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The Dead Boys

From the ashes of Cleveland, Ohio’s first punks Rocket From The Tombs, both DEAD BOYS and their avant-new wave counterparts PERE UBU came to being. While Crocus Behemoth (alias David Thomas) and Peter Laughner took the latter act on a weird and wonderful trip through times good and bad, guitarist Cheetah Chrome (aka Gene O’Connor) and drummer Johnny Blitz (aka John Madansky) called up an old buddy Stiv Bators (aka Steve Bator) and formed Frankenstein. Almost immediately joined at the seams by Jeff Magnum (aka Jeffrey Halmagy) and second guitarist Jimmy Zero (aka William Wilden), the combo cottoned on to the burgeoning underground punk scene and, with help from Joey Ramone, they played the infamous CBGB’s, a nightclub owned at the time by their future manager Hilly Kristal.
America’s answer to The DAMNED, the newly-named DEAD BOYS – a line taken from their `Down In Flames’ ditty – flitted to New York in the fall of 1976. Trying to find a niche and identity among the long line of punk acts was foremost in their minds when they signed up to Sire Records (the home of other new wave combos RAMONES, TALKING HEADS, RICHARD HELL & THE VOID-OIDS).
Finally, with feisty female Genya Raven (formerly of TEN WHEEL DRIVE) at the mixing desk, YOUNG LOUD AND SNOTTY {*8} was unleashed during the autumn of ’77. The record’s brash JOHNNY THUNDERS-meets-DICTATORS motif wasn’t quite the height of originality, but in at least two seminal punk classics, `Sonic Reducer’ and `All This And More’ (both also available on the V/A album “New Wave”), the LP sold moderately enough to make the Top 200 for a month. Cathartic, volatile and gobby, the 3-chord wonders of `Not Anymore’, `Ain’t Nothin’ To Do’, `What Love Is’, `I Need Lunch’ and a staggering live-at-CBGBs reading of the SYNDICATE OF SOUND’s `Hey Little Girl’, all were raw-to-the-bone as need be; as for the double-entendre `Caught With The Meat In Your Mouth’, Stiv and Cheetah were prowling up an unwritten un-PC valley. A subsequent British tour as support to The DAMNED, and a US one under the wing of IGGY POP, gave them encouragement when punk-rock was going through the ringer.
That difficult sophomore-set-syndrome was made even more difficult when former MOUNTAIN man-turned-producer Felix Pappalardi found it nigh-on impossible to tone-down the quintet. When all else failed including a worthy attempt to rope in former IGGY & THE STOOGES axeman James Williamson to pick up the pieces, the power-pop of WE HAVE COME FOR YOUR CHILDREN (1978) {*5} was ill-suited to Bators and the ‘Boys. It was everything that punk critics railed against (i.e. brutally nihilistic, musically limited and sheer bloody-mindedness), although it did feature `Ain’t It Fun’ (later covered by GUNS N’ ROSES) and the presence of two RAMONES, Joey and Dee Dee. On reflection, `(I Don’t Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy’ won the day over cheesy renditions of KIM FOWLEY’s `Big City’ and The ROLLING STONES’ `Tell Me’ (a flop single). Adding insult to injury (the injury aspect by way of Blitz’s mugging on the streets of NY), the band couldn’t promote their music to a diminishing punk crowd, just as the scene began to fizzle out in a fashion parody of itself – the norm at night was now finding someone in a suit!
Although they had celebrity fans in high places (BLONDIE, ALICE COOPER’s Glen Buxton and of course, the RAMONES, et al), DEAD BOYS were finally laid to rest in 1979 when Stiv sabotaged a live gig in order to scupper the chances of Sire releasing it as their contractual third album. STIV BATORS almost immediately went solo, cutting a handful of singles (including a version of The Choirs’ `It’s Cold Outside’) and a subsequent LP for Greg Shaw’s Bomp! Records: `Disconnected’.
After putting in a brief stint as an actor in John Waters’ Polyester movie, BATORS teamed up with ex-SHAM 69-ers, Dave Tregunna, Dave Parsons and Rick Goldstein to form the short-lived The WANDERERS. A solitary album, `Only Lovers Left Alive’ (1981), appeared on Polydor UK, before Stiv and Tregunna hooked up with old DAMNED buddy Brian James to form The LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH.
As this band’s studio output dwindled to almost nothing, Bators re-grouped The DEAD BOYS (Chrome, Blitz and Zero) to perform at NY’s The Ritz on December 26, 1987, the last remnants of the band and released in Germany as LIVER THAN YOU’LL EVER BE (1988) {*4}; IGGY & THE STOOGES’ `Search And Destroy’ was one of feedback-less tracks – just.
BATORS finally sacked his band(s) in ‘89 and took flight to London where he gathered together a bunch of old punk friends (Dee Dee Ramone, Neil X and JOHNNY THUNDERS) for a one-off supergroup gig billed as “Return Of The Living Boys”. Although this loose aggregation actually laid down around half a dozen studio tracks, BATORS was to die in his sleep on June 4, 1990, after he was run over by an automobile in Paris the previous day.