Darby Crash (the Germs)

It is said that, when he was 17, Darby Crash planned to make himself immortal by following a five-year plan. That plan was to form a band with his friends, spend a couple of years making it a cultish, outrageous live act, release one great album and then commit suicide to secure his legend. His only misstep was that John Lennon was shot one day after he died, completely overshadowing Darby’s own tragic demise.

Born in Los Angeles, Darby Crash (born Jan Paul Beahm, the 26th of September, 1958) had a troubled childhood. He grew up in Culver City and later, West Los Angeles. When he was 11 years old, his eldest half-brother Bobby Lucas died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27, thought to have been murdered by a disgruntled drug dealer who intentionally sold him an unusually potent batch of the drug. He grew up believing that his biological father was a man named Harold "Hal" Beahm, who had left the family early on in his life. When he was a teenager, one of his elder half-sisters, Faith Jr., revealed in an argument that his biological father was actually a Swedish sailor named William Björklund. Darby lived with his mother Faith Reynolds-Baker for much of his life, but their relationship was tumultuous. The accounts given of her in Brendan Mullen and Don Bolles' 2002 book Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs portray her as having a mental illness, which caused her to behave erratically and be verbally abusive toward her son. Faith's third husband, Bob Baker, died suddenly of a heart attack at 39 in 1972; they had married in 1964 when a very young Darby introduced the idea of them marrying after they began dating. She never married Darby's biological father, and not long after Bob Baker's death, Darby learned that his biological father, whom he never met, was also deceased.

He attended IPS (Innovative Program School), an alternative school that combined elements of est large group awareness training and Scientology. There, he befriended fellow-student Georg Ruthenberg. Frequent users of LSD at the time, they developed a following of other IPS students who would also use the drug. The two were accused of brainwashing the other students and causing them to behave subversively, which led to their dismissal from the school in 1976.

Not long after their dismissal from IPS, Beahm (who initially dubbed himself Bobby Pyn, as he is credited on the group's first recording, but soon jettisoned the moniker in favor of the more overtly menacing Darby Crash) and Ruthenberg (who now called himself Pat Smear) began trying to form a band, inspired by the untamed, amateurs-open aesthetic of pre-punk groups like The Runaways and The Stooges. Before they settled on the Germs as a band name, they called themselves "Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens", but had to use a shorter name because they didn't have enough money to put this on a T-shirt. After putting out an ad requesting "two untalented girls" who couldn't play their instruments, the two friends were joined by the suitably inexperienced bassist Terri Ryan, soon to be rechristened Lorna Doom, and drummer Belinda Carlisle, dubbed Dottie Danger, who never played a show with the group due to an extended bout of mononucleosis and went on to fame and fortune as both lead vocalist of The Go-Go's and an even more successful solo artist. She was quickly replaced with Becky Barton (aka Donna Rhia), who played three gigs with the group and recorded with them on their debut single, 1977's Forming.

Forming is regarded as the first true Los Angeles punk record:

The B-side to Forming was a song called Sex Boy. This live version of the song was recorded in 1977 but wasn't released till 1981, after Darby's death. In it, he goes: "I like it anywhere anytime that I can / I'm the fucking son of Superman":

Lexicon Devil, a three-song EP, was released in March 1978. This is the title track:

This is No God:

Here's a live version of Lexicon Devil:

(GI) is the only studio album they released, in October 1979. Darby Crash had originally wanted former Paul Revere & the Raiders vocalist Mark Lindsay to produce, but while Lindsay was willing to do the job, he turned out to be too expensive for Slash Records to afford. Joan Jett, a longtime friend and heroine of many of the band members since her time in the Runaways, was asked to produce the album.The opening track was the short What We Do Is Secret:

Another track from this album is We Must Bleed:

This is the largely autobiographical Richie Dagger's Crime:

This is Media Blitz:

Manimal has the great opening line, "I came into this world like a puzzled panther / Waiting to be caged":

This is from a live performance of Manimal:

Darby was gay but largely closeted to all but those who knew him closely. For a long time, in the proper Warholian tradition, he was a virgin. Songs like The Other Newest One portray his sexual awakening:

"My eyes meet yours in secret glance

Our bodies locked in ancient stance

You whisper something and I know it's good

You're acting crazy just like I knew you would"

Our Way declares:

"Down in the crowd we're down on our knees

Wanna get out but don't wanna succeed

We're the red-eyed legends of the night before

We're the dead mind babies of the T.V. war

Living in a rectory of sin

Against the currents, we all swim

Cageless wonders of sometime when

The paper icon's chase will end"

Finally, from this album, this is American Leather:

After (GI)'s release, the band would only undertake one more recording session, for the soundtrack album to the Al Pacino's 1980 film Cruising. The song, called Lions Share, was produced by Jack Nitzsche.

The Germs were captured famously in Penelope Spheeris' 1981 film The Decline of Western Civilization. The film features a characteristically hectic and sloppy live show in which Crash, heavily intoxicated and under the influence of several drugs, calls to the audience for beer, stumbles and crawls on the stage and slurs lyrics while members of the audience write on him with permanent markers. During an interview in the film, Crash also discusses taking drugs onstage to avoid feeling injuries from fan violence and "creeps out there with grudges". The Germs were well known for their violent, chaotic performances, often exacerbated by Crash's drug abuse, which increased steadily over the group's brief lifespan. All of this resulted in the band being banned from nearly every rock club in Los Angeles, which they nevertheless managed to avoid by playing under the alias G.I. (standing for "Germs Incognito"). By the point in which they were filmed for The Decline of Western Civilization, in late 1979, director Spheeris had to rent a soundstage called Cherrywood Studios in California in order for them to play a show outside of the club circuit from which they had been largely blacklisted.

Plagued by Crash's worsening heroin addiction, and live performances that now often ended prematurely due to violent conflict between audience members and the Los Angeles Police Department, the Germs disintegrated in April 1980, their last show being April 26 at the Fleetwood in Redondo Beach. Crash traveled to Britain, where he became heavily enamored with the music of Adam and the Ants, adopted an Adam Ant-inspired new look that included a mohawk, and put on a considerable amount of weight (some of which he eventually lost). Upon his return to the United States, Crash formed the very short-lived Darby Crash Band; Circle Jerks drummer Lucky Lehrer joined the ill-fated ensemble on the eve of their first live performance after Crash kicked out the drummer they'd rehearsed with during soundcheck and convinced Pat Smear to act as the group's guitarist. Smear described the band as "like the Germs, but with worse players".

On December 3, 1980, an over-sold Starwood hosted a final live show of the reunited Germs, including drummer Don Bolles. Fans and those who were present that night consider the performance possibly the best the group ever gave. From it, here's Beyond Hurt, Beyond Help:

... And this is Out Of Time:

Crash committed suicide by intentional heroin overdose on December 7, 1980, in a house in the Mid-Wilshire section of Hollywood, California. According to SPIN magazine, apocryphal lore has Crash attempting to write "Here lies Darby Crash" on the wall as he lay dying, but not finishing. In reality, he wrote a short note to Darby Crash Band bassist David "Bosco" Danford that stated, "My life, my leather, my love goes to Bosco."

His death was largely overshadowed by that of John Lennon, who was killed by Mark David Chapman in New York just one day after Crash's suicide. His friend Casey Cola Hopkins was with him that night, at her mother's main house. Casey was supposed to have died with him in the coach house (which was a converted garage) that night as part of a supposed death pact, but ended up surviving; her heart stopped for a while in the night, but she woke up with Crash's body in her arms. She was subsequently committed to an asylum.

So, what was the Germs' legacy? Uncouth and deafening, American punk was never intended to become an heirloom genre. Some bands have stood the test of time regardless - the Ramones and hardcore heroes Minor Threat are two whose recorded works are undiminished by time and taste.

Like their LA peers the Circle Jerks and Fear, the Germs were an influential band, but their music wasn't nearly the most resonant thing about them. They were lurid, out of control and funny, as anyone who has seen Penelope Spheeris' landmark film, The Decline of Western Civilization, will attest.

The Germs' only album, (GI), in 1979, remains a landmark record for what it meant, not for what it sounded like. Its speed and sense of mission would influence the next generation of hardcore punks and its visuals almost single-handedly kicked off the revolution in punk graphics away from London's ransom-note template.

To the meaning-hungry, secrecy-loving, symbol-embracing punks, the Germs' enigmatic blue circle came to represent both the band's simplicity and complexity. Really, though, the Germs were less a band than a black hole around which sticky chaos could orbit.