Jeffrey Lee Pierce (June 27, 1958 – March 31, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and author. He was one of the founding members of the post-punk band the Gun Club, and released material as a solo artist.
Early life
Pierce was born on June 27, 1958, in Montebello, California. He was the child of a multi-ethnic marriage. His Anglo father worked as a union organizer. His Mexican mother was a homemaker, taking care of Pierce and his sister, Jacqui. He started learning guitar at the age of 10. As a teenager, he moved from El Monte, a working-class industrial suburb east of Los Angeles, to Granada Hills, at the time a white working- and middle-class suburb in the San Fernando Valley. Pierce attended Granada Hills High School, where he participated in the drama program, acting in plays and writing several short experimental theater pieces.
1970s
Pierce's early musical interests were glam and progressive rock, including bands such as Sparks, Genesis, and Roxy Music. During the mid-1970s, after attending a concert by Bob Marley, Pierce became a fan of reggae, and subsequently traveled to Jamaica, where he met Winston Rodney and others, but also "got beat up there too", as he later recalled in an interview.
Pierce was also an admirer of Debbie Harry of Blondie, and became president of the band's West Coast fan club. He eventually became friends with Harry and Chris Stein. Blondie recorded the song "Hanging on the Telephone" in 1978 after Pierce gave Harry a cassette tape of the original 1976 version by obscure California band the Nerves.
His interest in reggae overlapped with the emergence of punk rock and he became involved in the Hollywood scene as a contributor to Slash magazine, writing on contemporary punk, 1930s blues, 1950s rockabilly, and on reggae under the name "Ranking Jeffrey Lea", including an interview with Bob Marley. By the late 1970s, Pierce was also performing as a musician.
Around this time Pierce met Los Angeles musician Phast Phreddie Patterson, who introduced Pierce to American roots music. Pierce was also a keen supporter of the no wave movement in New York City. Becoming disillusioned by the evolution of punk rock into what he saw as strict formality, and feeling that reggae was an import, Pierce developed a keen interest in and extensive knowledge of the Delta blues, taking influence and inspiration from his own culture's history.
Pierce encouraged his friend Brian Tristan, aka Kid Congo Powers, to play the guitar and develop his style, eventually recruiting him to form the band Creeping Ritual, which evolved into the Gun Club with the addition of drummer Terry Graham and bassist Rob Ritter.
1980s
The Gun Club's debut album, Fire of Love (1981), featured the songs "Sex Beat" and "She's Like Heroin to Me". The album also contains a version of Robert Johnson's "Preachin' Blues" and the love song "Promise Me". Australian musician Spencer P. Jones (a sometime collaborator with Pierce) suggested later (2014) that the blues influence in Pierce's music was largely the result of his access to the record collection of Canned Heat frontman Bob Hite, who allowed Pierce to come to his house and choose ten albums from Hite's vast blues record collection as he was dying.
The follow-up album, Miami (1982), was produced by Stein, and features renditions of "Devil in the Woods," "Sleeping in Blood City" and Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Run Through the Jungle." Pierce stated that he preferred Miami, and dismissed Fire of Love: "I can't even remember making it. What can you say about a record that you cut for 2500 bucks in 48 hours, on speed? It was just punk rock."
In September 1983, as the Gun Club prepared for an Australian tour, two band members quit due to financial concerns and ongoing frustration with Pierce's behavior. Nevertheless, Pierce and bass player Patricia Morrison traveled to Australia, where they enlisted two members of support act the Johnnys – Spencer Jones and Billy Pommer Jr – to fill in, as well as Kid Congo Powers, whom Pierce convinced to fly from the US to join them. Jones described the Gun Club's music as "way more brutal and full-on than any metal band I have ever heard."
The Las Vegas Story (1984) was the band's third album, seeing the return of Kid Congo Powers, drummer Terry Graham and a new bassist, Patricia Morrison. Dave Alvin also played lead guitar on two tracks. The album featured tribal beats ("Walking with the Beast") and slide-guitars ("Eternally is Here"), and other tracks included "My Dreams", "Bad America" and a cover of "My Man's Gone Now". The cassette tape version of the album also featured an extra track, "Secret Fires", missing from the vinyl L.P. but later available on the C.D. The album is dedicated to Debbie Harry, "for her love, help, and encouragement".
In December 1984, the Gun Club played two gigs in London, but by January 1985 had broken up, cancelling an upcoming Australian Tour. Morrison and Powers remained in London, forming Fur Bible, while Pierce visited Egypt with guitarist and new girlfriend Romi Mori, who he had met at a London show. Pierce relocated to England with Mori and concentrated on his solo career. He played a London gig on January 17, 1985, as 'Astro-Unicorn Experimental Jazz Ensemble', before recruiting Murray Mitchell, John McKenzie and Andy Anderson to record tracks which became the album Wildweed, the first on which Pierce played the majority of guitar parts, and material released later in the year as the "Flamingo" E.P. A different line-up including Romi Mori, Dean Dennis and Nick Sanderson also recorded with Pierce, completing the six-track "Flamingo" The EP featured a remix of Wildweed's opening track "Love and Desperation" and two cover tracks.
Wildweed'''s monochrome cover shot, of Pierce stood in a windswept barren landscape with a shotgun over his shoulder, was photographed on the south coast of England, as Pierce told a Swedish interviewer, but intended to "look like Texas. Or Kansas." Pierce toured Europe as The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Quartet, and from August 1985 he toured the United States and Canada. Pierce returned to Europe to play more shows, culminating in the Quartet's final gig on December 27 in London.
After six months in Japan, Pierce and Mori returned to London in August 1986, with Pierce intending to reform the Gun Club. Powers was by now living in Berlin and performing as guitarist with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, but accepted Pierce's offer and managed to combine working in both bands. With Mori now on bass, the band recorded 1987's Mother Juno, produced by the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie, and featuring songs such as "Thunderhead", "Araby" and "The Breaking Hands".
1990s Pierce's autobiography, Go Tell The Mountain, goes into detail about the personal turmoil he experienced during the late 1980s and early 1990s. His health had been poor for some time, having struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction. The final Gun Club album, 1993's Lucky Jim, includes the song "Idiot Waltz". Another album from that period is Ramblin' Jeffrey Lee and Cypress Grove with Willie Love, which consists mainly of cover versions of blues artists such as Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Skip James.
In late 1993, Pierce spent time with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds during the recording of their album Let Love In. Mick Harvey, a former Bad Seeds member, recalled, "He was sat on the couch during much of the recording ... He'd come almost every day and just sit on the couch and then he'd come out to dinner with us and just mumble away. He was very hard work. He was very unusual and a very unique guy." In May 1994, Pierce joined the band on-stage during the "Let Love In" European tour, culminating in a show at Shepherd's Bush Empire in London, where he sang a cover of the Johnny Cash/Bob Dylan song "Wanted Man". His last TV appearance was with the Bad Seeds on Later... with Jools Holland, recorded on May 14, 1994.
In November 1994, Pierce was arrested for brandishing a Samurai sword in his local pub in Kensington after an argument. He was due in court early in 1995, but flew instead to Japan, where he did some radio work and joined a Japanese band onstage, until he was hospitalized after a mugging. Pierce flew back to London in February to collect his belongings then returned to the United States, having been requested to leave England following his arrest and lack of visa. He returned to Los Angeles in 1995. Pierce continued working despite failing health, and reformed a Gun Club lineup for two shows in Los Angeles in August and September 1995, including guitarists Powers and Mike Martt, formerly of Tex & the Horseheads, and the Wayne Kramer rhythm section of bassist Randy Bradbury and drummer Brock Avery. The Gun Club's last ever gig, with bassist Elizabeth Montague replacing Bradbury, was at The Palace in Hollywood on December 18, 1995.
Personal life Relationships Pierce had a relationship with singer Texacala Jones, and together they formed the band Tex and the Horseheads, with Pierce providing arrangements of traditional songs and playing the guitar in some of their initial performances. Guitarist, bass player and photographer Romi Mori was Pierce's longest romantic partner and a member of the second incarnation of The Gun Club. Pierce was also known for his strong admiration for Debbie Harry of Blondie, and was president of the Blondie fan club. Harry contributed backing vocals on the album Miami under the pseudonym D.H. Lawrence, and was a longtime mentor and supporter of Pierce. Texacala Jones noted that Pierce carried a handwritten note from Harry in his wallet with instructions on how she dyed her hair, including the types of products she used. According to Jones, the note was "written out in beautiful handwriting and 'with love, Debbie' at the bottom" and was Pierce's "most prized possession".
Character In March 2012, Nick Cave gave an interview to Gun Club biographer Gene Temesy, researching for a book on the history of the Gun Club, which was published on the Australian web-based magazine Mess and Noise, noting Pierce's obsessions with the Vietnam War, dinosaurs, and Japanese horror movies. He went on: "with Jeffrey, you pretty much entered his world when you saw him. His obsessions crawled all over him. But in Jeffrey's world, sometimes it was very inspiring and illuminating and other times it was painful and depressing. But Jeffrey did make efforts to stay on top of all that sort of stuff. But I think it was very difficult for him ... Jeffrey very often didn’t make sense. That was part of his charm. Jeffrey was full of digressions. I think that was very much part of his character. Jeffrey digressed a lot. One minute he'd be talking about the fall of Saigon and the next minute he’d be talking about the size of a dinosaur's brain."
Death Pierce contacted Powers in early 1996 to work together on a new iteration of the Gun Club, and they began making plans, with Powers looking to recruit musicians in New York. However, on March 25, 1996, Pierce was found unconscious at his father's home in Salt Lake City, Utah. He remained in a coma until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage on March 31 at the University of Utah Hospital.
Legacy Posthumous tributes The French rock band Noir Désir paid tribute to Pierce in the song "Song for JLP", from its 1996 album 666667 Club. Blondie paid tribute to Pierce in its song "Under the Gun", from the 1999 album No Exit.
Pierce is honored by Thåström in a 2005 song recording. The World/Inferno Friendship Society also paid tribute to Pierce in their song by the same title.
Mark Lanegan recorded a cover version of the Gun Club's "Carry Home", from the album Miami, on his album I'll Take Care of You. Pierce and Lanegan cowrote the song "Kimiko's Dream House" that appears on Lanegan's album Field Songs.