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Did Christianity Kill
Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams?

April 1, 2011 By Joe Allen

In private moments otherwise shrouded in darkness, Christians feel the presence of God looming over their shoulders. The Omniscient Eye bears witness to every messy indiscretion behind closed doors and probes dirty thoughts like a supernatural panty-raider.

In view of their popular images, Marvin Gaye and Rozz Williams seem as different as sly grins and slit wrists, but the camera overlooks their common heritage. They were both children of a church-dwelling God, and His relentless imposition of conscience drove both them to the very edge of sanity—where they promptly jumped into the Abyss.

Both met their Maker on April 1st. No foolin’.

^

Marvin

© Brandt Hardin at DREGstudios

Marvin Gay Jr. grew up under the thumb of the “Hebrew Pentecostal” House of God denomination. His father, Marvin Gay Sr., was an ambitious preacher in the Washington DC congregation, and swung an iron fist on any defiant soul living under his roof.

The rules were simple: No make up, no television, no wine, no swine, no sweethearts, no playing after dark, no bed-wetting, and don’t even think about having fun.

The ministry brought many blessings to the Reverend Gay—despite his hobgoblin visage—including the loose “sisters” of the congregation who were more than willing to service a man of God under the nose of his timid wife. In his own mind, the pastor was destined to become a big time prophet. His dreams of sainthood were shattered, however, when theological rifts within the House of God left him with a meager flock to tend.

Defeated and disillusioned, the failed spiritual leader retreated into the quiet sanctum of his stank bedroom, where he would slip into his wife’s silky dresses and nylon stockings, swig jugs of liquor, and stare into the mirror while wearing a stringy, honky-haired wig. If that got boring, he would just go out and slap his family around. He particularly despised his handsome and talented son, Marvin Gay Jr., calling him a “sinner” and a “faggot” for abandoning the choir to sing the Devil’s boogie-woogie.

Marvin Jr. escaped this oppressive teenage existence by joining the Air Force in 1956. He didn’t much care for the military’s rules, either, but at least he got a chance to “do the nasty” off base—with a blubbery whore at Patsy Prim’s Cathouse. This two-pump poke-down was hardly the sacred act Marvin’s preacher had talked about and the post-coital guilt nearly crushed the young man’s soul.

Within a year, Marvin was granted an honorable discharge after faking the crazies. He headed back to his old ‘hood in DC, moved in with a sexy new girlfriend, and set about becoming a star. Of course, there was one final tie to sever. Upon realizing that the slang of the day had shifted against his surname, he immediately added the now-familiar “e” to dispel any confusion. Can you blame him?

Marvin made his way to Detroit in 1959, where he would find his destiny in Anna Gordy—a gorgeous, world-wise woman seventeen years his senior. She immediately fell in love with Marvin’s voice, and soon insisted that her brother—the founder of Motown Records—give him a listen. Berry Gordy saw an R&B star ready to burn, and wasted no time buying the rights to the singer’s soul. Before long, Anna Gordy said, “I do.”

In the early days of his touring career, Marvin remained faithful to Anna. He was content to just smoke a joint, rub some cocaine on his gums, and cozy up in his hotel room with a stack of skin mags. After awhile, though, he began to bring a prostitute or two into the mix. Perhaps it was a lingering tendency from porn-consumption, but he generally preferred to simply watch his hired help undress and fondle each other. If the specter of guilt arose, he would remind himself that the Patriarchs of the Old Testament were polygamous, so why shouldn’t he enjoy some variety?

“Prostitutes protect me from passion,” Marvin maintained. “Passions are dangerous. They can cause you to lust after other men’s wives.”

Publicly, Marvin was famous for his steamy duets, but it was pure magic when in 1967 he stepped into the national spotlight with the vibrant Tammi Terrell singing by his side. While race riots set Detroit on fire, America gazed in wonder as Tammi and Marvin sang of precious love, and for a moment it seemed possible that there “ain’t no mountain high enough” to keep true lovers apart.

Then one night Tammi fainted into Marvin’s arms onstage. Doctors discovered a tumor in her brain. A series of unsuccessful operations left the once gorgeous performer in a wheelchair—blind, bald, and unable to perform the simplest tasks. Marvin was so distraught that he would not go onstage again for four years.

Throughout Tammi’s decline, Marvin sought peace in solitude, reefer, and spiritual self-help books like Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. “I would like to become a man of power and knowledge,” he proclaimed to one interviewer. At 31, he developed megalomaniacal athletic aspirations. He played basketball, took up boxing, and even considered trying out for the Detroit Lions—to everyone’s amusement. The numby gummies had lost their luster at this point, so Marvin began sniffing instead.

Continuous television coverage of Martin Luther King’s assassination, the endless Vietnam War, and America’s deteriorating black ghettos erupted upon Gaye’s consciousness, stirring his troubled soul. He turned to the Spirit, gravitated toward New Age Gnosticism, and became convinced that the End was nigh—but that he was chosen by God to lead the Spiritual Elite to glory.

The long-awaited release of What’s Going On in 1971 took everyone by surprise. Beneath the album’s soothing vocals is a call for social justice, a wail of racial despair, and a warning of immanent ecological and/or nuclear catastrophe. Emerging from this hopeless vision is the plea to just save the children. Backed by groovy percussion and fronted by Marvin’s winning smile, the project was a smash hit whose impact endures to this day. The revolutionary youth fell in love with it. Marvin was no longer “The Sound of Young America.” On this album, he became the Voice of Black America.

Janis Hunter was also in love. The young girl stopped by the studio one day in 1973, and Marvin could not help himself. Her creamy, Cuban complexion, her lithe body and bubbly admiration—it was just too tempting. His wife Anna was 51 at this point—seventeen years older than Marvin. Janis was seventeen years younger—making her seventeen years-old. She was Marvin’s last chance to bask in innocence, purity, and the naïve optimism that is the folly of youth. Janis had much to learn.

This period saw the release of such seductive hits as “Let’s Get It On” and “You Sure Love To Ball.” Marvin left his humiliated wife and retreated with his little love bunny to a rugged cabin on the coastline. By the late 70s, Marvin and young Jan were married with children. They toured the world on a wave of erotic fame, snorted snow drifts of cocaine, and strained the limits of bizarre sexual pleasures.

Marvin’s New Age obsessions continued. He got into biofeedback and vegetarianism, wore brass pyramids one his head around the house, and remained convinced that Armageddon would soon purge the Earth of the unworthy—leaving him and the Elite to start anew. Perhaps these survivors would listen to sexy R&B tunes while disposing of irradiated mutants.

Marvin’s adventurous nymph eventually grew tired of his power trips and started exploring other partners. The early 80s found Gaye holding the #1 spot with “Sexual Healing,” while Teddy Pendergrass and Rick James were laying hands on his young wife. It drove Marvin to slap Jan silly, but he also blamed himself for corrupting her.

Time rolled over him like a train to Batshitville. The End was nigh, and his nostrils were blown out. Marvin took to free-basing instead. He did one last tour in 1983 to scrape up cash. Sometimes he brought multiple couples up to his hotel room, and had them soak his sheets with some midnight love while he stopped, looked, and listened.

He would occasionally repent in desperate moments, once smashing a glass pipe under a Bible as a symbolic gesture. Again and again, he vowed to live a life of purity and ferociously condemned the drug use of his companions. God forgives. Jesus is the Truth and the Light. But cocaine was readily available. A million dollars, a million record sales, a million brain cells boiling on aluminum foil and sucked through a glass tube. That shit is terrible for your teeth.

Threatening voices emanated from the television set like gakked-out Jiminy Crickets. Marvin would frequently dismantle telephones to search for recording devices. His soul was exposed. Everyone was out to get him. Maybe they would come after his parents instead. His beloved mother! Marvin sent his father an unregistered .38 pistol, just in case.

In Marvin’s mind, he was the biggest star in the world. A Savior of the human race. But his sins were rotting hot dogs stuck to his ribs, and the hounds of Hell drooled in the shadows. Groupies’ husbands, Jan’s father, unpaid drug-dealers, radicalized black supremacists, Berry Gordy’s henchmen, the FBI, the IRS, and of course, God Himself had a bone to pick with Marvin Gaye. One night he thought the Devil had finally come for him, and his bodyguard found him blabbering on the hotel bed with 666 pasted to his sweaty forehead.

The last months of Marvin Gaye’s life were spent under his father’s roof in the suburbs of LA. Marvin had bought the home for his parents some years back, but was still ashamed to live there. He was forty-four, fat, balding, bankrupt, and estranged from both Anna and Jan. His children were kept from him, and his career was all washed up.

Threats of suicide became commonplace but Marvin considered that to be an unforgivable sin. So he holed up in his darkened bedroom wearing a soiled bathrobe, consumed quantities of coke and PCP, and stared out the window for his coming assassins. Like father, like son. One close friend claimed that in his isolation, Marvin had taken up “some weird sexual thing” so perverse the friend refused to give details. I have my guesses, though.

Marvin’s father stayed drunk and disgusted with his son. His mother prayed for him in tears. Marvin just disintegrated. Then, without warning, Judgment Day arrived.

Marvin was laying on his bed talking to his mother, when his father came to the door griping about a lost insurance policy. He cursed at Marvin’s mother like she was a dog. So Marvin leapt from the bed and began to beat the shit out of him. “Motherfucker, you want some more?” He punched and kicked the pitiful old man repeatedly, then returned to his room.

Marvin Gay Sr. took the .38 his son had given him, walked to Marvin Jr.’s room, and shot him in the chest—then popped one more into his torso for good measure. Marvin Gaye was pronounced dead on April 1, 1984—one day before his forty-fifth birthday.

People close to him said that Marvin intentionally took his own life by his father’s hand. It puts a twisted spin on Jesus’ last words on the cross: “Father, into your hands I commend my Spirit.”

Marvin Gay Sr. had warned Marvin Jr. many times, “I brought you into this world, and if you lay a hand on me I’ll take you out.” If nothing else, he was a man of his word. While in jail, a reporter asked Marvin Sr. if he loved his son. After some hesitation he replied, “Let’s say that I didn’t dislike him.” It turns out that Marvin Sr. had a wicked brain tumor. He was given five years probation for voluntary manslaughter and confined to a nursing home, where he gradually lost his marbles.

“I could never imagine [Marvin Gaye] living to be an old man,” Jan said of her late husband. “He was drawn to danger[...] The dark side of life and the dark side of the mind really fascinated him. There was stuff that just went so deep, so dark and so bizarre. That was the driving force with him for many years.”

^

Rozz

© Brandt Hardin at DREGstudios

There was nothing gradual about Rozz Williams’ descent into darkness. One day it was Gummy Bears, the next it was bears at the leather bar. The little guy was so precocious, he might as well have been born into an open grave.

Raised by Southern Baptist parents on the outskirts of LA, Roger Alan Painter found his Savior to be repellent at an early age. He had too many questions and the church’s vapid answers were hardly satisfying.

Why is the world so mean?
(Jesus loves you)
Who am I?
(Jesus loves you)
What do I do with all these erections?
(You’ll go to Hell)
Is that all there is?
(Jesus loves you)

The kid was bored to death and willing to try anything to break free. Rock n’ roll was the obvious choice.

In 1979, at the age of sixteen, he founded the seminal goth band from which all black nail-polish still flows: Christian Death. The name Rozz Williams was lifted from a tombstone in a neighborhood cemetery. I have no idea where he picked up that haunted, faux-Shakespearean accent.  Not southern California.

Rozz’s church-going parents were alarmed at their son’s penchant for flamboyant blasphemy—especially after seeing his tapes condemned by pastors on TV—but what were they gonna do, spank him? He was already dressing like Boy George-meets-the-Exorcist and bringing boyfriends home so he could strip them down and tie them up and wrap them in plastic and cut them up with razor blades and lick their bloody wounds and then hold hands in public.

The details of Rozz’s private life are pretty murky, but he was never shy about expressing his perversions onstage or on film. This guy was cutting himself when blood-sucking was still left to Béla Lugosi, performing Crowlean black magic rituals at the height of the Satanic Panic, and openly defying gender norms back when LGBT was just a funny way to spell lug-butt.

“I’ve never understood the idea that men are supposed to wear pants and women are supposed to wear skirts[,]” Rozz mused. “We both have male and feminine sides to ourselves, so there’s no reason not to explore them.”

His breakout moment was with Premature Ejaculation in 1980. It was a bit of nasty performance art created in LA with his gothic dreamboat, Ron Athey. Inspired by massive amounts of acid, heroin, and yes, sado-masochistic games with preteen boys, this visual representation of animal abuse included a boy tied up on the floor, handfuls of putrid animal organs hucked at the crowd, the live crucifixion of a rotten roadkill kitty from which Ron took a few bites, and subsequently, a great deal of vomiting.

“I’d rather play a show which the audience walks out of en masse, than one they just stand around and talk through.”

His goth rock career took off in 1982 with the release of Christian Death’s Only Theater of Pain (not to be confused with Mötley Crüe’s pseudo-satanic Theater of Pain, released three years later.) Rozz took the stage in pancaked corpsepaint, black lipstick, silk gloves, smoldering cigarettes, and a flowing white wedding dress that just screamed, “She’s a liar!”

The lyrics ranged from the Jesus/Satan dichotomy to candlelit pederastic romance. You’d think he was raised Catholic. An amoral tone of dispassionate curiosity was established early on, which would endure throughout his subsequent work. Rozz sang:

Burning crosses on a nigger’s lawn
Burning money, what’s a house without a home?
Dance in your white sheet glory
Dance in your passion

[…]

Kiss on my hand
After dark
Hand for a kiss…

People weren’t sure what to make of it. Was it ironic satire? Sadistic indulgence? Soulless observation? Gothic nonsense?

Rozz explained, “I feel that people should be allotted freedom to look into whatever it is they’re looking into, and make up their own mind about it.”

After Rozz crucified himself at the Whiskey A Go Go on Easter weekend, few people in the press were asking him any questions, anyway. Christian Death came years before Madonna made out with black Jesus and Robert Mapplethorpe peed on crucifixes—sacrilege hadn’t gone mainstream yet.

By this time, Rozz had fallen head over heels for his wife-to-be, Eva O, a vamped-out, guitar-slung “queen of darkness” who occasionally played with Christian Death. She had recently left a relationship with the pentagram-emblazoned serial killer, Richard Ramirez, so she was ready for a rebound. Considering the fact that preshy-poo Rozzy wrote letters to Jeffrey Dahmer and pored over Charles Manson’s rambling philosophies, you have to wonder where him and Eva hid the bodies.

Eva and Rozz began writing songs for Shadow Project together in the late 80s. The name refers the charred “shadows” left on concrete walls by the vaporized victims at Hiroshima, and the sound was pure death rock—which is akin to straightforward rock n’ roll, but with a consistently, obsessively, slavishly morbid twist.

Christian Death became a goth sensation in America and Europe, and was to be Rozz’s most widely known work. But Rozz soon found himself bored with this project, as he eventually did with most things in life. He allowed the guitarist, Valor, to take over the group under the condition that they drop the name and not play Rozz’s songs.

“Call yourself ‘Satanic Life’ or ‘Evil Watermelon,’” I can hear Rozz saying, “But don’t use my material. Deal?”
“I am in such mortal anguish,” Valor moans, “but okay—deal.”
“Blood oath?”
“But of course.”
Slice. Slice. Splat.

Rozz fluttered off on bat wings, and Valor immediately started touring both sides of the Atlantic as Christian Death, playing all of Rozz’s songs. Which pissed Rozz off—but he took it like a sport, really. Everybody copied Rozz Williams—that’s just how things were. And after all, he had other things to occupy him.

There were snuff films to watch and demons to conjure and poetry to compose, and of course, heroin to zap up his veins. Gobs of gooey, womb-like, feel-no-pain-when-you-cut-yourself-with-an-old-school-razor-blade smack-in-the-dirty-needle. Bang! Zooom! To the moon, Eva!

Although Rozz would occasionally do Christian Death reunion shows—withdrawals are a bitch—he was always focused on the next endeavor. Shadow Project’s second album, Dreams for the Dying, was recorded while locked in their LA studio during the race riots of ’92. The songs are among his most deranged. It seems that Rozz was devoted to one mission throughout his career: Explore the underbelly of the Universe. Transgress every taboo. See what happens.

“What I like to do with anything I do is push it past the boundaries. I like to break a lot of new ground and try new things[...] We’re not interested in staying in a format, we don’t want to be labeled as just a gothic band.”

Rozz detested labels. Christian, Satanic, good, evil, gay, straight, normal, perverted, junky, rockstar—mere words!

“Everybody’s a human being,” Rozz insisted, despite evidence that he was a ring wraith. “And if you want characters, then create them on paper or something, don’t expect people to be your characters.”

[Oops]

Eva O became a born-again Christian in the early 90s. Although she continued playing Jesus Freak goth, Shadow Project was disbanded in 1994. Her marriage to Rozz—which he described as “a very informal marriage, more of a partnership”—was dissolved soon after. They would go on to record one final album together, not long before Rozz’s death. The tearfully sentimental From the Heart was released later that year.

Rozz continued to explore the oozing, Id-saturated mess that was his soul. His musical output—or whatever you want to call it—was constant, leaving the world an endless stream of cassettes to ponder. One of his last formal projects was the spoken word album, From the Whorse’s Mouth, written during a period of intense heroin addiction in 1996.

Without question, the most disturbing track is “Raped.” The recording combines Rozz’s poetry with snippets of Porky Pig’s voice, advertisements for gay porno, and an answering machine message from an obscene caller named Frank Lee, retrieved from an abandoned police station. Porky Pig stutters, Frank Lee threatens to sodomize a young child, and an enthusiastic barker promises potential customers “the hottest fist-fucking double fuck films ever made.”

Granted, this is pretty tired material for anyone who has clicked between YouTube, CNN.com, and BrutalManLove.xxx, but in ’97 it was a cult classic—a coveted glimpse into the evil that men do. But why would anyone want to hear that?

I had a good friend who adored Rozz Williams, but he’s not available to answer that question. After a brief, dysfunctional marriage to his body, he shot up a fatal dose in the underbelly of Detroit.

“I’m not saying I don’t have hatred toward myself,” Rozz said, about a year before he died. “There are certain things that I despise about myself, but I try to direct those things out of myself into something that can be positive.”

Also, “Frank Lee is my hero.”

Curiously, he went on to say, “I have a personal relationship with Christ, and that’s mine—it doesn’t belong to a church or an organization[...]

“I believe in [God and Satan] as literal—it’s also things you see day to day. As simple as someone passing you on the street and saying ‘hello,’ which most people do not do—they pass you by and give you a dirty look.”

His last undertaking was a short film with Nico B., in which a faceless killer kidnaps a hairless male youth, ties him up in an abandoned house—pauses to read from some infernal tome—and then proceeds to slowly mutilate and murder him. “Let’s say, if I weren’t doing this on film, you would be talking to me from a prison cell right now,” Rozz explained. “I’m living out some fantasies on film.” Which is entitled Pig.

Rozz was also working hard on his paintings and collages, and had kicked heroin for some time at this point. According to Nico B., Rozz remained clean until his dying day. He continued to knock back plenty of booze, however, and was left extremely depressed after the suicide of his best friend, Erik Christides, in 1997. People said Rozz looked unhealthy. Rumors spread that he had contracted HIV.

On April 1, 1998, Rozz was supposed to catch a movie with Nico B., but didn’t show. When his friends finally busted into his apartment, they found Rozz dangling from his doorway with the “Hanged Man” Tarot card laying nearby. He was 34. Many fans were disappointed that he left no suicide note, but having reviewed Rozz Williams’ prolific lyrics and visual art, I think a note would be a bit redundant.

“In 1994 Rozz told me he had accepted Jesus,” claimed his would-be widow, Eva O, “And before he died he called his mother and let her know that he accepted the Lord. In his last conversation with his roommate he said he was going to be with God. I believe he is safe now.”

When an interviewer mentioned that Rozz has been described as “an angel” by some, Nico B. responded:

“Well, he’s an angel now. I think he was a devil sometimes! (laughs) You know, when he was having fun[...]  But he was a very humorous person as well.”

He was obviously fond of April Fool’s Day.

Eulogy

In his coffin, Marvin Gaye wore the white military uniform from his last tour. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Rozz Williams wore something black, with black underneath. Around 10,000 people viewed Marvin’s body at his memorial service. As far as I know, only a handful paid respects to Rozz’s remains.

Both were cremated. Marvin’s family offered his ashes to the Pacific Ocean from the deck of a yacht. Rozz’s family sprinkled his remains into Runyon Canyon, CA. The state of their eternal souls remains a mystery.

Marvin Gaye was inducted into the Rock n’ Roll Hall of Fame on 1987, where his legacy continues to enamor the public. Rozz was given a memorial niche at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in 2001, and a plaque that reads:

All truth is parallel
All truth is untrue

For those who can muster the strength to carry on, Life is a precious struggle. As for those who cannot, their memories are enshrined as the living see fit. Who can say what is or is not forgivable?

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Marvin Gaye — “What’s Going On/What’s Happening Brother?”
1970s

Christian Death — “Romeo’s Distress”
1990s

For Vadim

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Eazy E: A Straight G Killed By HIV

March 26, 2011 By Joe Allen

© Jeffrey Bertrand

To hear him tell it on his records, Eazy E was a ghetto-blasting geyser spewing bullets and semen in every direction. If Eazy wanted to screw in a lightbulb, he could just wrap his dick around it and let the world turn around his balls. And if some studio-gangsta criticized this method, E would pop a cap in that ass.

Eazy E succumbed to AIDS on March 26, 1995 at the age of 31, but his legacy lives on through brutal, bitch-slapping gangsta rap and various microscopic organisms. He was a set-claiming hero for alienated black youth, a jheri-curled Casanova for rap-lovin’ starfuckers, a total embarrassment to African American moral authorities, and for the suburban white community—the musical equivalent of a PCP-laced joint smoked in a highschool bathroom stall. A few days after he passed away, the mayor of Compton, Omar Bradley, officially declared Eazy to be “Compton’s favorite son.” After all, E had made his downtrodden LA suburb a household name.

The story of Eazy E’s rise from a neighborhood Crip to the Godfather of Gansta Rap reads like a paranoid Ku Klux Klan pamphlet: shifty Jewish investors, gun-toting black thugs, a conservative white police state, an American society in perpetual decline.

It all starts with $250,000 of drug money that Eazy had stashed away for a rainy day. After securing the added capital of Jerry Heller—a Jewish entrepreneur from the Valley—Eazy E founded Ruthless Records. Their first endeavor was Niggaz Wit Attitude, featuring Dr. Dre droppin’ phat beatz, Ice Cube weaving blow-ya-mind rhymes, and Eazy E’s whine on the mic. N.W.A.’s first major release came in 1988. Straight Outta Compton blew the doors open for gangsta rap to sweep across America, and the album has sold over two and a half million copies to date.

N.W.A.’s most notorious track, “Fuck tha Police,” was so incendiary that the FBI sent a letter requesting that the label cease distribution immediately. The lyrics are both an indictment of police brutality against minorities, and a bloodthirsty hate anthem with more rhyme than Reason. Ice Cube’s fury struck a chord with black kids slugging it out in American ghettos—and wouldn’t you know it, even sheltered white teenagers were rapping along:

A young nigga on tha war path,
And when I’m finished,
It’s gonna be a bloodbath
Of cops dyin’ in L.A!
Yo, Dre, I got somethin’ ta say…

Fuck tha Po-lice!

According to Dr. Dre, it was Jerry Heller’s management that tore N.W.A.’s brotherhood apart: “[Heller] picked one nigga to take care of instead of taking care of everybody, and that was Eazy.” When Dre tried to leave Ruthless to form Death Row Records with bodyguard-turned-thug-4-life, Suge Knight, he was refused. But Suge doesn’t take “no” for an answer. This is the man who once dangled Vanilla Ice from a 4th-storey balcony by his ankles, and went on to become a suspect in Biggie Smalls’ murder, among other nefarious activities.

After Knight threatened both Jerry Heller and Eazy E’s mother, Heller got the Jewish Defense League involved. The FBI was soon to follow. In the end, Dre was released to Death Row Records in 1991, under the condition that a portion of his profits would go to Heller and Eazy E. The duel was on, to be settled on the mean streets of MTV.

Bolstered by his affiliation with Suge Knight and Snoop Dogg, Dr. Dre recorded the track “Fuck Wit Dre Day,” in which he promises to inflict various forms of oral and anal rape upon his former homie, Eazy E, even going so far as to threaten murder. To add insult to, well, insult, Dre also says “Yeeeah” and “Heeell Yeeeah” in a much more manly fashion than the helium-voiced E could possibly muster.

What Eazy E did muster was an entire EP dedicated to calling Dr. Dre out as a “studio-gangsta” and the most despicable of deviants, reviled by gangsta and preacha alike: a “faggot.” One who will be sucking Eazy’z nutz, if Eazy has his way about it.

The album’s title says it all: It’s On  (Dr. Dre) 187um Killa. The sleeve features photographs of Dr. Dre from the early 80s, wearing a lacy white ensemble and what appears to be lipstick and dark foundation. Like many hyper-masculine icons, Dre apparently went through a fruity spell, and Eazy E wasn’t about to let him forget it. The knock-out track, “Real Muthaphukkin G’s,” not only claims that the supposedly gat-packin’ Dr. Dre has never put in true criminal work, he is not even from Compton. Ouch.

And so the feud wore on. Eazy’s EP sold over two million copies. Dre’s The Chronic sold three million. Eazy smoked weed like it was good for him, buzzed from ho to ho like a honeybee on hydraulics, and filled his mansion with ghoulish clown statues and Chucky dolls. Dre advertised weed like the black Marlboro Man, put ho after ho in his videos, and filled various mansions with his chart-topping protégés.

Eazy became reasonably concerned that he might be killed by one of his gangsta rivals, and had even gotten word that his name was on some White Power hit-list. He was constantly ducking into the shadows—where he would find yet another “bitch” to offer her body to his insatiable appetite. Say what you will, at least the man was true to his lyrics.

Eazy E spread the love like Johnny Appleseed chewing a mouthful of Viagra. But as with many earthly delights, this ho-fucking free-for-all would eventually take its toll. Eazy was admitted to the Cedars Sinai Medical Center on February 24, 1995 with a wracking cough.

If there is any hard evidence of Intelligent Design—however malevolent—it has to be the AIDS virus. Its molecular structure is so devious, so simple and yet so effective, it’s no wonder that conspiracy theorists believe the government created HIV in a laboratory to eradicate black people (along with junkies, gay men, and vampires.)

A dirty needle, a torn anus, maybe even a cut mouth kissing a busted lip—the transmission is so pleasure-specific, you’d think the infernal Powers That Be didn’t want us to have too much fun. One drop of bad blood, an infected splat of semen, a swarming vaginal secretion, and that’s it. You’re the walking dead. The little germs devour your white blood cells like microscopic cop-killers. Before long, you can’t shake a chest cold. Most AIDS victims die of pneumonia.

The virus itself is so sleek, you’d think the Germans made it. One glycoprotein-dotted lipid bilayer, two little protein sheaths, and some viral RNA tucked inside with reverse transcriptase enzymes to get the ball rolling. The glycoproteins attach to the T-cell’s membrane, and the viral probe enters the cell’s cytoplasm. The reverse transcriptase copies the RNA into DNA, which is inserted into the cell’s genome—where it waits patiently. Maybe it’s a day. Maybe it’s twenty years.

An HIV brigade making a break from a withering T-cell

When it comes time to rock n’ roll, the little strip of tainted DNA begins cranking out new viral RNA strands. These genetic freeloaders clothe themselves with the T-cell’s own components, then flood out into the bloodstream, looking for fresh white blood cells. When the virus has reproduced beyond the host T-cell’s capacity, the cell collapses. But that’s okay. There are plenty more T-cells where that came from. Until there aren’t. That’s when the whole organism dies. So long as this unfortunate individual had an opportunity to go raw dog one good time, the HIV strain will sally forth to slay the next victim.

Upon learning that his pneumonia was the result of AIDS, Eazy E was faced with a choice. He could die quietly of “natural causes,” or he could go public with the news. He had to know that such a stigmatized disease would provoke vicious rumors—and strike terror in horny groupies from coast to coast—but ten days before he died, Eazy came forward with his final message:

“I may not seem like a guy you would pick to preach a sermon. But I feel it is now time to testify[...]

“I’m not saying this because I’m looking for a soft cushion wherever I’m heading, I just feel that I’ve got thousands and thousands of young fans that have to learn about what’s real when it comes to AIDS. Like the others before me, I would like to turn my own problem into something good that will reach out to all my homeboys and their kin. Because I want to save their asses before it’s too late.

“I’m not looking to blame anyone except myself. I have learned in the last week that this thing is real, and it doesn’t discriminate[...]”

Eazy E had every reason to be concerned. According to statistics compiled by the international charity organization, AVERT, African Americans are afflicted with sexually transmitted diseases in far greater proportions than any other race. The numbers are stunning.

A recent analysis by the CDC found that 48% of black women and 39% of black men suffer from genital herpes in America, compared to 21% of women and 11.5% of men overall. Black Americans have 8 times the levels of chlamydia and 18 times the levels of gonorrhea as compared to whites.

Blacks make up only 13% of the US population, and yet out of the half million Americans who have died from AIDS, nearly 40% were black. Just over a million people are living with HIV in America (1 in 300,) of which about half are black. Blacks comprise over half of all new HIV and AIDS diagnoses in America—which means the problem is growing.

According to a 2005 study by the CDC, nearly half of gay and bisexual black men in five major US cities are HIV positive (Including NYC, San Francisco, and LA.) African Americans also seem to contract HIV through heterosexual sex at much greater rates than other races. Of those living with HIV, 22% of black men contracted the virus through high-risk heterosexual contact (comprising two-thirds of all straight-sex contractions,) and 85% of black women were infected this way. In fact, AIDS is the leading cause of death among young black women ages 24-35.

AVERT cites poverty, poor health care, and unemployment as likely causes of these disproportionate infection rates. I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest one more factor: promiscuity. Popular folk wisdom has long alleged that blacks are endowed with stronger libidos than whites, though liberated white folks have been trying to catch up for decades.  The statistics seem to confirm that notion.

Fact: In a completely monogamous (or exclusive polygamous) society, sexually transmitted diseases would have no way to survive. Without mixing and matching genitalia, they could not spread. Alternatively, if condoms were always used—every time—a few germs might pop through, but infections would be reduced to isolated instances. Thus, the campaigns for safe sex and/or total abstinence.

The only problem: Slippery sensations are exponentially dulled by awkward rubber sheaths, and the last American to sleep with just one person was your old Aunt Fanny. Simple as that. We chase the fleeting pleasures of Life in the face of Death—or at least some very nasty sores.

On the day of Eazy E’s funeral, the mayor of Compton declared the occasion “Eazy E Day.” In the year after Eazy’s death, Ruthless Records became the first indie label to outsell the majors. A ghetto martyr was glorified. Despite every lame assertion that art only imitates life, I assert that admirers also imitate artists, oftentimes slavishly. It is an identity feedback loop.

© Brandt Hardin at DREGstudios

One quarter of black LA gang members interviewed by the Minority AIDS Project said they did not care if they got HIV because they were just going to die young, anyway. I’m reminded of Eazy’s tales of valor on “Eazy Duz It”:

Well, I’m Eazy E, I’ve got bitches galore.
You might have a lot of bitches, but I’ve got much more.
With my super-duper poop comin’ out the shoot,
Eazy E, muthafucka’s cold knockin’ the boots.

[...]

Gettin’ stupid, because I know how,
And if a sucka talks shit,
I’ll give him a {>POW<}

Eazy E was the Godfather of Gangsta Rap and the biological father of seven children by six different women. It is uncertain how many women he infected before he died.

For better or worse, Eazy’s cultural progeny have spread across the nation. You’ll find them in any urban center, along with various rurbans bangin’ in the backwoods. The gangsta meme continues to spread like viral bandanas, so perhaps we can look forward to an Age of Real Muthaphukkin G’s.

© 2011 Joseph Allen

“Real Muthaphukkin G’s“ — 1993

Filed Under: Martyrology, Most Exalted Tagged With: , ,

Biggie Smalls Said You’re Nobody
‘Til Somebody Kills You

March 9, 2011 By Joe Allen

Courtesy of Randy Key

It is dawn on Biggie Small’s deathday, and I’m sitting in the safest place in St. Louis, MO—just in case you care. I’ve been climbing in an unfamiliar arena ceiling for days now, 100′ in the air.  Steel beams and rough company.  Most people consider this to be a dangerous occupation, but apparently my walk to the hotel was the riskiest move I’ve made all night.

The television blares in the hotel lobby—the news shows a S.W.A.T. team kicking in doors in south St. Louis. A well-dressed, effeminate white man talks about how the neighborhood is really coming together through “community activism.”  Thugs wave guns at the news crew.  The two hotel security guards shake their heads in disdain.

I point to the screen and ask the motherly night clerk, Kay, “What would happen if I took a pleasant evening stroll down that street?”

“Boy, you betta not let the sun set on yo’ white ass down there.”

According to my guardians—two large black men with big flashlights and security badges—St. Louis has the # 1 murder rate in the U.S.A.  “Why do people kill each other so much?” I ask.

“You know.  Fool ganstas.  Drugs. Husbands killin’ wives.  Wives killin’ husbands.  Stoopid shit.”  My sleepy-eyed protector shrugs and sips his coffee.

This #1 status is a slight exaggeration. According to FBI statistics, St. Louis is actually just behind New Orleans in the bloody competition for “most bullet-sprayed city.”  However, East St. Louis—when considered as its own entity—is leaps and bounds beyond NOLA in the murder race, with 101.9 people murdered for every 100,000 in 2006.  (The national average is about 6 in 100,000.)  Morticians must get a lot of overtime around here.

“Yeah, people take fools to tha East Side to kill ‘em,” the security guard explains, ”and they bring they dead bodies and dump ‘em ovah here.”

“That’s what happened to my nephew,” says the night clerk, Kay. “He thought he was livin’ the life.  Drugs, gangs, you know.  They drove him into East St. Louis.  He felt that hot lead and he jumped out that car—right outta his shoes.”  Kay shakes her head sadly.  “He can’t see no mo’. Shot seven times in tha face.  But he still with us.”

Kay is paid to be nice to me, but after a couple of hours of conversation, I’m pretty sure she would be nice to me anyway.  She brings me my own urn of coffee, which is not bad for hotel brew.  She knows I have to go to work after I write this, and tells me, “Stop chattin’ and get typin’!”

It’s hard to end a conversation with Kay.  She knows more about dead rock stars than anybody I have met in months.  We talk about Sid Vicious’ murderous temper tantrum, and the brutal shooting of squeaky clean (accused rapist) Sam Cooke.  Kay talks about the Day Michael Jackson Died, and how shocked she was that the late Farrah Fawcett was immediately booted out of the spotlight the moment the King of Pop hit the hospital.  And of course, Kay is well-versed in the canonical teachings of the patron saints of the East and West Coasts, whose lyrics meet like ram horns in the Midwest.

“There’s two kinds of people: those who love 2Pac, and those who love B.I.G.”

I would have said, “And then there’s me,” but that’s not completely true.  My first deathday article was about the Notorious B.I.G., entitled “The Death Day of Biggie Smalls.”  Man, what a clever headline.

Biggie was a bright kid—an honor role student who made his mother proud.  Then he started hawking hubs, sporting furs and fedoras, and spittin’ dope rhymes.  Smart, ambitious, and fat as all hell, he soon metamorphosed from Christopher Wallace to the Notorious B.I.G.  Harlem star-maker, Sean “Puffy” Combs, got a hold of him, and B.I.G. became 350 pounds of bold lyrics and brash suicide trips.

Maintaining the morbid themes of his debut album, Ready to Die, Biggie’s posthumous release features a number of precient songtitles, such as “Somebody’s Gotta Die,” “Last Day,” “Niggas Bleed,” and of course, “You’re Nobody (‘Til Somebody Kills You)”. At 24 years-old, Biggie became a self-created emblem for ghetto violence.

Biggie represented Brooklyn at the height of the East Coast-West Coast rap wars during the 1990s. On March 9, 1997, he was killed in a hail of bullets at an L.A. intersection—six months after his friend-turned-rival Tupac Shakur was gunned down in a similar fashion. While accusations have been hurled at everybody from Suge Knight to the FBI, his murderers remain at large.  Maybe thugs were hired by Deathrow Records.  Or maybe his murder was the result of composing too many death songs—a manifestation of his morbid imagination, like in Rhonda Byrne’s The Secret, but bloodier.

I ask Kay what she thinks happened to Biggie.

“I think Puffy Combs had him killed.  That’s just my opinion. But Puffy be sleazy, the way he continued to capitalize on Biggie’s death.  Then he got caught up in that club shoot-up with Shyne [one of Puffy's rapper protégés, who was convicted of the shooting while Puffy walked free].  Puff Daddy probably just had Biggie popped fo’ tha money.”

She has a point. Perhaps Biggie was just a big, black piñata full of dollar bills, and Puffy came swinging a stick with no blindfold.

I don’t know if it took a bullet to make Biggie a legend, but his death certainly seems fated in retrospect.  Even orchestrated.  I recently saw his image displayed at the acclaimed “Who Shot Rock n’ Roll?” exhibit when it passed through Columbia, SC.  Taken a few weeks before his death, the photograph features B.I.G. in silvery black-and-white, standing in funerary attire among a hundred thousand anonymous tombstones.  The message: Everyone dies, but celebrities get to keep their faces.  Would Biggie have faded into a featureless grave if his life had been spared?

Kay snatches up my printout of last year’s Biggie Smalls article and starts reading.  I’m apprehensive at first, but she loves it.  She even reads this passage aloud:

“Released two weeks after his death, Life After Death sold over ten million copies.  P-Diddy crawled out from that blood-splattered Californian intersection like an Alien chestburster and grew into a hype-spinning monster that still stalks the earth in search of more dollars.”

She especially loves the ending, and I’m thinking, thank God somebody does.

“As long as there are fools, they will imitate their heroes.  And as long as their heroes portray braggadocious murderers, fools will continue to kill each other like morons with sharp sticks.

“So I’m throwing on my cream suit and hat, and heading out to the club.  I’ll love it when you call me Big Poppa.  And if you point a gun at me, I suppose I’ll throw my hands in the air, like I’s a true player.”

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Filed Under: Another Statistic, Most Exalted Tagged With: , , ,

March 5: The Deathday of Patsy Cline

March 5, 2011 By Joe Allen

Portrait by Kristy Cannon

In a world of condescending good ole boys, Patsy Cline refused to be anybody’s pretty little anything. Bold, forceful, and hellishly wild, she could go from cute to ugly in the flick of a cow’s tail. She assured the fellas around her, “I know how to whack below the belt.” She had to.

Growing up in the hardscrabble hills of Virginia, then kicking her way into the boys’ club at the Grand Ole Opry, there was no time for “pretty please.” Patsy came into the national spotlight at the dawn of the Women’s Lib movement, but she wouldn’t be caught dead burning bras. Her ambition propelled her far beyond domestic constraints, and besides, busting balls was more her style. She was throwing knees and elbows until her plane crashed in 1963.

Patsy grew up among the plain folk of the Shenandoah Valley, the real salt of the earth, or what a gentleman might call filthy white trash. Her mother Hilda met her husband-to-be at a Sunday school picnic when she was only thirteen years-old. He was forty. Hilda gave birth to Virginia Patterson Hensley in 1932, outside of Winchester, VA.

Little “Ginny” (as Patsy was then known) was born to shine, but her star had to claw its way up instead of shooting across the heavens.  At age twelve Ginny was hacking up hens at the local poultry factory. At thirteen she fell ill with rheumatic fever, which momentarily stopped her heart and nearly killed her—but she claimed that the throat infection altered her vocal chords, giving her a “booming voice like Kate Smith’s.” She honed her pitch in the church choir, and by fourteen little Ginny was singing on the local radio station. She was also getting on with twenty-five year-old pianist, “Jumbo” Rinker. She quickly gained a reputation for getting around, but she wasn’t about to get tied down.

When she was fifteen, her ageing Daddy hit the bricks, leaving her and her young mother to take care of her brothers themselves. Little Ginny split her time between soda-jerking at the drug store and singing her heart out in honky tonks—even posing for a naughty black-and-white here and there—but no one besides local admirers seemed to notice.

Then in 1952 she met guitarist Bill Peer, who became her band-leader, her mentor, and one of her many lovers. Despite his happy marriage, Bill remained by her side through her first major performances, her first Music Row recordings, and her first record deal with Four Star. In fact, it was Bill who gave her the stage name “Patsy.” Unfortunately for Bill, it was the pudgy, yet persistent high-roller, Gerald Cline, who gave her the last name.

Gerald was eight years older, but a good deal richer than sweet Patsy. Unfortunately for Gerald, a twenty-two year-old Navy sailor was giving her the orgasms. And on show dates, so was Bill. Only one person was happy with this arrangement. Gerald wanted an apron in the kitchen, and Bill wanted a songbird on his lap. Patsy wanted to be a star, and when the heavens opened before her, she left Bill and Gerald on the ground.

After a smashing television performance on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Patsy was endeared to a national audience. Regular appearances on the Grand Ole Opry soon followed. Nashville was a cowboy scene where women sang duets or back up, but Patsy knocked their hats in the creek. She became the first female country artist to headline her own shows, and after her death, was the first woman to be inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame.

It may have been a slow start, but once she got going Patsy Cline made hit records like a trailer park matriarch squirts out rug rats—just one after the other. Patsy preferred the more upbeat tunes, but her record-buying public clamored for sadness. She became the voice of heartbreak for a generation of jilted lovers. Though she generally didn’t write the lyrics, she got inside her songs in a way that bled sincerity. She would be so overcome with emotion that she often wept in the recording booth. Fellow performers remember tears streaming down her cheeks as she sang gospel tunes at the Ryman: “She was as moved as the audience.”

In 1956, Patsy performed “I’ve Loved and Lost Again” on Tex Ritter’s Western Ranch Party. This sappy little country song expresses sadness toward fickle hearts and decaying tradition, but it also heralds America’s immanent transition from domestic monogamy to the free-loving frenzy of the 60s:

To be true to one alone
don’t seem to matter anymore.
They’ll tell you you’re out of style
unless you’ve had three or four.

I’ve loved and lost again,
Oh, what a crazy world we’re living in.
True love has no chance to win…

She wears a cowgirl outfit—most likely made by her mother—with her hat cocked to cast a shadow over her eyes. A sly grin comes over her face each time she sings “unless you’ve had three or four.” For a woman like Patsy Cline, three or four is just a warm up. Before long, she would meet her next husband, and lose the Old West costume in favor of Manhattan furs and sequined gowns.

Though widely regarded as a country star, Patsy’s most popular songs saw her shed the chipper mountain yodel for a silky voice consumed with unhealthy obsession. Aside from crossover appeal in the 1960s pop charts, “Walkin’ After Midnight,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “Crazy,” and “She’s Got You” also share a common persona: the weepy romantic who refuses to move on. Cast aside by her one true love, she stares at his pictures, slips his ring onto her finger, and stalks the streets at night—trapped by a memory. The jukeboxes must have floated on rivers of tears. Hearing the genuine anguish in these songs, you have to wonder what kind of dick could string Patsy along so skillfully.

Charlie Dick was a drinker, a brawler, and a notorious ladies’ man. After his father committed suicide, he took over responsibility for his family, working hard—but playing harder. It was 1956 when he stumbled into a Virginia honky tonk to see the Kountry Krackers perform. Suddenly, Patsy Cline took the stage, and Charlie was absolutely smitten. Having just left her smothering husband, Patsy was coy with him at first. But women just couldn’t say no to Charlie Dick.

For the first time in her life, Patsy was in love. “He’s a man, all man,” she bragged to friends, “bigger than life, and twice as hard!” They were married in 1957, and their daughter Julie was born the next year. After Charlie received an honorable discharge from the Army in 1959, the couple moved to Nashville, where Patsy signed with Decca Records and joined the cast of the Grand Ole Opry. Perhaps most importantly, she met her new partner in crime—artist manager, guitar-picker, and amateur pilot, Randy Hughes. Soon she was pregnant with a baby boy—also named Randy—but that didn’t stop her relentless recording and performance schedule.

In January of 1961, Decca Records released “I Fall to Pieces,” which rocketed to the top of the charts. As Patsy’s star grew brighter, her husband’s affection withered away, but her success afforded a standard of living beyond anything they could have imagined in the backwaters of Virginia. They bought a dream house in Nashville’s suburbs, laid gold-flecked tiles in the bathroom, and filled the cabinets with bottles of booze.

Charlie often stayed at home with the kids, swilled liquor, and stewed on his slighted manhood. He hated it when his wife called him “Hoss,” and she refused to be called Patsy Dick.  He was also jealous of the men in Patsy’s life—and according to many of them, rightly so. “You ought to be home being a wife,” he would yell, “instead of hauling all over singing and fooling around!” Their domestic squabbles were legendary, and according to many, would often leave Patsy bruised up or Charlie in the drunk tank. But everyone who knew them agrees that despite the misery and constant bickering, they loved each other passionately until the bitter end.

In June of ’61, Patsy was riding through Nashville with her visiting brother when a passing vehicle hit them head-on. Patsy was thrown through the windshield. Her wrist was broken, her hip dislocated, and her forehead was sliced up from eyebrow to hairline. The lingering pain from her injuries would last the rest of her life, and she would never look the same. A jagged scar slashed across her face, and the headaches came constantly. Laying in a hospital bed, she took her preacher’s hand and prayed that the experience be a lesson to her, to inspire her to find happiness at home with her family.

By August she was rolling her wheelchair into the studio, where she recorded her signature track, “Crazy.” As soon as she got back on her feet again, she was out on the road. Having conquered Music City, her manager Randy Hughes booked her from Pensacola to Canada, including the Hollywood Bowl with Johnny Cash and numerous television appearances in New York City.

Patsy’s heart broke in two every time her bawling children chased her to the door, and the furious arguments with Charlie were taking a toll, but she had to keep going, she had to bring in the money. All the while, the hits kept coming. The iron was hot, and profiteers were hammering away at her soul. She spent her last Christmas on earth doing high-dollar gigs in Las Vegas, then cried into her hotel pillow while her kids described their presents on the phone. She told Randy Hughes she was ready to slow down. Randy told her where the next show would be.

Patsy’s last performance was a benefit for the surviving family of “Cactus Jack,” Kansas City’s most popular country deejay, who had been killed in a car crash in early 1963. Her last song was also her last recording, “I’ll Sail My Ship Alone” (though all the sails you’ve torn/ and when it starts to sinkin’, I’ll blame you.) The next morning, Patsy was tired, sick, and thoroughly disillusioned. She ached to be with her family—her two year-old boy was also sick—but a thunderstorm delayed their departure. Her best friend, Dottie West, was worried about Patsy flying in Randy’s little plane through such weather, and offered to drive her back. But Patsy decided to go with Randy. “Hoss,” Patsy told Dottie, “don’t worry about me ’cause when it comes my time to go, I’m going. If that little bird goes down, I guess I’ll go down with it.”

On March 5, 1963, Randy Hughes took off from Kansas City with three Opry stars onboard: Patsy Cline, Hankshaw Hawkins, and Cowboy Copas. Randy followed behind a stormfront moving over Nashville, where their families anxiously awaited their arrival. They got lost in a stormcloud 90 miles out. Witnesses said the plane was flying erratically, cutting the tops off of pine trees before it dove straight into a hill. Search parties said the plane and crew were completely pulverized. Patsy’s bloody slip hung from a tree. Scavengers prowled among the wreckage, lifting whatever they could get their hands on. Soon the news was traveling over phone lines, the airwaves, and eventually the press.

The next day, Paul Harvey announced on his radio show: “Three familiar voices are silent today. And over an ugly hole on a Tennessee hillside, the heavens softly weep.” There was weeping from the darkest hollow to the brightest stage in Nashville. The fates had been merciful since the death of Hank Williams a decade earlier, but statistics finally caught up to Music City. Patsy’s wake was held in her dream house in Nashville, with her husband overcome with grief, her children crying out for their mother. Oddly enough, a fourth Opry star was mourned during her public memorial—news rippled through the crowds that Jack Anglin had been killed in a car accident on his way to the funeral. When it rains, it pours.

Days later, thousands of fans descended on her burial in Shenandoah Park, VA, stripping the gravesite of flower arrangements and cards in full view of the grieving family. Not that Patsy would have minded so much. With an eerie intuition, she had begun tying up loose ends and giving away her belongings in the months before her death. She kept saying she would die before turning 30, but she just made it.  Having sacrificed her home life in order to ascend to the vinyl heavens, it is only fitting that her adoring fans would scour the ground for relics when she came crashing down to the earth.  As one of the pallbearers noted: “It’s like a religion with them.”

© 2011 Joseph Allen

“Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray” — 1957

For further reading, see Ellis Nassour’s Honky Tonk Angel: The Intimate Story of Patsy Cline.

Filed Under: Martyrology, Most Exalted Tagged With: , , ,

February 19: The Death Day of
Bon Scott

February 19, 2011 By Joe Allen

Courtesy of Brandt Hardin at DREGstudios.com

A man’s testes are many things to many people. They are objects of affection to be delicately caressed, vulnerable targets for an enemy’s swift boot, or bulging fashion statements in designer briefs. These throbbing organs generate a man’s ultimate purpose—they fuel aggression, propel the pleasure principle, and bestow a masculine pronoun. If his aim is true, future generations will revere his potent orbs as the very wellspring of Life itself.

AC/DC’s greatest frontman, Bon Scott, was extremely proud of his balls. He wore high-waisted skinny jeans to accentuate their curvature, and described them to his wife-to-be as “two hard-boiled eggs and a sausage.” He even wrote a song about them, tastefully entitled, “Big Balls.”

That’s just how Australians are, mate. It isn’t hard to find a bourbon-swilling brawler ready to prove his pair in the land down under. How fitting, then, that after drinking himself to death on February 19, 1980, Bon Scott would be exalted as the patron saint of Australia. He was their true-to-life working class hero, dead at 33.

It was a rough road to glorification. Bon bounced from job to job and band to band for over a decade before fulfilling his destiny in AC/DC. His work ethic was relentless. Never afraid to get his hands dirty, he scraped by laboring on fishing boats, driving tractors, and loading trucks at a fertilizer plant. But his struggle wasn’t just about grit and grime.

Though Bon’s first gigs were behind the drums with the bluesy Spektors, he soon found himself getting dolled up for the utterly unoriginal pop band, The Valentines. Those groovy years from ’66 to ’70 found Scott wearing Shakespearean bangs, poofy sleeves, and ball-shriveling bell-bottoms, all while singing backup to covers of “She Said” and “Build Me Up Buttercup.” Getting girly seems to be a rite of passage for hyper-masculine rockers. I guess it’s a long way to the top if you want to rock n’ roll.

During his four year run with the fuzz-faced folk band, Fraternity, Bon began to retune his energies to the Y chromosome. It was probably a surge of testosterone that fueled his brutal bike wreck in May of 1974. Estranged from his wife, wasted on Jack Daniels, and fired up on irrational fury, Bon hopped onto his motorcycle and crashed into an oncoming car, which landed him in a three-day coma with his teeth smashed out. This mishap shook him up, but it was only a rest stop on the highway to Hell.

Bon was still recovering when he saw the Young brothers—Angus and Malcolm—play their ferocious blues licks in an Adelaide club. They were introduced by mutual friends backstage. When it was suggested that Bon sit in on an AC/DC rehearsal, the fresh-faced Angus Young accused Bon—now in his late 20s—of being too old to rock n’ roll. Bon was quick to show the wee Scottish sprout what cock rock is all about. He tore his shirt off, screeched his heart out, and they offered him the vocalist gig on the spot. Bon told them he would think about it. His commitments to Fraternity and his love for his wife were still tugging at him, but ultimately, there was only one path to take. After all, he hadn’t grown that curly mullet to become a docile family man or play the recorder in some fucking hippie band.

AC/DC are often accused of being repetitive and two-dimensional, generally by those who lack sufficient levels of testosterone to feel the power. Their music celebrates the infernal joy of boyhood, and during their heyday, the riffs vibrated between the legs of a hundred million loose-living lassies. Three themes appear consistently in Bon Scott’s lyrics: rock n’ roll, Hell, and the testicular impulse. For example, he preached the devil’s gospel on “Let There Be Rock,” and “Rock n’ Roll Damnation,” and thumbed his nose at moralists—who consistently banned AC/DC from performing during their early days in Australia—with “Hell Ain’t a Bad Place To Be” and “Highway to Hell.” I am certain that if Bon had survived to make one more album, it would have been called My Rock n’ Roll Balls Are Hotter Than Hell.

Millions of eager, pubescent boys were prepared for the mysteries of sexual union by tracks like “Love at First Feel,” “Squealer” (an ode to taking virginity), “The Jack” (a euphemism for venereal disease), and “Night Prowler.” The latter—which describes the erotic desires of a nocturnal murderer—achieved tabloid infamy after Satan-worshipping serial killer Richard Ramirez was reported to be obsessed with it. And of course, there is my personal favorite, “Whole Lotta Rosie,” which is about making sweet love to a grossly obese woman, conjuring visions of “Mama” Cass wearing nothing but a dozen jelly donuts.

One may suspect this rock star bravado to be a campy pose, but Bon Scott lived every bit of his image. The man got more tail than Davy Crockett on a coon hunt. Life backstage was a whirlwind of groupies and booze, and Bon was never one to let an opportunity go to waste. Aside from reefer and the occasional snort to keep the party going, he wasn’t much of a drug user. In fact, you could say he was just a social drinker. The thing is, he couldn’t stand to be alone. Toward the end, he was guzzling Scotch like a desert nomad at a water fountain. “It keeps you fit,” he once quipped, “the alcohol, nasty women, sweat on stage, bad food—it’s all very good for you!” Maybe so, but Bon was as well-known for STDs at the urology clinic as he was for hits in the hard rock scene, and his diligent, if rapidly deteriorating liver became the subject of scientific curiosity. How fitting that his last televised performance was “Touch Too Much” on the BBC’s Top of the Pops (according to biographer Clinton Walker.)

Of course, there was more to Bon than the rock n’ roll caricature that eventually consumed him. He was steadfastly loyal to his family and friends, and sent hundreds of letters from the lonesome road. At the height of his international success—after the 1979 release of Highway to Hell—he regularly confided to those close to him that he longed for a stable home, a good woman by his side, and children to carry on his name. Behind that cunning leer was a deeply sentimental soul in search of solid ground to stand on. His last weeks were spent with Anna Baba, a Japanese woman he’d moved into his London flat. She barely spoke a word of English, but would cook him traditional meals and mother him through constant benders. He worked diligently on an upcoming album down to the final gulp. With a touching stroke of sincerity, his last recording was “Ride On,” a lament to the weariness of the endless highway.

As dawn broke on February 19, 1980, Bon flopped into the passenger seat of his friend Alistair Kinnear’s car after downing rows of whiskey doubles at the Music Machine in London. Unable to carry Bon up to his flat, Kinnear reclined the passenger seat, covered Bon with a blanket, and left him in the car to sleep it off. By the time Kinnear returned that evening, Bon was blue, having choked on his own puke. The certificate reads: “Death by Misadventure.”

Australia let out a collective cry of mourning. Breasts were beaten, whiskey shots were poured into the soil, and Highway to Hell echoed through the Outback with eerie poignancy. Bon’s ashes were interred in a Freemantle cemetery. Like Jim Morrison’s tag-covered grave in Paris or the syringe-and-cigarette-strewn park bench near the site of Kurt Cobain’s suicide, Bon Scott’s grave has become an international destination for mullet-sporting pilgrims. A statue was erected in his honor, and an arch above the entrance bears his name. Hordes of fans converged at his gravesite for last year’s 30th deathday, blaring bagpipes and strumming guitars to invoke his spirit.

Sketchy conspiracy theories cast suspicion upon AC/DC’s next album, Back in Black, which was hastily released a mere five months after Scott’s death. Some questions are compelling: Who were the “two big men” that Anna Baba claims rifled through Bon’s flat the day after he died? And what happened to the notebooks that Bon had been filling with lyrics? His parents never received them. Some claim that Scott’s final lyrics were used for the album dedicated to him. I personally believe that his notebooks are being held in a subterranean laboratory beneath Graceland, along with the extraterrestrial corpses recovered at Roswell.

It is striking, though, that Brian Johnson was chosen to be the new frontman within a month of the funeral. Many fans were appalled by this swift replacement—but not enough to hurt record sales. Back in Black became the second best-selling album in the world behind Michael Jackson’s Thriller, and Brian Johnson became Paul of Taursus to Bon Scott’s Jesus Christ.

And lo, the Evil One said, “Let there be Rock…”

© 2011 Joseph Allen

Filed Under: Martyrology, Most Exalted Tagged With: , , ,
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