Tim Adams in today’s Observer on Darby Crash and The Germs:
In 1975, Paul Beahm, a 17-year-old, high-school dropout from West Los Angeles, whose brother had been murdered over a drug deal and whose stepfather had died unexpectedly three years earlier, devised a plan to make himself immortal. The plan would have the timeframe of his hero David Bowie’s apocalyptic anthem ‘Five Years’. It went like this: Beahm would form a band with his mates, spend a couple of years making it a cultish, outrageous live act, release one great album and then commit suicide to secure his legend.
Beahm proved himself as good as his word. His band, the Germs, with Beahm performing under the name Darby Crash, were, for a while, the most infamous punk band on the West Coast. By 1978, their appearances were occasions of such mayhem that they were routinely broken up by riot police. The Germs’ only album, (GI) (Germs Incognito), released in 1979, was widely acclaimed as a brutal masterpiece (an ‘aural holocaust,’ the LA Times suggested). And, as planned, on 7 December 1980, Darby formed a suicide pact with his then girlfriend, Casey Cola. They lay down together in her mother’s back room and injected themselves with the $400-worth of heroin they had bought with the last of their rent money. Crash died, Cola survived.
The one thing that did not go according to plan, however, was the timing of Darby Crash’s self-mythologising exit. Icons are not supposed to be upstaged, but on the day after Crash killed himself, John Lennon was murdered in Central Park and the world found a more genuine legend to mourn. …
…Hardly a day went by without Crash telling anyone who would listen of his five-year plan, but he was so full of life that people hardly believed him.
As Pat Smear subsequently recalled: ‘Darby was very specific about how and when he was going to kill himself. When we were rehearsing for the reunion show he said, “The only reason I’m doing this is to get money to get enough heroin to kill myself with.” He’d said that so many times I just said, “Oh, right…” and didn’t think about it any more.’
Crash’s Nancy Spungen was Casey Cola. In a book about his life that Brendan Mullen put together, she remembered that last night with a horrible kind of teenage naivety. ‘Both of us were like, “Are you sure?” “Are you sure?” “Yes, I’m sure, if you’re going to do it.” It was like putting two kids in a room and they end up maybe doing something they wouldn’t do alone… he hit me up first and he said, “Are you OK?” and I said, “Um… yeah.” I was sitting up and he put his hand at the small of my back and said, “Just hold it, stay there - just wait for me OK?” He held me up for a second, then he hit himself up; then he laid himself against the wall and pulled me to him. It was almost like he forgot what he was going to do and then he realised, and he said, “Wait a minute”, then he kissed me and said, “Well, bye.” Everything was cool, both of us were in agreement and we were happy with what we were doing.’ …
Further: 3:AM’s 2002 interview with Brendan Mullen, author of Lexicon Devil / Official website / What We Do Is Secret / Decline Of Western Civilization parts one and two
First posted: Sunday, August 24th, 2008.
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