Johnny Pierce

Rip It Up, Issue 110, 1 September 1986, Page 6

Johnny Pierce

Oh shit. Another eulogy. Another death. Johnny Pierce, bass-player in the Headless Chickens and formerly This Kind of Punishment and Children’s Hour, died on August 30th aged 25. He took his own life. Sometimes the fact of death by suicide can cast a shadow over the life an individual has lived, the last act blotting out all the others. If that is so, let the record be set straight. Johnny Pierce came to Auckland from Whangarei in 1982. Tall and muscular, he had been a North Island A group soccer rep before a car accident resulted in a badly broken leg. He was already playing the bass by that time. He was never a flyingfingers type player, the essence of his style was its sheer heart and drive. He began playing with drummer Bevan Sweeney and guitarist Grant Fell. They met up with Chris

Matthews one day at Progressive and became the musical muscle behind Matthews’ stark young vision.

The musical community into which they had moved was a young, fluid one. A steady stream of faces passed through the ninebedroom house at the bottom of Grafton Road in 1983, and everyone had been to a party there. In an itinerant world, Johnny was a good organiser. It was always he who looked after what funds there were on a Children’s Hour tour and he who later did the

tiresome legwork to secure the Fort Street warehouse (like Grafton Road, now gone) which became a practice base and home for Children’s Hour and friends and perennial inner city drop-in spot for dozens of others.

Children’s Hour broke up in mid-84 but the members remained close. It was with Chris Matthews that Johnny began playing again towards the end of the year in the Five by Four EP line-up of This Kind of Punishment. The EP was recorded within a week of his joining. The Jefferies Brothers sense of discipline to achieve seemed to rub off all round, and so came Arthole Productions. Setting up base in an old charm school off Queen Street, Johnny, Chris, Bevan and a hard core of others launched the Nitpickers' Picnic in July 1985. The Picnic was a stimulating circus of music, theatre, dance and film put on in the Maidment Theatre by a group of young people who, strictly speaking, knew fuck-all about putting on a production of this size, but did it anyway. The whole thing was a remarkable effort of co-operation, with Johnny again the administrative lynchpin. The show saw the last performances of This Kind of Punishment in that form and the hatching of the Headless Chickens. It lost money but it was a raging success.

Johnny’s administrative ability was further refined over the summer with a job on the Auckland City Council’s PIPs scheme. He was responsible for those sunny lunchtime rock gigs in Aotea Square. I saw him go well out of his way once to get some gear for a Christchurch band forced to travel light. A lot seemed to depend on the big guy with the ginger hair. As he got more organised, so did the Headless Chickens. Their twitchy handful of songs at the Nitpickers’ Picnic had been impressive, but when they reappeared for the Nico support, slimmed to Johnny, Chris, and Michael Lawry, (Bevan was off being a stilt-walking shaman for the summer), they were something else again. And when it all fell together on the second night of their Rising Sun weekend, it was one of the best things I’ve ever heard. Where Children’s Hour had sprayed ideas and anger all over

the place, the Headless Chickens took both and hammered them into vivid, intricate packages and fired them off the front of the stage. The notable thing about the Headless Chickens was the amount of backroom sweat they were prepared to devote to a few special appearances. The same thing held for their posters and the forthcoming recordings and filmclips. Before I left New Zealand, Paul Rose and I discussed how good it would be to see Arts Council money go to a few different faces. The first name both of us thought of were the people at Arthole Productions.

Johnny Pierce had a combination of ability and attitude which is all too rare in this country’s music scene. But perhaps it was his diligence that was his undoing, too — he was prone to worry and the occasional deep depression. The music he played may have concerned itself with dark things, but it and the community it lies within are not nihilist. It’s still a young, strange one, and deaths are not borne easily. Chris and Michael will presumably carry on their work in some form and Johnny’s contribution can't be taken away. Watch for them.

But it’s sad, it’s hellish sad.

Russell Brown