The death of GG Allin came as a complete shock to me, since I had been receiving road reports from GG after he got released from prison and began his tour with the Murder Junkies, his new band which included his brother Merle.
I heard about GG's death and made a phone call to his Mom's house on the east coast because I figured that would be the only place I could get a straight answer on what really happened. His brother Merle talked to me over phone, telling me how anti-climatic the whole event really was. At first I thought this was just another contrived death hoax that that of Connie of the Dwarves faking a death, but after analyzing what had happened, I realized it was for real.
GG's final show was at the Gas Station, a small club in New York City. GG had been doing cocaine all day long, getting himself wired up for the show. GG had always told me on tape and for the record that drugs only weakened a person's soul and he found no place for them in life, yet, I guess, he lived a double standard.
It was Sunday night around 8 p.m. when I got the call from GG, who was going off about having just taping a NY talk show that would air in three weeks. He felt that his mission - exposing the corporate rock world and all its false perceptions - was nearly complete. People had talked over and over about GG saying he was going to commit suicide on-stage on certain dates, but he never followed through with it, either because of jail or due to the fact that his mission, his purpose in life, had not yet been accomplished.
Two weeks earlier I did one of the last interviews and photo shoots he would ever do. And this night I received one of the last phone calls GG would ever make. He wanted to make sure that the pictures I had taken were going to be put to good use and he talked in great detail about me getting him a backstage pass for Lollapalooza (a concert tour he immensely despised) and about how, during the Rage Against the Machine performance in Michigan, he would run on stage naked and attack the crowd to make one major intense statement. I told him that I would have to clear that with the band before I would do it and could he call me back to find out if it was cool or not? He parted with an unpolite (as usual) hang-up - he said he never like to tell someone, "talk to you later," because he never thought there was going to be a later...and he was right.
This is the way Merle tells the story of his end.
"We hit the stage in a fury...GG took out 10 people, knocking them out cold during the first song. The whole show lasted a total of 10 minutes. Ambulances showed up with police cars and the show ended with a riot that the police could not completely disperse for two hours. GG split to tend to his injuries from the show - he was hurt pretty bad - and said he wasn't going to a hospital but was going to hang out with some people who had a drug house in the city.
"At 1 a.m. he was alive and at 4 a.m. he was pronounced purple and dead. It looked like a heroin overdose, but the police said he was beat up. Could someone have injected the drugs into his veins while he was unconscious? His funeral was July 3rd, in Littleton, New Hampshire, where he was buried in his dog collar and jockstrap."
His new album will not be out until the fall and is rumored to have a back cover of the band standing around GG's casket. GG Allin was a menace to the music industry, a thorn in its side. He was hell-bent on breaking the music industry's back, and he spent his last ounce of strength doing so; now he is gone. He will be remembered as the king of the real rock 'n' roll underground, and not as some stupid drunk, like Darby Crash of the Germs, who also died of an overdose. GG was sick and vulgar and vile, and he did it all to prove a point about what the manipulating media is trying to push on us. You might have thought he was a hero or hated his guts, but he was one thing for sure - real!
Jon Stainbrook
Return to The GG Allin SuperSite Media Guide