G.G. Allin is dead.
He died of a drug overdose at a friend's apartment in New York City on Monday, June 28 after a violent show at a nearby club called The Gas Station.
According to Allin's brother Merle, who played bass in their band The Murder Junkies, Allin had done "bags and bags" of cocaine before the show and heroin afterwards.
"When everyone woke up at 9 o'clock this morning," says Merle, "he didn't."
After the 10-minute show, which ended abruptly, Merle stayed behind to take care of business in the midst of the chaos.
"It was the most insane show," says Merle, "like the grand finale. People were throwing bottles at buses and stuff for like an hour afterwards. G.G. split to get away from the insanity. That was the last time I saw him. I got to hear the police tell me he was no longer with us."
Despite continual suicide threats, Merle is convinced his brother's death was not intentional.
He explains, "Killing himself was the last thing he wanted to do at this point. He hadn't even begun to peak yet. There was too much more from him to do to take himself out now. He just got very obsessive yesterday with all this coke and dope."
Todd Phillips, a local documentary filmmaker who has chronicled Allin's life and "rock 'n' roll mission" in Hated: G.G. Allin & the Murder Junkies, agrees.
"I knew eventually when he made the film he was going to die," says Phillips. "I just wish it wasn't now, because he was heading towards a peak. The dying thing obviously takes away from it. I expected him to be around a couple more years and then go out in a suicide, something more glamorous. Instead, he went out like a typical rock star with the whole overdose."
A dozen recordings to his credit, Allin had sold his latest, Bloodshed and Brutality For All to an L.A.-based independent label for a fall release. It includes the pro-AIDS song "I Kill Everything I Fuck," the last tune Allin performed.
Besides Bloodshed and the countless bootlegs that will follow, Allin will live on in Phillips' film. In fact, Hated will be shown every Thursday in July at Anthology Film Archives on Second Avenue and Second Street, only blocks away from where the punk legend died.
A 52-minute justification of Allin's "mission" - to break down laws and social barriers in the name of free expression - Hated sheds light on why the infamous punk rocker was so extreme. Raised by a suicidal, abusive father in a small-minded, creatively-void New England town, Allin was like a wolverine, says one of his high school teachers, with an insatiable appetite to kill more than he needs.
"My flesh, blood and body fluids are a communion with the people...to bring danger back to rock 'n' roll," Allin tells Geraldo Rivera after questioning such stage mannerisms as flinging feces into the audience.
"My mind is a machine gun, my body the bullets and the target is the audience," he continues elsewhere in the film. "If I didn't do what I do onstage, I'd probably be a mass murderer. There's a fierce fire in me I have yet to get out."
In light of Allin's death, the documentary's most telling moment is an acoustic cover of Warren Zevon's "Carmelita." During the line "I'm all strung out on heroin," Phillips closes in on a needle attached to the neck of Allin's guitar.
Unintentionally revealing Allin's death, Phillips also reveals his legacy.
"I don't know if G.G. Allin was bon this way or if society created him," says the street scenarist. "I do know that the Murder Junkies and their fans are exceptional. They represent a part of America most people would rather not think about - an alienated, directionless minority that appears to have found its voice in a punk rocker with a death wish."
Once the product fades, will that voice continue to rage?
"We have to find a new singer," says Merle half-heartedly. "We're never going to find one like him though."
Allin's funeral will be in Littleton, N.H. on Saturday, July 3. The king of the rock underground, laid out in his signature dog collar, leather jacket, jock strap and boots, apparently will have the last laugh on his target, his audience, says Phillips.
"He wanted to fuck with them by making them travel far to see his grave."
(Editor's Note: For more information about Hated, contact Anthology Film Archives at 212-505-5181. Phillips' Skinny Nervous Guy Productions can be contacted by phone at 212-995-2091 or by mail at Cooper Station, P.O. Box 367, NY, NY 10276)
Robert Makin
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