Dead boys

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Dead boys
General information
Genre (s) punk
founding 1977
resolution 1979
Last occupation
Stiv Bators (Steven John Bator)
Cheetah Chrome (Gene O'Connor)
Electric guitar
 Jimmy Zero (William Wilden)
Johnny Blitz (John Madansky)
Bob Clearmountain (1977)
Electric bass
 Jeff Magnum (Jeff Halmagy) (1978)

Dead Boys was a band that played hard punk rock . It was counted to the scene that developed around the CBGB music club in New York City in the mid-1970s . However, the band members were all originally from Cleveland , Ohio . The Dead Boys released two studio albums before the band split up in 1979.

Band history

Guitarist Cheetah Chrome and drummer Johnny Blitz had played in the band "Rocket from the Tombs", which broke up in 1975. Her musical role models were Alice Cooper , The Stooges and The New York Dolls . Together with the singer Stiv Bators , the second guitarist Jimmy Zero and the bassist Jeff Magnum in Cleveland they initially formed a band called "Frankenstein", but only gave a few local concerts under this name.

When they heard about the flourishing underground scene on Bowery Street in downtown Manhattan , where the Ramones friends were among the recognized bands, they arranged a test appearance in the CBGB with the help of their singer Joey Ramone . There they were celebrated by the audience. Bators' stage show with its Iggy-Pop- like gestures and the band's hard three-chord punk were very well received in New York. Hilly Kristal , the owner of the CBGB, was hired by them as a manager, and soon afterwards they got a recording contract with the record label Sire Records , which also had the Ramones under contract.

The band, now called Dead Boys, had the same line-up as Frankenstein with the exception of bassist Jeff Magnum. On their first album Young, Loud & Snotty , Bob Clearmountain , who later became known as a producer, played bass. The album was produced in 1977 by rock singer Genya Ravan . When the Dead Boys went on tour in the USA as the opening act for Iggy Pop and as opening act for The Damned in England, Magnum got back on track as bassist.

Despite positive reviews in the music press, punk was still quite alien to most rock fans in the USA and the expected sales of the debut album did not materialize.

The Dead Boys focused on their second album, which was produced by Lou Reed under the working title Down to Kill . However, the record company thought the sound of the music was "too hard" to land a hit and insisted on hiring Felix Pappalardi , the former producer of Cream . However, Pappalardi had no access to the loud and fast passages of the songs, and so the collaboration was rather fruitless.

The second album was released in 1978 under the new title We Have Come for Your Children . It did contain the punk classic Ain't It Fun , but it couldn't beat the sales of its predecessor. Afterwards, the band was exposed to gross insults and insults on tour for a long time. Johnny Blitz was attacked with a knife on the street in New York, was seriously injured and barely survived the attack. John Belushi , Divine , the Ramones, members of Blondie and Alice Cooper's guitarist Glen Buxton then held a benefit concert under the title Blitz Benefit at the CBGB music club to finance Blitz's medical expenses.

In 1979, Sire Records forced the band to cancel an ongoing concert tour. Since label owner Seymour Stein said that he had "thoroughly speculated" with punk, he asked the Dead Boys to change their music style, their image and the band name. The band then broke up, but months later had to meet their contractual obligations with Sire Records and gave a concert at the CBGB that was recorded for a live album. However, singer Bators left his microphone off during the performance to render the recordings unusable. When the Bomp label wanted to release the album a few years later, Bator's vocal part was re-recorded in the recording studio and superimposed on the old recording.

In the 1980s, the band occasionally appeared at individual concerts. During this time a bigger was heavy metal -Publikum the Dead Boys attention when the New York band Overkill to singer Bobby Blitz cover versions of songs Sonic Reducer and Is not Nothin 'to Do published. The popular US rock band Guns N 'Roses has a cover version of Ain't It Fun .

Discography

Chart positions
Explanation of the data
Albums
Young, Loud and Snotty
  US 189 10/22/1977 (4 weeks)

Albums

  • 1977: Young, Loud & Snotty
  • 1978: We Have Come for Your Children
  • 1981: Night of the Living Dead Boys (live, recorded at CBGB , New York City, March 1979)
  • 1987: The Return of the Living Dead Boys
  • 1988: Liver Than You'll Ever Be
  • 1989: Younger, Louder and Snottyer !!! (Original mix from 1977)
  • 1997: Younger, Louder & Snottier (Remixes)
  • 1997: Twistin 'on the Devil's Fork: Live at CBGB's 1977 & 1978
  • 1998: All This and More
  • 1999: 3rd Generation Nation

Singles

  • 1977: Sonic Reducer
  • 1978: Tell Me
  • 1980: Not That Way Anymore (with Stiv Bators)
  • 1987: All the Way Down (Poison Lady) / The Nights Are So Long
  • 1988: Search & Destroy
  • 1995: Eve of the Dead Boys (as Frankenstein)
  • 2000: Buried Gems
  • 2013: Last Stand 1980 EP

literature

  • Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain: Please Kill Me - the uncensored story of punk . Standard work on the history of US punk from 1967–1992 with a focus on the New York scene. German-language edition, Koch International GmbH / Hannibal, 2004. ISBN 978-3-85445-237-9

swell

  1. ^ McNeil / McCain: Please Kill Me, p. 285
  2. ↑ McNeil / McCain: Please Kill Me, pp. 289 f.
  3. ↑ a b McNeil / McCain: Please Kill Me, p. 363 ff .: Chapter Young, Loud, and Snotty
  4. ↑ McNeil / McCain: Please Kill Me, p. 388: Interview with Cheetah Chrome
  5. ^ The Billboard Albums by Joel Whitburn , 6th Edition, Record Research 2006, ISBN 0-89820-166-7

Web links