Everybody felt the same and we were there for the music. Hollywood star Johnny Depp is also a massive fan, who has previously called The Gun Club his favourite band. He was one of the founding members of the band The Gun Club, and released material as a solo artist. Toward the end of his life, Jeffrey Lee Pierce increasingly embraced a more traditional blues, as if hed lost interest in the future altogether. His Anglo father worked as a union organizer. Pierce fronted the Gun Club from 1979 through to his death in 1996 . It kind of sounds like a Christmas song but Jeffrey always described it as a love song.. Explaining the decision to work with Robin Guthrie, Powers says: We kind of felt pigeonholed so we wanted to break out of that, just for our own artistic survival as we didnt want to keep making the same record over and over again. Elvis From Hell will tell the story of Pierce, a tragic but influential figure who died at 37, due to complications from heroin addiction, alcoholism and HIV. Music was the same thing: if he liked something then hed listen to it to death. After the Fur Bible offshoot and the bassist Patricia Morrison's departure for the richer and more bombastic pastures of Sisters of Mercy, Pierce went solo and released Wildweed, a pretty focused collection which included the strangely prophetic "Portrait of the Artist in Hell". [38] The song ends with the lines: Come back, Dee Dee Ramone. He'd come almost every day and just sit on the couch and then he'd come out to dinner with us and just mumble away. Come back, Frankie Venom. Not even Elvis: I hate Elvis. David Antrobus is a former youth worker and a writer (for. 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! "[7], The Las Vegas Story (1984) was the band's third album, seeing the return of Kid Congo Powers, drummer Terry Graham and a new bassist, Patricia Morrison. He still made ends meet by working hard in a record store and contributing to music fanzines but, by 1981, he was at the helm of Gun Club, an impressive fourpiece (also featuring Kid Congo Powers on guitar, Rob Ritter on bass and Terry Graham on drums) who seemed to create their own brand of swampy, ramshackle, psychotic, blues- influenced music. His Latina mother was a homemaker, taking care of Pierce and his sister, Jacqui. "[7], Primal Scream's 2013 album More Light referenced Pierce and the Gun Club with a reworking of Pierce's "Goodbye Johnny" and use of the title "Walking with the Beast".[40]. [7][46] Axels & Sockets opens with a rendition of "Nobody's City", for which Iggy Pop, Nick Cave and Thurston Moore used an original Gun Club demo recording from the Berlin demo tapes from the Mother Juno album in 1987. It still pains me that I completely missed the next three albums. Because hed stopped drinking, he found that he couldnt perform, because it was always about him being pissed, explains Mori. [31] The World/Inferno Friendship Society also paid tribute to Pierce in their song by the same title. It is revered by many. We need you now. What can you say about a record that you cut for 2500 bucks in 48 hours, on speed? Theres a clip out there of him performing Alabama Blues by Robert Wilkins, which seems wrenchingly poignant to me, the woe writ large on his face, the naked self-deprecation at the end after he stumbles, the hollow weariness when he looks right into the camera, even his apparent lack of awareness at the questionable spectacle of a white man singing Brownskin women, gonna be the death of [me]. Perhaps he no longer cared. Obituary: Jeffrey Lee Pierce | The Independent | The Independent We were all very relaxed and all good friends and we all really wanted to do it. Bluntly, they never quite got famous enough to sustain themselves in the down times, of which there were many. After six months in Japan, Pierce and Mori returned to London in August 1986, with Pierce intending to reform the Gun Club. Texacala Jones noted that Pierce carried a handwritten note from Harry in his wallet with instructions on how she dyed her hair, including the types of products she used. The future was acknowledged, however grimly envisioned. THE SHOCKING LIVE TELEVISION SUICIDE OF A NEWS ANCHOR! date of death. TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.