Rozz Williams Comes Home: “Romeo’s Distress” Screening and Live Performance in Pomona
On Saturday, August 29, 2026, Rozz Williams: Romeo’s Distress will be screened at Fox Theater Pomona. Presented by Cult Epics, the event brings the story and music of Rozz Williams back to the town where he grew up. After the documentary, former Christian Death members and special guest vocalists will perform an extended live set celebrating his legacy.
This is more than another stop on the documentary’s journey. Pomona is part of Rozz Williams’ personal history. Bringing the film to the city where he grew up gives the night the feeling of a homecoming—one shaped by memory, music, and the people who helped build the early Southern California deathrock scene.
Rozz left behind a body of work that still reaches outsiders across generations. His music was confrontational, poetic, theatrical, and painfully intimate. Therefore, returning his story to Pomona feels especially meaningful. The artist may be gone, but the city will hear his songs again.
The Artist Behind the Gothic Icon
Rozz Williams: Romeo’s Distress is a 102-minute documentary directed by Nico B. The film examines the life of Roger Alan Painter, known to the world as Rozz Williams: musician, poet, visual artist, and founder of Christian Death.
For decades, Rozz has often been remembered through unforgettable images: pale makeup, haunted eyes, religious symbols, and a stage presence that seemed both dangerous and fragile. However, the documentary moves beyond the icon. Through family memories, personal testimony, and rare material, it searches for the human being behind the mythology.
The result is an intimate portrait of an artist who helped shape gothic music and fashion while creating space for people who felt different, rejected, or impossible to classify. Rozz died in 1998 at only 34, yet his influence continues through deathrock, post-punk, dark art, queer underground culture, and new generations discovering his work.
Explore the Archive
Los Angeles Turned Gothic for the Romeo’s Distress Premiere
Once the screening ends, the evening will move from cinema into live ritual. Original Christian Death musicians Rikk Agnew on guitar, James McGearty on bass, and David Glass on drums will reunite for an extended performance.
They will be joined by Eva O, Gitane Demone, Patrik Mata of Kommunity FK, William Faith of Shadow Project, and Kenton Holmes, who will share vocal duties. Together, they will perform songs connected to the classic Rozz Williams-era albums Only Theatre of Pain, Catastrophe Ballet, and Ashes. The set will also include music from Shadow Project.
Those records did more than define a genre. They turned spiritual conflict, alienation, surrealism, and punk energy into a new form of dark theater. Hearing this music performed by figures who lived inside that history will give the event a rare sense of authenticity.
Throughout the night, DJ Mr. Chino of Prayers and Chologothnight will play darkwave, goth, and post-punk, carrying the atmosphere from the doors opening to the final song.
My Connection to Romeo’s Distress
I am Christian Mariotti, leader of Edgar Allan Poets, and I served as cinematographer on the documentary while also contributing during its final editing stages. I witnessed the film take shape from its earliest moments.
One of the defining experiences was traveling into the desert with director Nico B to visit the Painter family home. That journey opened the door to the film’s emotional core. It also revealed how much of Rozz’s story existed beyond the stage—in family memories, private wounds, and places that still carried traces of his presence.
Working on the documentary changed the way I saw the Los Angeles underground. Behind every record, photograph, and legend, there are human relationships. There are also contradictions, losses, and memories that rarely reach the audience. This film tries to bring those fragments together without reducing Rozz to a single explanation.
A Night for Those Who Remember—and Those Just Discovering Rozz
Longtime fans will recognize the musicians, songs, and histories gathered onstage. Meanwhile, younger listeners will have the opportunity to discover why Rozz Williams still matters. His work remains alive because it never treated darkness as decoration. For Rozz, art was a place where beauty, provocation, pain, sexuality, faith, and doubt could exist together.
On August 29, the documentary and the live performance will bring those worlds together under one roof. In the town where Rozz grew up, the screen will hold his story and the stage will return his music to the night.
Do not miss this rare celebration of one of gothic music’s most singular artists.
Melbourne’s Lothario sounds as though somebody left the rehearsal-room door open during a small electrical fire, and their latest single IOU takes that sense of danger somewhere tender. The lead single from the band’s EP has the clipped guitar drive and propulsion of Blitz’s New Age, but its engine is a promise between people who have seen each other wrecked, furious, exhausted, spiritually bankrupt, and still worth coming back for in the end.
Annaliese Redlich sings where friendship has survived enough damage to become a private religion, built from favours remembered, wounds forgiven, and the knowledge that somebody showed up when everybody else disappeared.
“IOU is a love song to self, and to those who have stuck by you through thick and thin,” says Redlich. “Shameless cinematic optimism after wallowing in the pit of despair. An anthem for the dawning of a new day, and pledge to keep going.”
Punk has always loved survival, usually with the emotional subtlety of a brick through a pharmacy window – making it through another day can be messy, indebted work. IOU channels this chaos as linear guitars push against a pub-rock stomp sharpened into something wiry and menacing, while Redlich turns gratitude into a public declaration. There is love here with bruises on its knuckles and a tab it intends to settle.
This reckless fellowship spills into Maria Cecelia Tedemalm’s black-and-white video, where a woman drives through the wrong side of town collecting passengers as though she runs an after-hours ministry for the permanently disreputable. She becomes an oracle of rock ’n’ roll spirit, guitars for a pulpit, anarchy in the gasoline. The high-contrast photography recalls a lost seventies rock film, carrying the candid electricity of Godlis photographing people outside CBGB before anybody knew which faces would become history.
Watch the video for IOU below:
Lothario’s IOU EP also widens Redlich’s method after earlier material was recorded largely alone in her bedroom. Elsa Birrel, Beth Lockhart, and Will Clifford now enter more deeply into the process, with Redlich’s brother Matt recording the sessions.
“I’ve always been a deeply collaborative person, but Lothario’s inception marked a period of me going totally inward,” says Redlich. “A time when I kinda hid away and just let all this stuff pour out of me that had been building over a lifetime. I had so much to prove to myself and understand about my own process. It was immensely empowering but it leaves you nowhere to hide and no one to hide behind. In spite of how many men were automatically given credit for what I made.”
Lothario takes “IOU” to Europe for twenty-six dates across ten countries this autumn, carrying a song about being carried through hell into a van, across borders, and toward another dawn. The European tour begins September 13 at Leffingeleuren in Leffinge, Belgium, and concludes October 10 at Funtastic in Benidorm, Spain. Useless Eaters join the run beginning September 24 in Vienna, while the final show is a Lothario-only appearance.
September 13 — Leffinge, Belgium — Leffingeleuren
September 14 — Brussels, Belgium — La Chaff
September 16 — Arnhem, Netherlands — Cafe Bosch
September 17 — Tilburg, Netherlands — Hall of Fame
September 18 — Hamburg, Germany — Komet
September 19 — Berlin, Germany — Schockoladen
September 20 — Leipzig, Germany — Venue TBC
September 21 — Prague, Czech Republic — Klubovna Povaleč
September 22 — Brno, Czech Republic — Vegalite
September 23 — Linz, Austria — Kapu
September 24 — Vienna, Austria — Venster99
September 25 — Ilirska Bistrica, Slovenia — MKNŽ
September 26 — Castelgoffredo, Italy — Metapalooza Fest
September 27 — Rome, Italy — 30 Formiche
September 29 — Bologna, Italy — Freakout Club
September 30 — Biel, Switzerland — Quai Du Bas
October 1 — Winterthur, Switzerland — Kraftfeld
October 2 — Burghausen, Germany — Burgkeller-Bar
October 3 — Heidelberg, Germany — Carousel
October 4 — Paris, France — Venue TBC
October 5 — Nantes, France — Mosta
October 6 — Bordeaux, France — La Maison Allez les filles
October 8 — San Sebastián, Spain — Dabadaba
October 9 — Barcelona, Spain — Prison Fest
October 10 — Benidorm, Spain — Funtastic (Lothario only)
Elena Siegman is known for providing the unforgettable vocals for Call of Duty Zombies. Her new solo material, however, shows just how versatile she really is as an artist. She recently dropped “The Source” through her own label, Dollbreath Records. I had the chance to chat with Elena about the amazing fan reaction to her return, the emotion behind her gaming anthems, her take on AI in the industry, and her advice on dealing with gatekeepers.
Reuel
Hello Elena! I’m very happy to chat with you. How are you doing?
Elena Siegman
Hi Reuel! I’m – very busy pouring all of my heart and soul into a bunch of projects all at once, and very excited to talk to you! I’m so grateful for your questions – I am a big fan of your outlet. 🙂
Reuel
Oh I’m humbled!
‘The Source’ has been out for a month now. A quick look at the music video’s YouTube comments shows people saying things like “the Queen is back” and, overall, a lot of excitement for your new solo material. How does it feel to have such an enthusiastic fanbase behind you?
Elena Siegman
Honestly it’s like a fever dream. I’ve been wanting to release my own music like “The Source” for a very long time, but it’s not been an easy journey to get there. I was extremely nervous about it and wasn’t sure it would land with anyone, but it has been received incredibly well.
For a very long time, the songs I sang in Call of Duty Zombies, which garnered a huge number of fans, was like a weird alternate universe that part of my personality got to live in. It’s always lived that way in my psyche, this idea that people liked those songs (and of course my performance on them) but not necessarily me and my music. The super supportive reaction to my solo music has blown me away.
Reuel
While your longtime fans are used to the heavy metal music you’ve made in the past, your newer material blends elements from a variety of genres. What inspired this move toward a more fluid musical style?
Elena Siegman
I am a huge metalhead and fan of nearly every sub-genre of metal music – but in my bedroom, it’s not music I make by myself very easily. It’s not bedroom rock. It’s loud and it’s complicated and it requires many collaborators. But it is my true love and now it’s finally a tool in my toolbox.
When operating completely solo, I play the guitar, but I’m more comfortable on the piano. I also listen to so many different kinds of music and I always have. I have genres that I gravitate towards, metal and punk probably being the primary ones, but I also love R&B, soul music, alt country, classical music…
It has always been a major challenge for me to focus on a single genre, although I do think I have a “style”, or at least, I think I’m figuring that out. It makes it hard to explain what kind of music I make to people, but I could easily tell you when in the studio if something sounds like “me” or not. When I write it’s more about mood, picking the right sounds and tones that really convey a feeling. Those can come from anywhere!
What’s emerging now is a really interesting mix of heavy metal, synthwave, dark pop, industrial… and more.
Reuel
This sounds exciting! Many people know you through the Call of Duty Zombies soundtrack. Not every song fits the atmosphere a game is trying to create, yet your music became a defining part of that experience. What do you think it is about your vocals and performances that connected so well with the gaming world?
Elena Siegman
I’m a game developer by trade, so I could probably write an entire PhD thesis on this. Primarily, I think it’s because I sang the original songs for zombie mode in the recording studio AT the game studio, with the development going on all around us. I worked at Treyarch at the time, so I was making the song with my coworkers. I’m a gamer and a game developer, and I was regularly playing the game we were making music for – so I had a vivid and clear picture of the context the song would be heard in. I really think that makes a difference.
The songs were written specifically to pay the themes of the maps and the game mode off – so all I really had to do was submit to the song and perform it in the way the music made me feel (and the way that Kevin directed me to sing it!). The songs are written not just to elevate the tone of the experience, but to give you some inspiration to last a little longer against the relentless waves of zombies. It’s a battle cry!
When it comes to music, especially for games, you have to commit to the story the song is trying to tell and the emotions it wants to evoke. I think some people perform to lean into the tones and the sounds, which, of course is important, but nothing is more important than the emotion. You can make very ugly sounds and nail the emotion and it is perceived as beautiful.
Reuel
Wow! Thank you for sharing this wonderful experience. Going back to your new single and the excitement around it, what can fans expect next? Is there a bigger release on the horizon that you can share with us?
Elena Siegman
I’ve been holed up in my own head and home secretly writing and recording music all by myself for a long time. I’ve slowly been building the relationships with other artists and musicians and the infrastructure to get that music out there, to my quality standard, and now I’m finally releasing it. I am over the moon. In terms of what’s coming right up:
You may have heard that I’ll be in the next Call of Duty’s zombie map (Rex Infernus) coming out on Sept 20 – so folks will get to hear a new collab with me & Kevin Sherwood, which is pretty much the pinnacle of music making joy for me.
Personally – I am releasing music all year – and I’ll be releasing a new cover (of Faith No More’s “From Out of Nowhere”) on September 18. I also have some new originals in the pipe that will be coming out soon, I am VERY excited to release them – I have a fun, creepy song for spooky season in October, and some really exciting originals and covers coming up as well.
Ever since “Remember Us” in 2024, I’ve been working with Pete Adams, the producer Activision hired to record and produce my vocals for it – and we have been cooking up so much good stuff. I really am bursting at the seams for people to hear it all.
Reuel
Wow that’s a lot of things to look forward to!
Besides the shift in musical styles, you’re also releasing music now through your own label, Dollbreath Records. Having your own label gives you more control over your music, but it also comes with more responsibility. How has that balance been for you?
Elena Siegman
I honestly kind of love responsibility… with great responsibility comes great power? Does it work backwards? I guess we’ll find out.
I have a lot of crazy ideas. It is hard for me to explain them to people. It’s easier for me to just get started on them and see if I can get anybody else involved in my wild schemes. Having a label makes that a LOT easier. I’ve been sketching and making things for so long, and releasing things for other people for so long. I finally figured out to cross the streams – make my own record label!
It’s been a dream of mine for a long time. I grew up in the era of Kill Rock Stars and Righteous Babe Records – DIY record labels created to showcase music that didn’t get released on major labels but had a very serious and devoted audience. I want that! I hope to expand the label in the next year or two. There are a lot of artists like me – they’ve been introduced to an audience who is dying for more music from them, but it’s a real brain buster to figure out how to connect. That was me for ages. I think I’m finally figuring it out!
Reuel
Brilliant! While you’re heading towards a more indie music ground, people are using AI to say hello to each other. What dangers does AI pose to musicians in particular, and what do you think needs to be done to counter it?
Elena Siegman
When I think about dangers posed by AI, I don’t actually fear the tool. I think there is something really amazing about a technology that you can interface with using human language. That’s really cool, in fact. The problem arises in using it as a way to “measure” value of actual human output and experience. Who gets to decide? There is so much danger in assigning “financial value” to human expression – and we’ve all lived our entire lives under that paradigm, and now it’s changing faster than we can adjust to. Of course that introduces more difficulty in being a creative human trying to make a living with their talents. It’s a profound change.
There was a huge earthquake in the music business in the late 90s/early 2000s, when Napster threatened to make music “free”. The reason it got to that point in the first place is that the entire industry that connected music to people was exploiting the only two pillars of the whole thing: the fans and the artists.
Personally, I just think we’re there again. The technology is one thing, but the inputs, the training, they aren’t being appropriately accounted for. If we were actually interested in creating a system that didn’t exploit the most important people in the system, we could create a new way to use this technology that benefits the artists and the consumers today. I believe that people make and listen to music to connect to other people. Nobody is using generative AI to connect to other people in the same way. It might be good to get your ideas out, to find someone to collaborate with, but it shouldn’t be the end product.
Elena Siegman
`When I write a song, and I perform it, and I record it, and I do all of the work to get it on the internet, I have paid a fair price for every tool I used to do that. I have paid the people I collaborated with to make the music. And if someone uses that song in their commercial work, they have to compensate me for it. If we had a system where generative AI fairly compensated for what it learned from something you made or created or was trained on your voice, for example, things might be different.
There’s also a huge problem in conflating the tool with the output. The process is important to most art, but at the end of the day, if you’re trying to share your point of view with someone, the process of creating it is not as important as the impact. The impact of creating artwork with AI is now mixed up with the economic, environmental and moral impact of it. We haven’t got a map! We really need one. As consumers, I think people do need to be more thoughtful than they have in the past. As artists, I think we need to be more principled.
Elena Siegman Cover me Photo Shoot at El Rey Theatre by Monica Orozco
Reuel
Thank you, again, for sharing your great insight!
We have readers from all around the world, including women who still face barriers, and even persecution, in the music industry. As an inspiration to many aspiring musicians, what message would you like to share with those who dream of pursuing a music career?
Elena Siegman
I think the typical advice is “don’t listen to the gatekeepers.” I heard that when I was younger and I took the wrong message away. Because the gatekeepers were extremely powerful. When your safety is in question, “don’t let the bastards get you down” is actually terrible advice. If they’re tearing powerful icons like Madonna and Beyonce down, if Ke$ha and Halsey find themselves in label purgatory, if Pussy Riot and Mai Khôi can be targeted by the state for expressing themselves… “don’t get discouraged” is incredibly unhelpful for a vulnerable person with a marginalized identity and absolutely zero power.
Instead, I think it’s better to remember that if there’s a gatekeeper, that implies there’s a gate. Who built it and why? And is it actually blocking anything? What do you want to do? And who is stopping you? Can you get around them? I confused fearing for my safety (actually smart) with believing I wasn’t supposed to be making music (incorrect).
These are questions I only started asking myself once I stopped believing that anybody had a right to tell me if I was entitled to make music or not. I had internalized the idea that I was interloping on territory that wasn’t meant for me because of the treatment I experienced, or saw other women experience. I took exactly the wrong message away from that.
You only get the one life. You only get the one belly and the one fire in it! Nobody gets to tell you what to do with it. It may scare some people. It may upset some people. You might actually have to worry about that if it does. But you can do hard things! And people being upset is not evidence that it’s not your right to express yourself, and to follow in the footsteps of others that have inspired you. It is really, really important not to get that twisted.
Reuel
That was quite inspirational! Thank you for your time, Elena! It was genuinely educational getting to chat with you! Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Elena Siegman
Just that I have many originals and many covers in the pipe that I’ll be releasing for the rest of this year and well into 2027. I don’t want people to miss out! I have an email list at elenasiegman.com where I give people early access to the songs before they release, and also release demos and b sides and things they can’t get any where else.
And that if you’re a musician reading this that has a fan base from a game or a soundtrack and no idea how to reach them, that’s a problem that I’m building Dollbreath to solve and I am very interested in hearing from you.
Well, that, and! That it is very meaningful to be interviewed by y’all at FemMetal. You are right at the intersection of things that matter a lot to me and being recognized by you and your readers is a big deal for me! <3
Marrow Deep is likely the most important and highly anticipated albumprogressive/stoner metal troupe Mastodon has made in at least two decades. Beyond being the follow-up to 2021’s superb Hushed and Grim, it’s the band’s first record without late guitarist/singer Brent Hindsand their first as an official quintet thanks to the additions of guitarist/singer Nick Johnston and keyboardist João Nogueira (who appeared on Hushed and Grim). Thus, it needs to prove not only that Mastodon can still kick ass after almost 30 years, but also that they can carry on without the signature input and presence of Hinds.
Thankfully, the set does all of that (and more) by the time its characteristically intense final moments fade away. Sure, Hinds’ absence is strongly felt (especially vocally), but the returning trio (Brann Dailor, Troy Sanders, and Bill Kelliher) – plus the two newcomers – excel at building upon Mastodon’s beloved formula while tossing in a few surprises along the way. In other words, their guttural heaviness, affective gentleness, and cosmic complexity are totally intact, making Marrow Deep a wholly fitting, satisfying, and promising first step on Mastodon’s next path.
In many ways, the record feels as much like a tribute to the Hinds era as it does an indication of where Mastodon are going next.
For instance, tunes such as opener “Barbarians Blood,” “A Vampire’s Demeanor,” and “Out Like a Lamb” harken back to the extra harshness of the group’s first three records (especially 2004’s Leviathan). In contrast, “Poisonous Weapons,” “In the Ruins,” and “Golden Spires” find Sanders and/or Dailor evoking the spacier, softer, and sadder blueprints of 2009’s Crack the Skye and beyond. Whether they’re joining their voices or leading the charge, both men sing as well as ever, and with plenty of idiosyncratic riffs, rhythms, eccentricities, and smooth changeups fleshing out their performances, these tunes – among others – showcase just about everything that’s long made Mastodon special.
That said, several of the album’s best moments are its most refreshing ones (undoubtedly due in part to the inherent newness brought by Nogueira and Johnston).
Namely – and with purposeful vagueness to avoid spoilers – Nogueira steers a few intergalactic detours that wouldn’t have been out of place on one of Opeth’s 2010s (jazz fusion-esque) “observations” or a classic ‘70s outing from Camel, Pink Floyd, or King Crimson. Likewise, there’s lovely acoustic guitarwork and vocal harmonies strewn throughout that easily rank as some of the group’s most beautiful and/or hypnotic material to date.
The official press release explains that the collection is “inspired by . . . the fragile threads connecting life, loss, and destiny” as it “channels . . . intense personal experiences . . . into some of the [band’s] most expansive, adventurous, and emotionally resonant music.” That’s absolutely what the revised and reinvigorated Mastodon accomplish here. Aside from the lack of Hinds’ irreplaceable quirkiness, virtually everything that fans love about the band’s ability to shift between strangeness, sensitiveness, and sinisterness is fully present.
As such, Marrow Deep is on par with most of its predecessors, and it might even be the group’s best album since 2009’s Crack the Skye. Most importantly, it thoroughly and irrefutably proves that although Mastodon will never be the same without Hinds, they’re more than capable of carrying on with an irresistible blend of familiarity and freshness.
Release Date: August 28th, 2026 Record Label: Loma Vista Recordings Genre: Progressive Metal/Stoner Metal
Some loves end cleanly; others keep a key to the room long after the door has slammed. Silence can become its own kind of conversation, filled with imagined replies, remembered jokes, and the stubborn belief that one day the phone might light up with a name you never stopped wanting to see. Moving on sounds simple until the past still feels unfinished. Hope survives on little: a song, a street, a photograph, the sense that timing once failed where feeling did not. We cling because possibility is easier to carry than finality, and because love rarely leaves when communication does.
Romantic failure has always needed good transportation. Trains leave, elevators close, taxis disappear down avenues, and somewhere across town the person you still love is living an entire evening without knowing you are composing speeches to them in your head. New York City’s Bunny X (Abbi Gordin and Jenny Bates) understand this beautifully on the effervescent Even If We Don’t Talk, a sweetly obsessive slice of synth-driven pop from the New York duo’s third album, Love On A High Floor.
The album places Gordon and Bates amid the glass-and-steel ambitions of 1980s Manhattan, where money climbed toward the clouds while romance remained vulnerable to busy signals, missed trains, bad timing, and plain cowardice. Here, the emotional problem is brutally familiar: communication has stopped, yet hope keeps finding loopholes.
“This track was a latecomer in the writing process and almost didn’t make the final cut at all since album production was in the final stages by the time the idea for the song came about,” says Gordon. “Even If We Don’t Talk explores the lingering inability to move on from a past love and the hope that something might still happen.”
That unresolved ache gets dressed for Friday night. A driving synthwave-meets-Italo Disco beat gives the song forward motion while Gordon and Bates sing with an earnestness recalling Madonna. Whitney Houston, Sheila E. and Sheena Easton, when pop could make romantic disaster feel perfectly reasonable beneath fluorescent lights. Their voices eventually tumble into a call-and-response outro that practically begs for roller skates, polished floors, and one more lap before somebody turns the lights on.
Director Alice Teeple, with Bates helming the visual effects, carries that sensibility into a video partly filmed around New York’s Financial District, transforming crossed paths into romantic slapstick with a corporate-era sheen.
“We wanted to make this look as authentically from the 80s as possible,” says Teeple. “I am a big fan of shows like Moonlighting and movies like 9-5, so I jumped at the chance to try my hand at that with Abbi and Jenny. I borrowed some ideas from The Twilight Zone and the Boomtown Rats video for Banana Republic, they brought a great Working Girl aesthetic to their style. I loved the idea of missed connections due to transit troubles, crossed wires, and rotten timing. In the end it all works out, though! We all need a lighthearted distraction from the troubles of our world right now, and we created a delightful little vignette together.”
Perhaps that happy ending explains the song’s charm. Anyone can declare a romance finished; the dangerous part is secretly leaving the porch light on. Even If We Don’t Talk lives in that unreasonable interval, where silence still contains possibility and every missed connection carries the ridiculous promise of another chance.
Watch below:
New York City retrowave duo Bunny X released their third full-length album, Love on a High Floor, on August 14th via Aztec Records. The record is available digitally and through Bandcamp, with vinyl and CD editions offered through ElasticStage.
Framed by the wealth, ambition, and vertiginous excess of 1980s Wall Street, Love on a High Floor places Bunny X high above Manhattan, where polished offices and skyline views conceal the compromises accumulating beneath the surface. The setting becomes an apt backdrop for songs concerned with adulthood, romantic expectation, and the uneasy distance between the life one imagines and the life that eventually takes shape.
The album also revisits ideas introduced on Bunny X’s debut, Young & In Love, effectively catching up with its characters years later. Teenage innocence has given way to careers, complicated relationships, and the realization that youthful ambitions rarely survive adulthood unchanged. Across Love on a High Floor, Bunny X examine that reckoning alongside the seductive promise of the American Dream, tracing how aspiration can gradually become disenchantment once success, love, and security prove harder to define than they first appeared.
Rick Wakeman spent six months of 1977 recording Going For The One with Yes. Meanwhile, JJ Burnel and The Stranglers released two albums over the same time period in the same year. When Prog put the pair together in 2012, some might have expected the punk wars to resurface. What happened instead was an epic revealing of home truths about the time when prog’s glory years ended, and another movement took its place.
“What’s all this about?” asks Stranglers’ bassist Jean-Jacques Burnel is leaning forward in his chair and enquiring why he’s sitting next to the rather less buff former Yes keyboard player and all-round prog overlord Rick Wakeman.
We decided to bring together two men from opposite ends of the musical spectrum to find out what things were really like on the frontline all those years ago. In 1977 Wakeman had spent six months in Queen’s Mountain Studios in Montreux working on Yes’ Going For The One album. In stark contrast, The Stranglers were preparing to release not one but two albums, six months apart: Rattus Norvegicus and No More Heroes. For Yes it marked the end of their imperial phase. For The Stranglers it was the beginning of theirs.
The pair greet each like old friends – and it turns out that they are old friends, their paths having crossed several times over the years. “1977, then,” booms Wakeman, settling back into his chair. “I’m not certain either of us will remember that far back…”
For JJ, 1977 would have been the start of an adventure, whereas Rick had, to put it bluntly, been round the block a few times.
Rick Wakeman: Thank you!
Jean-Jacques Burnel: It was the first time we’d released an album. We felt something was going on – a bit of a revolution, and with every revolution you chuck the baby out with the bath water. It was a Year Zero for many people. It was only years later that people started admitting to having liked anything before Year Zero.
How long did that take?
JJ: A long time. I do remember Captain Sensible at the time, without any irony, admitting he liked Abba; and when I saw the Sex Pistols they were playing old Monkees covers. There was a dichotomy between what people were doing and what they were claiming in the press.
A lot of the bands claimed punk had nothing to do with drugs. I was like, “What?!” We used to get called hippies because we smoked dope. Everyone was broke and tight, so speed was the drug of choice because it was cheap.
What was 1977 like for you, Rick?
RW: In 1977 I’d just rejoined Yes and we were recording Going For The One in Switzerland, which took six months…
JJ: Six months! We recorded our first two albums in 10 days!
RW: A lot of that time was spent with Alan going skiing, Steve tuning his guitars, and trying to wake Chris up! But [label boss] Ahmet Ertegun came to us and said: “I don’t know how much longer I can keep funding records like this.” We realised that this was the last bastion of prog rock as we knew it. We were aware of punk – I’d seen it coming a few years earlier when I saw The Tubes and took them to A&M, who signed them.
We were aware that something was going on. And it kills off what went before it
Rick Wakeman
JJ: Really? We used to love The Tubes.
RW: We were aware that something was going on. And it kills off what went before it, at least for a bit. When prog came along, it did away with the old beat and psychedelic groups, the way the beat groups had done away with the crooners before them.
JJ: When something new comes along, everyone wants to be a part of that peer group, to the extent that they’ll deny their history. It’s only when they’ve gained some confidence that they can start to admit where that history actually came from. Up until that point it’s almost politically incorrect to admit your influences!
(Image credit: Future)
But you can tell by just listening to the music. On our first album, the nearest thing we had to a prog rock song was this four-part piece called Down In The Sewer. That was about 11 minutes long and it was a suite. Prog rock, essentially, even if it was prog à la Beefheart and The Doors.
Did that kind of rivalry exist in prog, Rick? Did you have any dust-ups with ELP or Genesis?
RW: No. The press tried to stir things up, between myself and Keith Emerson especially. But we were great friends and we used to laugh about it all. We let it go on because it fuelled press.
We used to laugh at Pink Floyd taking years to make an album. But we’ve just taken two years to make ours
JJ Burnel
JJ: We used to laugh at things like Pink Floyd taking years to make an album. But we’ve just taken two years to make our album [Giants, 2012]. The creative process can take time, because you’re not on an assembly line. And you have a life outside the band as well. The two worlds did occasionally meet: Freddie Mercury bumping into Sid Vicious in the studio, members of Led Zeppelin turning up to punk gigs…
I don’t really recall fraternising with any bands from the previous generation apart from Dr Feelgood. When I was a kid I’d go and see bands like Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac and Black Cat Bones, who became Free, and I felt that kind of vibe in Dr Feelgood.
Our keyboard player, Dave Greenfield, was a prog rocker, though. When I first met him he had platform boots on, his jacket had frills, and he had long hair and what we called a semi-pro moustache. He introduced me to In The Land Of Grey And Pink by Caravan. I did like that. I do remember the Yes singer [Jon Anderson], though. Is he still into elves?
RW: Jon has his own little world. When he doesn’t like what’s happening in the real one he retreats into his own one. He’s a big fan of yours, though, JJ. We were touring together recently, driving around in the same car, listening to all sorts of music. We played some Stranglers, and he said to me: “You know, there’s a few of their songs that Yes could have done.” He was right. Certainly something like Golden Brown.
How did get you away with that?
We played some Stranglers and Jon said, ‘There’s a few of their songs that Yes could have done’
Rick Wakeman
JJ: There was a lot of hypocrisy involved at the time, like people claiming to be working class when they weren’t. I remember Joe Strummer crying on my shoulder when we were the first band to support Patti Smith and the Ramones. He was in a rhythm and blues band called The 101’ers; he was going, “Oh, I wish I had a band like yours!” He used to live in the Notting Hill squats at the time. No one knew his dad was a diplomat.
Was there a rivalry between the punk bands at the time?
JJ: Not until success kicked in. I remember meeting Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the Sex Pistols when we supported Patti Smith in 1976, and all Steve said to me was: “We’re going to be famous in six months’ time. I like your haircut!” Then a year later I remember having a punch-up with Steve and Paul and Paul Simonon from The Clash at the old Dingwalls. That’s when the rivalry seemed to start – when we started outselling everyone.
JJ: I’ll tell you something about Golden Brown that I’ve never told anyone before. It actually developed out of a prog rock suite. We were recording the La Folie album, and Hugh and I were pissed off because we seemed to be writing all the songs. So we said to Jet and Dave, “Right, you two are going to write a song. We’re off to the pub. Have it written when we get back.” We fucked off to the pub all afternoon.
Now, with Dave being a prog rocker and Jet being a jazzer, when we got back they presented us with this six-part piece of music. And we were like, “Fucking hell, we can’t record this.” We went, “Don’t like that bit… don’t like that… oh, wait a minute, we could something with that.” And the part we did like formed the basis for Golden Brown.
Have you seen these re-runs of Top Of The Pops from 1977? What a It’s like karaoke central
JJ Burnel
1977 has retrospectively been cast as the year of punk, but the biggest-selling albums of the year were Bat Out Of HellandRumours. Has there been a bit of rewriting of history?
JJ: Have you seen these re-runs of Top Of The Pops from 1977 on telly? What a load of shite! It’s like karaoke central.
So, 1977: was it fun?
JJ: It certainly was. I knew a year later that things were changing, though. I had a bank account, and I went in and the teller was a young girl with streaks of green in her hair. The great British assimilation had begun.
There are few bands in extreme metal whose identity has been forged as deliberately, dramatically and controversially as Behemoth. For more than three decades, the Polish giants have transformed themselves from an underground black metal act into one of the most recognisable forces in modern extreme metal. I, Scvlptor, due for release on 4th September … Continue reading Album Review: Behemoth – I, Scvlptor
