The very few listeners Suicide must have gained from their
monumentally brash and downright harsh debut album must have thought it a
bizarre fluke for such a cohesive first album to be born out of nothing, let
alone the idea of following up the record with an equally consistent, and
potentially better release, the imaginatively titled Second Album. And what of
it? Does it feature more bursts of synth and drum with crooning atop? Does it
feature extended pieces about Vietnam Vets having a hard time coping back home?
Well no, it doesn't feature any of that really.
From the opening track we see Suicide in a bizarrely
different mood, one that pertains throughout, a style of music that seems not
too far removed from the sweet dulcet tones of Gary Numan, New Order and
Depeche Mode. A music style of geeky, glitchy optimism in the face of nothing
but concrete, dirt and decay. These tracks make up the first half the album and
while they are upbeat it begins to dawn that Suicide are now recognizing
themselves as innovators. Some tracks seem to glisten with a sexy sweat,
whereas others immediately change in the light to be bathed in a disgusting
hateful cannibalistic sweat. Suicide really knows how to destroy and rebuild a
song. On the second half of the album they employ more of a sonic approach to
their raw sound, making use of wide sprawling synthesiser drones and although
these tracks seem to lack the focus in comparison to the more trimmed and
pruned earlier half of the album, they show a band experimenting in what it
does best, creating nasty and confrontational music on synthesizers. The album
has a wider implication than just being a 'classic' though. This album is one
of the first to fully realise the potential of synthesizers in creating melodic
pop music, and though it's a huge way removed from 'Just Can't Get Enough', it
provides a more than adequate blueprint in terms of the look (one techno-geek
on the instruments, and a camp good looking guy singing over the top of it),
the instructions and cool nonchalant attitudes surrounding it.
Proof that punk was more about attitude than a raw,
guitar-driven sound, Suicide's self-titled debut set the duo apart from the
rest of the style's self-proclaimed outsiders. Over the course of seven songs, Martin
Rev's dense, unnerving electronics -- including a menacing synth bass, a drum
machine that sounds like an idling motorcycle, and harshly hypnotic organs --
and Alan Vega's ghostly, Gene Vincent-esque vocals defined the group's sound
and provided the blueprints for post-punk, synth pop, and industrial rock in
the process. Though those seven songs shared the same stripped-down sonic
template, they also show Suicide's surprisingly wide range. The exhilarated,
rebellious "Ghost Rider" and "Rocket U.S.A." capture the
punk era's thrilling nihilism -- albeit in an icier way than most groups
expressed it -- while "Cheree" and "Girl" counter the rest
of the album's hard edges with a sensuality that's at once eerie and alluring.
And with its retro bassline and simplistic, stylized lyrics, "Johnny"
explores Suicide's affinity for '50s melodies and images, as well as their pop
leanings. But none of this is adequate preparation for "Frankie
Teardrop," one of the duo's definitive moments, and one of the most
harrowing songs ever recorded. A ten-minute descent into the soul-crushing
existence of a young factory worker, Rev's tense, repetitive rhythms and Vega's
deadpan delivery and horrifying, almost inhuman screams make the song more
literally and poetically political than the work of bands who wore their
radical philosophies on their sleeves.
Even punks hated Suicide,
reacting to their gigs with astonishing violence. In response, the band locked
the exits so no one could flee. Jon Wilde asks them how they survived it all.
Be it
headlining Glastonbury or supporting Led Zeppelin at Knebworth, most bands that
have been around for close to 40 years have one unforgettable, career-defining
gig. Suicide are no exception.
"That
would be the show in Glasgow in 1978 when someone threw an axe at my
head," says Alan Vega with admirable matter-of-factness. "We were
supporting the Clash and I guess we were too punk even for the punk crowd. They
hated us. I taunted them with, 'You fuckers have to live through us to get to
the main band.' That's when the axe came towards my head, missing me by a
whisker. It was surreal, man. I felt like I was in a 3-D John Wayne movie. But
that was nothing unusual. Every Suicide show felt like world war three in those
days. Every night I thought I was going to get killed. The longer it went on,
the more I'd be thinking, 'Odds are it's going to be tonight.'"
Vega, now
59, is sitting with his long-time Suicide cohort Martin Rev (age undisclosed)
in the reception area of an east London branch of the Holiday Inn. Vega looks
wonderfully sinister in his shades and street-fighter beret. Rev, in a
distressed leather jacket and visor sunglasses, looks as if he has stepped off
the set of Mad Max 2. It's fair to say that they don't blend in with the
blue-rinsed sightseers and Swedish language students who mingle in the foyer.
Then
again, Suicide never did blend in with anything or anybody. While this helped
them become one of the most reviled bands of all time, it didn't stop them
becoming one of the most influential. It's Kraftwerk who get the kudos for
furthering the cause of electronic music, inspiring a generation of pop and
rock bands to use synthesisers. But Suicide surely merit at least equal
billing. Not only were they the blueprint for every synth-and-voice duo of the
1980s, they were equally influential on the industrial music and, quite
possibly, techno scenes that followed. In a tribute album to mark Vega's 60th
birthday this month, the contributors' list includes Primal Scream, Peaches,
Grinderman, the Horrors, the Klaxons, Julian Cope, Vincent Gallo and even
long-time Suicide fan Bruce Springsteen, who donates a live version of Dream
Baby Dream.
The
Brooklyn-born Alan Bermowitz (Vega) and Bronx-born Martin Reverby (Rev) first
met up in 1971. Vega was engaged with sculptures and far-flung electronic
experiments at the Project of Living Artists, a downtown workshop funded by the
New York State Council On the Arts. Rev, already a veteran of avant-jazz
ensembles, wandered into the workshop to escape the torrential rain. The two
hit it off and began performing together at local galleries. Their second show
was entitled Punk Music Mass, which is said to have been the first time a band
used the word "punk" in an official context to describe their music.
The name Suicide was inspired by Satan Suicide, an issue of Vega's favourite
comic book, Ghost Rider.
When Vega
and Rev started making music, they were both limited and liberated by their
poverty. Often starving, living on a sandwich a day between them and unable to
afford proper instruments, they made their music on the one instrument
available to them: Rev's $10 Wurlitzer keyboard, over which Vega would
improvise.
"For
a long time, we didn't have songs as such," Vega says. "So Marty
would repeatedly kick his keyboard and I'd hit the microphone stand with a
broken bottle or make these horrible noises come out of a trumpet. Then I
graduated to screaming, and eventually that led to writing actual lyrics."
Unsurprisingly,
there were few takers for Suicide's music. "People were looking to be
entertained," says Vega. "But I hated the idea of going to a concert
in search of fun. Our attitude was, 'Fuck you buddy, you're getting the street
right back in your face. And some.' At one of our first shows, there was a guy
in the audience who'd brought this trombone. I jumped into the audience, fell
over and knocked the slide out of his trombone. These South Americans took real
offence to that. So they immediately attacked us with chairs, tables, anything
they could get their hands on. That became the norm. I started carrying a
bicycle chain on stage, figuring, if you can't beat em, join em. If the
violence got really bad, what I'd do was smash a bottle and start cutting my
face up. That seemed to have a calming effect on the crowd. I guess they
reasoned that I was so fucking nuts that nothing they could do would bother me.
I figured out a way of doing it so that I drew a lot of blood but I wouldn't be
scarred for life. I had it down to a fine art. Another ploy I had was to lock
the exit doors so nobody could escape. That was the ultimate 'fuck you', as far
as I was concerned."
Rev is
nodding thoughtfully to all this. "I was convinced we were going to be as
big as the Beatles," he chips in, without irony. "All the hostility
we were getting did nothing to change that. Even when the violence was going on
and the blood was spilling, I'd be thinking that the crowd knew we were doing
something from the future. But it wasn't a future they wanted to know about. So
the antagonism got stronger and stronger. The only reaction we didn't get was
being attacked by wolves. But that's only because you weren't allowed to take
wolves into clubs."
By 1975,
Rev had acquired a 1950s drum machine, which expanded their musical possibilities
exponentially. Vega had got hold of a two-track tape recorder, which enabled
Suicide to make their first demos. Meanwhile, the New York music scene was
being transformed by a wave of new bands (the Ramones, Television, the Patti
Smith Group, Blondie, Talking Heads) performing regularly at CBGB. One by one,
those bands were signed by major record labels, while Suicide continued to be
conspicuously overlooked.
It wasn't
until mid-1977 that Suicide finally secured a deal, with the small French label
Red Star. Their eponymous debut was released the following year. Possibly the
most paranoid-sounding album ever made, Suicide's seven tracks feature Vega's
spluttering rockabilly vocal fighting it out against throbbing drum machines
and Rev's dissonant keyboard. The album's centrepiece is the profoundly
unsettling Frankie Teardrop, about a Vietnam vet who slaughters his family.
In the
US, the album was greeted by howls of disgust from reviewers. European critics,
however, adored it. Sensing they'd finally found an audience ready to embrace
them, Vega and Rev flew to Britain to join the Clash on tour.
"We
genuinely believed that we'd get a reception fit for returning war
heroes," says Vega. "But it was like going from the frying-pan to the
fire. The axe in Glasgow was just one of many weapons hurled at us. When we
played in Metz, someone scored a direct hit on me with a monkey wrench. I've
still got the scar on my head. Supporting Elvis Costello in Brussels, we
provoked a full-scale riot and the venue was stormed by police letting off
tear-gas canisters. Then something very strange happened. We headlined our own
tour of Britain and ended up in Edinburgh. Two songs in and there was no riot,
which was very, very unusual. Then we started to see people move around. I turned
to Marty and said, 'Here we go - watch out for flying objects.' To my
amazement, people started dancing. I turned back to Marty and said, 'We're
finished, our career is over.'"
Live
1977-1978, a limited-edition, six-CD box set featuring 13 complete live Suicide
sets, gives a taste of what those gigs were like. Not every live release comes
with the stark warning, "These recordings are not for the fainthearted or
casual fan". The Suicide gigs were recorded on cheap, handheld cassette
recorders, and it's often difficult to distinguish the sound of the band from
the background noise (smashing glass and bloodthirsty heckling). Stick the CDs
into your computer and, faced with a choice of genre, iTunes unhesitatingly
opts for "unclassifiable". Very astute, that.
After
their uncomfortable introduction to Europe, Vega and Rev spent time in limbo.
"Malcolm McLaren offered to manage us but he wanted to turn us into a
disco outfit, so we politely declined," Rev says. Instead, they delivered
a second album, also entitled Suicide, produced by Ric Ocasek of the Cars. A
more polished affair, it sold in shockingly small numbers.
Vega and
Rev went their separate ways. Astonishingly, for a brief period in the early
1980s Vega became a pop star in France, and won himself a deal with a major
label that unsuccessfully attempted to market him as an alternative Bruce
Springsteen. He has since continued to release solo albums, the latest being
2008's Station, and has supported himself by selling his sculptures, "mostly
to rich Texans who don't realise there's usually a good old New York cockroach
stuck on the bottom". Rev, meanwhile, has eked out an even more precarious
living by releasing the occasional solo album, producing small-time bands, or
playing sessions with obscure electronic outfits.
From time
to time, Vega and Rev have reunited for a Suicide tour or album. You sense they
miss the days when dodging axes and monkey wrenches was simply part of the job.
"I
guess we're a historical act now," asks Vega. "We've turned into
fucking entertainers. It was never meant to turn out that way. But what can you
do? People are completely unshockable now. Even if you brought a fresh corpse
out on stage and started eating it with a fork, no one would bat an eyelid.
Still, one of the things about playing live these days is that at least we know
we're not going to die on stage. That's kinda nice, man."