Bobby Hackney Sr, of Death, at the Venue, 2015. Photographs by Sharon Steele, Not to be reused without permission
Preamble: If somehow you have missed the story of Detroit proto-punk band Death, you still have a few days to catch up! They play the Rickshaw on Wednesday, May 22nd. Start with ...For the Whole World to See, if you haven't heard it yet. If it seems like a throwback to the glory days of the MC5 and the Stooges - it is. And it's a pretty unlikely thing that the band made a comeback at all. See the documentary about them, listen to the album, and if you like, read what follows. It's a remarkable story - but also, it's remarkable music that they make, and we're very lucky to be hearing it.
Bobby Hackney, Sr., the bassist, lyricist, and main vocalist
for Death, is a born storyteller, but he’s also an
excellent interview subject. He’s very generous with his answers, and has a
pretty good understanding of how music writing works: he’ll tell a story, then
pause, to give the journalist a chance to interject shape the conversation, because he understands that the writer has his or her
own angle or direction, and may even have begun to write the piece in question,
even if only internally, before the interview actually takes place.
Sometimes in shaping
a piece, however, a writer might choose an angle that plays up a particular
aspect of a story more than is accurate. The interactive nature of the
interview process means that the writer actually influences the subject a bit,
which can in turn bend things a bit; if the writer has a particular point of view, and the subject is
obliging and willing to go along with it, you might get a distorted picture of the band.
Take the article on Death I just did for the Straight – the quotes in it are from Bobby Hackney (and
borrowed from a clip of Wayne Kramer, online, which is actually an outtake from
the doc, not included in the film proper). Hackney does say that the band never called themselves a punk band – “we
just called it hard-drivin’ Detroit rock’n’roll,” he said, in a line that ended up cut from the final print version. But the whole quibble with the idea of labeling them a punk
band – “punk before there was punk” – is not coming from Hackney: it’s coming
from me (and my editors, who actually were the ones who came up with the title, amplifying the quibble further).
Which I hope is understandable: it adds to the conversation about Death, builds on what's already been said, and maybe draws a few readers to the article. And calling them punk rock before there was punk was itself an
angle created by journalists to call attention to this remarkable band.
In the end, though, it really, really doesn’t matter that much. If you call the
MC5 a proto-punk band, you can call Death one, too, if you like. It just needs
to be acknowledged somewhere that the music of Death is definitely much more
complicated than the cruder forms punk often takes. There are traces of Hendrix (especially in “Keep On Knocking”), and traces of funk and math rock (especially in the dizzyingly intense “Politicians in My Eyes"). While the Ramones get cited in the documentary, even compared to Death, what the Ramones did is much more Spartan, simple, and repetitive than those early Death songs – and I’m here citing the two that
actually did get released back in the 1970’s, and heard by a few people, that could actually have HAD an influence...
In any event, whatever you call them – “hard drivin’ Detroit
rock’n’roll” sounds pretty good, to me – the point is, this is a great band.
Vancouver audiences have a chance to see them on the 22nd at the
Rickshaw, with a great local band, WarBaby – whom I have previously interviewed for
the WestEnder, and have a Straight piece online about here – opening.
Bobby Hackney Sr and Bobbie Duncan, of Death, at the Venue, 2015. Photographs by Sharon Steele, Not to be reused without permission
What follows are outtakes from my Straight conversation with Bobby Duncan Sr. Thanks to Mo, Sue, and Michael for helping facilitate this, to Mike Usinger and John Lucas and the other people working behind the scenes at the Straight, and thanks to the great Sharon Steele (here making her Alienated debut!) for digging up some Death photos to run with this article, from the last time Death played Vancouver.
Allan: I’ve been
listening to Death’s most recent album, N.E.W., and comparing it to …For the
Whole World to See. The contrasts are striking. The new stuff seems a lot more
positive, even comparing a song like “Rock and Roll Victim” to “Relief,” say.
The first album seems actually kind of paranoid!
Bobby: Well, it was rock’n’roll in the 70’s, man. Everybody
was paranoid! We didn’t want to get drafted, y’know. We unequivocally were afraid of Washington and Nixon, the whole thing. And it was the 70’s – it was
post the Woodstock movement. I think John Lennon summed it up best when he said
the 60’s was great and then the 70’s was this big drag. We thought the war
would be over, we thought that civil rights would take on a whole new plateau
in our society, we thought that women would have rights, we thought… y’know,
all these things that all these great bands preached about in the 60’s, that
was a real hopeful time, but the 70’s was kinda a wake-up call from the ‘60’s:
‘hey, we gotta still fight!’”
Were you around for
the Detroit riots of 1967?
Of course. Of course, at the time, I was only eleven years
old, dude, when that riot broke out. But you know, my brother David, he was 16,
and Dannis, he was a little bit younger than David, but they were more
street-savvy than I was, or should I say, than I was allowed to be…
So was
there a political vibe in your family, were you guys interested in Black Power
stuff at the time, or…
Well, our parents – like most working parents in Detroit –
they were Kennedy Democrats, and, you know, they were right on the heels of the
Civil Rights movement and the March on Washington. So, I mean, yeah, like most
parents in our neighbourhood, probably like most people in Detroit, my Dad was
UAW – he worked in the automobile factory as an electrician. So, I mean, around
our dinner table, it wasn’t uncommon to hear Martin Luther King, John Kennedy,
and Jimmy Hoffa in the same sentence.
The line in “Where Do
We Go from Here” about “treasonous liars” – was that in reference to Watergate?
You know what, that definitely was a reference to what was
happening in Washington at the time, because Watergate was going on, and
pre-Watergate, it was almost like the way the White House is now. It was a
revolving door: people was comin’ in, and people was gettin’ fired, left and
right. That was an inspiration for that – I mean, ‘have you heard the news lately,
leaders steppin’ down greatly,’ and ‘shock has come to pass:’ I mean, it was
shocking for our society. You think about, our parents were right out of the
Eisenhower era, that led to the Kennedy era, and those things didn’t happen in
government, during that time, and along comes Nixon and the ‘60’s, and it was
like the two movements were kinda made for each other, you know?
Dannis Hackney of Death, at the Venue, 2015. Photographs by Sharon Steele, Not to be reused without permission
Okay. So, an aspect of the
60’s that isn’t brought up much in the documentary is drugs. Some of the songs –
“Freakin’ Out,” obviously, with it's lyrics about being on the moon with a green sky – seem like they’re inspired by LSD. If you don't mind my asking, was that
something the band was into?
There’s a great story behind that song, which is true. My
two older brothers, they were basically hippies, you know, and just like
everybody else was, they were experimenting with drugs left and right. Drugs
were cheap, and nobody thought that they were sinister, as they are today, so
you know, they’d get a sheet of blotter acid, Mickey Mouse acid or whatever…
and my mother made me breakfast – I was still in school – and those guys, my
two brothers, snuck a hit of acid into my orange juice. And I went to school,
man, and it was funny, because that whole song is based upon the experience I
had that day. I didn’t know what was happening!
Were you pissed off at
them?
I was kind of angry at them for not telling me, but to be
honest with you, it was quite a wild experience. I have to admit – it was kinda
a fun ride, that day!
Bobby Hackney Sr, of Death, at the Venue, 2015. Photographs by Sharon Steele, Not to be reused without permission
Ha. I bet! Okay, so:
there’s a pretty trippy moment in the film, where your brother Earl, I think,
plays a tape of David, about how he doesn’t want worldly success, that he wants
to “play in front of the throne of Almighty God.” It’s probably the most chilling
moment in the film, since that’s kind of what ended up happening. What was the
origin of that tape?
Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, he was doing – David did some
kinda self-memoirs, you know. He would write a little bit, but David was always
a big fan of cassette tape recorders. He would just put in the cassette and
talk into it. And it was funny: when the filmmakers went to Detroit and visited
our family, and kinda spent some time with them, they got that tape from my
brother Earl, and Earl had had it, and when we listened to it, it sent chills
down our spines, because David used to always talk about those things. His
songwriting was always orchestral, and he would think of the heavenly
orchestra, and imagine what kind of instruments would be in the afterlife, and
in heaven. And he said, when you read the Bible, you read about angels with
harps, and you hear drums, and he said it was music that ushered in great
events. So he was always totally convinced that God was a big music fan.
Bobby, Dannis, and David Hackney in the 1970s
Were your parents also
an influence on your musical development?
Oh definitely. The thing about it was, they wasn’t musical
people, per se, on instruments, but they did love music. We had 45’s in the
50’s from the Chess Records label, and we had blues, all the Memphis stuff that
my Mom and Dad used to buy. Of course, my Mom was heavily into Mahalia Jackson,
Dinah Washington, and of course Aretha came along just a little bit later. And
then there was, of course, Dionne Warwick. My Mom loved all that stuff. They
loved Patsy Cline, and they liked Johnny Cash. They really taught us. We’re
basically a black family living on the East Side of Detroit – which was a very
mixed community at the time we were living in it – but they encouraged us to
listen to everything. And then of course, my brother Earl, who was around 12
years old, in the early 60’s, he brought the first Motown album into the house.
Well – the first Motown 45. It was around 1960, maybe 1961, but that just
changed everything that we as young people were listening to. It was either
that blue Motown label or that burgundy Gordy label, that was all the records
we were buying – on up until something happened in 1964.
Do you remember what
the song was?
“Oh Baby Baby” by the Miracles. That was the first Motown
record that came into the house!
[Note – there’s a hole
here. I was holding onto the “What was the first Motown single you heard, and
didn’t pick up on Bobby mentioning that “something happened in 1964.” I have no
idea what that was. I’ll ask him, if I remember to, when the band plays the
Rickshaw]
There’s also no
mention of live shows in the documentary. I know you’ve said that the focus for
a young musician in Detroit at the time was on getting out records, not playing
live, but I also heard you mention online that you played garage and cabaret
shows?
The only people that really saw Death when we were young and
kickin’ it with this music, us three brothers, you know – we’d just go into our
Mom’s garage, we’d open up the big door, and we’d just play. People would
gather around, there would be people coming from downtown in their cars from
work, that would stop on (Warner
street?). For awhile, it almost became a weekly ritual, and then it got to
the point to where the cops were showing up, so we had to move everything up
into our rooms. Fortunately, when we were doing the garage shows, that was
before we landed all the big Marshall stacks and the big acoustic bass amps, and
Dannis got [word indecipherable] on
the drums. We really had beginner’s
equipment when the garage thing was happening, so it was loud, but it
wasn’t loud like it was when we was in that room, you know? (Laughs). And any
other shows, we just got rejected, because of the name Death. When David named
the band Death – man, we would call up Harpo’s, which was a big club in
Detroit, and we would call up all the rock clubs that we used to hear on the
radio stations, that was advertising, and some of them would actually hang up
on us because they thought we were playing a prank. They’d say to David, what’s
the name of the band, and David would say, “Death,” and they’d just hang up,
because they thought we were pulling some prank. We couldn’t get any shows.
David Hackney
So
David decided to book us at a cabaret, which was at Warren Avenue in Detroit,
right down the street from the Chrysler plant where all the factory workers
came. These cabarets were, like, bring-your-own-bottle, you pay one price,
bring your own bottle, bring in your girlfriend or your wife, you sit at the
table, and usually there would be either a blues band or a rhythm and blues
band, and so they decided – David was one of the guys who organized the music
there, and he convinced them to let us perform a show there. And man, I gotta
tell you – I’d like to tell you they gave us standing ovations and they
screamed out “rock’n’roll,” but it was quite the contrary. This was an all
black audience of factory workers, who loved the blues, and here we are,
playing all these songs, like “Keep On Knocking,” “Politicians in My Eyes,”
and all that stuff, and right after we ended a song with this rock and roll
crescendo – we were up there workin’ hard, but you could just hear a pin drop.
They were just looking at us like “What the heck is this?” Finally, after three
or four songs, one older gentleman just kinda walked up to us, walked up to me
and said, “You’re too loud!” And went back and sat down. So you imagine that –
a whole packed house of people, and not one person is clapping. You know, we
learned some things that night, but we tried our best.
Death at the Venue, 2015. Photographs by Sharon Steele, not to be reused without permission
I do have to say, there was one club that gave us a shot, and that was in Iggy’s town, in Ann Arbor. And it was Uncle Sam’s – it was the biggest
rock club in Michigan – and it was because he had heard the record. W4 (WWWW, a
popular Detroit radio station), I mean, we were trying to get them to play the
record like crazy. We were bugging them so much, til they got annoyed with us,
and they did play it once or twice after midnight. I think one of the people at
Uncle Sam’s actually heard the record, but he still didn’t like the name. So he
said, I’ll give you guys a Monday. Here we are on a Monday night, with about
three people, four people there, and we’re playing our brains out. I’ll never
forget that show, because I’ll never forget there were just two couples – an
older couple and a younger couple – and they were dancing to our music, you
know? And they had a great time. But that’s the most we could really get at
that time, that was all we could really get, because everybody was so terrified
of the name Death. A lot of people think it was because we were an all black
band, but that really wasn’t the case. It was our name. For some reason, we
just got all kinds of scuff for that, man.
How about seeing live
shows? The documentary mostly focuses on the Who and Alice Cooper, for good
reason – but what about other bands, like, say, the MC5 or Iggy and the
Stooges?
We had the privilege – see, our Mom’s boyfriend was a
security guard and he worked all of the arenas, the Olympic Arena, the KOBO
arena, Kobo Hall, Michigan Palace, Ford Auditorium, and there were some
concerts we saw that were just totally amazing, like seeing Mick Jagger and the
Stones with Stevie Wonder opening up, for $8, you know – or like seeing the MC5
and Iggy and the Stooges at Michican Palace. That was the congregation place
for the rock’n’rollers, you know? KISS would play there on a regular basis. And
we wasn’t really much into that scene, but I do remember, going to the KISS
shows, you never could tell the band from the fans, because all the fans would
dress up like KISS, you know? That was a lot of fun. We saw the Who, we saw, of
course, Iggy, we saw – I mean, Bob Seger was our favourite, we grew up with Bob
Seger. We used to see Bob Seger as a local band, who would play the Detroit
Auto show, that was his yearly gig. Him and the Rationals and – of course,
Grand Funk Railroad was the three
piece band of Detroit, of Michigan. Those guys were our poster guys.
That’s how we learned – we just watched and learned and
immersed ourselves in everything, from Grand Funk to the James Gang to
everything. Todd Rundgren, everything – anything and everything rock’n’roll, we
would get the albums and we’d dissect the sounds and read the liner notes while
smokin’ a good joint, you know (laughs). That kind of thing – that’s what it
was.
And then you guys were
big Who fans, right? I love the Who, but to tell the truth, I’ve been listening
to Death more than the Who, lately…
Aw, thank you man – that just means so much to us, because if
we had idols, those guys were our idols. When Quadrophenia came out, David was just so excited about that album:
‘this is the album where rock has arrived. It’s finally met the orchestration
of classical music.’ Quadrophenia was
just his favourite, favourite album, and he had so much respect for the Who for
just being able to put that whole package together. I don’t think there’s a day
that went by in our room where we didn’t hear at least one of them songs from
that album!
Kind of a different
question, here, but how do you feel about – you know, a white guy like Eminem
might get criticized for appropriating rap, or you see videos online where
white people are getting heat for wearing dreadlocks – the whole cultural appropriation
thing. But you guys were influenced by white rock bands, who themselves were
influenced by black R&B – the Who used to call themselves “maximum R&B,”
if I recall. So do you think that there’s “white music” and “black music,” or
do you think there’s just good
music?
Well, it’s good music, and what Eminem and all those guys
are going through is the same thing we went through, when we decided to play
rock’n’roll. The crazy thing about it is, I can bet – I can’t be sure of this,
but this is what we went through – is that most of the criticism that he is
probably getting is from his own culture, his own race of people. Like we did!
We got, “Man, you guys don’t need to be playing this stuff, you need to be
playing Earth Wind and Fire, James Brown, Isley Brothers, man – give me some
Isley Brothers, give me some Kool and the Gang!” What my oldest brother said in
the film was 100% true, that’s what they used to call us, “white boy music.”
And I’m sure those guys probably get the same thing. Most of the guys I know
who are black LOVE Eminem. But I’ll betcha that a good percentage of his
criticism is coming from his own race.
Could be, could be. So…
you obviously have interacted with Wayne Kramer and Alice Cooper, since they’re
in the film. How about Iggy?
We haven’t connected with Iggy yet, but the amazing thing
is, Iggy gave us a shout out when he received his recognition at the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame, but we haven’t connected with him as of yet on a personal basis.
But some of the rockers – one of the Rationals came out to a show that we was
doing in Ann Arbor, about maybe three years ago, and that blew my mind. We was
talkin’ about how “we used to see you guys on Robin Seymour’s Swingin’ Time.” When we said Robin Seymour’s
Swingin’ Time, he just lit up, because the Rationals were kinda like a mainstay
on there. They would always be on that show.
I don’t know them
well.
You might want to look them up. They don’t get talked about
as much as a lot of the Detroit bands do, but yeah, they were a killer band.
They were actually one of David’s favourite bands. And of course, Ted Nugent
and the Amboy Dukes – I mean, everybody loved Ted Nugent. “Journey to the
Centre of the Mind” was just classic, and everybody wanted to play it. And, you
know, it was just great. When Alice Cooper came there from Arizona, and the Who
set up a kind of mini-residence at the Grande Ballroom, I mean – it was just a great,
great town for rock’n’roll, man.
Bobby Hackney Sr, of Death, at the Venue, 2015. Photographs by Sharon Steele, Not to be reused without permission
Has anyone shared
stories of similar bands to Death?
Oh yeah, yeah, there’s a few bands. We’ve even met bands
that have said, “Hey, wait a minute, we thought we were the first black punk
band!” We’ve met a couple bands like that, but according to the historians, 1975,
none of them could pre-date 1975, you know.
The story I'm pretty curious whether you've heard - the one closest to the story of Death - is a Baptist rock band called the New Creation. They recorded one album in 1970, did a small private pressing just like you did with the single, and they mailed it to churches and Christian radio stations, hoping someone would notice. No one did. Then thirty years later a local record dealer found it, thought it sounded interesting, and suddenly, it was reissued on CD and became a bit of a hit.
Wow.
I'm just curious if anyone has mentioned them to you?
You know, I think I've heard that name before, but we never even had a conversation... I sure would like to hear that music. I'll bet it's incredible!
It's a great album - a psychedelic garage rock album with Christian themes.
Oh yeah! I'd love to hear that.
I'll try to bring Chris Towers, the guy from the band, to the show...
Awesome - if he's got one of those reissues hangin' around, tell him to bring it to the show, I'll trade him.
I think that you guys, having had a Baptist upbringing, might like it. Speaking of Christian rock, though - has the 4th Movement (the Hackney brothers 1980 Christian rock record) gotten a reissue, too?
Yes, it has, on Drag City Records - you can tell all the people in your piece. That was one of those awesome things that has also been preserved. I'm just so glad we preserved all that stuff, because I think that's some of David's best guitar playing, is on that first 4th Movement album.
Any high points from
the last ten years? How does it feel, looking back?
The great thing of it is, myself, my brother Dannis, and
[current guitarist] Bobbie Duncan all just happened to be still playing music
when this Death discovery took place, man. We had been playing reggae music [in
Lambsbread] for 20 years. And in the back of our minds, what we did in Detroit
always stuck, you know. But we just thought that was something that was passed,
and especially with the passing of our brother David, we said, ‘okay, that kind
of closes the door on it’ – and we’ll just keep goin’ on. And little did we
know, years later, that this thing would come out and explode like this. It was
just totally amazing.
A lot of people ask me, how did this happen, and the only
thing I can say is, it was like a suitcase that’s sitting over there, with all
the ingredients, all the elements in it, except our brother David. But
everything that David left in it was there, and it was just sittin’ in the
corner for 40 years. And we just grabbed that suitcase, dusted it off, looked
inside, and said – like everybody else in the world – ‘wow, we actually did
this.’”
Thank you so much for doing this, Bobby. Looking forward to seeing you!
The documentary, A Band Called Death, plays the Rickshaw on May 21st. Tickets are $5 at the door, and can be used towards admission to the concert the next night - because Death plays live, May 22nd, at the Rickshaw, with WarBaby opening. Details here! Also check out the Drag City website for the 4th Movement/ Death bundle, featuring all of Drag City's Death and 4th Movement reissues.
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