Lexicon Devil The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs
LEXICON DEVIL, an oral history that probes the brains of over 100 characters, and contains 140 never-before-seen photos, goes beyond early punk rock into secret regions of suicide, mind control, suppressed sexuality, corrosive humor, self-abuse, and addictions to rock celebrity, drugs and cults. Thieves, surfers, skinheads, nymphettes, chickenhawks, skateboarders, Scientologists, boho artists, under-age sado-masochistic punk kids, and TV stars confront and hustle each other in a late ’70s L.A. history that reads like bowdlerized chapters of Hollywood Babylon that have finally come to light.
It took three improbable co-authors to put together this amazing book. Brendan Mullen founded the Masque, the urine-stained basement from which Los Angeles punk rock was created, (and with Mark Spitz) wrote We Got the Neutron Bomb, the ’70s Los Angeles rock history. Don Bolles played drums for The Germs, Vox Pop, 45 Grave and Celebrity Skin; when not homeless Bolles DJs horrifying children’s records at KXLU. Adam Parfrey is known for his apocalyptic sociology, and most recently the volume Extreme Islam: Anti-American Propaganda of Muslim Fundamentalism.
“Number One, with a silver bullet. The definitive story of L.A. punk’s tragic manimal, Darby Crash. Truly obscene, appallingly funny, sad beyond words. I await the Hollywood motion picture.”
— Jimmy McDonough, author of Shakey: Neil Young’s Biography, and The Ghastly One: The Sex-Gore Netherworld of Filmmaker Andy Milligan
“Compelling reading from start to finish.”
— Ugly Things
“This book delivers on punk mayhem… A fascinating story… one of the most emotionally powerful books on punk… the punk book which might be most meaningful to a broader audience… a lot of insights not only about the music and the time, but about youthful rebellion more generally.”
— Benjamin Hervey, The Joe Bob Report
“Rock & roll, death, urine, slime, blood and pus [were] reborn on the Sunset Strip in the punk summer of ‘77. Darby Crash was the Christopher Columbus of horror, grotesquery, and bad behavior – of course he needs his story told. I couldn’t believe the book – it brought me back in a time machine to my own brush with madness and insanity.”
— Kim Fowley
“This book is an important oral history of a person, a band, a time long past that will never be repeated.”
— Trent A. Reinsmith
“Lexicon Devil is, pure and simple, the finest volume on L.A. punk – world punk – PUNK! – to have seen the light of print. (Yes, folks: that includes Please Kill Me.) As oral histories of ANYTHING go, I would put it right up there with Jack’s Book and Edie: An American Biography. Great book!”
— Richard Meltzer
”[Lexicon Devil] is as compellingly readable a portrait of a personality and a culture as anything you’re likely to set eyes on.”
— Crispin Sartwell
“This book scared the shit out of me. It’s amazing, it’s great … I can’t believe how good it is.”
— Pat Smear, Germs guitarist, and later a player for Nirvana and the Foo Fighters
- 296 Pages
- 6 x 9 inches
