Pierce taught Powers how to play the guitar using an open-E tuning and one finger. And speaking of language, Ive tried to avoid it, but his last name even rhymes with fierce. Fire Of Love: A Jeffrey Lee Pierce Retrospective - The Quietus After Pierce's death, Cypress Grove had happened upon a cassette, stuffed into a drawer, whilst cleaning out his loft. If he inspired Jack White musically (and he did), he more readily recalled Jack Black, physically while embodying, in his own agitated head at least, Jack on Fire. Ad Choices, The Gun Clubs Jeffrey Lee Pierce Gets New Documentary, A daily roundup of the most important stories in music, New Music Releases and Upcoming Albums in 2023, Lucinda Williams Announces Album, Shares New Song With Bruce Springsteen, Watch Clairo Cover Vashti Bunyans Winter Is Blue, Godflesh Announce North American Tour, Share New Song Nero, The Gun Clubs Jeffrey Lee Pierce, 1983 (Photo by Peter Noble/Redferns). "[14] Pierce toured Europe as The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Quartet, and from August 1985 he toured the United States and Canada. She left him and began a relationship with her future husband, Nick Sanderson. Id gone down the skids again and Jeffrey was in Utah staying with his father and cleaning up again. EXCLUSIVE: Jeffrey Lee Pierce, frontman singer of seminal LA punk rock band The Gun Club, is the subject of a new feature documentary. [24] among many others. It had a great feel and it was special.. His premature death at the age of 37 on March 31, 1996, was shrouded with a tragic inevitability, and sadly he never saw his legacy truly take shape while he was still alive. I realize Im straying toward an authenticity-rockism I dont even believe in here, but I ought to note that however much I admire and even love Jeffrey Lee Pierce as a musician/artist, that by no means extends to any equivalent esteem for the train wreck of his personal life. Death Party: 8:29: 3-6: Stranger In Our Town: 5:14: 3-7: Gila Monster New Mexico / Preachin' The Blues: 9:40: 3-8: My . He represents the Americana I hate. So Chapter 1: Verse 1 in the Punk Bible, then. 5", "THE GUN CLUB The Las Vegas Story Punk Blues Vinyl Album Gallery #vinylrecords", "From The Archives -The Gun Club- Concert Chronology / Gigography", "iTunes Music Wildweed by Jeffrey Lee Pierce", "The Quietus | Features | A Quietus Interview | Kid Congo Powers Interview: From Gun Play To Monkey Business", "Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds Setlist at Muziekcentrum Vredenburg, Utrecht", "Nick Cave on Jeffrey Lee Pierce: 'His Obsessions Crawled All Over Him', "Gun Club Oral History, Part Four (Pastoral Hide and Seek to 1996)", "an interview w/ Keith Morris & Dimitri Coats of OFF! In 1979, following in the footsteps of the Germs, the Dead Kennedys and the Dickies, Pierce formed his own punk band, Creeping Ritual. Reviews of Fire of Love usually cite Son House and Robert Johnson as touchpoints, which is understandable given their choice of covers/thefts, but I believe Jeffreys true musical soul mate (blues mate?) The sessions were recorded with acoustic guitars in Grove's bedroom using a "boombox" device. Jeffrey Lee Pierce Wiki, Biography, Age, Career, Relationship, Net At this point, Jeffrey was a musical archaeologist; he even began to dress on stage like some squat Indiana Jones, at once furtive and feral, his search for something priceless within the buried sediments of ages almost a holy one. The Las Vegas Story is a farewell of sorts to an LA and America changing under the Reagan administration, but whether they knew it or not, The Gun Club wouldnt be returning to the US to live. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, singer, guitarist, composer: born Texas 27 June 1958; married Romi Mori; died Los Angeles 31 March 1996. Long-term alcohol abuse had left Pierce with cirrhosis of the liver and his enforced sobriety was having a detrimental personal and musical effect. The scourge, the deep scar tissue, of racism. Speaking of the US/UK divide, The Gun Club never really found much traction in their homeland. 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Jeffrey Lee Pierce, singer, guitarist, composer: born Texas 27 June 1958; married Romi Mori;. When he was a teen-ager, he was president of the Blondie fan club. We were talking about doing something in New York and calling it The Gun Club and getting some local players. This is what The Gun Club and Jeffrey Lee Pierce at their best managed: they showed us that all the loneliness of the world can be if for only a song length, for a propulsive drum beat, for the wail of a slide guitar, for the few precious seconds it takes for a defiant and fleeting shriek to disperse into the night all that apparent abandonment by the world can be momentarily defeated by spirit, by the fire spirit, by Jack on Fire, by the Indian wind along the telegraph lines. (Shes Like Heroin To Me.). This contained forgotten preliminary recordings for a further . I think that was very much part of his character. With the band ready to board a connecting flight bound for Australia, Duckworth and Graham quit thanks to Pierces unreasonable demands. The Gun Clubs 1981 debut Fire of Love was rarely off my turntable in those days. Somewhere in that bled-out hellhole there is room however small and cramped for actual love: Really, this is what the Gun Club achieved as they crawled westward, south-by-southwest, the recurring astonishment of beauty amid the horror, running from flashlights on the back roads, a New Mexican mirage, an Arizona dream, as if the murderous pedophile Judge Holden in Cormac McCarthys Blood Meridian had abruptly renounced his appalling ways, emerging gore-soaked and penitent from the heat shimmer one day, proceding into a new life of domestic contrition. Language links are at the top of the page across from the title. Biography - Jeffrey Lee Pierce They were going to be playing that night and I said, Jeffrey! The band upped sticks to New Yorks Blank Tape studios to record the follow-up album, Miami. Dave Alvin also played lead guitar on two tracks. The three songs were "Ramblin' Mind", "Constant Waiting", and "Free To Walk", with further material uncovered over time to support the tribute project. The Parisian rock elite, always in love with tragic figures like Morrison, Thunders and Iggy Pop, had found a new hero. Driven by an obsessive personality from an early age, Pierces love of alcohol, drugs and the romanticism of playing in a band would be both his making and undoing. In December 1984 the Gun Club played two gigs in London, but by January 1985 had broken up, cancelling an upcoming Australian Tour. Jeffrey Lee Pierce Death: and Cause of Death On March 31, 1996, Jeffrey Lee Pierce died of non-communicable disease. [49][bettersourceneeded] In the documentary, Voss interviews Pierce's former collaborators, Kid Congo Powers, Ward Dotson, Terry Graham, Jim Duckworth, and Dee Pop, in addition to his high school friend Steven Tash, former publisher of Pierce's work, Henry Rollins, and Lemmy, lead singer of Motrhead. "Death Party" (uncredited) 2012; Too Young to Die. Such an accomplishment, in a world mostly devoid of magic, is damn near miraculous, quite honestly. To preserve these articles as they originally appeared, The Times does not alter, edit or update them. Pierce fronted the Gun Club from 1979 through to his death in 1996 . With the first line-up imploding, Pierce and Powers were joined by Rob Ritter (bass) and Terry Graham (drums) from LA band The Bags, whose contribution was instantly felt. Though the material was as strong as the debut Texas Serenade features some fine slide playing by Dotson while Mother Of Earth practically invents alt.country Steins production all but ignored the bottom end to create a trebly document that, as testified by live bootlegs from the time, was hardly representative of the bands sound. [41][42][43], Grove contacted other artists via Myspace to contribute to the project, including Lanegan, and as the project grew, artists such as Isobel Campbell and Jim Sclavunos also agreed to contribute. Born in Montebello, California to a Mexican mother, he felt alienated growing up and considered himself a half-breed. In 1987 Pierce reformed Gun Club, recording with Robin Guthrie of the Cocteau Twins as producer. [50] The documentary received mostly positive critical reception, but was criticized for not including any of Pierce's music or interview footage with him.[51]. Pierce arrived in Australia with bass player Patricia Morrison and enlisted two members of support act "The Johnny's", Billy Pommer Jr and Spencer Jones, to fill in,[10] plus Kid Congo, who flew from the United States to join them after being convinced by Pierce. Mr. Pierce, a singer and guitarist, began his career in music as a fan and critic. We didnt try to transpose it to rocknroll, says Powers. "It was Jeff's musical misery tour.". They were deadly serious, for one thing. Punk had left its mark on both of the young friends, with Pierce and Powers running the Blondie and Ramones fan clubs respectively. Signup for Breaking News Alerts & Newsletters. [38] The song ends with the lines: Come back, Dee Dee Ramone. He was a record nerd but we were also dreamers and into a lot of rocknroll fantasy. Apparently his health had been very bad again but it was a step in the right direction. The film will cover the singer/guitarists life and career through his death in 1996 at age 37 from causes related to heroin addiction, alcoholism, and HIV. He was digging. One of his best qualities, was encouraging his friends to make music, even insisting that they do. Pierce stated that he preferred Miami, and dismissed Fire of Love: "I can't even remember making it. Recorded in 1984 at Hollywoods Ocean Way Studios and using Ry Cooders gear during the graveyard shift, The Las Vegas Story saw the band now with Terry Graham back on board incorporate a variety of influences. The gulf between the two records is grimly fascinating. I learned 30 songs and I had one 10-minute rehearsal where Jeffrey was completely pissed, and then I played the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in front of 5,000 people. "[34] At live performances, Morris has introduced "Jeffrey Lee Pierce" with a tribute to Pierce and their close friendship, describing the song as a "eulogy".[35][36][37]. Youd go places and everybody was in on it, she says. His Latina mother was a homemaker, taking care of Pierce and his sister, Jacqui. Born in 1958, Jeffrey Lee Pierce was raised in the east LA suburb of El Monte. In a 2012 interview with Gun Club biographer Gene Temesy, Nick Cave, a great admirer of the frontman, said: "With Jeffrey, you pretty much entered his world when you saw him. The blues had provided the kindling, punk the flame. He returned to Los Angeles in 1995. The singer lived for a time in London and gigged fitfully around Europe, doing strange versions of jazz standards (John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme", Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit") and releasing disappointing albums of past and recent concerts on many labels (Two Sides of the Beast on Dojo for instance). His obsessions crawled all over him. Imagine hearing the opener for the first time Sex Beat, that post-traumatic explosion of damaged purity if indeed purity can emerge from such mongrel ferocity (which of course we all know now it cannot. In late 1993, Pierce spent time with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds during the recording of their album Let Love In. Jeffrey Lee Pierce, fdd 27 juni 1958 [ 1] i Montebello, Kalifornien, [ 2] dd 31 mars 1996 [ 1] i Salt Lake City, Utah, [ 3] var en amerikansk rockmusiker, frontfigur i det Los Angeles -baserade punkbandet The Gun Club . By coincidence, Robin and Liz were walking towards us, remembers Mori. He was 37. We had two channels on our TV and a wood stove for heat, the wood-splitting axe a necessary companion. IN THE LATE 60S! But Jeffrey did make efforts to stay on top of all that sort of stuff. 2023 Cond Nast. As a teenager, he moved from El Monte, a working-class industrial suburb east of Los Angeles, to Granada Hills, at the time a white working- and middle-class suburb in the San Fernando Valley. Not that you can blame him, given Pierces increasingly erratic substance-augmented behavior. 4 references. The label clarified that the third album has become the "penultimate" full-length release of the Project, but did not name the final album, or its release date. Indeed it was. His last TV appearance was with the Bad Seeds on Later with Jools Holland, recorded on May 14, 1994.[21]. Mori saw him one last time: It was his last day in London. One minute he'd be talking about the fall of Saigon and the next minute hed be talking about the size of a dinosaur's brain. His interest in reggae overlapped with the emergence of punk rock and he became involved in the Hollywood scene as a contributor to Slash, writing on contemporary punk, 1930s blues, 1950s rockabilly, and on reggae under the name "Ranking Jeffrey Lea", including an interview with Bob Marley.