"It's like a Jesse James thing. He's one of those outlaw characters that grows and grows in the legend. The longer he's dead the bigger the legend gets." (writer Joe Coughlin).
New Hampshire, like all of New England, has its share of famous citizens and legendary characters. Some the state is proud of, their names are used to promote the state and attract tourist dollars. Others are left to fade into the pages of history books. Then there are those that most New Hampshirites would just as soon forget.
A few months ago a sign in the window of the Music Connection in Manchester advertised in big letters the release of a new GG Allin album.
Allin, raised in Northumberland and Manchester, has been dead for almost 6 years, but his legendary status as the most disgusting rock and roll musician ever, has continued to sell his albums and the videos of his outrageous almost pornographic live performances.
The stories of this man are prolific and seemingly too incredible to be believed. Just a partial list of what he's said to have done on stage is somewhat overwhelming. Probably the most enduring story is that he would take a dump on the stage then smear shit all over his body, eat it, and throw it at the audience.
Also, at various times it has been said that he performed naked, masturbated, raped both women and men, beat himself bloody, walked on broken glass, cut himself with broke bottles and cans, gotten and given head, waded into the audience to pick fights with fans, thrown furniture into the crowd and even tried to have sex with a dead cat.
Almost all of it appears to be true and it appears to be a good marketing tool. "GG is a cult figure for the things he did that had nothing to do with music," says a spokesperson for the company responsible for many of Allin's albums. "When GG defecated on stage at The Cat Club in NYC and threw it at the crowd, records started selling. They have sold ever since...Sales on his recordings are robust for an indie like Black & Blue. Remember most major label releases sell less than 1000 copies. GG is doing better than that!"
That's not all that sells. Along with the 12 CDs and 2 videos that Music Connection stocks, they also carry GG Allin Limited edition 45's, t-shirts and window stickers. "I have customers that come in constantly to buy stuff," says manager Richard Gesner.
Allin is also a tourist attraction. "I know people go up to his grave to party," says Gesner. "He's buried in Littleton. It's very active that cemetery up there. They have a barrel right by his grave stone because people throw their old cans in there after they drink. And I'm sure they dump beer all over his grave. He wouldn't want flowers."
"Sure, the guy was nuts, sure he beat up a lot of people and did a lot of horrible horrible things, but hell, the guy ROCKED!!" (Jason Head - Good Ole' GG Allin!! Web Page)
For more than fifteen years, Allin raged, defiled, humiliated, and assaulted his audiences both figuratively and literally. For fifteen years, he sold out clubs all over the country and gave his audience 20 to 30 minutes of mayhem before the police or the proprietors shut him down.
In the GG Allin Archive Web site, musician Michael Bowling in his article "A (Last) Day In The Life Of GG Allin" described one such performance in New York City. "The set had gone about 3 or 4 songs when GG told some kid in the crowd, "Fuck You!" The kid shouted back, "No, Fuck You!" and thus began the melee. GG stormed into the crowd, fists flying, coming, unluckily for me (or so I thought at the time), right at me, I started to bolt."
Bowling says he then remember an earlier conversation, when he had asked Allin how he picked who he attacked in the show, was it random? "Random, Hell!" Allin had responded, "I just look for the fucker with fear in his eyes. I usually leave the other fucks alone." Bowling remained on his spot and tried to look as unafraid as possible. "It worked," Bowling continued.
"He threw a punch, dodged one coming at him, and then, face to face with me, gave a little grin, turned aside and continued his little private war."
This would be Allin's last performance, but it was typical of his shows for the last several years of his life. Here are some pieces of a description by John Coughlin, Allin's authorized biographer. It describes Coughlin's first live experience of Allin.
"GG was all movement and animal grace, his voice an icy shriek." recalled Coughlin. "Right away, I saw a girl unconscious, her friends pulling her away by the feet. A crying teenage boy ran for the door with his hand on his face, blood streaming through his fingers. I thought about bolting, but I couldn't look away."
Allin would fight with his audience, hit himself with the microphone until he was bleeding, cut himself, and paw and grab women and pull them on stage. All while the band with his brother Merle on bass, would play chord heavy power punk at high speed and high volume. Allin would scream out the lyrics. The songs were as angry and violent as the performance, with titles like "Kill Thy Father, Rape Thy Mother," "Anal Cunt," and "Terror In America."
"GG brawled with another guy" continued Coughlin, "then gave him grinning thumbs-up when they stopped. He yanked a clump of hair from someone's head and stared at it while he sang. An orange highway cone was being thrown around, and GG tried to fuck the small end of it before whipping some heavy barstools at us. I stood behind a wall of people, thinking someone could easily die here. I have to admit, I found the prospect exhilarating."
"Destroy rock and roll. Kill the lame bands and conformists. Murder the industry and put danger and fear back into people's hearts. No limits and no laws." (GG Allin)
Danger and defiance were the primary elements to Allin's life and performance. Over the years, Allin created a philosophy that justified his wildest actions. The war was against conformity and rules and the fight was for freedom of expression.
In a 1992 interview with Coughlin, Allin described it this way, "Why me? Because it's my revenge on this robotic society, because someone has to do it. Someone has to be the leader, and no one else is doing it. Why rock 'n' roll? Cause this is rock 'n' roll, this is what it was meant to be." It is hard to imagine what the people who tried to outlaw early rock and roll would have done with GG Allin.
Most certainly Allin did have some effect on our First Amendment rights. It is hard to say whether it was a positive or a negative one. Allin was arrested and convicted several times for his outrageous performances. His biggest conviction was not for a performance but for cutting a woman with glass after she consented. Most of the trial was a display of Allin's shows on video. The judge during the sentencing said something to the effect of "Even if it was mutual consent, you can't cut another person up."
Danger was Allin's energy force. The tension hung thick in the clubs where he performed. First, there was the potential for experiencing frightening, violent and repulsive acts vicariously, like at a bull fight or on a Fox Network's "Terrifying Car Crashes and Animal Maulings" show. Second, the possibility was always there that you would become a willing or unwilling participant. Here's what Allin said in an interview with Roy Harper, "My music reflects real horror - the kind we all know. My music is savage, violent, and angry - the way I feel inside. My shows are the primitive holy aggression that will never be tamed."
Without the description of Allin's show, one might think he was all talk. What seems to be true is that he could tap into some primal place in our being. Recently, Coughlin tried to describe his experience of it, "I just got a real vibe. It really felt like every possible emotion was in that room. People were ecstatic, people were pissed off, people were terrified, people were laughing, and other people were just like, 'What an asshole.' You put all that in the blender and it feels like anything can happen. That's how I felt. It felt like anything was possible."
The final question in all of this is "why?" For Allin the "why" can be found in two statements from his interviews with Coughlin. "I don't think what I do is outrageous. I put myself through it so I can get stronger every day. I can face anything." and "I don't get close, period. I use who I have to get where I want." These statements might suggest, to use a sports analogy, "Sometimes the best defense is a good offense." Given the descriptions of his first ten years growing up in New Hampshire one can only imagine the defense he felt he needed.
Allin and his older brother Merle were raised in a remote two-room cabin without electricity or running water. The boys' father professed to having visions of Allin before his birth and thus named him Jesus Christ Allin. It was changed to Kevin Michael, by his mother, before he began school. The nickname GG came from young Merle's inability to pronounce Jesus.
Also, their father would close himself in one half of the cabin for days at a time allowing no conversation. Even packing snow outside the windows to block out the view. He was also known to dig family plots in the dirt cellar, curse his wife out, and destroy things she liked. Once he even set his own bed on fire when she wouldn't sleep with him.
Allin's mother initially put up with this abuse because it was a change from her own abusive mother. She eventually took the kids and moved back home. Allin soon discovered rock and roll and fell in love with it. He started playing in bands (first as a drummer) in high school.
He defiance of rules and conformity had him in and out of trouble, including being held back a year and landing in Special-Ed classes. At his first ever gig, a high school dance, he snapped, ran out, and tore down all the decorations in the gym in the middle of a song. The teachers were angry, but the kids cheered and the seeds of a legend were sown.
From there, each band he played in got more confrontational. By 1977, Punk had arrived and with it, final validation of the road he was already on. All of his excesses fed on themselves and the more outrageous he acted the more people paid attention.
It seems weird in some ways to say he had talent, but it took some kind of talent just to survive his life as long as he did. He also obviously knew how to read and play an audience and sometimes his songwriting showed flashes of creative intelligence. Occasionally, it bared a deviant and troubled soul to the world, much the way William Burroughs did in his writings.
In 1989, Allin declared that he would commit suicide on stage Halloween night 1990. "Death is a very important part of life," said Allin in Coughlin's interview. "It's not so much wanting to die, but controlling that moment, choosing your own way. As far as the stage, that's where I lived my life. I don't wanna get old and stagnant and hang around. I think you should go out at your peak."
At the same time, he began speaking of himself as the messiah of rock and roll. "Rock and roll has to be destroyed" he said, "and rebuilt in my name, it it's ever going to accomplish anything." Allin missed his Halloween date because of the first of a series of arrests and convictions that kept him in jail for the most part of 4 years.
Upon his release in 1993, he quickly went into recording studio and cut a new album. Many say the album ("Brutality & Bloodshed For All") was Allin at his brutal and coherent best. He toured around the country for less than two months before he hit New York for the show that was described earlier.
The show ended with Allin running naked in the street followed by fans and the police. He eluded both by slipping into the nearby apartment building where he was staying. Upstairs in his friend's apartment he spent the rest of the night snorting heroin and cocaine until he passed out sometime after 4 a.m.
"Where many underground bands flirt with an aura of self-destruction, of danger, GG is one of the few who actually lives what he sings." writer Jim Greer - SPIN Underground
On the morning of June 23, 1993, GG Allin was found dead.
People still tell tales of experience, rumor, and the outlaw. People still purchase his recordings. The legend lives on.
Kris Garniost
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