UGLY THINGS MAGAZINE! CHEETAH CHROME OF DEAD BOYS! SUMMER '25
In Collaboration with Ugly Things Magazine Issue #69:
CHEETAH CHROME: OLD, LOUD AND SNOTTY!
By Justin Murphy
In November of 2024, I booked the current live band of the Dead Boys to perform at my family’s ramen restaurant in San Diego. As bizarre as my endeavor was, what was even more remarkable was Cheetah Chrome thrilled to the point that he would even call the shop weeks before asking curious questions with excitement in his voice. The juxtaposition of rock music and a bowl of ramen was somehow sparking moderate interest with bookings that would include the Flamin Groovies, Paul Collins Beat, the Zeros to name a few. A good email with convincing prose can go a long way. The night as expected became a mixture of older devout fans reminiscing the past and the younger 20s all-you-can-drink hooliganism. A rumble within all present enduring the crush with warlike enthusiasm.
After the gig, me and Cheetah found association by a shared affinity for Irish Whiskey. On top of that, conversing with him is like reading Ugly Things Magazine, receiving useful information in an enjoyable manner. There are endless ways to learn more about the history of the CBGBs/Max’s era which is well documented in multifaceted accounts. From iconic books such as Please Kill Me or personal memoirs from Richard Hell, Mickey Leigh and even Cheetah writing one back in 2010. I’ve always been fascinated listening to Ork Records: New York, New York & Live, at CBGB’s so this was a real interest of mine. The balance of masculinity and flamboyance coming from groups like the Dictators and the Dead Boys are top tier. I decided to take it a step further and meet directly with Cheetah. Shortly, I would be flying to Las Vegas where he was currently residing.
As soon as I arrived, I was gambling with uninterrupted service of drinks deviating from my initial intention. I waited pacing my inebriation and did eventually receive a phone call from him. After my last despicable bet, I called a taxi to his location, about fifteen minutes from the Strip and escaped the indefatigable sounds of slot machines.
As I walked in to the tavern, a sign was posted.
ATTENTION MOTORCYCLISTS
BLUE HAWK TAVERN NO LONGER PERMIT M/C CLUB COLORS OR PATCHES ON OUR PREMISES.
We appreciate your cooperation to our commitment of maintaining a safe & friendly atmosphere for all of our valued customers.
I walked up to the bar, grabbed a drink, doing a 360. I quickly found & crossed paths with Cheetah once more. I was excited. To me, along with Johnny Thunders and Keith Richards, Cheetah Chrome is one of the great anti heroes when it comes to rock n roll guitarists. I expressed my appreciation about this and he stated cheekily that they just really didn’t play by the rules or acted like there weren’t any.
Since the show. Cheetah had been dealing with finding a new singer with the stress of a tour coming up. There had been some controversy recently with the current singer, Jake Hout, quitting the band due to Cleopatra Records wanting to use AI technology to recreate the voice of Stiv Bators on their newest record. This led to some fallout with fans. Cheetah’s response was he denies to use AI extensively, claiming the album will not feature a “fake” Stiv Bator’s voice. With the help of the Damned’s drummer and manager, they found a new London-based singer, Mark Thorn, who I admit is very David Johansen in all the right ways.
We settled the present & began a dialogue of his life. Cheetah Chrome’s real name is Eugene O’ Connor and is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up as an only child with a single mom in a Catholic household. During his upbringing, specifically the 60s and 70s, Cleveland was desolate with big buildings as described to be similar to a neutron bomb going off. The best visual resource can be found in the photo book of Dave Treat’s Dead Boys 1977: The Lost Photographs capturing the essence of the dilapidated city. There were not many people walking the streets and a lot of decay present. Deindustrialization affected the city but to this day people from Cleveland are proud of where they come from, comparable to a smaller New York City. An excerpt from From Dave Treat’s interview from Vice, “Cleveland was definitely in decline. Downtown was a ghost town as people were moving to the suburbs and we were losing blue collar jobs in steel and the auto industries. We were referred to nationally as the Mistake on the Lake and the Cuyahoga River was so polluted it caught fire. In 1978 the city went into default. We shot one photo in the middle of the main street, downtown on a Saturday afternoon and one car came down the street.”
As we know, the Beatles set American culture ablaze on February 9th of ’64 performing on the Ed Sullivan show. A few years following, the Beatles would come to play Cleveland where Cheetah and his mom would attend and become one of the most memorable concerts of his youth. He cited them as the first inspiration for playing rock and roll music.
Ohio caught early on to the cultural and musical transformation throughout the 60s. Although it wasn’t Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco, Cheetah claims Cleveland radio stations to have been progressive and not only that but a lot of good touring bands came through to the city. New York Dolls, the Stooges, Slade, Mott the Hopple, Kiss, Alice Cooper and the Raspberries were all bands he’d see in his early adolescence. The Raspberries actually happened to be from Cleveland playing locally often.
After the Beatles, he was committed to rock and roll. Being a troublemaker, he was happy to find something harder in sound in reflection of how he felt which would then become Steppenwolf. The sound of Steppenwolf is a style of what became the defining raunchy Dead Boys lead guitar sound. This would primarily be playing loud naturally producing a fuzzy and heavy distortion. For himself, until then there was only brighter chords but this would be the sound he had been wanting to find. Steppenwolf would also be the first band he’d see dress cool with the “bad” attitude for the times. Of other early inspirations, the Velvets, the Stooges, Alice Cooper & New York Dolls would adjoin next to the Beatles & Steppenwolf.
After begging his mom endlessly, he finally got a guitar and started learning by playing along to records and getting any books from the public library to help. It took him a moment to realize his first guitar was a toy but eventually his mom got him the real deal. It was hard for her as they didn’t have much money and were part of the lower class but to my understanding she was very supportive of Cheetah’s endeavors.
Cheetah soon came to meet a lifelong friend, John “Johnny Blitz” Madansky through a musician’s wanted ad and got started playing with someone he liked. Around this time, he would start to indulge in teenage shenanigans. Drinking, having sex, doing drugs. He would soon drop out with no future plans except to keep playing guitar.
Up until now, he had yet to play in a real group until he was asked by older Clevelanders to join their band with Johnny Blitz. The original band was a continuation of a promotional project for a weekly tabloid that David Thomas wrote for under the pseudonym Crocus Behemoth. The band was originally comprised of David Thomas (vocals), Kim Zonneville (bass), Glen Hatch (guitar) and Tom Clements (drums). Guitarist Peter Laughner introduced himself to Thomas and eventually joined the band. With Laughner in, the band slowly morphed into the classic Rocket from The Tombs lineup in June of 1974 with David “Crocus Behemoth” Thomas, Peter Laughner, Cheetah Chrome, Johnny Blitz, and Craig Bell. Sonically speaking, the sound was a response to the decade long ruin of heavy industry in Cleveland as described earlier. Along with the Rockets, other notable groups were electric eels (purposefully spelled all lowercase) and the Mirrors. Rocket from the Tombs never recorded an album in their lifespan, but various live recordings and bootlegs can be found. Most noteworthy is a twelve track live set recorded in a loft that was initially to be broadcasted on a local radio program. When playing with Television for one of the last shows, both guitarists were talking to each other, and Tom Verlaine said, ‘That’s one scary group!’ and Richard Lloyd, states that he wanted to be a part of the group, which would come to be true in 2003 for their reunion tour. Ultimately, Lester Bangs described hailed them as "the original legendary underground rock band.”
How was working with David “Crocus Behemoth” Thomas?
He can be difficult. You know that can be a volatile relationship but you know me and him we had an axe to grind with the 2003 reunion and tour and we were kind of oil and water the whole tour. But we got it all straightened out and we’ve got along since. He works it you know. I respect David’s work a lot. We did the loft tape with Peter and David and everyone thought he sang just fine. With the frustration and not getting anywhere was where was when Peter started to say, “He can’t sing.”. Everyone tried to fix something that wasn’t really broken. I always wondered what would’ve happened if RFFT got in a van and drove to New York. There could've never been Dead Boys y’know.
He wrote “Sonic Reducer” and you came up with the music right? It’s crazy how classic it’s become.
Never expected it. It was one of those times you connect the antenna with the universe. It pretty much wrote itself. The actual inspiration for it was Charles Starkweather (infamous for committing a series of murders in the late 1950s), imagining him having something better than a gun you know. (laughing)
It used to have a psych intro to it too right?
Yeah it had kind of a drone kind of a thing. David played the organ on it, it was really cool. It would be a 10 minute thing.
Peter Laughner. How did he influence you?
He taught us a lot of stuff that we wouldn’t of known about like Richard Thompson and shit like that. He was like an encyclopedia. Especially blues, folk music and stuff like that. Also, he was a Lou Reed fan and modeled himself after Lou and kind of read the same poets and all that. He was a very rock n roll guy. He was a good writer as well into guys like Lester Bangs and such. Very hyper talented. He wasn’t a follower by any means. He taught me how to rehearse in a band and me and him would work on our guitar parts together. It was a lot of fun and one of the most creative times in my entire career writing songs with the Rockets. He had a very profound effect on me.
In UT #53, Johnny Blitz talks about how after you guys made the demo that was played on WMMS, you guys took it to the Cream offices in Michigan to Lester Bangs and Lester played it for people and they all thought it was terrible and that shook the whole group.
There wasn’t enough self confidence in the band. I mean I was fine with David’s voice. I thought his voice was like Elvis or Robert Plant or something.
The band was booked to play two more shows, one opening for Television at The Piccadilly in July and one at the Viking Saloon in August. In the final farewell show, Stiv Bators went on to infamously break up the band. At the end of the set, they went into “Sonic Reducer" and Stiv was lying on the floor knocking and bumping into everyone on stage. From Cheetah’s memoir, "Crocus was by the side of the stage just looking disgusted, Peter and Craig put their instruments down and walked off, and I leaned my guitar against the amp and let it feedback, then walked off with Stiv. And that was it. I wasn’t a Rocket anymore.”
David Thomas and Peter Laughner would proceed to form the experimental avant-garde group, Pere Ubu. Craig Bell starts a band called Saucers (also playing bass for the Gizmos later). Cheetah Chrome and Johnny Blitz go on to form Frankenstein with Stiv Bators, Jeff Magnum and Jimmy Zero.
When did Frankenstein officially become a thing?
Stiv had joined RFTT for a little bit when they were trying to figure out what to do new singer-wise but he never fit. He was basically there to steal me anyways. (laughing)
Rockets broke up August of ’75 so a month later we did Frankenstein. I had the long hair being into the Alice Cooper thing and all.
I was shocked to see photos of how long your hair was.
Yeah at the time I was still into the glam thing. Real crazy back then. We did that one show with Pere Ubu debuting with us and Travis Dobbs hosting. Travis Dobbs was a wild ass drag queen that was a really fucking cool guy. He was a black guy who would wear spandex and googly alien things on his head. The most outrageous outfits.
So no more than 5 shows you’d say?
It was maybe four. Then nobody really cared and we broke up.
So you guys broke up. That’s when Stiv went to New York hung out with Joey Ramone and came back inspired. The story of how he gathered you guys back together is hilarious!
Yep he told all of us to pick him up separately at the airport. So everyone goes to the airport bar and everyone starts coming in you know, realizing he wasn’t just getting pickup from the airport but he was scheming (laughing). He was like Captain Kirk on Star Trek. He said, “I just came from New York, there’s people like us there. Let’s go there!”. That was probably Spring of ’76 and we played our first gig August of ’76 as Dead Boys.
Frankenstein would reform as Dead Boys trying to convince Jeff Magnum to come which would be initially unsuccessful and decided on doing the first gig without a bassist. In the beginning, the Dead Boys would be Bators, Chrome, Blitz and Zero. With a plan of finding a name, a bassist, and bringing a few songs from the Rockets and some covers, they headed on over to New York already having an in with the Ramones and Hilly Krystal, the owner of CBGBs. The Dead Boys quickly became one of the favorites in the New York scene selling out CBGBs often. No band was tougher and meaner except for maybe the Heartbreakers. Hilly Krystal decides to offer to manage the band landing a deal with Seymour Stein’s Sire Records and Magnum would be convinced to rejoin the band around this time. Their debut album, Young Loud and Snotty was recorded at Electric Last Studios produced by Genya Ravan and came out October of 1977 as part of a four-record “New Wave” release which would include Talking Heads’ More Songs About Building and Food, Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation, and the Saints’ U.S. release (I’m) Stranded.
When Sire Records did the 4 record release. How did you feel about the strategy of the release with it being marketed as “new wave”?
They didn’t know what to do with anything. It broke up the band eventually. It was them trying to turn us into the Babies or something.
All four of the groups became iconic in a sense.
Oh yeah, the Richard Hell album especially is a good album.
Genya Ravan did an amazing job producing the record considering the differences between her tastes and your guys. How was she as a person and producer?
She was wild. She asked me the one time if the curtains match the drapes so I pulled down my pants and she was like ok. That bit in the CBGBs movie is true. We had lots of fun. She even orchestrated a girl to give Stiv a blowjob on stage. Genya gave her 4 double shots of Wild Turkey and took off her top and sprayed whip cream on her or something like that. Next thing I know she’s on stage while were playing unzipping Stiv’s pants. I wanted to do a second record with her. She was in that group, Ten Wheel Drive, that was a jazz band. She started to work with Hilly Krystal and formed a production company and all that. Hilly suggested her and she was great and a really good match up. The record was supposed to be a demo tape so we thought we were going to be able to the whole thing over again and we weren’t able to. She got some slack from the band about that but it wasn’t her fault. It was definitely Sire and Hilly…
It ended up being fantastic. Pertaining to, "I Need Lunch”, who was getting it on with Lydia Lunch where the inspiration came from? (laughing)
That was Johnny, Stiv and Jimmy. I had a girlfriend at the time. (laughing) Me and Lydia have always been good friends. She was a great person, a lot of fun to hang out with.
So at the time Jeff Magnum wasn’t in the band yet so you guys needed someone to play bass, how did you guys figure out who was going to do the parts?
Touring drove Jeff nuts. He was pretty shy around people but you couldn’t shut him up in the van.. (laughing) Being around people on drugs drove him nuts. He did like playing gigs. You never knew if he was gonna show up or not… Genya suggested the assistant engineer on the session, Bob Clearmountain. He played the bass on the whole first album except “Hey Little Girl” which was recorded live at CBGBs. When you listen to the first and second album stylistically the bass doesn’t sound the same at all.
Around the time, the Dead Boys were a part of the Damned’s first US tour and they were one of the first punk bands to be playing in the US. Tell me about that.
Yes, April of ’77. They came over to the U.S. to play at CBGBs. They had us and the Damned for four nights. We would be in there 8pm to midnight and they would clear the house out and Patti Smith would be from 1am to 4am. I wasn’t a fan of Patti.
Why is that?
Well I’ve always liked her music but she’s always been kind of an asshole to me… I mean I got along great with Lenny, I got along great with everyone else in the band.
It seems as though there’s always been a division of the rock n roll animals and the poetic types. Maybe some cross-breeds like Richard Hell.
I just don’t like all the pretentiousness, y’know. I don’t like pretentious shit. I’ll call people on it. I love Richard Hell, he’s a great guy!
I’ve read Just Kids and M Train and I’ve also read your memoir. There is a discrepancy in the style of the way in which you both tell your stories.
What she does is really good. I have nothing against her artistically at all. I love her music and just because she’s an asshole to me doesn't mean I can’t enjoy her music.
Recording for the second album, We Have Come For Your Children, began in early 1978. Discussions were held on who should produce it which included Genya Ravan and also Lou Reed but ultimately it would be Felix Pappalardi, known for being in the band Mountain and also had produced Cream’s 2nd album, Disraeli Gears. Although it is seen as the inferior record, there are still very good songs on it especially Jimmy Zero’s “ I Won’t Look Back” as one of my favorites. With that being said, it was hard to follow up a record like Young Loud and Snotty. Frustration started to stir in the band and at one point Cheetah even calls James Williamson of the Stooges to try to fix the album without avail.
So why wouldn’t Sire let Lou Reed produce the 2nd album?
There logic was he didn’t produce his own record. Richard Robinson produced him.
Do you think he took offense to not producing your guy’s record?
Oh I know he did. He went through all the trouble of actually doing up a budget and we could’ve done the record in Berlin and it would’ve been just as cheap as we did it in New York. He was really into it. He said we could be doing something on a different level. But they flew us to fucking Florida to a hippie! What the hell is the logic there?
The second album is viewed inferior to the first album but there are couple great songs on the record such as “I Won’t Look Back”, “Flame Thrower Love”, “Third Generation Nation”, the Stones cover “Tell Me”. In my opinion, these are great!
Oh there are great song, sure! I don’t play any leads to em. They’re all power chords. There’s nothing wrong with the material, it was all bad mixing. With Felix, when he came and did pre-production we got along fine for that but when we got to Miami to start rehearsing, he starts trying to cut songs apart, putting dog barks and gun shots in ‘em.
And his wife ended up killing him right?
Yep, it was the same gun we used on the album.
Around this time, they would get to play with one of the group’s heroes, Iggy Pop. One show while they were playing “Search and Destroy”, Iggy comes on and joins them on stage. Other notable events at the time was a their first and only England tour.
How cool was it doing “Search and Destroy” with Iggy?
Yeah he came out to do it with us while we were covering it on stage. That’s actually the night shit went south between us. After going to a Chinese restaurant and partying he was going through Stiv’s shit after he fell asleep looking for drugs and we went at it. Next thing I know, Hilly calls us up and asks if we wanna 3 dates in the Midwest with the Stooges. After that, I saw him was at the first gig and it was great.
Tell me about the England tour with the Damned. The amount of pranking that you mention in your memoir that you guys did too each other during the Dead Boys tour reminds me of Jackass! (laughing)
It was like 30 days. Pretty tough crowd and our album wasn’t even out yet. Fuckin Stiv…you’d start to take a nap and when you finally get a chance to sleep, he would light a match to your feet or tie your shoes together. All the sudden your foots on fire and you jump up and your shoes are tied together. We had a lot of good ones.
I loved how you mentioned in your memoir pertaining to the critics who were in favor of the Sex Pistols labeling Dead Boys as being inauthentic. Your response is your upbringing was more lower class than theirs and you didn’t need to put pins in your ear to prove how tough you were.
Everyone from over there would be like, “Oh London rough town or Manchester or Birmingham…” It’s just like Cleveland y’know. There’s some synchronicity going on there. Like when Rockets from the Tombs were coming up in Cleveland and it turned to Dead Boys and Pere Ubu. Over in England, bands like London SS and 101ers became the Clash and the Damned. Over there you had Ducks Deluxe and Dr Feelgood just before punk too which was the best.
Yeah all the pub rock stuff? Sharp rock and roll!
Hell yeah, it’s some of my favorite stuff actually. It was a good time for rock and roll.
Another interesting thing around this time was that you and Stiv did a TV segment Gore Vidal meets the Dead Boys and did coke on live television?
He didn’t tell me he was going to do this and he pulls it out and I follow his lead. Afterwards we invited him to the gig and he actually came and he loved us he thought we were great the host was completely confused.
After We Have Come For Your Children was released later that year, Sire Records was pressuring the group to appeal more to the US mainstream which has yet to embrace punk seen in the UK, leading to the Dead Boys break up in 1977. Cheetah explains to me that he wasn’t interested in matching suits and that’s what Stiv wanted to do towards the end of Dead Boys before it imploded. They did play a few shows without Cheetah, replacing him. If you want to see an example of this, there is one clip on YouTube titled “Evil Boy” (Live 1980) - Stiv Bators. It’s the only video where you see the Dead Boys without Cheetah Chrome and another guitarist wearing matching suits and starting to experiment into the power pop direction.
Do you like Power Pop?
Yeah I do like it. It’s a little too happy for me. I like the dark stuff you know. Stiv was way more into power pop than I was you know but stuff like the Flamin’ Groovies and Shake Some Action. We covered Yesterday’s Numbers in our first set list as Dead Boys. We were also going to do the Europe with them but they didn’t want too.”
I would imagine Dead Boys would be a tough band to follow…
The aftermath was a difficult time with severe drug abuse and disillusionment but as a New York rock n roller it was an interesting and unique time for you. You played with the Stilettos, Nico, recorded on the Ronnie Spector album… The amount of people you associated with is astonishing!
It was really fun and definitely a good time. I’ll never forget it, it was weird because I got to meet an amazing bunch of people right around then. They liked me I guess!
After Dead Boys and one thing I didn’t end up finding too much information about was GG Allin.
At one point Wayne Kramer & Dennis Thompson were a part of GG’s the Jabbers, and at another point you were also a part of the group too. Not at the same time though?
Yeah it was at a different point. Me and GG got to know each other in the early 80s maybe ’81 or ’82. He was very clean cut back then.
Kind of interesting GG Allin’s first record, Always Was, Is and Always Shall Be and Stiv’s first solo record, Disconnected have similarities to it. A punk essence with an effort towards power pop. GG Allin’s "Bored to Death” is especially amazing! Also, I found out Genya Ravan was GG’s manager at one point.
GG knew what he was doing. We did some gigs in Providence and Boston, maybe Connecticut.
Very interesting. Well, out of all your post-DB’s discography, I think your songs on the Ork Singles is the best!
That was a great project. I was honored to be on Terry’s label. I had that recorded a month before the Dead Boys broke up.
Finally, there was an Italian Hardcore band named Cheetah Chrome Motherfuckers, was it an honor or a headache?
Never met them, they were from Italy. It was a pain in my ass for a little bit. I’d be driving home with my girlfriend and people would be calling me about playing somewhere that night and I would be calling the club saying what the hell I’m not playing tonight, I’m watching TV!
I guess if you were cruising around and a sign said IGGY POP MOTHERFUCKERS on a matinee sign and with the lack of social media back then you can assume Iggy Pop’s playing that night.
Yeah. My phone would be ringing, “Hey can I be put on the list tonight?” And I would say, “I’m not playing!”. I talked to someone asking what can I do about this? And he said let me see well they got half a set of drums and two twin reverbs so there isn’t much to recover. (laughing) On one hand, it is somebody capitalizing on me to promote themselves. But on the other side of it, it is homage. I don’t know…they came up with some excuse of it being some cartoon character in Italy. That’s bullshit. (laughing)
When was this around?
Early 80s, not too far off from when Dead Boys broke up! So…yeah, I been putting up with that shit for a long time…too fuckin long! (laughing)
It was getting late so I wrapped it up and thanked him for his time. The next day, I woke up with a hangover thinking I would be laying low until flying home. Going into the night, I received a text from him asking if I was still around so we hung out & ate some dinner at his favorite Italian joint. We even went to his place afterwards and he pulled out the Irish Whiskey once more, smoked some pot until the wee hours… Thanks to Cheetah Chrome, for being a great host!
