The
reason the book feels like one lengthy bitch fest is that Porter relies almost
solely on old magazine interviews given by the band upon their various album
releases. Porter prints these old interviews in what feels like their entirety,
which only brings to light the Cramps’ habit of complaining. They complained
about being pigeonholed, they complained about other bands, they complained
about record labels, they complained
about MTV, they complained about music
producers, and more than anything else, they complained about being
misunderstood. Lux, who died unexpectedly in 2009 at age 62, is probably
complaining that the afterlife isn’t quite as rockin’ as he’d hoped.
Lux
(real name: Erick Lee Purkhiser) and his
long-time companion and co-star Poison Ivy (real name: Kristy Wallace) came
of age during a time of cheap horror movies, cars that looked like rocket
ships, and of course, nearly fatal doses of rockabilly and garage rock. They
met in Sacramento when Lux picked Ivy up hitchhiking. The outré pair quickly
realized they were absolute soul mates, their infatuation with each other
matched only by their love of the swampiest edges of American pop culture.
Undeterred
by their lack of musical experience, Ivy and Lux yearned to pay homage to their
rockabilly idols. Ivy appointed herself chief guitar picker; Lux assigned himself the role of ghoulish front
man. They landed in New York just as a
new rock scene was mushrooming. Their first gig was on Nov. 1, 1977 at CBGB,
the infamous bowery rock club. Their guitars were so out of tune that Ivy
recalled “people thought we were doing some avant
garde atonal thing.” CBGB owner Hilly Kristal wasn’t impressed by the
band’s brutal psychobilly noise, but Lux and Ivy were encouraged by other
bands, namely the Dead Boys. Though they rarely received credit for being part
of the punk scene, the Cramps were banging it out in New York at the same time
the Ramones and Blondie and Patti Smith were in their early primes, a situation
that forced Lux and Ivy to learn on the job.
In the
ensuing decades, the Cramps developed
followings in England and France, and dozens of bands have since pointed to
them as an influence. Still, fame in
America was as elusive as a fly. Ivy became a quality guitarist, probably
inspiring many females to pick up the instrument, and eventually stepped into
the role of band manager. To Ivy’s credit, the Cramps actually improved their
lot once she took control. Yet, band members rarely stayed for the long haul.
There was something about the Cramps that sent various drummers and guitarists
spinning out, as if from a tornado. One of Ivy’s expressions was “This is it -
dig it or walk,” so not many tears were shed over band members who couldn’t
hack it. Lux and Ivy forged ahead with their mission to bring old sounds to new
people.
Porter, a veteran rock journalist with many books to
his credit, hits most of the Cramps’ high and low points, including their
legendary gig at a mental institution in Napa California, where Lux described
the inmates humping each other on the floor and
“doing the weirdest dances you’ve ever seen.” There was their time in Memphis, when a drunk and
deranged Alex Chilton struggled to produce tracks for their first album. There were tours in
support of bands like The Police and The Runaways, where audiences had
absolutely no interest in the Cramps’ brand of arcane voodoo rock.
And, of
course, there was the paranoid meltdown and departure of the aforementioned
Bryan Gregory, the guitarist whose “misdirected sheets of noise” had provided a
baleful backdrop for Ivy’s twangy licks. Visually, Gregory was a masterpiece.
“His pockmarked skin,” writes Porter, “had the quality of parchment torn from a
book of forbidden lore, while his needlepoint pupils glinted from beneath a
flick of long brown hair, arranged to cascade down one side of his face in the
style of Veronica Lake.” Gregory simply disappeared one night in the middle of
a tour, annoyed that the band remained stuck in the 1950s. “He was just a
money-grubbing creep,” declared Lux, who imagined that one day Gregory would
end up at “the bottom of a pool somewhere.” Instead, Gregory faded into the
fringes of the music biz, dying at 49 of various health problems. Some of us
thought he’d died years earlier, perhaps lashed to a witch’s altar.
Yet, the
band persisted. There were appearances on the Conan O’Brien show, a shot at
writing tunes for a John Waters movie, and even a strange cameo by Lux on Spongebob
Squarepants. It wasn’t exactly the career they’d imagined back at CBGB, but
they outlasted most of the bands they’d started out with in the 1970s. The
Cramps, at least, endured.
Despite
Porter’s experience, his prose all too often falls into the sort of jejune
hyperventilating that I remember from old issues of Creem and Zig Zag. There’s
too much tripe about “sucking at the sweet nectar of rock and roll,” and his
assertion that Ivy was “one of the finest guitarists of her generation” is a
major stretch. He’s no help critically, describing each new Cramps’ album as
“one of the Cramps’ best”, or “up there with their best”, and Porter’s opening
rapture about the early days of rock and roll includes howlers like “At a time
when the motions of Elvis’ hips were subject to moral panics and seat-dampening
enthusiasm in equal measure, Little Richard represented a loudly ticking
timebomb.”
Porter
should’ve dispensed with the redundant rock rhapsody and focused on the subject
of his book. For instance, why did Lux start wearing women’s clothing? How did
that play into his relationship with Ivy, who had once earned money as a
dominatrix? And when Porter quotes Lux
about one of his songs being autobiographical, there’s no follow-up. In what
way was it autobiographical? Porter
mentions every last Cramps bootleg recording, but he doesn’t dig deep into Lux
and Ivy. Part of this could be because the pair spent more time talking about
their collection of obscure records than themselves, but there’s also a feeling that Porter wanted
to write a book without doing any heavy lifting. Instead, we get endless quotes
from Ivy and Lux about how much they love old rockabilly records.
The book
falls short as a full-blown biography, but there are just enough gems to make
it worth a read, especially when Porter depicts the adoration Lux and Ivy had
for each other. As Ivy put it, the pair were “karmically entwined.” They stuck
together, even as their dream of rock stardom seemed, as Lux once said, “just
out of reach.” One sad little scene involves the pair being denied entry to a
Disneyland theme park because Ivy was wearing too much makeup.
“I guess
they already had their quota of crazy people in there that day,” said Ivy.
Substitute
the music business for the theme park, and you’d have a handy metaphor for the
band’s entire, frustrating career.
I met
the Cramps once. They did a meet and greet
in a small record store in Boston. I was a shy kid from the suburbs who
had enjoyed their first album, ‘Songs the Lord Taught Us’. I especially liked
‘Garbageman’, which was the best piece of throbbing rock sludge I’d ever
heard. Unfortunately, the band was so stoned they could barely stand up.
Somehow, they shambled forward and autographed my shopping bag. I lost it years
ago. But I do remember that Ivy took a moment to talk to me about recording in
Sun Studios in Memphis. She was a tiny thing, wearing dark glasses and hailing
the virtues of tube amps. “The equipment was old,” she said, “but sounded great.”
Yes,
exactly. Sometimes the old way is the best way. That’s why, despite the book’s
imperfections, it’s fun to read about the Cramps again. They didn’t turn the
world into a bunch of cool rockin’ daddies, but it was beautiful to watch them
try.
- Don Stradley
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