Creeping Ritual Productions was formed June 27th 2007, not only as a tribute website to the late Jeffrey Lee Pierce but most importantly its primary purpose is to archive and protect the legendary memory of this rock . Pierce was born on June 27, 1958, in Montebello, California. From his days as a peroxided, Debbie Harry-fixated Los Angeles teen-punk, through a lengthy era when he seemed convinced he could channel the spirit of Robert Johnson, to a more recent probe of the seedier side of continental balladry, Pierce who died of a cerebral blood clot in Utah at the end of March 1996 always . When he formed The Gun Club, he wanted to destroy everything. Jeffrey Lee Pierce Birthday and Date of Death Jeffrey Lee Pierce was born on June 27, 1958 and died on March 31, 1996. Elvis From Hell will tell the story of Pierce, a tragic but influential figure who died at 37, due to complications from heroin addiction, alcoholism and HIV. Hypothetically it couldve worked but then he passed away a week or two later.. We didnt try to transpose it to rocknroll, says Powers. Jeffrey Lee Pierce While Jeffrey was slipping into a coma and dying, I lived (totally oblivious) on 16 acres of unfarmed flood plain surrounded by mountains alongside my common law partner, my baby son, two big dogs, a Manx cat, a rooster. Start your Independent Premium subscription today. 31 March 1996. The former couplet is from Fire of Love and the latter The Gun Clubs 1993 curtain call, Lucky Jim. Jeffrey Lee Pierce And The Gun Club - Discogs imported from Wikimedia project. Recording wasfine but live it all changed.. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was born on 27 June 1958. Jeffrey adored Debbie Harry and carried a signed note in his wallet from her which included hair dye instructions. Label:Retro Deluxe - RDBX004, Vibrant Records Ltd. - RDBX004: Format: 4 x CD, Compilation. Pierce continued working despite failing health, and reformed a Gun Club lineup for two shows in Los Angeles in August and September 1995, including guitarists Powers and Mike Martt, formerly of Tex & the Horseheads, and the Wayne Kramer rhythm section of bassist Randy Bradbury and drummer Brock Avery. They were going to be playing that night and I said, Jeffrey! Ive waited 13 years to say goodbye to Jeffrey Lee Pierce. It was at this place called The Gala in Norwich, he says. Jeffrey Lee Pierce was an American punk, and a bluesman lead singer and guitarist for that most contradictory of bands, The Gun Club, whose erratic embers smoldered and sputtered fitfully. Driven by an obsessive personality from an early age, Pierces love of alcohol, drugs and the romanticism of playing in a band would be both his making and undoing. This is a digitized version of an article from The Timess print archive, before the start of online publication in 1996. And move! Death Certificate Index Pierce, Jeffrey Lee Certificate Number: 1975-MN-017354 Death: July 28, 1975 County of Death: Itasca County Mother's Maiden Name: SCHAEFFER Date of Birth: Jul 2 1959 Place of Birth: MINNESOTA. Jeffrey Lee Pierce (June 27, 1958 March 31, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and author. 4 references. Jeffrey decided that he wanted a girl in the band and they were wary of who they were going to get, so they said, Would you do it? says Morrison of her entry into the band. This stuff goes beyond appraisals of coolness or even value its like attempting to evaluate the worth of a tornado and suddenly, were asking the wrong questions. Guitarist, bass player and photographer Romi Mori was Pierce's longest romantic partner and a member of the second incarnation of The Gun Club. [38] The song ends with the lines: Come back, Dee Dee Ramone. His Anglo father worked as a union organizer. Its like we had this idea that the band would repeat Fire of Love ad infinitum and wed all go home happy, so when expectations were dashed, much of the critical world scowled petulantly and turned away, never to turn fully back. Harry contributed backing vocals on the album Miami under the pseudonym D.H. Lawrence, and was a longtime mentor and supporter of Pierce. I was just sat there having coffee waiting for him to come back from scoring and it just wasnt right any more. retrieved. He was always at our gigs selling his autograph. He returned to Los Angeles in 1995. Ad Choices, The Gun Clubs Jeffrey Lee Pierce Gets New Documentary, A daily roundup of the most important stories in music, New Music Releases and Upcoming Albums in 2023, Lucinda Williams Announces Album, Shares New Song With Bruce Springsteen, Watch Clairo Cover Vashti Bunyans Winter Is Blue, Godflesh Announce North American Tour, Share New Song Nero, The Gun Clubs Jeffrey Lee Pierce, 1983 (Photo by Peter Noble/Redferns). Thats what I got the most out of it. The band upped sticks to New Yorks Blank Tape studios to record the follow-up album, Miami. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, singer, guitarist, composer: born Texas 27 June 1958; married Romi Mori;. Gun Club looked like serious contenders but, by 1984's "Las Vegas Story" (which would have formed an apt soundtrack for the Mike Figgis Oscar- nominated Leaving Las Vegas movie) Pierce's boozy and druggy life-style had started to overshadow the music. His obsessions crawled all over him. Powers was the west coast head of The Ramones fan club and Jeffrey was the head of the Blondie fan club. Powers was by now living in Berlin and performing as guitarist with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but accepted Pierce's offer and managed to combine working in both bands. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the leader of Los Angeles punk band The Gun Club, is the subject of a new documentary, as Deadline reports. He was 37. [citation needed], Mark Lanegan recorded a cover version of the Gun Club's "Carry Home", from the album Miami, on his album I'll Take Care of You. cerebral . By now Pierce had begun to take his health more seriously and took up an unconventional method to lose weight. Remembering Gun Club'S Jeffrey Lee Pierce 19 Yrs After His Death! In 1979, following in the footsteps of the Germs, the Dead Kennedys and the Dickies, Pierce formed his own punk band, Creeping Ritual. The Gun Club became the seminal swamp-blues, post punk band that had come screaming out of the LA club scene during the 1980 s. In 1982 Creeping Ritual Music was created by Pierce and later became the soul source for his music publishing. Find a Grave memorial ID. According to Jones, the note was "written out in beautiful handwriting and 'with love, Debbie' at the bottom" and was Pierce's "most prized possession". Arun Starkey. A scheduled recording session for Tex & the Horseheads, the band Jeffrey Lee Pierce had put together around his girlfriend Linda/Texacala Jones was going to go unused. So bookends of sorts: one darkly prosodic, the other starkly prosaic: one running frenzied from the swamp-demons of the past, the other recoiling in vain from the keening horror of an unspeakable future. WERE WE ALL BRAINWASHED BY THE CIA WITH SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL? [49][bettersourceneeded] In the documentary, Voss interviews Pierce's former collaborators, Kid Congo Powers, Ward Dotson, Terry Graham, Jim Duckworth, and Dee Pop, in addition to his high school friend Steven Tash, former publisher of Pierce's work, Henry Rollins, and Lemmy, lead singer of Motrhead. date of death. I was already living in New York and I got as far as asking people, because there was a great music community in New York. He was the child of a multi-ethnic marriage. But this isnt the place for either masochism or specific reviews, even of the thumbscrew/thumbnail variety, so Ill merely hint at an entry point: go listen to a song that didnt make the cut originally, only showing up on the reissues, Secret Fires. Clocking in at just over two-and-a-half minutes, at first glance its a boilerplate country-folk waltz that pits an open-sky acoustic strum against the mating-cougar wails of a lap steel, all dry arroyo echo-sketches, yet within its weary concision it exemplifies the wild mercury allure of the best Gun Club music, transient and indelible as the ozone dance of summer night lightning. But it was after witnessing Pere Ubu at LAs Whiskey A Go Go in 1978 that the idea of band was hatched. Metallica mix it up on second night of World Tour in Amsterdam, Kids doing well, Slipknot slaying, new record label: Life is pretty great for Corey Taylor right now, Buses for upcoming Avenged Sevenfold tour will cost $2million more than pre-Covid. At the age of 23, she hit NYC nightlife, working at music venues, bartending, and writing about all of her adventures along the way. It was too painful. The ultimate beginner's guide to Jeffrey Lee Pierce - Far Out Magazine Jeffrey Lee Pierce July 2, 1959 July 28, 1975 Such an accomplishment, in a world mostly devoid of magic, is damn near miraculous, quite honestly. The album featured tribal beats ("Walking with the Beast") and slide-guitars ("Eternally is Here"), and other tracks included "My Dreams", "Bad America" and a cover of "My Man's Gone Now". When I told Jeffrey that Id been asked to join The Cramps, he said, Do it, but get us gigs! With Powers joining The Cramps to record their second album, Psychedelic Jungle, The Gun Club recruited slide guitarist Ward Dotson and set about making their debut album, Fire Of Love. So enamoured was Pierce of the new name that he wrote Group Sex for them in return. Kid Congo Powers chuckles when asked what hes proudest of: Many things. He was one of the founding members of the band The Gun Club, and released material as a solo artist. At the time of his death he survived by his large extended friends and family. In my defense, my own life was undergoing plenty of upheaval, both outwardly (a migration to Canada, which required my relinquishment of every piece of vinyl I owned at the time) and inwardly. Not even Elvis: I hate Elvis. All rights reserved. At no point did The Gun Club ever really break into the broader public consciousness. He still made ends meet by working hard in a record store and contributing to music fanzines but, by 1981, he was at the helm of Gun Club, an impressive fourpiece (also featuring Kid Congo Powers on guitar, Rob Ritter on bass and Terry Graham on drums) who seemed to create their own brand of swampy, ramshackle, psychotic, blues- influenced music. I thought they were amazing with Ward Dotson playing, remembers Powers. His health had been poor for some time. Despite a pick-up replacement, the magic was gone and the tour ended at Dingwalls in Camden Town, London. Over the course of seven studio albums and an ever-shifting line-up of musicians driven away by Pierces self-obsessed and self-destructive behaviour, The Gun Club left behind a body of work whose ramifications are still reverberating to this day. Almost beyond language. The blues was an anchor but we were very much into seeing what would happen if you mixed up different things. Visit our corporate site (opens in new tab). Jeffrey was full of digressions. Featuring five songs, the material on the EP sounded thicker and bolder than anything that had previously been released, with a far stronger emphasis on the songwriting. If he inspired Jack White musically (and he did), he more readily recalled Jack Black, physically while embodying, in his own agitated head at least, Jack on Fire. Cave and Harry perform a duet of the song "The Breaking Hands", a song that is also performed by Lanegan and Isobel Campbell on the album, while Tex Perkins and Lunch perform together on "In My Room". By this time, bassist Rob Ritter had taken as much as he could of Pierces self-centred behaviour and quit, with Ward Dotson following soon after. Learn how and when to remove this template message, "Jeffrey Lee Pierce, Rock Musician, 37 New York Times", "Obituary: Jeffrey Lee Pierce People News", "in exile: the rootless cosmopolitanism of Jeffrey Lee Pierce and the Gun Club", "Preaching The Blues: Remembering The Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce", "Returning to the supposedly troublesome 'Miami', "Rockbrat Remembers: When Spencer Jones played with The Gun Club", "NEW YORK NIGHT TRAIN issue 1: Kid Congo Powers Oral History Pt. Growing up in the wild So Cal punk scene formed Amy's aesthetic and broadened her horizons. Learn how your comment data is processed. 2023 Deadline Hollywood, LLC. [citation needed] Pierce and Lanegan cowrote the song "Kimiko's Dream House" that appears on Lanegan's album Field Songs. Jeffrey Lee Pierce. PLEASE KILL MES PUNK HISTORIANS LEGS MCNEIL AND GILLIAN MCCAIN TURN THEIR ATTENTION TO L.A. They embarked on a highly successful tour of Europe that saw The Gun Club play with a renewed vigour and sense of musical dexterity. writer: "The Stranger in Our Town" TV Series; 2012; 1 episode; Personal details. Pitchfork may earn a portion of sales from products that are purchased through our site as part of our Affiliate Partnerships with retailers. This is what The Gun Club and Jeffrey Lee Pierce at their best managed: they showed us that all the loneliness of the world can be if for only a song length, for a propulsive drum beat, for the wail of a slide guitar, for the few precious seconds it takes for a defiant and fleeting shriek to disperse into the night all that apparent abandonment by the world can be momentarily defeated by spirit, by the fire spirit, by Jack on Fire, by the Indian wind along the telegraph lines. (Shes Like Heroin To Me.). Rock music has had its beautiful losers (Jim Morrison, Ian Curtis, Kurt Cobain) but the American singer and songwriter Jeffrey Lee Pierce was more in the mould of the late Johnny Thunders (of New York Dolls and Heartbreakers fame) and Malcolm Owen (of Britain's Ruts), one of those musicians who never quite fulfil their potential yet follow their destiny to its inescapable conclusion. It features interviews with Pierce, acoustic performances and clips of the Gun Club. As excellent as it is in isolation, its nonetheless a little sad in context. Line-up: Jeffrey Lee Pierce (vocals)/ Ward Dotson (guitar)/ Rob Ritter (bass) and Terry Graham (drums). At the time of his death, he was 38 years old. Hell, right off the bat you almost recoil from the light in Shirleys lips, fleetingly grasp the tiger in Debra Anns hips. More images. Grove uncovered a recording of three songs on a cassette marked "JLP Songs", and realized they were from sessions he had worked on with Pierce for an album they were planning. Furthermore, his cover of the traditional outlaw ballad John Hardy on Miami is eerily similar to a Leadbelly version (on most compilations, the accordion-less 3:13 cut). He touches on Nick Cave, The Cramps, and how R.E.M. It kind of sounds like a Christmas song but Jeffrey always described it as a love song.. among many others. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, That was my audition! she laughs. He seemed to yearn unfocused, like a naked thing belched from a reeking swamp some fog-smudged night, all EC comics, AC current, and sleazy intent. Thats why he started playing guitar more. home [jeffreyleepierce.com]