A Date With Ivy Wrestling, Gridiron, Mass Murder ... and Elvis

Rip It Up, Issue 109, 1 August 1986, Page 14

A Date With Ivy Wrestling, Gridiron, Mass Murder ... and Elvis

by

Kerry Buchanan

In 1966 Elvis made a movie called Easy Come, Easy Go, with this crazy scene of bikini clad girls having their skin decorated by a body painter and a yoga instructor putting Elvis and the girls through a few positions. TH. inspires Elvis to break into a song

aptly called ‘Yoga is as Yoga Does’. Even in something as potentially dumb as this, Elvis remains great. I don’t know if the Cramps like yoga, but I know they love Elvis and rock and roll, and that’s why I love the Cramps. • -•* *’ I ' “7 \

To ring up Hollywood is not quite the same as being there, but the thrill still lingers. After the Cramps’ answer phone dies in a hail of echo and reverb, the voice of Ivy Rorschach (lead guitar and album cover model) is heard live from her East Hollywood home. It’s decorated in the same spirit as their songs: “We have a tropical bar, with blinking tiki lanterns ... tikis are very exotic in North America. We have lots of great movie posters, a 50 inch TV set because we watch a lot of movies, and a pink TV in our boudoir. We have a pink boudoir...” This is an environment

and sense of style that is pure 50s rock and roll, but to many the Cramps are seen more as punk rockers or some manifestation of the Gothic ideal. “It’s really weird, we’ve just been to England and the people who come to our shows look like that, but we don’t look like that, and we’re not singing about that. But in America we don’t; in America we just get very American looking people now ...” American music comes in many forms, from the highly sanitised images of MTV to its flipside in the hardcore scene of bands like MDC and Agnostic Front. But to

the Cramps both these worlds lack something ... “It seems to me that the only aspect of hardcore.that. is attractive to me is that it seems rebellious in a way. But it seems like the ; opposite of us — for one £ thing it seems asexual, it c doesn’t seem like a P.'?~7 celebration of anything, just 7? the opposite, real serious. and grey." t Get REAL Gone The Cramps’ vision is the same as Chuck Berry’s celebration of popular culture in ‘Back in the USA’ and the sensuality of the '

Dominos’ sex-shout of ‘Sixty Minute Man’. The Cramps carry the primal secret of rock and roll, the ability to “get real gone,” as Elvis says in ‘Milkcow Blues’. It’s the sort of feeling you hear in gospel and in the wild rockabilly of things like Billy Lee Riley’s 'Flying Saucer Rock ’n’ Roll’ — losing one’s self in the celebratory nature of it all. The Cramps play the sort of rock and roll that still sounds like the bastard son of blues and country, the underground music of the 50s, before rock and roll became legitimate. In a way the Cramps are attempting to enlighten us all, to bring us back to the truth, like some form of hellfire rock and roll preachers. “I think we are ... we’re the living essence of rock and roll. The Cramps are the essence of rock and roll. I think we are setting an example for people that I don’t see many other groups doing. That we are showing j the people the way to do it, < and reminding them of whet rock and roll can be. . -?■ Because it was a very special thing, it happened several years ago, but it seems that it slipped /, .., < ■ people’s minds. It wasn’t 3 something that could die, it I was something that can free f/ you, y*know.” Rock and roll is more than the music, it’s an expression of popular culture, its about “other worlds”. Like professional wrestling for • instance. “Yeah it’s great, it’s the same thing as rock and roll ... I don’t know who's current now, there could be someone who’s great who is ; contemporary, but George ■ ‘the Animal’ Steele has I kinda been my favourite over a period of time ... I also like this guy ‘Exotic’ Adrian Street, who wrestles for NWA a lot, we met him in our house, he’s just nuts, he never lets up, every minute you're around, he’s just totally in love with himself... '/jit’s so inspiring!” ~ '), ■ ./'? ®l| Those of you seeking similar inspiration, take a look at Grunt: the Wrestling Movie (in all good video shops), where Exotic Adrian Street is in fine form. The Cramps also delight in football, where their fave team, home boys the LA Raiders destroy all opposition. 'The Raiders’ - emblem is a skull and crossbones. “The Raiders are great, .. ..

they’re number- one, the :,p Cramps are the unofficial - band for the LA Raiders, and;? that’s official.” Gore and Boars j/ As yet they haven’t recorded any homage to pigskin and cheerleaders, but their dedications to exploitation films make up for that. Their version of the theme from Herschel!/ ? ' Gordon Lewis’s ‘She Devils 1 on Wheels’ is spot on, and ‘I Ain’t Nothin’ But a Gore / J Hound’? (“A devil with a blue 7 ’ dress, blue dress on. I go crazy, going going, going / gone ...") is the perfect aural equivalent to HG Lewis’s manic vision. One of his7"/-Q movies just consists of total violence against inanimate objects, just kids trashing a !< room, as the camera lovingly pans over the broken chair leg, inspiring teen epic about vandalism with a blockbuster theme song. /-"The film’s called For the Hell of It and the song is ‘Destruction Inc.’ /’/' .7 “Yeah, that's great — f that’s sorta like destruction ... we haven’t done any other ones from his movies. He writes those songs too. We did that ‘Faster Pussycat? Kill-, Kill Kill’ by Russ Meyer. Ivy thought if they ever made a movie/Russ Meyer would be first choice as director.. “I love Russ Meyer films, he’s got a great look to ° " - everything and a real vicious . kind of editing, and he > narrates his own movies and everything; and I like a lot of 50s people — the way they did things.” > ; One of the greatest | exploitation film-makers ever t, is Ted Mikels, who in Astro 1 Zombies and The Corpse: , ‘s Grinders creates some of the coolest looking things ever. , - y- :y, . z “We met him here, he lived in a castle in Glendale. It was really a castle, a medieval castle, and he « never wore a shirt and he g’ wore boar’s teeth. And he a lived with I forget how many women there, he called them his Castle Women ... he had to leave, he lives in Las Vegas now." One of the most exciting aspects of Ted V Mikel’s work is the appearance of Tura Satana, a women of exceptional beauty, who also appears in Meyer’s Faster Pussycat. It comes as no surprise that she is Ivy’s fave actress.-

A... <Tura Satana, as far as ?s inspiring me, I haven’t seen her in much, but God she’s great. She just plays herself, I guess. Because Ted V Mikels put her in one of his movies [Astro Zombies and Doll Squad], I guess she was his girlfriend for a.while; he ' said that in real life she had “ /scar from a bullet wound and all sorts of, stuffy, she’s A a tough cookie.” & ''y* In the world of modern !/crime fiction there’s nobody if tougher than Jim Thompson, whose prose can . whip Mickey Spillane, and sends Pendleton’s Punisher series down the toilet. “I like this book called Killer Inside of Me by Jim ' Thompson. It’s fiction, but first-person point-of-view — from the killer’s point-of-view, but also kinda dumb. It sounds like the guy who wrote the book was, a killer too, which makes it more . interesting. He’s great, but I like a lot of true crime books about mass s murders. I’m reading one about the . zodiac, killer.” - / /Songs, like ‘People Ain’t No Good’ might suggest a certain ill feeling towards .. mankind, but no, the / Cramps have a love for all, including a Mr John Wayne Gacy. convicted and charged with the death of 33 boys. ,j Lux and Ivy write to Mr Gary, who in turn sends them paintings and his own letters, which are; “Really crazy and charming and charismatic. They just are. which is just weird because the guy killed . 33 people or at least that’s what they know for. sure that he killed. But it’s just weird reading his letters because . hes just bubbling with j ". personality. They’re very sarcastic, real kind of acid black humour. He sent us an astrology chart that describes the character of people born under each sign iy Most of them try to make everything sound positive f but he writes a negative thing. Like under Capricorn i he’ll write? ‘There’s never ? been a Capricorn born of any merit. You might as well ’ kill. yourself.’ ” He sounds like a nice guy, almost as good as Johnny Carson. Perhaps he should be a talkback show host. “Yeah, he’d be good for that... he’ll be great. Because there’s this photo of him shaking hands with Rosalyn Carter — a real American.”'

Another “real American” of interest is poor old Ed Gein, made famous by Hitchcock’s Psycho and Hooper's Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Lux paid a visit to the Gein family home and brought back a piece of history. “It was all burnt down ... but we have in our house a piece of the foundations, this huge rock that Lux dragged back from Ed Gein’s house.” What an image: Lux Interior (“Six foot three with my feet on the floor / Hey babe what do you take me for?”) with a huge hunk of murderer’s rock dragging behind him. It would make a great EC comic cover. “Ed’s just died. He was in a mental institution making jewellery, which is a shame. 1 would like to have bought some, hand crafted, his jewellery made him famous, but not at the same time!” Cornfed Dames None of these things — wrestling, movies, murderers, etc — exist outside the Cramps’ idea of rock and roll, but are integral parts. It’s what makes them supreme masters of rock and roll, that ability to encapsulate all of the power of popular culture in a hard rockin’ gem like the current A Date With Elvis. Now there’s been a lot of shit written about this, an almost total culture shock on the part of many critics. Faced with songs like ‘Cornfed Dames! with lyrics like: Now good girls can’t pay

the rent these days These cornfed dames done found a way Unzip that zipper ... snap that snap Round up the cattle In the Cadillac Whip that cream till the butter comes. tends to make a few critics cringe with sexist embarrassment. I mean it’s downright offensive — it’s just not the 80s thing to do! Darn right it’s offensive, and it’s sexual and it’s violent. Just like a Russ Meyer movie — as American as a Playboy bunny.

This is a rock and roll i album like they used to 1 make, a lot more rhythm and I blues orientated than their | earlier stuff. Listen to anyß| J 50s black R&B albums and i you can hear the influences ' on the Cramps. Try Hank . h Ballard and the Midnighters' ‘Open Up Your Back Door (I 1 Want to Make a Little < Cream)’ and compare it to 1 ‘Cornfed Dames’. The album i to me is also very romantic, I with ‘(Hot Pool of) Womanneed’ being an ace ’ I beat ballad. A Date With ' c < Elvis is a burst of R&B > \ < < ! I romanticism and Ivy knows

it... “I do exactly, it!s weird to hear somebody say that, because that’s one of the things we listen to a lot. People always make a big deal about the sexual i. a connotation. That’s always been in rhythm and blues and rock and roll. And we v are romantic people, % extremely romantic. We were very inspired when we did that album, and it's in a way we weren’t for any other record that we made —it - was a very intense 1 experience. I’m sure ,we i are inspired by that old R&B thing, because we listen to it all the time. Those kind of records sound like another world to me, we listen to R&B a lot on the road, because it calms us down. Doo wop, old black harmony ... real dreamy, other world • ' stuff.” * The new album also sounds different, with a ; production that cuts as?clean as a switchblade — brighter but not necessarily lighter.. Before this new one, Ivy described the material on Gravest Hits as her favourite, but Date she describes as: . “It sounds to me like we woke up' . It's produced y better. 4 don’t think some of our records were producer! the way rock and roll should have been. Like Alex |, [Chilton) is a great producer, / but I,don’t think he had the Z right thing for us ... I think we needed a more tear-your-ears-off sort of thing.” * A The album certainly does that, with Ivy’s guitar in pride of place, the Link Wray ' touches intact but with a more rhythmic feel, like Bo Diddley, and the solos are ;, more in keeping with the R&Bjaunch of Chuck Berry.. and Lowman Pauling of the Five Royaies, vl A Date . With Elvis is a true -

tribute to the great man, not just the acceptable side like the early Sun and RCA sides, but everything right through the films and on to Las Vegas. The cover- tells C/V 7 all: “Well it was inspired by' - - Elvis, because ‘all those / x - books were what Elvis read. .7 to his date, this is a fact, and that was his favourite meal, fried peanut butter'' A sandwiches ... which I ate afterwards ... they’re great.” ■ Aloha from Hell The Cramps perform ‘Do the Clam’ on stage and not : ' 5 as a joke, but as part of v Elvis’s great career. Songs like their version of ‘Do the Clam’ and 'Aloha from Hell’ (“I’ll be dancin’ thru theflames I Like a devil in disguise / You can hear me / sing / But not by satellite”) is as close to the Elvis f mystique'as you’ll s ever get. Part of that allure is in all . die movies he created (he ’ was the auteur in those rather than the director Hal Wallis). Ivy picks King Creole as her favourite. • “Because he’s so sexy in ' that ... he just mesmerises me. I love any movie” he’s in, because he’s Elvis, he just hypnotizes me in anything. y But King Creole it seems -tome like he was playing V .7himself ... and I also like ' x Carolyn Jones. Seeing him 5 making- it with Carolyn Jones ...just great.” Ivy finds a lot of the--^.y---e criticism levelled at Date totally unfounded, especially over ‘Kizmiaz’: £ “Well it is 'kiss my arse! but beyond all that it is also r a love song, a, love song that Lux and I wrote to each v other and it stands as just that too. I’ve read ridiculous stuff... I’ve read that it was making fun of Elvis’s movies - -on a tropical island. And that

is one thing. We don’t and ' we never make fun of Elvis.” The album was recorded at Hollywood United Studios, where Elvis did some work, and Lwondered if they felt the spirit of Elvis helping them ... “I don’t know if we did from him specifically that much, but the studio was : great... we felt the spirit of / Elvis in the Phillips studio in Memphis, actually we felt the spirit of Jerry Lee Lewis, because there were bullet -holes in the ceiling and he g said that was from Jerry Lee., ■ It’s amazing that he’s still kicking ... I think he was quite glad when Elvis died, I think he always felt that Elvis was the one who had all the fun.” ' ' ?- AW t There’s gonna be a lot of fun later this month, with. \ Vthe Cramps at the Galaxy k with the new bassplayer ; ; Candy Del Mar playing, “stuff off Date With Elvis and rsome surprises and a few i old songs' and stuff we haven’t done at all ...” What \ I’ve heard of the English tour tapesis' fantastic; with an opener like’ ‘Heartbreak ~ Hotel’ totally Cramped up, - how can you lose — it’s. gonna be nirvana. / \ Ivy and Lux have been ? "going around” for a while/ < now, and I wondered when - Athey were going to tie the / knot... “I don’t know, we’re having . *a prolonged engagement / right now, its time for a -. honeymoon. We have periodic honeymoons anyway. I don’t want to stop wearing this groovy - - engagement ring. I'm notv sure where we’d get married, g maybe in Las Vegas at the Imperial Palace -—there’s a chapel there — great!” As the King said, “Viva Las • Vegas!” A-’;-'---A *

Kerry Buchanan