Psychotronic Video Issue # 36

IN THIS ISSUE!

RON MANN, a Canadian, makes documentaries. Directors who make good documentary features are a rare and precious breed. I Ioved his TWIST and GRASS and am happy to be able to publish an interview with him. Mann's next feature will be on Ed "Big Daddy" Roth! Ian Johnston, who has also interviewed Russ Tamblyn, Roberts Blossom and John Vernon for PV now works in Toronto. He created and writes the fake biography series LITHOGRAPHY hosted by Canadian Leslie Nielsen.

JEREMY SLATE is an actor whose 20th Century American life touched more bases than most of us could imagine. In the Navy during WWII he was at Normandy and helped escort FDR, Winston Churchill and The King of Arabia to Yalta. He acted with and became friends with Elvis, Dennis Hopper and Hell's Angel leader Sonny Barger, became a serious swinger at the Sandstone commune and was friends with Timothy Leary. In movies he starred with Bob Hope and John Wayne, was the biker villain in THE BORN LOSERS (the first Billy Jack movie) and was also a soap opera star. Interviewer musician Nelson Basden is on the soundtrack of a new remake of THE FLESH EATERS!

CLU GULAGER is a serious, soft spoken part Cherokee actor with a dark sense of humor, who was born and raised just miles from my father in Oklahoma. Although I had seen him on many TV shows, I first learned about his cult status from early 80s Psychotronic contributor Carola Von Hoffmannstahl. Gulager co- starred with Ronald Reagan and Lee Marvin in the KILLERS, is known for RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and other horror roles and has a driving passion to make an unrelenting serial killer movie starring members of his own family. Some of David DelValle's PV interviews have been Cameron Mitchell, Cornel Wilde, and Dan O'Herlihy. VINCENT PRICE ­ The Sinister Image is his new DVD from Allday Ent.

Read the Interview with Clu Gulager now!

DONALD JACKSON, had sent me press material for his DEMON LOVER DIARY back when I was working on the first PV book (published in 1983) and he had just arrived in Hollywood. Since then he has made many cheap and fast "zen" movies (with actors like William Smith, Brion James and Karen Black) including sequels to his HELL COMES TO FROGTOWN and ROLLLER BLADE . I knew he was a comic book fanatic but was surprised to discover that he's into alternate country music and is a friend of folk ballad belter Judy Henske. Interviewer Dean H. Garrison Jr. lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, near where Jackson grew up.

From PV #36 intro:

Cleveland 1975: Crocus Behemoth (David Thomas - Rocket From The Tombs), J. Regular (John Morton - Electric Eels), Michael Weldon (Mirrors), and Peter Laughner (kneeling - Rocket). Cleveland Plain Dealer photo by William Ashbury.

The photo on our intro page ran in the daily Cleveland Plain Dealer on my 23rd birthday (1/17) 27 years ago. It illustrated an article called Rock Reverberations ­ Is There an Underground Cult? David Thomas and Peter Laughner were the leaders of Rocket From The Tombs. John Morton's band was The Electric Eels. I, a former guitarist filling time as an untrained minimal drummer, was the unworthy representative from Mirrors. Mirrors founders Jamie Klimek and/or Jim Crook should have been in the picture but they probably considered the whole thing a set up to promote Peter (true), I didn't have far to go for the interview and photo shoot since I already worked downtown (at Record Rendezvous on Public Square), and I guess it was sort of a birthday present.

All three bands peaked, recorded and were gone by the end of 1975 and all three now have new CD compilations available. The early ClePunk bands regrouped under new names, traded, shared or stole members (or girlfriends) from each other and/or started new bands (including Pere Ubu, The Dead Boys, X blank X, The Styrenes, and The Saucers). After a few practices with John's X blank X, I was never in a band again. I never owned a drum kit.

Peter Laughner OD'd at the age of 24 in June 1977 (less than two months before Elvis). We were both born in '52, but I've been around more than twice as long as he was now. He was an ambitious, driven, already married kid who seemed to want to be Cleveland's Lou Reed, Phil Ochs, Lester Bangs and Andy Warhol (without the art part) all at once. I never knew him well or spent much time with him, but he affected my life over the years. During my senior year at Lakewood High School my locker partner (Don Harvey) was the bass player for one of Peter's many bands, so I first saw him on stage in '69 or '70. I didn't know then that he already knew Jamie and Jim from Velvet Underground gigs at La Cave. They all had hung out with and jammed with Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed. Peter later reviewed records and hyped bands (including Mirrors) for local publications and even wrote for Creem. He was the first person I met who got paid (!?) to write (the second was Mike Hudson of The Pagans). Peter and his wife Charlotte took me with them when they interviewed Eno (Mirrors members loved Eno's solo LPs) and Peter was indirectly responsible for me spending a night in a Cleveland Heights jail (with Brian McMahon of The Eels) after one his pretentious drunken parties (where he shot a loaded gun out of the window). I had relatives with guns in Oklahoma but he was the first person I knew in Cleveland who owned real guns besides BB rifles (the second was Mike Hudson).

I'm sure it was Peter who convinced music columnist Jane Scott to run the "underground cult" story and it was Peter who had arranged for all three bands to play on the same bill at The Viking Saloon just weeks before. The first time I visited NYC (in 77), I saw Pere Ubu, the band he had formed, then quit after two singles, and Television, a band he had brought to Cleveland, then tried to join. Peter had steered John Thompson's Hideo's DiscoDrome from being a hippy holdover store to being The Drome!, a cutting edge punk rock and import center. When Peter died I basically got his clerk job there. When Cle magazine was started by Peter's young friend Jim Ellis, his former band mate David and his boss John, I started writing a Psychotronic movies on TV review column for it. I lost the Drome job two years later, moved to Manhattan in '79 and started the original weekly Psychotronic TV Guide. Our most famous contributor was Peter's doomed writing idol Lester Bangs who had written an obit/feature about him in The Village Voice (reprinted in the book Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung). Some of you might know Peter's song "Ain't It Fun" from the last Guns N Roses LP. Did I mention that he stole my rare pre LP Velvets "Loop" flexi-disc?

David Thomas still (!?) leads a band called Pere Ubu and Jane Scott (still!?) writes her teen music column in the P.D. (she started when The Beatles first came to town). This makes sense in a city that still has three (!) movie host TV shows (The Ghoul, Son Of Ghoul and Big Chuck And 'Lil John). Big Chuck has been on Cleveland TV since the original Ghoulardi show in 1963! That's Ghoulardi (Ernie Anderson) with the basketball on the PV #36 cover. Meanwhile John Morton is an artist in Brooklyn, still makes music, and is now also the Psychotronic web master!

Stay Sick! - Michael J. Weldon