| Lux Interior - The Cramps |
| LUX INTERIOR Born Erick Purkhiser October 21st, 1946 Stow, Ohio USA. He died on February 4, 2009 Glendale, California 4th February 2009. MANY MAY be cult, but few are The Chosen. The Six foot 3 pencil thin Lux Interior will go down in rock folklore for as long as the Cramps records are printed and the memorys of his captivating live performances are still in living memory, and then some. Along with Iggy who was a big inspiration Lux Interior (real name Erick Lee Purkiser) with his weird 'n' wacky red wine drinking showmanship will never be forgotten. His singing wasn't bad either, imagine a crooning hell hound whose infamous vocalisation and original interpretations of the songs he put out captures subversion in its most raw state. Lux detected in all those shrieks and licks and bip-bop-booms from long gone obscurities was the place he could insert his own perceptions of disarray back into what he liked to call "the landscape of rock and roll". "Because rock and roll is a whole landscape, it takes you from here to there. And you can't look at that as great 'art. It's not that soclalised; it's an outlaw art. And you can't judge it unless you're living a rock and roll lifestyle either." Lux Interior lived that rock 'n' roll lifestyle. Marc Bolan was Interior's idol. In a 1980 interview he declared: "I saw them in Cleveland where Bolan came on weighting 300 pounds, wearing this batwing costume and beating his guitar with a whip - Holy Shit! I thought, this guy is my IDOL. Driving home, I was singing better than he had onstage, so trying to form a group started to seem natural". His other love in life besides collecting records and cameras was Poison Ivy the Cramps sexy guitarist and partner in crime. They met in psychedelic Sacramento, California circa '72 whence Interior had fled from his home lair in Stow, central Ohio in search of drugs. Lux had appointed himself a psychedelic guru - "all you need is enough drugs" - and during the course of one ordinary working day, he picked up a hitchhiker who went by the name of Ivy Rorschach (real name Kristy Marlana Wallace). As says Lux, "plastic and acid were my big influences when I first met Ivy in California. I've just always liked obscure things, strange names - and once I found rockabilly I just couldn't listen to anything else." The cosmic couple felt the magic receding from mushrooms, however. Ivy was infatuated with the Dolls. "But I never saw them - it was all from reading Rock Scene magazine." In autumn of 1975 Ivy and Lux re-Iocated to New York, they were distressed to discover that not only were the Dolls defunct but that they'd also been just these one-time wonder weirdos. Lux took a job as sales clerk in a record shop, and resolved to confine his lusty ambitions to lunchtime confidences. " In the way of these things, his fellow disc-sacker was one Bryan Gregory of Detroit, Michigan.- who had as much enthusiasm as he did. Within three days Gregory had an $85 guitar and Lux had a band. Ivy christened the band late one night while she fixated on a Kinks LP cover an tried to think of something kinky, something warped. As any American female past puberty will teII you, "the cramps" has always been pan-US teen talk for what stiffer upper" lips term "period pains". The Cramps came screaming into the rock world without rust behind their ears. But their lust for the stagelight stunk with the rawness of punk - Interior spent a good two years attempting Iggys 'New Kind Of Kick' - and with every shift of gear a little glitterdust flew. Though The Cramps auditioned at the then - mecca CBGB's the day after Halloween,1976, it took until the following summer of '77 for them to settle on Nick Knox as a permanent drummer. Since all Lux did after he stopped painting back in 1970 was "collect records, listen to records and make tapes of records to play" plus pick up on the day-to-day debris of the counterculture's collapse, there was a lot to filter into the band. And an entire bibliography of off-the-wall Cramp-worthy stuff to cover. Jimmy Seward's 'Rock On The Moon, The Sonics 'Strychnine', Little Willie John's 'Fever', Tommy James' 'Hanky Panky', Johnny Burnette's 'Tear It Up'. The first song The Cramps ever de constructed was 'Quick Joey Small' - its successor; 'Louie Louie'. The chaotic early days of ten songs and 20 minute sets were a bit over the top for some. In 1978; a freeze-out by the Big Apple's bigheaded No Wave chic set sent The Cramps back West, but on they soldiered. And soon they were headlining to ecstatic reviews at - wait for it - Napa State Mental Hospital!!! Read on: "The audience went beserk and it was pogo city all over again. I've never seen so much audience participation - one patient went over to the superintendant and said, These guys look like they just got out of T-Unit, the super later told me, is where they keep the 'lifers. During an incisive 'What's Behind The Mask', one lively you lady jumped on Lux's back and held on for the whole song, screaming melodically into the mike. Later the same little honey grabbed the mike and made off with Lux in hot pursuit. But the greatest 'thing was to see all these overweight, middle-aged women holding handbags and doing totally liberated pogos. What an audience!" - Howle Klein's 1978 live review of the gig. It was during 1979: The Cramps meet Miles Copeland who bank rolls their first visit to England as support to The Police and - more importantly - the recording of 20 tracks in historic Memphis, under the directorial hand of Big Star / Box Tops Alex Chilton. No signed contract or release date was finalised but Copeland "demonstrated his commitment" by reissuing the tracks the band had previously recorded and pressed themselves on a 'Gravest Hits' EP. 1980 saw the Chilton-helmed LP makes its debut as 'Songs The Lord Taught Us', both one giant step backwards for mankind and - as Lux so hotly breathes on the album - "the hottest thing from the North to come out of the South". Gregory by now had been dissolusioned and left the band not before Lux had held him by his feet dangling from 17 story building just to see what it felt like. After more line up changes around the ever present Interior/Rorschach core and lots of touring with productive releases and some critical aclaim in the music press 'Songs The Lord Taught Us' had shipped 50,000 copies and the just-released 'Psychedelic Jungle' in 1981 had sold out an initial pressing of 45,000. Things were looking up for the weird and wacky Cramps. However prior to the release of 'Off The Bone' in 1983 saw the band involved in a $1.1 million damages suit against Miles Copeland and his various labels, alleging they have "generally thwarted the Industry growth" of the group. And also allege that they have never been paid a sum of $10,000 which they claim was promised them upon inking the original IRS pact in July of '79. They "want out of their binder and they pledge to return all money paid them by Copeland In return for their recorded masters and song copyrights,' says their lawyer Jay Jenkins. The ensuing court case not only held up the bands creative edge it prevented Lux and co from releasing anything until later that year when they recorded 'Smell of Female' live at New York's Peppermint Lounge; In 1985 the Cramps recorded a one-off track for the horror movie The Return of the Living Dead called "Surfin' Dead", With the release of 1986's 'A Date With Elvis', the Cramps permanently added a bass guitar to the mix, but had trouble finding a suitable player, so Ivy temporarily filled in as the band's bassist. The album featured an increased focus on sexual double entendre, and met with differing fates on either side of the Atlantic: in Europe, it sold over 250,000 copies, while in the U.S. the band had difficulty finding a record company prepared to release it, It was not until 1986 that the Cramps found a suitable permanent bass player: Candy del Mar (of Satan's Cheerleaders), who made her recorded debut on the raw live album 'Rockin n Reelin in Auckland New Zealand', which was followed by the studio album 'Stay Sick' in 1990. Knox left in 1991 despite this the Cramps hit the top 40 singles chart in the UK for the first and only time with "Bikini Girls with Machine Guns"; Ivy posed as such both on the cover of the single and in the promotional video for the song. The Cramps went on to record more albums and singles throughout the 1990s, for various labels and with varying degrees of success. In 1995 The Cramps appeared on the TV-series Beverly Hills, 90210 in the Halloween episode "Gypsies, Cramps and Fleas." They played 2 songs in the show: "Mean Machine" and "Strange Love." Lux started the song by saying "Hey girls and ghouls, ready to wake up the dead?". In 2002 Lux Interior performed the voice of a character on the children's television show SpongeBob SquarePants he was the lead singer of an all-bird rock band called the Bird Brains. Lux and Cramps continued to tour sporadically during the last decade and played their last European tour in 2006. They never really hit it off in the mainstream charts but had a fierce and very loyal cult fanbase who guranteed packed houses everywhere they played. Lux and Ivy when not touring resided in a Glendale Arabian styled apartment overlooking the Haunted House mansion in the former Allied Artists movie studios. In honor of the excess of The Cramps, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has on display a shattered bass drum head that Lux's head went through during a live show. On February 4, 2009 at 4:40 AM PST, Lux Interior died at the Glendale Memorial Hospital from a pre-existing heart condition. He was 62. Once seen never forgotten!!!! Peter Don't Care You can sign a condolence book at the official Cramps site below www.thecramps.com |
