Bruce Duff - The Smell of Death

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Copyright 2014 by Bruce Duff

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A Barnacle Book | Rare Bird Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 453 South Spring Street, Suite 531, Los Angeles, CA 90013.

Set in Goudy Old Style
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West

Interior illustrations by A Person

Publishers Cataloging-in-Publication data

Duff, Bruce.
The Smell of death / Bruce Duff.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-940207-09-4

1. Duff, Bruce. 2. Rock musiciansBiography. 3. Sound recording executives and producersBiography. 4. Rock musicCalifornia. 5. Rock musicBiography. 6. JournalistsBiography. I. Title.

ML385 .D84 2014
780/.42dc23

For Patricia Louise
who encouraged it

Queen Gina
who denied it

Jeff Dahl
who allowed it

Factsheet Three
who survived it

Contents

Introduction

by Cheetah Chrome

R eading this book brought back a lot of memories for me, both of touring myself, with others, and with Bruce Duff himself. Matter of fact, as I type this, things are shaping up for he and I to hit the road again in Spring 2014 for a short jaunt up and down the West Coast. Weve done the trip before, as well as one to Spain in 2004, and several recordings and gigs in the eighties in L.A. with Jeff Dahl (one with matching Firebirds!) before the events described in this book. One of those shows was my last time on stage together with Stiv Bators, at the Music Machine in Santa Monica in early 1990.

Two things I can say about Bruce: he knows what hes talking about, and its always great to see him. Cant say that about everybody, but it comes easy in his case. Hes always been a calm force in the most turbulent waters, and a voice of reason in crazy times. And hes funny as hell, too! This book reminds me of that, and makes me wish Id been along, and thats why Im glad he wrote it. It also makes me look forward to those gigs in the Spring!

Nashville, TN

January 2014

Foreword

by Bruce Duff

T his book was written by the man formerly known as SL Duff, who had previously been S.L. Duff, which stood for Screamin Lord Duff. An inappropriate appropriation of one of rock n rolls most unforgettable showmen, Id nicked it to differentiate the writer from the musician, Bruce Duff. The musician came first, but along the way the musician was asked to become the editor of a start-up local music newspaper being jump-started in the outback of the Inland Empire, here in California. Yours Truly, Bruce, pre-SL, had no experience or knowledge of how such a thing was done but accepted the job. Why not? This was in 1977.

Roll the clock forward a few years and Id moved to Hollywood to find fame and everything else, and utilized my previous editing and writing experience to sideline into music magazine freelancing. Soon after, I began using the S.L. Duff byline and it stuck. After a time I dropped the periods because SL without them seemed like the way a real writer would do it. SL Duff might one day write a novel about a descent into some kind of hopeless addiction, or maybe a pilgrimage to the third world on an undercover op, or something equally grand.

That didnt happen (and why would it?), because SL Duff was always secondary to Bruce Duff, who maintained real employment within the music industry and was usually the member of at least two or three co-existing performing and recording bands at any given time. Write a book? No. But I would fly to Atlanta on Geffen Records dime to interview the chainsaw-wielding Jackal because no one else that wrote for that magazine would take the assignment, as they were embarrassed by the very nature of it. My thinking in these instances always was, what the hell, Ive never been to Atlanta and Ill bet its nice.

Along the way, both Bruce and SL got to travel the world on indie rock tours as well as assignments for real magazines paid for by record labels back when such things actually occurredbefore budget cuts, file sharing, MP3s, and bloggers obliterated these promotional extravagances. One such indie rock tour took place in early 1993 when myself and five other gentlemen piled into a small van and toured through eleven European countries in nine weeks. We were all issued a detailed tour itinerary from the booking agency responsible for this jaunt. Each page was a new day, a new town, a new venue, and just maybe a new adventure. The back of each page was blank. As we rolled through this tour, I got in the habit of jotting down notes about each day, which I figured, when coupled with all the photos I was taking, would put together a nice little picture to help my brain keep these memories sorted out. Someday in the old rockers home this would bring a tear and an ever-so-slight smile. Not long after we got going, these notes and this tour itinerary turned into something of a journal.

Back in Los Angeles, following the tourand a short time after my girlfriend decided it was time to leave Hollywood, leave me, and get back to Ohio where everything made a bit more senseI took a look at my scrawlings on the backside of the itinerary pages and found myself somewhat amused. Thumbing through the pages, I sat back and asked myself: Could there be a book lurking in here? Do I have a worthwhile story to tell?

Convinced that I did, I began pounding it out, night after night, and in a few months it had a beginning, middle, and an end. I finished the draft sometime in 1994 and then pondered what to do. A few of my friends had parlayed being rock critics/music writers into the publishing game, but mostly were talking about music bios, ghostwriting, tell-alls, or analytical music think pieces. In other words, the same subject matters as the magazine articles they were writing, only many times longerand with a bunch of photos. One of these folks made an introduction to a notable publisher who specialized in books about music and musicians. They reviewed the book and informed me that, while it was well written, it had no star power and wouldnt attract an audience. They wanted sex, drugs, and platinum - selling rock n roll.

I refused to accept that and knocked on some more doors, but soon found that the publishing business as a whole was in agreementunpublishable. I put the manuscript on my nightstand under a CD of William Burroughs bedtime stories and forgot about it for years and years.

The clock rolls forward even farther, and in 2005 I decide to euthanize SL Duff once and for all. In the nearly three decades that Id manhandled the word processor, the chore of writing about music had soured for me. The pay hadnt really improved, promo items were becoming non-existent (you want me to download it, burn my own CD, and then write about it??again, this was 2005. No iTunes for me yet). Trips on the label promo budget had vanished, the music one had to write about was more fleeting as the one-hit wonder became the norm and the artist with a multi-release career became the oddity, and the editing my work was being subjected to became more nonsensical. Sound bites were preferred to developed opinions. Meanwhile, I had set up a Pro Tools studio in my house, and the thought of writing about music I wasnt terribly interested in as opposed to spending my time multi-tracking just seemed pointless.