Top 5 Confrontational Frontmen

I'm not even sure I can put this in any particular order, because each entry has a different approach to what they do. Flag-era Henry Rollins would fight you, then cut himself up. Alan Vega would whip you with a long chain, send you out of the room, then start singing and freak you out. Steve Albini knows exactly what you are offended by, writes brilliant songs about those subjects, and occasionally gets blood thrown on him at shows for it. Lee Ving doesn't care about you. Fuck you. Wendy O. Williams did everything in her power to shock you into watching, and more importantly, listening to her. Remember, every one of these bands was seen in their time as scary or even a real threat to undermine the morals of American youth. These are the faces of that fear.

1. Black Flag-era Henry Rollins

"There's songs about cops. There's songs about killing yourself. There's songs about depression. The women who leave. The car has no brakes and we're flooring it. We're gonna hit something. So what? It's Black Flag."

Henry Rollins wasn't always an actor/terrible comedian. He used to sing for the most notorious hardcore band that ever existed. Already a huge fan, Hank joined his favorite band in the summer of 1981, moving all the way across the country for the opportunity to sleep on questionable floors and never have any money. On the plus side, he did get fucked with every night by fans who thought he ruined Black Flag, and by the cops, who thought his band was a menace that needed to be stamped out. If this was your everyday life, you can imagine what kind of outlook it would give you. Now sustain that for five years. Black Flag had often dealt with themes of frustration, anger, and depression, but Rollins introduced a loathing previously unseen. Many fans that were around before he joined the band found this new direction either confusing or unbearable.

Rollins had undergone a few changes as well. Henry had joined the band as an eager-to-please, lean, shaved-headed 20-year old. In the years since, he'd started a tough workout routine and covered his arms with tattoos. He also grew his hair long, began writing poetry and spoken-word pieces and performed wearing only a pair of black athletic shorts. Some found his newly-minted brooding stage persona exciting, even sensual or erotic. Many others, though, accused Henry of egotism and narcissism. To some extent, it did seem like he was aping Jim Morrison, a charge he would get repeatedly in the LA press. Fans criticized Henry's tattoos, claiming they were for jocks or rednecks, which is ironic, given the tattoo's popularity in punk rock today. Rollins got into fights on stage almost every night on tour. Oddly, the other band members did not receive the physical abuse that Henry did, leading some to believe that Rollins may have invited the confrontations. You be the judge:





2. Alan Vega(Suicide)

"I never heard anything avant garde. To me, it was just New York City blues."

Alan Vega and keyboardist Martin Rev formed Suicide in 1970. They were the first band to describe themselves as "punk music", taking the term from a Lester Bangs article. This band had no guitarist, no drummer, no bassist, yet still managed to be loud and scary on an almost primal level. Seeing them live for the first time, especially in their prime during the mid-70's, was like watching someone sleepwalk while going through night terrors. Alan Vega, already a working artist in New York, wanted to push the boundaries of rock n' roll as far as possible. If you wanted to watch this intensely original duo, you were going to be involved one way or the other. If the nightmarish music didn't do it for you, there was always the possibility of Vega pulling out a chain and whipping it at you and the rest of the crowd. Martin Rev, clad in black leather with a face devoid of expression as he drove the soundtrack to this bad acid trip, had about as much comfort to offer you as a cenobite to its next victim. Either you embrace what is happening, or run for your life. All this, and they had yet to record a single note before 1977.

Over the years, Suicide has slowly gotten the recognition they deserve as a pioneering band in punk and electronic music. All those New Wave and Synth Pop bands from the 80's? You can blame them for it. Soft Cell? They're just Suicide without the fangs. For September 2009's Don't Look Back concert series, The band was asked to play their first album in its entirety. I can only speculate as to whether Vega enjoyed this performance to an adoring audience with no one to intimidate. There have been a thousand pretenders, but the thing that really made Suicide different and menacing and creepy was Alan Vega. He wasn't singing to the crowd as much as he was screaming from the void.




3. Steve Albini(Big Black)

"Big Black is a way to get the old blood to boiling without having to buttfuck or garrote little boys, or hang around slaughterhouses."

Before he recorded all your favorite bands, before he played in Shellac or Rapeman, before he even formed Big Black, Steve Albini pissed a lot of people off. In high school, after being hit by a car and badly breaking his leg, he would get calls from jocks and rednecks telling him how glad they were that he was hurt. While recovering, he taught himself how to play bass. In college, while writing for various Chicago fanzines and furthering his provocative reputation, he got a hold of a cheap drum machine, a Roland TR-606. Walking around campus with the same unvarying beat piped into his headphones, he began gathering ideas for what would become the first Big Black release, Lungs. Initially solo, he soon recruited Naked Raygun's Jeff Pezzatti and Santiago Durango on bass and guitar, respectively, and the live version of Big Black was born. The band used to open their sets by setting off a brick of firecrackers onstage, presumably to piss people off, and because it was cheaper than actual pyro. Every song was counted off with the words, "1, 2, Fuck you!!"

Make no mistake, this band, more importantly its 98-lb-weakling singer, had no sacred cows. Taking this point almost literally, "Cables" is about kids who hang out at a slaughterhouse for fun. Murder, rape, child sexual abuse, arson, racism, and misogyny were just some of the topics covered in their songs, and that's just the first half of Atomizer. Having grown up in Missoula, Montana, Albini had no shortage of fucked up stories to pull songs from. Remember kids, boredom breeds either creation or destruction. If one isn't possible, the other becomes your outlet. It's no wonder the band seemed to play to destroy its audience. With Steve's reputation as a misogynist, racist prick from those who couldn't see the black humor in it all, those audience members were all too happy to give Albini the same amount of abuse right back. During the UK show recorded for their now-scarce Pigpile live video, a crowd member was throwing blood at Steve throughout the latter half of the show in response to the song, "Pigeon Kill". Love him or hate him, he did his job by getting a rise out of you. He wins. Here he is, now covered in blood.




4. Lee Ving(Fear)

"I've seen an old man have a heartattack in Manhattan. He died while we just stood there looking at him. Ain't he cute?" - "I Don't Care About You"

Lee Ving, or Mr. Boddy if you know him from Clue, is the only original member of Fear at this point. Everyone else was fired or quit because they couldn't take this fucking guy. What you see is what you get with Lee, and sometimes you got it in the teeth. Forming Fear in 1977 with bassist Derf Scratch, they found guitarist Burt Good and drummer Johnny Backbeat to round out the lineup. They recorded a single before replacing Good and Backbeat with Philo Cramer and Spit Stix. This lineup is widely seen as the best in the band's history, as all four had distinct personalities and could actually play well. Hinting at blues and jazz influences, they were always a great live band to hear. That is, if you could get past the wall of insults.

This band, and Lee Ving in particular, were masters of crowd baiting. They weren't serious, but a lot of people took it that way. Immortalized in The Decline of Western Civilization, their shows consisted of as many back-and-forths to the crowd as actual music. If someone took particular offense to, say, "Next time, don't bite so hard when I come," they might run up to the stage to get a shot at Lee. There were bouncers onstage, but that didn't stop everybody. Men, women, didn't matter. He'll fuck you up if you came too close. When they did manage to play, the insults were just put to a backbeat. Another memorable performance was when they managed to snag a spot as the musical guest on the Halloween '81 episode of SNL, courtesy of longtime friend and supporter, John Belushi...You know what, just watch:
http://www.wideo.fr/video/iLyROoafvXes.html (This video was hard to find, and an embed code seems to be impossible) As you can see, they were a great band and really hilarious if you didn't take them seriously. Here's another video of the band telling the crowd how much they love them:



5. Wendy O. Williams

"They ask us why we smash TV sets, drive automobiles into swimming pools, or blow them up; and today they ask me why I would jump out of a moving car onto concrete, so it can crash into an exploding stage, and I say well...somebody has to do it."

Wendy O. Williams is tougher than you, and she's dead. What did she die of? Being too awesome. She did everything people would brag about doing later on, first. The Plasmatics were the first American band to blend punk and metal, the first band to sport mohawks, the first punk band to blow up and chainsaw fucking everything they could get their hands on. She also did all of this damn near naked. Don't try any of this at home. You'll just embarrass yourself. Originally formed as an art statement by Wendy's husband, artist Rod Swenson, showing that the measure of great art is how confrontational it is. And how. There really isn't a bad Plasmatics release, it's just variations on the ratio of punk to metal. I would've killed to see this band live, if only to see what Wendy would do next. As it stands, she did plenty.

One example is refusing to change out of a revealing outfit for a taping on SCTV. They compromised and painted her breasts black. Of course her career was peppered with charges of assault and battery, simulating a sex act onstage, indecent exposure, obscenity, etc. She was always either fined or acquitted; she never served much time for any of it. After The Plasmatics, she had a solo career, garnering a Grammy nod in 1985 for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. After retiring from music, she moved to Connecticut with her husband and became a wildlife rehabilitator and natural foods activist. On one talk show appearance, she accused Debbi Fields of Mrs. Fields Cookies of being "no better than a heroin pusher" for using so much processed sugar in her products. Years later, she attempted suicide for the first time by hammering a knife into her chest. The knife lodged in her sternum and she changed her mind, calling Swenson to take her to the hospital. She eventually killed herself with a self-inflicted gunshot wound in 1998. She was 48 years old. Watch this video, and if you haven't started yet, listen to The Plasmatics!!