The Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce was a purveyor of American myths. Dark myths—of long dead trains, ghosts on the highway, bad voodoo, murder and fire spirits and hellhounds on your trail. His was a vision of a haunted America where every day is judgment day, an America stained by blood and tormented by sins for which there is no forgiveness, and he translated that vision into a totally unique and new musical form—a raw punk blues infused with the imagery of our continent’s violent past. This alone set him apart from an LA punk scene set in a chaotic, dystopian present, one with no past and no future. Pierce’s vision was, ironically, closer to that of the Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead than to the Germs’ (GI). A taste for the past makes for strange bedfellows.
Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s fixation on the American deathtrip was odd indeed when one considers he was the one-time President of the Blondie Fan Club. He would bring a Bible on stage and preach fire and brimstone like a clay-eating, itinerant Pentecostal minister. In his mind he dreamed fugitive visions of evil going-ons in a rural South that was as foreign to him as it was to that other prophet of a bad moon rising, John Fogerty. It makes no sense to romanticize the guy. He was just a kid with a vivid imagination who liked Blondie. He wasn’t one of his characters, although he shared their taste for self-destruction. He wasn’t a myth. He didn’t die in the back seat of a 1952 Cadillac like Hank Williams. He was living with his mom. There’s something commonplace and domestic and touching about that.
The Gun Club’s debut album, 1981’s Fire of Love, is a revelation. Its primitive rhythms, raw sound and dark poetry spell out a vision of a savage, timeless America, one you won’t find on any roadmap. “Sex Beat” and “She’s Like Heroin to Me” are the standouts, carnal and dangerous. “Sex Beat” is a primal blast of feral punk blues that hits you straight where you live. A simple guitar riff and jungle drums propel Pierce’s shot-to-the-solar plexus vocals—when he sings “so you can move, move!” then follows it up with that “Sex beat… go!” it’s as exciting as hearing some long gone wild man in a Southern juke joint of the imagination. “She’s Like Heroin to Me” is all propulsion and slide guitar; it’s surprisingly melodic and is about a woman as seductive and addictive as a strong narcotic—she may be the only woman in the world that comes with a needle and a spoon. And Pierce, as always, is a live wire—the man’s frantic vocals shoot off sparks.
“For the Love of Ivy” is about the Cramps’ Poison Ivy and was co-written by Kid Congo Powers, who co-founded the Gun Club only to split before the recording of Fire of Love because the Cramps made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. It’s all stop and start—after the immortal (and quite amusing) “You look just like an Elvis from Hell” (which is followed by some primitive smash and crash) Pierce tosses off lines like “Gonna buy me a graveyard of my own/Kill everyone who ever done me wrong.” “Take it down man” he says at one point, and the band does, but only to add more oomph when the guitar comes snarling back in. “Preaching the Blues” is a radical reworking of Robert Johnson’s “Preachin’ Blues (Up Jumped the Devil)” that careers out of the starting gate then slows to a cacophonous blues stop and start with an off-kilter guitar riff. When Pierce isn’t firing off one-liners he’s whooping it up and ululating and in general acting like he’s got the devil inside him. He’s preaching, all right, but I doubt you’ll find a Christian fella from here to Louisiana who could cite the passages in the Bible he’s basing his sermon on.
“Ghost on the Highway” is also all slide guitar and moves down some haunted interstate like a tractor trailer trying to make up for lost time—Jeffrey’s all excitable as he sings about murder and blood while tossing off cryptic lines along the lines of “You thought winning as a woman, meant failing as a friend/It is nor an art statement, to drown a few passionate men.” It’s a giveaway line of sorts, because like every song on Fire of Love “Ghost on the Highway” is an art statement—the Gun Club was an art rock band. Pierce was a student of the weird America and not, like Robert Johnson or Hank Williams or any of the other musicians who’ve achieved mythical status, the unstudied real thing. Which isn’t to detract from Pierce’s achievement—he may have come at things secondhand, but he picked some mighty fine role models. And his passion was very, very real. “Cool Drink of Water”—which Pierce adapted from a Tommy “Quiet Whiskey” Johnson original—is the album’s only real weak link. It’s too subdued, too static—there is no cathartic release. And it goes on too long. It has a certain hypnotic power, and Pierce’s vocals have their appeal, but not enough happens—the frayed and chaotic guitar discord that finally comes along is too little, too late.
“Fire Spirit” is pure punk and spits fire, roaring along only to come, again and again, to a dead stop. The guitar sound is barbaric, pummeling—no weird slide on this one. Meanwhile, Pierce is going to the mountain, but he won’t be coming down satisfied. He sings, “Why can no one ever touch a fire spirit?/Why can no one ever hold a fire spirit?/Why can no one ever feel a fire spirit?” He’s not so much damned as just plain fucked, an outsider and unacceptable—”And no one will take all of me/So the fire will stop.” “Black Train” is all rhythmic chug-a-lug and crashing guitars; Pierce is riding on a train as black as night through the darkness, torn from his southern home because he killed a black man and he’s running a fever: “I’m heat on the black train/And I’m lightin’ up the night/With everything I’ve had and everything I’ve done/I still can’t be satisfied.” “Goodbye Johnny” is all guitar vamp and rumbling stutter and a trip into the “American unknown”—Pierce “is out there in the desert” where “all your dreams lie dead” and he’s possessed (“What slipped so deep into me/I can never get it out of me/I’m all broke up, Johnny/It all just beat me down.”) This weight of land, its ghosts and darknesses, will seep into you. It “comes out of the east like rain,” and it will chase you all the way to Los Angeles. There’s no escaping it because it’s in you. You can’t outrun yourself.
“Promise Me,” is a slinky, slide-guitar haunted slow one, all atmospherics and Pierce’s insinuating vocals, and while it’s short on pyrotechnics it has cumulative power. And its drone reminds me of the music of Junior Kimbraugh. “Jack on Fire” is a sort of mystery song; the guitars make a real racket but the song is an exercise in remorseless control—it pushes its way across the grooves of the vinyl, Pierce never letting up on vocals. He’s Jack and he’s on fire and he’s driving “deep into what is never seen.” He’s an enigma, our Jack, and something of a shuck—I certainly hope Pierce was giggling when he came up with the stanza that goes “When you fall in love with me/We can dig a hole by the willow tree/Then, I will fuck you until you die/Bury you and kiss this town goodbye.” I know I giggle when I hear it. Just as I do when Pierce follows it up with “It will be unhappy, it will be sad/But, it will be understood that I am BAD!” This is Pierce resorting to parodic hyperbole, which has its risks, but it’s good to know he was having fun. Murdering your lover is one thing; fucking her to death is another. I’m not sure you’ll find a Delta blues song, or any kind of blues song for that matter, where it’s done, because the blues are situated in a place where ghosts and hellhounds roam but people don’t go around fucking each other to death. And Pierce, who was a mythologist but also a smart guy with a black sense of humor, knew it.
All of which is to say that the secret ingredient of Fire of Love is camp. There’s an irony in these songs, and a sense of bemused exaggeration—a knowing wink, if you will. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was peddling the dark side of the American psyche, but he had a bit of snake oil salesmen in him and it saves these songs from being bad parodies. He was a believer, but he was also a jester—he was in show business, after all, and his songs are those of a huckster working the freak show tent. The dark America is real, but Pierce’s dark America was one of his own imagining, and he was intelligent enough to inject some humor and distance into his vision. I’ve never been convinced that Nick Cave, that Australian purveyor of the dark America, has done the same. Pierce knew his limitations. He knew he couldn’t walk in Robert Johnson’s shoes towards the crossroads. He was the president of the Blondie fan club, the only places he haunted were record stores, and he liked to laugh.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
