Chained Punks

Sid Terror from The Undead (in cuffs and chains on ground) and others
protest in front of San Francisco city hall.
San Francisco, 1980

Sid Terror replies:

Oh, boy... The junk rockers. Junk and speed. There was a Colombian drug dealer that lived upstairs from me at The A-Hole art gallery, and it seemed like he was the main connection for all the band people in town. People were always crawling up those stairs to his door. In fact, Sid Vicious even scored there when he was in town with The Sex Pistols. That drug dealer shoved a 357 magnum in my face once when I was stark naked in the shower. I looked over to see it coming through the shower curtain at me, and him screaming that he was gonna blow me away. All I had done was bang on the pipes because I'd lost the hot water and was standing there freezing. It took some quick talking, me standing there with my nuts in my hands, but he finally cooled out and put away the gun.

I was sleeping in my room one day, when some loud noise woke me up... I didn't hear the noise well enough to identify it, but it woke me up. Then there was a bunch of screaming and stomping around upstairs. I figured it was some drama with the druggies again, and just rolled over and went to sleep. Later, when I got up and was having some breakfast in the kitchen, Bruce Pollack (the guy who ran the gallery and was in the performance art group "THE PUDS") was walking by carrying a mop and bucket upstairs. He had a grim look on his face, so I asked him what was up. He told me the Colombian drug dealer had put the 357. in his mouth and blown his brains out all over the place. (Which was the noise that had waken me up) It was Bruce's job as landlord to mop up the mess after the police had left. I knew then that it was time to move the Hell out of that place.

I hated pot, because I hated hippies (I still call it "hippie cabbage" to this day). This may be a surprise to people who knew me back then, because I was skinny as a rail and would do some kookie things, but I never got into speed much and I only did junk once... I did it with Darby Crash from The Germs when he came up to S.F. and we did a show together. It was only within a about a week that he was dead of an overdose. I figured that was TOO friggin' close. It was a major wake-up call for me, so I pretty much swore off everything from there on.

It is always kinda bittersweet in a way looking at pictures from then (like thumbing through that San Francisco Hardcore book), it is like looking at high school yearbook pictures for me. Except most yearbooks don't have pictures of several people on each page that are either dead or got lost in a world of drugs. Drugs have really infiltrated and destroyed every viable youth movement since the early 1960's. There are some conspiracy nuts that point to it as a government plot or something, but it all really comes down to a personal choice of the individual. It is also a big part of the reason I had so much turnover of members in my band over the years, I couldn't keep a band going and deal with someone's drug habit too. It would only drag the band down with it, and the sheer odds are against you having a successful band to begin with. So I'd give people one warning to shape up, and if they didn't, I'd replace them. Simple, cut and dried.

I don't preach to people or impose my will on them or anything, because they are gonna do what they are gonna do and I don't have the energy to fight that without feeling like I'm wasting my time. I keep hoping young bands and people in the music scene will wise up, that there is no such thing as a "successful" druggie, but they never seem to... Even if you show them a yearbook full of dead people to back it up. For some reason there is a romance attached to it and kids are drawn to it, but what is romantic about laying in a puddle of your own puke? The times when The Undead were the most productive and successful were when drugs weren't an issue for any of the members. We'd have money in the bank and the band fund, which means touring and putting more records or CD's out. Isn't that what it is really all about to begin with? Why fuck that up?