from Addicted to Noise
April 2, 1996
Jeffrey Lee Pierce, leader of the
early '80s L. A. -based Gun Club, a
group probably best known for
their brilliant debut album, Fire Of Love,
which included the
devastating "Sex Beat," died on Mar. 31. What follows
is a remembrance,
written the day Pierce died, from his friend, Fred
"Phast Phreddie"
Patterson:
A few days ago Jeffrey Lee Pierce, the lead
singer, sometimes guitarist and creative force of the Gun Club, suffered
a blood clot to his brain while he was in Utah, where he was visiting
his father. Surgery kept him alive for a few more days. About 30 minutes
ago his mother called to inform me that he passed away.
I have known Jeffrey since about 1977, when he worked behind
the counter
at the Bomp Records store in the San Fernando Valley. Somehow,
he and I
got to be close friends. When I moved to Hollywood the next year he
always seemed to be over, drinking my beer and listening to my 45s. We
always had a good time.
We used to hunt down records together. We would go
on these all-day
shopping sprees, drive out to Glendale or down to Long
Beach or South
Central L.A. On one of our trips we found a sealed copy of
James Brown's
Live At the Apollo Volume 2. We took it to my
house and played it all
the way through. It was a revelation to us. That
record changed our lives.
Our friendship was based around music. He turned me on to
Burning Spear.
I turned him on to Sun Ra and Wynonie
Harris. One night he and Joe Nolte
of The Last got drunk
and decided to put a band together to back me.
Thus was born Phast
Phreddie & Thee Precisions. Not a big thing to you,
perhaps, but it
was to me.
We rehearsed about a dozen times, after which he
started the Creeping
Ritual with Brian Tristan on guitar and
Don Snowden (then writing for
the L.A. Times) on bass. They
played a gig at a joint in China Town and
somehow Jeffrey managed to piss
off the management of the venue. Afraid
that they wouldn't get booked there
again, he changed the band's name to
one that Keith Morris of the
Circle Jerks came up with: The Gun Club.
(He kept the Creeping
Ritual name as the name of his publishing company).
I got the Gun Club a gig at Madam Wong's in Santa Monica, where
Lux &
Ivy of the Cramps came and saw them. They
asked Brian to try out for the
Cramps and they changed his name to Kid
Congo Powers.
The Gun Club was a great Rock 'n' Roll band.
Although the first album, Fire
Of Love is unquestionably the best,
all of the records have merit. I am proud
to have contributed to Las
Vegas Story. I played a little wooded flute on it.
Flash forward... For the last several years, Jeffrey didn't
seem to be
himself. One time he'd be so whacked out from boozing; another
time he'd
be feverish, sweating waterfalls, from a virus he'd picked up
during a
visit to Southeast Asia; he would just seem crazed and reckless;
when he
was in New York about a year ago he was overweight and seemed tired,
like an old man. Every time I'd leave him thinking that it would be the
last time I would ever see him.
I spoke with him on the phone in early February. He
was at his father's
house in Utah, apparently drying out. He was lucid, and
spoke intelligently.
We laughed and joked about things. We remembered old
times. He talked
about his future plans: Move to NYC and put together a new
Gun Club.
It was the first time in years that I didn't get the feeling that
he was
going to die soon. I was excited, hoping to see my friend
again.