It was the fall of 1990, less than a month after I had caught a Butthole Surfers show at the notorious Lyric Theater on 42nd St. in Manhattan. (I suppose the Danceteria didn’t invite them back, haha) Poison Idea was playing in a small club with a two foot high stage that was so narrow that the gargantuan band members barely fit on it. These guys were said to collectively weigh over a ton at one point. I stood in the front, two feet away from Tom “Pig Champion” Roberts whose guitar looked tiny in his massive arms. Jerry A. was on his best behavior although his fire breathing act probably singed a few locks off some spiky haired members of the audience. He was giving high fives in the crowd so I reached out and he shook my hand; it was like shaking hands with a grizzly bear. There is no sense in describing the music but a Poison Idea concert was like being in the middle of a cyclone of fire. It was ferocious, nihilistic rage to the extreme and it felt so goddamn good. There is a strand of the punk counter culture that starts with Iggy Pop and The Stooges, connects them to Johnny Thunders and the Dead Boys, The Germs, and GG Allin; Poison Idead sits comfortably in that lineage. I hate to get mystical sounding about it, but there is a transcendental state of ecstasy that can be achieved by abandoning all caution, spinning wildly out of control.
In the first volume of Jerry A. Lang’s autobiography Black Heart Fades Blue he tells us about his troubled childhood and teenage years, the time when he moved to Portland, Oregon and got involved in the punk and underground music scene. He also tells us about his precocious encounters with drugs, alcohol, sex, and violence. Volume two picks up where that left off. As Poison Idea’s popularity grew, so did their good and bad times, and so did their reputation as being a problem child of the music industry. But this book isn’t about the band so much as it about Jerry A. It’s not that he denies the importance of the other people in his life; it’s just that he knows their version of events won’t match his and he doesn’t want to speak for them. So he makes sure that we know that this is how he sees his life as only he can and leaves it at that.
The story isn’t anything unique. Most rock bands follow the same path of putting out records, building a following, partying to an excessive degree, and then going into decline as their drug habits take over. The most unique thing about Jerry A.’s story is how high he got and low he sank. Jerry A.’s intentions were to pick up where Darby Crash, lead singer of The Germs, left off. That meant pushing all limitations in terms of lifestyle and music well beyond what anybody had done previously. One of the songs on Poison Idea’s War All the Time LP was called “Romantic Self Destruction.” The catch here is that Jerry A. was not only physically bigger and stronger than most other rock stars, but he was also made of sturdier material than most other people. On top of that he had a complex personality, a strong mind, and a surprising awareness of morality and social justice that helped him navigate through the scummiest of the scum pits in the world. Those finer aspects of his mind included appreciation for art and literature, a wide ranging taste in music, a love of nature, a curiosity about the world and its variety of cultures, a willingness to defend outsiders and misfits, a respect for women’s rights, and an anti-bigotry stance on issues of race and gender issues. Sounds like one great guy.
Not so fast. As Jerry A.’s life spun out of control, mostly because of drugs, alcohol, and violence, those refined attitudes receded into the background. But they never entirely disappeared and that is the key to understanding where this autobiography is going.
As Poison Idea toured America, Europe, and Japan, the band was having a non-stop party. Jerry A. loved drinking; he could chug a whole quart of whisky without taking a breath. But on top of that he, and other band members too, got hooked on heroin. Drugs and alcohol are fun until they aren’t. They went from being a band that used drugs to drug users who had a band to support their habits. Things took a nasty turn for the worse. The combination of drunkenness, heroin withdrawal, and diabetes resulted in some disgusting injuries and illness and a couple near death experiences resulting from overdoses. Jerry A. tried to clean up with Alcoholics Anonymous and methadone and has some interesting things to say about what a sleazy grift those clinics and therapy groups are. To support himself, he got a job as a professional jizz mopper in a porn store. Then just when you think he had hit rock bottom, he sinks even lower as the methadone doesn’t help and he turns to stealing and ripping off drug dealers to get his fixes. Jerry A., along with Pig Champion, end up homeless at one point. As far as stories about junkies go, there isn’t anything too unique about these events. It’s just that the story is told with the same intensity and power that Jerry A. put into his music. This is the kind of harrowing literature that makes you feel like you’ve been kicked in the balls with a steel toed boot. As far as accounts of heroin addiction go, this autobiography is in league with William S. Burroughs and Jim Carroll. It’s tempting to say it might even surpass the works of those authors in terms of their impact on the reader.
This subject matter may be too much for some to handle. The abrasive details are described in a smooth, easy going writing style though. The writing itself is not challenging although there are some flaws. Jerry A. sometimes repeats information as if he forgot that he has already told us some of his stories before; this is no big deal though because he doesn’t dwell on these details for so long that it ruins the narrative. Some of the sequencing can be a little disordered too. In one chapter he’s homeless, in the next he’s living in an apartment. At the beginning of a chapter he goes to the methadone clinic and then he shoots up heroin a few paragraphs later. It’s like he wrote everything down in the order that he remembered it rather than putting into an organized timeline. Also, his unwillingness to write about people he was close to leaves some huge gaps in the story, but he has his reasons for doing this and as a reader, we have to understand where he’s coming from.
None of those flaws are bad enough to make this unworthy of reading. What Jerry A. does get right is what matters most. This isn’t a work of self-aggrandizement nor is it a work of self-pity. It is neither a work of self-celebration nor is it a work of self-hatred. He obviously regrets a lot of what he did, but he writes in such a calm and detached manner that presents us with nothing but the facts, or at least the facts as he understands them to be. This is a work of self-evaluation, like a surgeon who removed a tumor from his own body and then studies it under a microscope as objectively as he possibly can. This is the kind of book a complete fuck up would write when they decide to turn their life around and make themselves into something better. There is an undercurrent of self-respect here and an attempt to reclaim some sense of dignity after surviving a hurricane of self abuse.
Watching somebody self destruct isn’t pleasant. You shouldn’t expect it to be. You wouldn’t read a book like this for simple entertainment though. Black Heart Fades Blue tell Poison Idea fans a lot of what they need to know if they ever wondered where this band was coming from. Jerry A.’s childhood was nothing to envy. We see how he grew up without parental guidance or restraint, had some intense experiences at a young age, and then spent his life in reckless abandonment, seeking out any experience more intense than the last. Or maybe he was trying to numb the pain with heroin and alcohol then trying to undo the numbness with sex, violence, and music, an eternally repeating cycle that fed addictions of all kinds. You can feel sorry for his bad childhood if you choose, though I don’t think he wants that. One thing is certain: if he hadn’t grown up the way he did we might never have been blessed with one of the greatest hardcore punk bands that ever existed, if not THE best. Poison Idea named their first LP Kings of Punk and they earned their right to that title. And if you think that’s all there is to this story, than remember that hitting rock bottom always offers the opportunity for redemption. Be sure to read volume three of these memoirs for that part of the story if you haven’t already.
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