Rocket From the Tombs Never Gonna Kill Myself Again

The Rocket From The Tombs Story (1973-1975)

past Jon Allan, Late Night Magazine, 2001

This album [The 24-hour interval The World Met The Rocket From The Tombs] is more than just an artifact of a specific time and place. It offers a tantalizing glimpse at i of the greatest albums never recorded. Many of us - fans of this cabalistic sub-chapter in the history of stone music - are convinced that had Rocket From The Tombs survived long enough to record "xxx Seconds Over Tokyo," "Sonic Reducer," and "Final Solution," besides equally lost classics like "Muckraker," "And then Common cold" and "Amphetamine," the resulting tape would, today, exist ranked alongside the MC5's Boot Out The Jams, Patti Smith's Horses and the Stooges' Raw Power equally seminal albums of the punk era. This collection of demo and live textile is the closest we tin get. Still, after 26 years worth of mythologizing, it provides ample proof that during their all too brief existence few bands rocked harder or closer to the edge.

Urban Pioneers and Billion Dollar Babies

By 1973 David Thomas had caused a measure of local celebrity while writing under a number of aliases for Cleveland's The Scene magazine. The most prominent of these, Crocus Behemoth, had evolved into a full-fledged change ego. Later on that year he and boyfriend Scene employee Kim Zonneville (Charlie Weiner) formed The Cracking Bow-Wah (Death) Band, a loose assembly of recruited musicians deployed on promotional hijinx. A more purposeful endeavour at making a band produced Rocket From The Tombs. (The name derived from a brusque, Zappa-inspired motion-picture show fabricated by Thomas and high schoolhouse buddy Jon Luoma called "The 24-hour interval The Earth Met The Rocket From The Tombs.")

RFTT debuted June 16, 1974 at the Viking Saloon, a rock society downtown owned by Thomas' friend and housemate Dick Korn. The lineup was Thomas (vocals, bass), Zonneville (bass, vocals), Glenn "Thunderhand" Hach (guitar, vocals) and Tom "Foolery" Clements (drums). The set consisted of well-nigh all the Kick Out The Jams anthology. Some of the originals, inherited from the Bow Wahs, were farcical or satiric in nature. The improver of vocalizer / guitarist Peter Laughner several months later on focused and then transformed the group.

DAVID THOMAS - I think I met Peter at the Grapes of Wrath (a folk and blues club contrary the Viking Saloon) and he knew who I was considering of my column in The Scene. Nosotros would run into each other and have some drinks and laissez passer the time and ane day he asked to play in RFTT. Somewhat dumbfounded I, of form, agreed.

Laughner probably tried harder than anyone to plough the dysfunctional loners of the Cleveland "secret" into a cohesive "scene." Along with Mirrors founder Jamie Klimek, he was at the ground zip of Middle America's punk explosion, the series of Velvet Underground concerts at Cleveland's La Cave Club in 1968 and 1969. Klimek and Laughner were among the earliest and most vocal, local proponents of Total Velvetization. Ironically, Laughner's catholic tastes left him open to near everything, information technology seems, except his own very great abilities, and while he included a selection of his own songs in every ring he fronted, insecurities acquired him, in the words of ex-wife Charlotte Pressler, to become an "undercover jukebox." Joining RFTT only a few months afterward the final interruption up of his own Cinderella Backstreet, he found in Thomas someone who shared his enthusiasms, who shared his need for a serious band, but, peradventure more importantly, someone who did not share his doubts.

A period of restructuring, of expansion and contraction, yielded the archetype RFTT lineup. It survived less than 8 months all the same information technology was responsible for some of the greatest and most influential punk songs of all fourth dimension.

Guitarist Gene O'Connor (Cheetah Chrome) and drummer Johnny "Madman" Madansky (afterwards Johnny Blitz) were kids from the city who shared a love of overdrive groove rock and general chaos. They played in bands chosen Slash and Sarah Bluish, covering the New York Dolls, Alice Cooper and other glam/hard rock acts. Laughner met them a couple years before when they answered an advertisement in the paper.

Bassist Craig Bell, an original member of Mirrors, and who too wrote for local 'zines, knew Laughner from his visits to Mirrors rehearsals. He brought to RFTT a itemize of sharp-edged songs in a Kinks-meets-Velvets style. For a few weeks he held his position in both bands before Klimek fired him for wanting to play with "the enemy."

CRAIG Bell - Subsequently I returned from the Army in 1974, I took a chore driving a taxi in Cleveland. I took a call to go downwardly to 1 of the worst tenements on the West Side 1 evening and as I pulled up to the edifice, out walked one of the weirdest guys I had always seen. He was dressed from head to toe in a silver suit and silvery boots, with long, brilliant cherry-red hair, and chrome aviator sunglasses (although it was most 9 o'clock at dark). He hopped in the back seat, and told me to take him to Twiggy's, a trendy eastside bar. In one case we arrived, he fumbled around in his pockets to pay the fare and came up x cents brusk. I told him not to worry about it and we both went on our split ways. Some months afterwards, when I was asked to audition for RFTT, it was my first introduction to Cistron O'Connor. We all ended up at a java store afterwards. Something had been bugging me all the fourth dimension we'd been playing together. Finally, over a cup of coffee, and some go-to-know-you conversation, I looked Cheetah dead in the centre, and said 'Hey, you son of a bowwow, you owe me ten cents!" Rehearsals began in hostage in early December of 1974.

Cheetah CHROME - I had the music for "Downwards In Flames," "Transfusion," "30 Seconds," "Never Gonna Impale Myself Again" and "Ain't Information technology Fun," and we started matching them to Croc and Pete'southward unfinished lyrics. I think the first thing we tried was probably "And then Cold," as it reminded those guys of Alice Cooper and they wanted us to experience at abode! It became apparent quickly that we had a bunch of pretty damn good songs! Plus, Peter was a great band leader, listened really well and caught a lot of skilful things. He really drilled us at do, doing it over and over till it sounded like something. Everybody pitched in ideas, all five of us, nosotros tried 'em all, and we got along well back then. It felt like a real squad.

The retooled Rockets debuted at the starting time "Special Extermination Music Dark," December 22, 1974 at the Viking Saloon. The headliners were The Electric Eels. The Mirrors opened. This was offset and last fourth dimension the 3 bands shared the aforementioned phase. The Rocket set included the originals they had just worked upward, including Thomas' "thirty Seconds Over Tokyo," a psychodramatic retelling of the Doolittle Raid on Japan. Add the all-needles-are-on-cherry-red sonic overdrive of "Down In Flames" as well as "What Love is" and the Beefheartian "Life Stinks."

Others Talk Nigh Information technology, We Do It

All the same, there was the trouble of gigs. The Cleveland rock scene served an entrenched oligarchy of cover bands. But Laughner, beingness on expert terms with dj Child Leo (mc for the Special Extermination Music Night), accomplished an end run. WMMS agreed to broadcast a tape to initiate a series of Sun night programs dedicated to local bands. Peter borrowed a reel-to-reel, someone brought in a reverb unit and on the night of February 18, 1975, RFTT recorded 12 tracks alive to tape.

CRAIG Bong - We recorded information technology in our rehearsal loft on West 4th St. It was a large space, maybe xx 10 50, which suited our purposes because the volume we played at. I think nosotros put Cheetah's Orangish amps all the style at the back of the room with a mic facing them so the rest of us could hear what we were doing. I was in accuse of the Sunn 6-channel mixer along with turning on and off the 2-rail record auto to which information technology fed. Considering the primitive acoustics and limitations of our situation, I think we got quite a neat tape out of it.

It was circulate the following Sun with commentary from Laughner.

CRAIG Bell - Peter, being in loftier spirits, and never a shy man, was very verbose before and later the playing of the tape. But I'll always call back, in his closing statements, how he basically told everyone out in the listening audience not to be agape, and don't intendance what anyone else thinks, and in his words keep, "doing it for yourself."

PETER LAUGHNER - The reason we did this tape, and the reason that WMMS is gonna circulate this stuff, is to tell y'all that YOU CAN Practice Information technology Too! I mean, anybody can brand a tape every bit long as they've got a little flake of stuff together, and it should be original. Considering records today are made by formula; they shove the right Pavlov impulses downwardly your throat and into your ear, and if you don't hear that formula, and if y'all don't feel the style producers of records today want yous to feel, and y'all want to make a tape, you lot gotta do it for yourself! Which is what nosotros did with this thing, you know? It's not studio stuff, simply it'south a valid statement nosotros made most what we were doing ane nighttime at our loft, merely going crazy...

Rockets had their largest audience e'er, and with Thomas' guild connections, particularly at the Agora where RFTT opened for the recently reformed Iron Butterfly, they were getting few merely steady gigs. There was even a one shot Rocket From The Tombs Mutual Admiration Gild Newsletter. More importantly, the new songs kept coming - among them two of the most important anthems to come out of punk rock's first moving ridge, Concluding Solution and Sonic Reducer.

A Ticket For A Sonic Reduction

DAVID THOMAS - The idea of "sonic reduction" occurred to me as I wrote "Terminal Solution" and then I wrote "Sonic Reducer" considering it was a cool thought (sonic reduction!) and I figured I ought to brand more of it. As for WHAT it was... I remember it had something to do with a synthesis of much sound into a moment of clarity.

"Final Solution" was written by Thomas as a response to the Sherlock Holmes mystery The Final Problem. "I had the flu and I was reading Sherlock Holmes betwixt bouts of fevered hallucination," Thomas said. "All I could think of for what seemed similar days was that if there's a final trouble there's got to be a concluding solution." Over the years there's been much speculation every bit to who the vocal is about...

DAVID THOMAS - It'due south not ABOUT anyone. If anything it's more similar an autobiographical malaise-projection. My mom did throw me out because I wouldn't wear pants that fit - I used to wear them and so that the legs rode high to a higher place my ankles. I wanted to write a song equally a followup to Blue Cheer'southward version of "Summertime Dejection." Tim Wright was the band's soundman sometimes and he had huge Voice of The Theater speakers in his living room. I remember hearing information technology over and over at cranked levels. I wrote the words to that tune. I went to Craig and described what I wanted musicaly - "Summertime Blues" reduced (sonic reduction!) to the minimum - a throb and and then a big outburst of noise and so back to a throb.

CRAIG BELL - I was at the rehearsal loft and David was the second to go far. He said, "I take this new song, let'southward run across if we can piece of work something out" and started reading off the lyrics while pounding his hand on top of an amplifier. As we worked it out, I started playing a bass riff timed to his tempo, and by the time the residuum of the band arrived, we had worked out the basic construction of Concluding Solution. After some more than tweaking that twenty-four hour period, Peter had added the outro and that pretty much was information technology. Equally for who it was about, isn't it most all of usa?

Still propelled by the momentum of the WMMS broadcast, Laughner adamant to generate attention from a record label and ready out to enlist the help of Lester Bangs. So editor of Creem magazine (for which Laughner had begun to write), Bangs was a champion of all that was unacceptable, obscure and only plain out of control in rock 'n' roll. With record in hand, and Bell in tow, Laughner headed for Detroit.

CRAIG BELL - The trip to Michigan was quite an feel. We drove up in a rented van from Cleveland and stayed with Lester at Creem'southward offices in Birmingham. Past this time, Peter and Lester had gotten to know each other quite well, and Lester was very enthusiastic upon hearing our tape. He told us that he would forward information technology to Murray Krugman, who at that time was one of the producers of Blue Oyster Cult. All of this later on happened despite the fact that during one of the evenings nosotros were driving around in the van, while making a sharp plough, I managed to roll Lester effectually the dorsum of the van similar a ping-pong ball. All I remember about the trip to John Sinclair's dwelling house is that the White Panther bread truck was in the garage and I don't think if nosotros met John or not.

Rockets rehearsed several times a week and played out when they could.

CHEETAH CHROME - The shows were usually pretty intense, Crocus could work himself into a pretty proficient frenzy back so, occasionally doing the "gator", rolling effectually on the floor, wearing that judges robe, or graduation robe, or whatever the hell it was. Peter used to say some pretty off the wall stuff, leaving the audition shaking their heads. Craig used to say we needed to buy him a leather gag!

CRAIG BELL - I also recall Cheetah coming out wearing a dog collar on a concatenation. Part of Crocus' stage apparel was a long choir robe, which was immediately drenched in sweat. Between that and his sopping-moisture pilus, I was assured of it never being a dry night, since I always stood backside him.

Nobody knew it and so only a gig at the Berea Community Center in April proved to be the beginning of the end. Not but was it the final time that the Thomas - Laughner - Bell - O'Connor - Madansky lineup played together - Madansky's girlfriend wanted him to leave and he left soon after - merely information technology as well marked the appearance of Steve "Stiv" Bators on the periphery of the band.

The Center Cannot Concord

Cheetah CHROME - Pete used to talk about this little guy named Steve Bators, only we didn't meet until a gig in Berea where Stiv and Jimmy Nil were talking to Blitz and my girlfriends while nosotros were on stage, which got us pretty po'd. We were gear up to first something with them, but Pete was similar "No, that's this guy I've been telling you about," and nosotros concluded up talking and going out for drinks the next dark. Pete ever said that once I met Stiv, he knew Rockets days were numbered.

Wayne Strick, the younger blood brother of some of Bell'south friends, would replace Madansky and proved to be a better drummer than is heard on the surviving Piccadilly tape (see below). He served the band well until the terminate but in the meantime The Agora, in conjunction with WMMS, ready a "Heavy Metal Showcase" and RFTT needed a drummer. Bell's replacement in Mirrors, Jim Jones, suggested fellow tape shop clerk Don Evans. This May 5th evidence is the source of a number of bootleg tapes. Five songs were professionally recorded and the final two, "Down In Flames" and "Search & Destroy," were broadcast the following Sun. Although the show was a success and featured stiff new songs, frontman David Thomas found himself at a crossroads.

DAVID THOMAS - Peter sang some of his songs. Craig sang his ain songs. I sang mine plus some of Peter's only I was getting insecure about my singing. I had to sing in ways I wasn't into - melody was non my thing-- and I was still relatively new to phase sound. There may accept been something going on behind the scenes as well. In any case I wanted to sing less then I picked up an Ace Tone organ and Peter had a sax I started playing.

A identify was existence cleared for Bators, an Iggy disciple late of the Akron covers band Mother Goose. RFTT was mortally wounded and beginning to drift.

CHEETAH CHROME - I always thought Crocus sang pretty skilful, I hateful, he wasn't exactly a crooner, simply it worked on a lot of our stuff. When we tried to exercise more melodic stuff, it kind of became a big point. To exist honest, I wasn't crazy near Stiv'southward voice dorsum then, he didn't have enough balls, which used to bulldoze me nuts. Crocus definitely had assurance.

Laughner, enamored with Garland Jeffries' "Wild In The Streets," a vocal touted by some critics as America's answer to Street Fighting Man, wanted to release it every bit a single.

CHEETAH CHROME - He even tracked down Garland to ask his permission. I retrieve cuz' we were surprised he was listed in the NYC phone volume. We tried it a few times (this was with Stiv singing), but I personally hated it and it never really came together. I would have preferred i of the Roxy Music songs that we did (Remake Remodel, Bounding main Breezes), but on the B-side.

That Laughner lobbied to tape a comprehend speaks less well-nigh renewal and more than about how far the band had drifted. RFTT headed off to the Thomas family farm in Pennsylvania for a long fourth of July weekend hoping to accomplish a caste of cohesion.

CHEETAH CHROME - Yeah, for one cursory weekend the bucolic setting of Franklin, PA was disturbed past loud music, gunfire, a boozer pig, and drunker Rockets. I remember seeing the Fire Section orchestra play on the boondocks green on the 4th, and trying to ride a horse that absolutely hated me bareback whilst drunk off my ass. We found "Poet Hub", the but blackness poet in Franklin, while in town on a beer run. He came out to the farm with us and nearly had tears in his eyes when he heard united states of america play, it was and so long since he had heard R&R without having to drive to Pittsburgh or wherever.

CRAIG BELL - My most vivid memory is seeing Cheetah and Stiv riding horses (you can imagine in what status). What a sight! We apposite in Dave'south parents' barn and seemed to draw a fairly good crowd from the locals. Where they came from, I take no idea.

Downwardly In Flames

PETER LAUGHNER - Entertainment is fine, but there has to exist something across that. It may sound pretentious to talk near making art statements, but it is possible to brand an art statement with music.

In April, when Television and the Patti Smith Group held their now legendary five week residency at CBGB's in New York City, Laughner was there, front and center, bowled over past Tom Verlaine. He lobbied for Cleveland equally a showcase for their start shows exterior New York and worked to convince the Piccadilly, a trendy downtown club, to put up the cash. July 24-25 was secured, and Rockets was fix to open. What was meant to exist a triumph became instead a portrait of a ring on the verge of blowing apart.

Considering the state of the band - O'Connor and Bell scuffled in the dressing room, and two members dropped acid before going on - the tape of the July 24th show is remarkable, proving to be the debut of "Read It And Weep," "Amphetamine" and "Sonic Reducer." As he launched into the opener, "Sonic Reducer," O'Connor fell over backwards simply connected to play on his back. "I didn't miss a note!" By the time they came off phase the fabric of the band was torn beyond repair and while there were no physical confrontations, O'Connor remembers that "a lot of very nasty things got said - everything came to a caput that night."

Chetah CHROME - Me and Wayne were still in our teen angst stoner phase dorsum so, and that annoyed the "adults" (Pete & Croc were 22) to no end. Blitz leaving because his girlfriend didn't want him in the band was another thing.

One concluding prove was bundled, a double bill with Mirrors at the Viking Saloon in early on August. Information technology'south unclear if this was meant as a farewell, just that'due south what it became. It was the starting time and last time Bators appeared on stage with the band.

CRAIG BELL - This was definitely the last Rockets testify. Toward the cease of the set, Cheetah brought Stiv upwards on stage to sing. David immediately left the stage. We launched into a song, I believe it was "Down in Flames/Search and Destroy." Somewhere toward the terminate of information technology, while Cheetah and Stiv were thrashing around on the flooring, Peter gave up the ghost and walked offstage and I found myself withal playing along, while watching these two rolling on the pines. I finally put downward my bass, shrugged my shoulders, and walked abroad. And that was the end of Rocket From The Tombs.

CHEETAH CHROME - I don't remember if anybody from Rockets talked after that, it was weird. Looking back, with a little perspective, it really was an honor to play in that band. Nosotros didn't realize at the time that we were 1 of the first punk bands, we only played what we felt. It'southward similar that Faces song "I wish that I knew what I know now, when I was younger,.." I'm just happy that the music has stood through the years, and that people are finally getting to hear information technology. It deserves information technology, because we kicked ass. Everything else was merely kid stuff.

ybarratiscity.blogspot.com

Source: http://www.ubuprojex.com/rocket-from-the-tombs/rocket-from-the-tombs-story.html

Share this post