Fire of Love (1981)

9

Sex Beat / Preaching the Blues / Promise Me / She Is Like Heroin to Me / For the Love of Ivy / Fire Spirit / Ghost on the Highway / Jack on Fire / Black Train / Cool Drink of Water / Goodbye Johnny

Please allow me to introduce Jeffrey Lee Pierce, user of many substances, exorcist of countless personal demons, and only steady member of the nearly forgotten The Gun Club. Well, they never were a commercial triumph to begin with, but the lack of recognition they now get is beyond comprehension, their very sketchy output notwithstanding. As far as I know (and I must admit I only heard about half of their albums), Fire of Love is their most impressive album, but unlike some of their contemporaries’ efforts, no one hardly ever mentions them. And with contemporaries, I refer to the L.A.-bands that were signed to Slash Records and who – like The Gun Club – coupled fiery, punkish rock ‘n’ roll with roots elements, whether it be 50’s rockabilly from the likes of Sonny Burgess or Johnny Burnette (X, The Blasters), or tex-mex (Los Lobos). Fire of Love is often considered the first so-called cow-punk or psychobilly (basically a punked-up version of rockabilly) album, and while I don’t know or care whether that’s true, I certainly haven’t heard an (older) album that sounds remotely like it. Anyway, Pierce started the band in the late 70’s with Rob Ritter (who’d be a member of 45 Grave and Thelonious Monster later on) on bass, Terry Graham on drums, and on guitar a friend of Pierce, Kid Congo Powers, who’d leave before the recording of the debut album, and wound up in various more popular bands, like The Cramps and The Bad Seeds (Nick Cave’s ‘backing band’). A suitable replacement was found in the person of Ward Dotson.

Fire of Love contains at least one should’ve-been-a-classic: “Sex Beat,” a fiery blast of energy that immediately displays some of Pierce’s obsessions (sex, the protecting of the ‘soul’) and intense delivery, Dotson’s jagging style (similar to X’s Billy Zoom’s slashings), and the rhythm attack’s primal/tribal assault, which is also continued in the album’s other notorious track, the perverse “She Is Like Heroin” that rages ahead (certainly during the chorus), with Pierce’s off-key howling and great “She cannot miss a vein”-line. The lengthy “For the Love of Ivy” was co-written by Powers, and is basically a slower version of “Heroin” and has the classic opening line “You look just like an Elvis from hell.” It’s a half-demented and morbid track (“Gonna buy me a graveyard of my own, kill everyone who ever done me wrong”) that gets its strength from the alternation of slower, shuffling parts and flashes of desperate madness, witness Pierce’s over-the-top wailing as the icing on the voodoo doll. More rootsy (obviously) is the band’s successful take on Robert Johnson’s “Preaching the Blues,” which is turned into an incendiary piece of gothic punk-blues. It’s especially noteworthy to check out the different approach of the guitars: while Dotson keeps on playing in a messy punk-style, Pierce counterpoints with his slide-guitar, while both unite during the chorus in which the high fever is driven to a maximum. While hearing Pierce’s wailing preach, it’s not hard to guess who influenced 16 Horsepower’s David Eugene Edward’s singing style either. Another example of relatively straight blues is the hypnotic Delta-blues “Cool Drink of Water” (originally written by a guy called Tommy Johnson) that has JL yodelling lazily like a drunken Phil Alvin, uttering lines like “I ask for water and she gave me gasoline,” and two climactic moments with soloing on the verge of chaos.

“Ghost on the Highway” betrays a Bo Diddley-influence (although it also reminds me of “Mystery Train”) and again contains some fierce guitar interplay, while the updated rockabilly of “Black Train” does what it’s supposed to do: keep on rolling for two minutes. That Pierce was fond of dark tales that focus on the less rational side of the human psyche is once again proven by “Jack on Fire,” in which the message isn’t to be misunderstood: “I’m like Jack and I tell you this, I will be your lover and exorcist, in the stillness of the mosquito sunset, you will make love to me to your very best.” Not all the songs on the album are that intriguing, though, as “Promise Me” falls too much back on The Velvet Underground’s minimalism (blame it on the monotony of the violin), and “Fire Spirit” is simply no match for the album’s other tracks. But, it doesn’t change a thing about Fire of Love’s appeal: it’s one hell of a debut, raw and with a thin production, but also possessed of the true rock ‘n’ roll spirit, most apparent in the acquired, but imposing inspiration of Jeffrey Lee Pierce.

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