Born in Cleveland, Gene O'Connor
got famous with his punk rock stage name Cheetah Chrome. He
played guitar with the proto punks Rocket From The Tombs and
the Dead Boys and was one of the first celebrities of the emerging
New York punk scene.After the end of the Dead Boys in 1979 Cheetah Chrome started solo projects and collaborated with different artists like Jeff Dahl, Sonny Vincent or Ronnie Spector. Today he is living in Nashville with his wife and has a band called Sweet Justice. At the Punk! Kongress Cheetah Chrome will perform with his former colleges Rocket From The Tombs and talk about the eventful life of a rock and roll star. It were the Beatles who made young Cheetah Chrome wanna become a musician himself, after watching them in the "Ed Sullivan Show" on TV. Later, in the early seventies, when he discovered the Stooges; MC 5 and the Alice Cooper Band he turned away from the melodious British pop music. Together with his friend, drummer John Madansky; he met the rock poet Peter Laughner who asked them to join his band Rocket From The Tombs (RFTT). Rocket From The Tombs never released a record during their short existence of only a year. They became a legend because they were the cradle of two famous successors: Pere Ubu, formed by Laughner and David Thomas and the Dead Boys who were founded by Chrome and Blitz. Both bands were playing songs from the old RFTT repertoire. After the short life of another group called Frankenstein, where Chrome played with guitarist Jimmy Zero and singer Stiv Bators, they moved from Cleveland to New York. There they hoped to find more opportunities for playing gigs. When they performed at CBGB's they took a new name: The Dead Boys. Their celebrated debut was June 25th in 1976. Hilly Kristal, owner of CBGB's, was so enthusiastic about the music and the steaming stage antics of the front man, that he decided to become the manager of The Dead Boys. Their first album with the appropriate title "Young, Loud And Snotty" came out on Sire Records in 1979. Their stage show was wild and brutal and Stiv Bators exhausted the audience with gruesome gags à la Iggy Pop. Rancid salami slices pinned to his T-shirt was one of his milder jokes. They soon toured the UK with their colleagues from The Dammed and it was quite a success. The second album "We Have Come For Your Children" came out in June 1978 on Sire Records. In addition to punk rock classics like "3rd Generation Nation" and "(I Don't Wanna Be No) Catholic Boy" they recorded another RFTT piece, like on their debut album "Ain't It Fun." The following US tour turned out to be a financial disaster and the records didn't sell so well either. As a result, Sire wanted them to change their sound into a more catchy "New Wave" style. To fulfill their contract, they decided to record a live album at CBGB's. During the show Bators sang deliberately past the microphone to fuck up the recordings. The material was published a year later on Bomp-Records as "Night OF The Living Dead Boys". After this episode, the Dead Boys lost their luck: first drummer Johnny Bitz was stabbed and dangerously injured; and in 1979, Sire Records broke of their contract. The members of the band decided to go their own way. At the end of the eighties there was a short reunion of The Dead Boys and a 12 inch release on Relativity. For a while Stiv Bators was the most successful Dead Boy: after a power pop sound solo album for Bomp, he founded The Wanderers with ex members of Sham 69 and The Damned and later the famed indie band Lords Of The New Church. In 1990 he died tragically as a result of a traffic accident. Cheetah Chrome released a solo 7 inch on the New York Ork Label and became part of Nico's backing band. He then retreated from the scene until the late eighties - with the exception of some guest appearances as a session musician. After a short-lived Dead Boys reunion in 1987, he recorded one more solo album in 1996, produced by Genya Ravan, which was actually never released because of some legal differences. But three years later "Alive in Detroit" came out on DUI Records. Finally, Chrome and David Thomas got together again to go over some old RFTT material for another record release. They toured together and published the album "Rocket Redux", a studio album with the RFTT live set. Cheetah Chrome formed Sweet Justice, his own backing band. They are working on an album and planning a tour in Europe. |
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ALTERNATIVE TV IGOR BASIN MICHAEL "PANKOW" BOEHLKE BOONARAAAS! BOY FROM BRAZIL SEZGIN BOYNIK BUZZCOCKS CHEETAH CHROME CZD DEAN DIRG RONALD GALENZA HENRYK GERICKE THOMAS GROETZ DICK HEBDIGE ALFRED HILSBERG STEWART HOME SIEGFRIED KALUS THE KIDS THOMAS LAU MARLENE MARDER MALCOLM MCLAREN LEGS MCNEIL PADELUUN BERT PAPENFUSS MARK PERRY HARRY RAG ROCKET FROM THE TOMBS SEDLMEIR ANDY SHERNOFF MARTY THAU TOKYO SEX DESTRUCTION VIVA L'AMERICAN DEATH RAY MUSIC |