Jeffrey Lee Pierce (* 27. Juni 1958 in Montebello (Kalifornien), Los Angeles County; † 31. März 1996) war ein US-amerikanischer Sänger, Songwriter und Gitarrist. Er war Gründungsmitglied r Band The Gun Club. Darüber hinaus veröffentlichte er mehrere Solo-Alben.
Bereits als Teenager widmete er sich r Musik, besuchte viele Konzerte und schrieb Artikel für Fanmagazine. Für das Slash-Magazin übernahm er die Verantwortung für die Sparte Weltmusik. Später wur er Vorsitzenr s Blondie-Fanclubs. Dabei lernte er 1980 Kid Congo Powers kennen, mit m er kurze Zeit später die Band Creeping Ritual grünte. In ihrer Musik verbann sie lta Blues, Country und Punk miteinanr. Auf Vorschlag seines Mitbewohners Keith Morris in Los Angeles wur die Band in The Gun Club umbenannt.
1981 erschien das bütalbum Fire of Love, allerdings ohne Beteiligung von Powers, r die Band bereits vorher verlassen hatte. Es wur ein Erfolg, obgleich manche Kritiker die Texte r Band als sexistisch und rassistisch einstuften. Das ein Jahr später erschienene Album Miami, mit bbie Harry als Produzentin, fand auch in r Musikpresse Anklang. Hoher Alkohol- und Drogenkonsum führte allerdings zu vielen Mitglierwechseln in r Band und nach m Album The Las Vegas Story (1984) pausierte sie erstmal.
Jeffrey Lee Pierce Painting By Christy Powers
Pierce veröffentlichte, nachm er nach London gezogen war, 1985 sein erstes Soloalbum Wildweed, das als kommerziell orientiert gilt. Anschließend holte er Powers zurück und startete einen Neubeginn mit The Gun Club. Es folgte 1986 das Album Mother Juno, das als eines r besten Alben r Band gilt.
1992 veröffentlichte Pierce unter m Namen Ramblin’ Jeffrey Lee & Cypress Grove With Willie Love ein Album mit klassischen Bluessongs und daran angelehnten eigenen Kompositionen. Ein Jahr später erschien die letzte Platte von The Gun Club Lucky Jim. Als danach seine Freundin Romi Mori, die als Bassistin in r Band gespielt hatte, Pierce verließ, verfiel er wier m Drogen- und Alkoholkonsum.
Pierce schrieb in n folgenn Jahren seine Autobiographie Go tell the Mountain, die 1998 posthum herauskam, da er bereits am 31. März 1996 an einer Gehirnblutung verstorben war.
Photo Jeffrey Lee Pierce 1983 Henri Clausel Wallbackstage
Zum erschienen unter m Namen The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project die Alben We Are Only Rirs (2010), The Journey Is Long (2012) und Axels & Sockets (2014), bei nen Musiker wie Nick Cave, bbie Harry, Iggy Pop, Mark Lanegan, Thurston Moore und Steve Wynn alte moaufnahmen von Pierce neu aufnahmen., are introducing a whole new generation to the blues at the annual Reading Festival. A thrilling and coruscating performance powered by heavy distortion and near-punishing volume, Jack White’s wide-eyed and frantic delivery drips from every pore with a punk rock attitude. And while the new fans are throwing themselves with abandon to the maelstrom emanating from the stage, older heads are sensing a familiarity that hasn’t been heard for some time.
And then it happens. With Meg White pumping her bass drum, Jack stomps on those overdrive pedals again and hollers, “You look just like an Elvis from
!” For those older heads it all clicks into place and at the same time The White Stripes acknowledge forebears every bit as important to their oeuvre as Robert Johnson, Lead Belly or Son House: the song is
Liz Fraser Of Cocteau Twins And Jeffrey Lee Pierce Of The Gun Club
And The White Stripes are paying dues to The Gun Club. This is a crucial moment and one that links the opening overs of the 21st century to the early 1980s, when roots music collided
Every generation since the boomers onwards has had a gateway band into the blues, and for those taken by punk’s brief but seismic blast, that group was The Gun Club. Formed in 1979 and based around the core of frontman Jeffrey Lee Pierce, The Gun Club drew deeply from the well of American vernacular music and infused it with the stripped down energy and elemental values of punk rock. And while punk, on the surface, at least, eschewed and discarded what had come before it, The Gun Club tapped into a lineage that took them through the decades via punk, primal rock’n’roll and eventually the blues.
Driven by an obsessive personality from an early age, Pierce’s love of alcohol, drugs and the romanticism of playing in a band would be both his making and undoing. 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. Over the course of seven studio albums and an ever-shifting line-up of musicians driven away by Pierce’s self-obsessed and self-destructive behaviour, The Gun Club left behind a body of work whose ramifications are still reverberating to this day. Whether consciously or not, echoes of The Gun Club are keenly felt by contemporary practitioners of punk-rock blues such as Daddy Long Legs, Guadalupe Plata and The Bonnevilles as well as more established musicians such as Mark Lanegan, Nick Cave and The Black Keys.
Rapidfix: Jeffrey Lee Pierce
Born in 1958, Jeffrey Lee Pierce was raised in the east LA suburb of El Monte. An obsession for record collecting in his early teens led to him meeting fellow music fan and future Gun Club guitarist and co-founder, Kid Congo Powers (née Brian Tristan).
“We were record collectors and fans and at a super young age had dedicated our lives to that, ” recalls Powers. “After punk and post-punk, the next logical step was for us to have a band.”
Punk had left its mark on both of the young friends, with Pierce and Powers running the Blondie and Ramones fan clubs respectively. But it was after witnessing Pere Ubu at LA’s Whiskey A Go Go in 1978 that the idea of band was hatched.
Musik: Indierock Kollektiv Würdigt Jeffrey Lee Pierce
Says Powers: “The concert was great and at the end of the night, in a fit of inspiration, I suppose, Jeffrey said, ‘Why don’t we have a band together?’ So I said, ‘Well, okay, but I don’t play any instrument or do anything.’ So he said, ‘Well you can be the singer and I’ll play the guitar, ’ and I’m like, ‘I’m not going to be the singer.’ And he’s like, ‘I could show you how to play guitar. We’re having a band.’ And that was that!”
Indeed it was. Pierce taught Powers how to play the guitar using an open-E tuning and one finger. The moment was certainly right for Pierce. He’d already spent time travelling around the United States and Jamaica on a musical odyssey, and returning to LA he’d regularly contribute reggae reviews to the
Fanzine under the name Ranking Jeffrey Lee. Recruiting bassist Don Snowden and drummer Brad Dunning, the quartet named themselves The Creeping Ritual before changing their name to The Gun Club at the suggestion of The Circle Jerks’ Keith Morris. So enamoured was Pierce of the new name that he wrote
The Gun Club's Jeffrey Lee Pierce And Texacala Jones Of Tex And The... News Photo
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.
Where he’d take a Bible on stage and throw it to the floor. It was juvenile but very dramatic and the seeds of what would follow, ” says Powers.
Pierce’s behaviour on and off the stage soon began to be counterproductive: “The other guys in the band were very antagonised by him. He was difficult to get close to because he was changing personas so much. He was a record nerd but we were also dreamers and into a lot of rock’n’roll fantasy. That period was a lot of trial and error and luckily more of it was working than not, but that nihilistic streak and antagonism that was coming from him was needed at the time. Jeffrey’s idea was to be as antagonistic as possible. He’d say, ‘Always tell the people what they don’t want to hear.’ So what’s going to really annoy people? How about a title like
Jeffrey Lee Pierce Concert & Tour History
“But fantasy bled into reality and it was annoying to the band. At times, it was a case of, ‘This could be really good but you’re really fucking it up. You’re really pushing everyone away from us.’”
, The Gun Club soon developed a reputation for being a band’s band and in turn attracted the interest of The Cramps, who offered Powers the job of replacing recently departed guitarist Bryan Gregory. It was an offer that worked to both bands’ advantages.
“When I told Jeffrey that I’d been asked to join The Cramps, he said, ‘Do it, but get us gigs!’” With Powers joining The Cramps to record their second album,
The Gun Club: Born To Burn Out Fast
Was the perfect distillation of Pierce’s vision of punk and blues coming together. Garnering much critical acclaim, it would prove to be an influential album, not least on the UK’s nascent psychobilly scene and the 80s garage band revivalists that followed. The Gun Club had truly arrived.
The following year saw The Gun Club capitalise on Pierce’s Blondie connections by signing to Chris Stein’s Animal Records. The band upped sticks to New York’s Blank Tape studios to record the follow-up album,
Practically invents alt.country – Stein’s 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 band’s sound.
Died On This Date (march 31, 1996) Jeffrey Lee Pierce / The Gun Club The Music's Over
By this time, bassist Rob
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