows of Doctor John and Jim Morrison passing over the musical landscape. This is nothing like the rock of the first side – We’re on new territory…but it’s back into full-on rock’n’roll with the stomp of ‘Bad Indian’, Pierce crossing the USA in the journey:
”You blew me out of the south
and Texas too
I made love to California to get away from you
New York has made you, a hungry girl
now, you catch up with me at the end of the world”
The version of ‘John Hardy’ is also a rocker, a traditional song, no doubt carefully chosen by Pierce for its dark and desperate subject matter, based as it is on the life of a 19th century railroad worker from West Virginia who killed a man after a drunken dispute, found guilty of murder, and was hanged after having made peace with his god by being baptised in a river. Original ‘The Fire Of Love’ (ironically included here, not the debut album of the same name) slows things down to a sleazy riff-laden groove. ‘Sleeping In Blood City’ picks the pace up again before the beautiful, heart-wrenching ‘Mother Of Earth’ brings the album to a close, Jeffrey Lee Pierce taking us “down the river of sadness…”
The Gun Club went on to make one more album in this period of their history, ‘The Las Vegas Story’ in 1984, before disbanding in early 1985 for eighteen months or so, another version of the band ‘reformed’ by Pierce in late 1986, recording ‘Mother Juno’ and another three albums before Pierce embarked on a solo career.
On May 14th 1986, Pierce was interviewed by Steve Harris in Tokyo, Japan regarding the end of the band:
Harris: ”What actually led to the break up of The Gun Club? You said you got kinda sick of the whole thing.”
Pierce: “Yeah, well, um..It was really bad to be from Los Angeles at that time and be in the music industry. At that time, Los Angeles had absolutely no interest in its own music or in its own bands, and the record industry never even looked behind its shoulder to see what was going on there. It was just sort of an all uphill struggle with no success, so we relocated to New York and then finally relocated to Europe and, it just wasn’t really going anywhere…It’s just… the platform you’re trying to reach, above the underground on to some sort of level where record company hears you and sees you…it just seemed impossible to reach it, and the frustration of the band members…I think everybody just started biting each other’s throats out really.”
In Kurt Voss’ brilliant, gritty biographical documentary ‘Ghost On The Highway’, former band members Ward Dotson and Terry Graham express extreme opinions of Pierce, describing him as ‘insane’ and how they had recurring dreams about wanting to strike him with golf clubs and kung fu moves! “He had a really good band, and he let it slip way from him…”
Dotson and Graham tell tales of Pierce striking a big bible with chains on stage and how they were lucky to make it out of a club in Houston alive, being pelted with beer cans before they’d even played a note and having their van bumped by pick-up trucks after leaving the venue…Dotson says ”I remember telling Jeffrey ‘Can you not incense the crowd after it starts going south’ and it was just ‘No, f**k you, we’re doing it this way…He was a tough guy to be around but, you know, twenty-five years later, here we are…”
Dotson describes life with Pierce in the early days: ”I mean, I knew Jeff was nuts almost immediately.These super-sweet people would let us stay at their places, and he would get thrown out of each place…we would take bets ‘Is he going to last three days, seven days, ten days? He was just incorrigible, you know, making $700 phone calls to Europe and all kinds of crazy sh*t, but ugh, yeah he just started acting more insane…” Terry Graham says that ”Jeffrey was definitely independent, on his own, do it yourself kind of person.”
In ‘Ghost On The Highway’, School friend Steven Tash confirms Pierce’s love for Brando, James Dean and playwright Harold Pinter. Tash says “He had aspirations to be this great literary writer…” In the film, Peter Case of The Nerves remembers that Pierce had ‘bags and bags of books’ and that he was ‘crazy about William Burroughs.”
In an article by Sylvie Simmons for Mojo in 2005, Patricia Morrison describes her time in The Gun Club and the self-destructive nature of Pierce’s leadership, which explains the revolving door of musicians:
“There were so many things. We would have to do everything for him, carry his equipment. He didn’t talk to you, he talked at you. He would annoy the hell out of people. I spent my years in the Gun Club with people coming up to me and saying, ‘This is a great band, get rid of the singer. But we’d say, ‘He is the band.’ Because Jeffrey was totally in control. His saving grace was his undeniable vision and talent. The Gun Club should have been massive, but they weren’t – because of Jeffrey. In the end I said, ‘This band isn’t going anywhere, I’m out.”
Jeffrey Lee Pierce died in 1996 from a brain haemorrhage at the tender age of thirty-seven, also suffering from cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis and mental health issues in the lead up to his death, the result of years of drug and alcohol abuse.
“No future. I’ve never been so bored in my life. I’ll go anywhere anyone wants to take us. And do anything. To be a piece of dust, just float…”
Jeffrey Lee Pierce
Let’s leave The Gun Club as ’Miami’ does, with the spine-tingling lyrics of ‘Mother Of Earth’ a song that never fails to well me up when I hear it. Rest in peace, Jeffrey Lee Pierce:
“I’ve gone down the river of sadness
I’ve gone down the river of pain
In the dark, under the wires
I hear them call my name
I gave you the key to the highway
And the key to my motel door
And I’m tired of leaving and leaving
So, I won’t come back no more
Oh, my dark-eyed friend
I’m recalling you again
Soft voices that speak nothing
Speak nothing to the end
Oh, Mother of Earth
The blind they call
But, yet stay behind the wall
Their sadness grows like weeds
Upon my thighs and knees
Oh, Mother of Earth
The wind is hot
I tried my best, but I could not
And my eyes fade from me
In this open country”
‘Miami’ tracklisting:
Carry Home
Like Calling Up Thunder
Brother And Sister
Run Through The Jungle
A Devil In The Woods
Texas Serenade
Watermelon Man
Bad Indian
John Hardy
The Fire Of Love
Sleeping In Blood City
Mother Of Earth
References and quotes:
The Gun Club ‘Miami’ CD
http://sylviesimmons.com/jeffrey-lee-piece/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gun_Club
‘Jeffrey Lee Pierce interview 1986 – The late leader of The Gun Club on going solo’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Peye1nR9sE
‘Documentary about Jeffrey Lee Pierce/Gun Club: ‘Ghost On The Highway’ part 1 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQH3MjNrDQ0
‘Ghost On The Highway’ part 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GvJrRoktIg
Lyrics and music:
The Gun Club ‘Miami’ CD
https://genius.com
Photographs:
The Gun Club ‘Miami’ CD
http://www.gerpotze.com/gunclub/articles/wildweed.htm
Eddie's Rock Music A-Z 