Germs - The punk germs of hardcore

The Germs (Los Angeles, 1977-1980) played a historic role in bringing the punk of London's Sex Pistols to America, where it would go on to morph into Californian hardcore - a genre that, only at that point, people realized coincided with the music already invented back in 1975 by New York's Ramones, music now revisited, however, in a tragic, "heavy" key rather than its original comic, pop one.

Not only that. By making the music dependent on expressive urgency rather than the other way around, the Germs were an apparently mono-stylistic band that, in fact, practiced a plurality of different and sometimes opposite styles: punk, hardcore, dark, new wave, grunge were among the veins they pursued. Veins that they each, often decisively, helped to invent.

In 1977, Los Angeles was overrun with third- or fourth-generation hard rockers (after Deep Purple, Aerosmith and AC/DC, it was now Van Halen's turn). The Germs changed the face of the city forever, turning it into the home — the one true home — first of hardcore and later of speed and thrash metal. This mattered as much socially as musically: the punk, the nihilist, the asocial, the resigned figure (rather than the rebel or eccentric of rock'n'roll legend) became a hugely present figure in the collective imagination of an entire generation of teenagers; an imagination that would go on to change its forms, but not its underlying concept of apathetic nihilism, across the generations that followed.

Properly speaking, America — partly thanks to symbols like the Germs — would never really see punk in the English aesthetic sense: hardcore is as opposed to punk as the outer is to the inner; it concerns inwardness rather than form, reflection rather than the physical, nature rather than history. Punk is anarchic, hardcore is anarch. Punk arrives at nihilism, hardcore takes it as a given. Punk arrives at suicide; hardcore starts from the post-mortem, from innate impotence. In 1977 this was still only a seed, and it wouldn't become fully manifest until the third generation of hardcore, in the mid-Eighties, the generation of Squirrel Bait, the one that would definitively usher in the post-hardcore era. Proof of this lies in the sum of contradictions and uncertainties that define the Germs phenomenon; contradictions and uncertainties that nonetheless didn't stop them from being the first to institutionalize the hardcore genre.

Naturally, by the late Seventies Los Angeles already had a punk humus (inspired above all, besides the Ramones, by the English Damned): the Zeros (formed in '76), the Weirdos, but above all Fear, as well as the city's various clubs (like the Whisky), bear witness to that. Elsewhere across America, too, there were pockets of extreme music: the Misfits in New Jersey, for instance. The Germs didn't come out of nowhere; still, they were the first to flesh out the hardcore genre into a programmatic album, contradictions and all (the same goes for both Fear and the Misfits, bands that formed before or alongside the Germs but only managed to release an album of their own in the early Eighties; bands that, moreover, were playing an extraordinary, alternative strain of hardcore before the genre had technically even been born).

Even the lives and outlook on life of the kids who would form the Germs are significant, and valid for an entire generation whose legacy every generation since has had to reckon with. Jan Paul Beahm (later Darby Crash) and George Ruthen (later Pat Smear) were — like virtually every future hardcore kid — two prep-school boys (born in 1958), sons of the middle class (unlike the English punks, who were working-class kids, the very subject and audience of their own songs). This is essential to understanding the social, and therefore experiential, and therefore artistic, differences between punk and hardcore.

In the Germs, and later in hardcore, there's no social claim whatsoever, no desire for redemption, no discomfort that isn't purely psychological and self-inflicted: both punks and hardcore kids were shaped by extreme life experiences; the point is that while the former reacted with extroversion, the latter reacted with its opposite, introversion.

In order to grasp this total unleashing of every symbolic force, a man must already have reached the peak of his own self-alienation, which seeks to express itself symbolically through those very forces.

Darby Crash, whatever era he had been born into, whatever he might have gone through, would have been exactly the same: his problem, his whole point, was inherent to his personality — it was the personality itself. Beyond time and beyond any other conditioning, he was a force of nature. He satisfied that force through homosexuality, alcoholism and heroin addiction. He was all the more fragile and delicate the more irreducibly and pathologically averse he was to conforming — not just to any pre-established state, but to any state whatsoever. Perpetually dissatisfied, uneasy, on edge. This led him not so much to neurosis as to depression and a fatal sense of dismay. In order to prolong or, in some meagre way, give purpose to his existence, he needed to find an expressive form equal to that burden; his good fortune, and his death sentence, was finding that expressive form at eighteen, in early '77, on a television show: they were playing the Sex Pistols.

His close friend Pat Smear accompanied Crash's voice — the prototype of every hardcore voice, that is, within the realm of non-singing, less sing-song than Rotten's punk delivery, less conversational, more throat-shredding, deeper, less self-destructive, already dead and gone — with an out-of-tune, exhausted, untrained guitar.

A young blonde girl, somewhere between lived experience and pure pose, dressed at first like a London punkette and soon enough a forerunner of dark fashion, Lorna Doom revolutionized the use of the bass on a grand scale while playing it in the Germs; her bass — fast, powerful, booming, far more than a mere rhythmic instrument, but an atmospheric one — would become a reference point for hardcore (speed), for dark/new wave (depressive atmosphere), and for metal (power) alike.

Don Bolles on drums (whose use of the hi-hat and cymbals in general he pushed to the extreme) completed the definitive shift from the New York Dolls' rock'n'roll revivalism, and from the Sex Pistols' far milder punk, into hardcore. The Ramones had already gotten there in terms of speed; what they lacked was power and system.

Through photos and songs, Darby Crash left us all the elements needed to reconstruct his complicated and uncertain artistic path (his existential path, by contrast — the nihilism and self-destruction — was about as ruthlessly solid as it gets): after all, he found himself founding a new genre (hardcore) at the very moment the newest genre of all, punk, had just turned the entire world upside down. It's as if he either couldn't manage, or found it too confining — already an institutionalized thing — to simply play punk. What's more, punk, however much it pushed things to extremes, had still remained within the song form. Hardcore, through the sheer length of its tracks, the stacking of miniature songs within an equally miniature song, melody or chorus never sought out but thrown in here and there almost incidentally, and lyrics that read practically like prose — enough words to fill a whole pop album crammed into thirty seconds — did everything it could to reject the song form too. What the Germs achieved can be considered nothing short of miraculous: they were supposed to be the last English punk band, and instead became the first American hardcore band. And they did so mostly by instinct, not by design, unlike the Sex Pistols. After the Germs, in fact, it would take bands like Circle Jerks and D.R.I. to finally nail down the genre's boundaries once and for all. After the Sex Pistols, no other punk band would be necessary.

The Ramones are the fathers of the Sex Pistols, but not of punk; the Sex Pistols are the fathers of the Germs, but not of hardcore. The Ramones' innovations (besides the look and the lyrics) were twofold: extremely short songs (one minute) and guitars that shunned any kind of solo, confined instead to a brutally violent accompaniment. The Sex Pistols carried on with that understated rhythm section, but, compared to the Ramones, added — through Johnny Rotten — the most systematically extreme voice heard up to that point (it's Rotten's throat that makes the Sex Pistols' songs). What's more, with "Anarchy in the U.K.", the Sex Pistols gave rock music its most socially significant song: for the first time in many thousands of years, man, the people, pop, punk, laid claim to its own self-destructive will. Before '77 the phenomenon was confined to individuals or otherwise small circles; after '77 it would become a fashion; by the Eighties, the very nature one started from.

The Germs added to the violence of the Ramones' guitar and Rotten's voice the first truly and systematically violent and powerful rhythm section in the history of rock. In terms of sheer power, if the Ramones are worth 1 (the guitar), and so are the Sex Pistols (the voice), the Germs — like hardcore itself, and that's precisely why they're its fathers — are worth 4 (voice, guitar, bass, drums). The Germs, moreover, made the shift from society or objectivity to the individual, to introspection (hence lyrics that, like all hardcore lyrics, aren't manifestos for anything, but rather acts of self-crucifixion).

Even just from the lyrics — among the few in the whole of rock actually worth reading (which isn't meant to devalue all those bands who deliberately use banal lyrics to foreground the music) — the Germs already set themselves apart quite clearly from the Sex Pistols. For one thing, they're not against anything: like all the hardcore that followed, it's not against anyone, it doesn't speak to anyone; its sole aim is self-reflection, self-immolation. Crash tries to bring order to the reality around him by creating it: that is, he doesn't describe things that happened, but things he will go on to do. Once again, nature prevails over history. And perhaps that's precisely the curse of Crash's generation: being totally free to build and run their own tomorrow; a totality that crushes, that paralyzes. Finally, as a kind of closing note, Crash pairs these reminders for tomorrow with an aphorism — concept in place of image, deductive.

The Germs lasted less than three years: back then, punk had barely come into being, and after them would come hardcore, goth and grunge. Even outwardly, they seem to have prophesied all of these movements. You won't find a single photo of Crash in which he looks recognizable. The gaze, at least, stays the same; for the rest — and it's not just a matter of look but also of "aura" — he moves from moikan-punk, to full-on goth, to the oxymoronically casual look of hardcore, to various glam touches, to nazi-fascist imagery, to grunge's ripped jeans; from blond to dark-haired, from fat to thin. Mentioning all these elements here isn't a matter of frivolous detail, but a necessary duty for fully understanding the deep spirit that hovers around every Germs song. Crash was dissatisfied with every outfit, just as he was with every song, every man and every woman (and not only on a sexual level), every drug as much as himself, with England (where he would move in 1980) as much as with America. Had he not killed himself on December 7, 1980 with a terrifying dose of heroin, the Germs, given all these diverging forces (within one and the same personality!), would have fallen apart anyway.

Crash's suicide (at 22) deserves attention. First, because it stands as almost a unique case within hardcore (a genre of survival rather than rupture, a genre of reflection rather than action, a genre of post-mortem rather than life). Second, because the way it happened makes clear just how alien Crash, and hardcore as a whole, were to the idea of harming anyone else. On December 7, 1980, Crash got a $400 loan (which alone shows how little the hardcore trade and the fame he'd achieved were actually paying off...), and spent it all on heroin. He then went with a female companion to a squalid apartment. After the usual dose, he left the girl on the bed and, in the bathroom, injected himself with the lethal dose: before dying, he dragged himself to the wall, managing only to write "Here lies Derby C." Crash killed himself because of that nature of his, the very nature that would define every hardcore musician to come, but which he, as the first example, failed to fully embody, remaining caught in confusion and indecision between punk, hardcore and goth. He, the ultimate figure of resignation, killed himself more out of helplessness than resignation. It was only a coincidence, not emulation, that Sid Vicious, born a year earlier (in '57), had died the previous year, himself not yet 22.

The Germs debuted in July '77 with the single "Forming/Sex Boy".

"Forming" (3:03) is a strange song, one that could sit comfortably among the most alienated American new wave, yet already foreshadowing industrial post-punk, with its atonal, understated, obsessively repeated pulse, bass and drums smothered in the background and a disoriented guitar doing its best to prop up the voice of an ex-punk already past the point of no return. Folk music for anyone who has reached the most inhuman side of the nuclear age armed with nothing but the sheer, personal tedium of life.

"Sex Boy" (2:12) is a literally limbic live recording; you can barely hear anything: faint, bloodless, half-hearted rustlings, nothing more. The sparse audience, the sparse, listless souls around, also drown out the little that is intelligible, that has any life to it. Objectively, it's garbage; it's a mystery that it could have been recorded and released as a debut. For the rest, it's a kind of metaphysical asceticism.

The Germs started making music with the EP Lexicon Devil, released in May 1978.

"Lexicon Devil" (2:03) is Sex Pistols-style punk pushed just a bit further, with a few rhythmic and vocal peaks reminiscent of early Wire.

"Circle One" (1:46) carries on pushing punk to its extreme, already hinting at a betrayal of the genre by overtaking it.

"No God" (1:52) opens with a couple of guitar scratches that Metallica would later echo in many of their epic semi-acoustic intros; it then continues with a series of fleeting ideas, propped up by a Crash howling well above the punk average and a particularly solid guitar riff.

In October 1979 came (GI), the most important album in all of hardcore — regardless of whether or not it's the best one — and one of the most important in all of rock, if we define as such those albums that open up a sub-genre and enrich, and thereby allow the survival of, the rock genre itself. The album was produced (as a kind of spiritual mother figure, or an outside, partly ironic point of reference) by Joan Jett of the Runaways. Fifteen tracks, 28 minutes (averaging under two minutes per song), plus a closing 9-minute progression.

"What We Do Is Secret" (0:42) is the quintessence of hardcore — its brevity alone says as much. The strength of the composition lies in the rhythm section: full-bodied and fast in a way never heard before. Then come the verse and the drawn-out, full-throttle chorus, with Crash already unveiling, even here, a moving melodic aftertaste.

"Communist Eyes" (2:13) at times retains the power and immediacy of the opening track, at times it's still close to punk, of which — given a bass so sulfurous — it would represent the goth strand. On the other hand, Crash, with his vocal inventions (here given over to long, despairing howls), and Smear, with certain precious guitar flourishes (reaching for a touch of pathos whenever Crash doesn't get there first), seem to transcend genre altogether: too hardcore for punk, too punk for goth.

"Land Of Treason" (2:09) is sublime, pure hardcore: no verses, no choruses, just a continuous, searing babble that could, without ever losing tension, go on forever. After tracks like this, you realize just how wasteful it is to buy 90% of the records you actually buy.

"Richie Dagger's Crime" (1:55) is built on punk stop-starts (Crash's voice here is deliberately ugly: meant to throw back in your face, to unsettle, to mock, all things proper to punk), interspersed with a more appealing guitar-and-voice-only breakaway that foreshadows the Meat Puppets' splendid country-hardcore. As a punk song, it's satirical — unusual for Crash, who always leaned toward tragic or intimate tones (denoting great sensitivity).

"Strange Notes" (1:50) is hardcore, and if it sounds cheap, consider that this very cheapness is what invented the genre. Lorna Doom's bass ends up doing the singing (the wailing), in the best tradition of the '80s, already fully on display here.

"American Leather" (1:09) is carried by Crash's high-tension semi-spoken delivery, whose words (and perhaps the meaning behind them) come across as unintelligible, sometimes too swallowed, sometimes too stretched out: unlike punk, whose manifestos end up being all too comprehensible. Hardcore is the only rock genre made for screaming: the throat is the fourth instrument of suffering. Punk, essentially, doesn't scream, isn't unintelligible, doesn't wail (it doesn't cry): it complains (it protests — hence the need to be understood; a need caused by a social or individual point of reference, a reference that hardcore solitude for the most part lacks).

"Lexicon Devil" (1:42) is the track on the EP skillfully translated from punk into hardcore (just compare the respective lengths of the two versions).

"Manimal" (2:11) stretches out the hardcore formula into a composition that might seem longer but also cooler, until it reaches a touch of genius: Crash's choral, war-cry-like scream, literally the equivalent of Ennio Morricone's epic western scores. A gem of sensitivity and artistic feeling, this device will mean a great deal for the Dead Kennedys, and for Jello Biafra's vocal approach in particular.

"Our Way" (1:57) is built on an obsessive, moving melodicism; a hardcore track in ralenti where Smear's syncopated, out-of-tune guitar (already grunge) emerges: from TSOL to Bad Religion, whenever hardcore needs to be especially inspired by lyricism, this will be the most sincere and harrowing starting point.

"We Must Bleed" (3:01) is a kind of explosive precipice that, given the sheer power of its structures and the obsessiveness of the drums and bass, could already pass for speed metal (which is exactly why Metallica are the opposite of Iron Maiden…). The ending, if anything even more incendiary, with Crash's throat ending up choking on itself, is the only possible explanation for the excesses of Nirvana tracks like "Territorial Pissings".

"Media Blitz" (1:30) is, after "What We Do Is Secret" and "Land Of Treason", yet another masterpiece. This time we're in Cheap Trick territory, which, set to hardcore tempo, delivers the most nostalgic and moving sound of the entire Eighties.

"The Other Newest One" (2:45) is the fifth masterpiece. A hardcore ballad whose presence seems able to help you bear any possible misfortune. "You're not the first you're not the last/ Another day another crash", recites Crash (who perhaps not entirely unintentionally, and more than once, ends up turning himself into his own negative myth): the line is what remains to us, like a testament, of his passage through this world.

"Let's Pretend" (2:32) is bread (particularly poisonous bread, mind you), but the kind of bread on which a whole genre was built.

"Dragon Lady" (1:37): here guitar and voice are the real protagonists, answering each other in a lament of beauty drawn from having lived through endless hardships.

"The Slave" (1:02) usefully, extremely (again thanks to Crash's expressionistic vocal range) restates the ABCs of the genre.

"Shut Down" [Annihilation Man] (9:39) was supposed to be the more or less psychedelic, more or less progressive epic of the moment. Instead, nothing like it had been heard since "White Light/White Heat" in terms of symphonic noise harnessed for expression. The Germs bring the Velvet Underground into the punk era, bring noise into punk. The Germs invent Sonic Youth. More specifically, from the individual dissonances (and violence: Crash just screams) of this composition the most extreme grunge bands will draw their inspiration: Melvins, Mudhoney, Babes In Toyland. The only composition of the era comparable to this anti-suite suite is "Sex Bomb" by Flipper. The inhuman principle underlying the whole track is later scattered from the garage-industrial of Chrome to the acid blues-punk of the Birthday Party. Smear, by playing virtually no notes, proves himself a fundamental architect of instrumental innovation, and, together with the other musicians, shows that the old line about hardcore bands not being able to play only holds for a few frustrated, dried-up technicians.

The Germs were an experiential shock for all four of those guys. The Germs answered to no one. Crash had, at most, a kind of spiritual superiority (or simply managed to put into words what the others kept bottled up inside). They broke up out of a sort of instinct, expressed through a silent decadence or a latent fear. The only one who didn't want the split, the only one who wanted to look death in the face, must have been Crash, who (also) for that reason took his own life. For the others, the band's breakup was like a kind of unconscious renunciation of suicide, an instinctive (even if inertia-driven) preservation of life.

For years, busy processing the grief (their own personal grief: they were alive, yet had already seen themselves as dead), nothing was heard of Pat Smear, Lorna Doom, or Don Bolles. Then, in a kind of helpless and sterile aftermath, a necessary vice, we find: Pat Smear supporting the grunge movement, first alone with Pat Ruthensmear (1988) and So You Fell In Love With A Musician (1992), then with Nirvana — whom he accompanied on their final tour, unknown to everyone except, as it were, their own children — and, unfortunately, with Foo Fighters; Don Bolles playing metal with Celebrity Skin; Lorna Doom, like her friend (and the Germs' second drummer: the first had been the gorgeous Belinda Carlisle) Donna Rhia, having been among the very first examples of what would become the femme fatale maudite of the Eighties, chose to lick her more senile wounds in total anonymity.

Ride the wave of great music

Add OndaRock to your favorite sources on Google Discover. Don't miss our reviews, milestones and latest news straight in your feed.

Follow on Google