A Punk Legacy Takes New Form

By Richard Harrington
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, August 4, 2006

A scenario in which L.A. punk pioneers the Germs reunited and toured a quarter-century after the suicide of lead singer Darby Crash never entered Pat Smear's head. Even in his wildest imagination.

"No. Never could have thought of it. Never thought I'd play with those guys again," the band's guitarist admits.

Or that Darby Crash would be revived by an actor who plays an emergency room doctor on television.

When the Germs play the Black Cat on Saturday, Shane West -- best known as "ER" intern Ray Barnett -- will stand in for Crash, as he does in the upcoming biopic "What We Do Is Secret," whose title comes from the hyperkinetic 42-second opening track on the Germs' only full-length album, 1979's "GI."

A synopsis of Germs history necessarily races by as fast, and as chaotically, as most of the band's tunes, beginning in the late '70s, when punk first roared in London, New York and Los Angeles. That's where pals-since-high-school Georg Ruthenberg and Jan Paul Beahm -- soon reborn as Pat Smear and Darby Crash -- formed the Germs with bassist Lorna Doom and just-for-a-minute drummer Dottie Danger, who, as Belinda Carlisle, went on to front the Go-Gos. She was replaced by Don Bolles.

In 1977 came "Forming/Sexboy," one of the first American punk singles, and a shambolic debut at Los Angeles' Whiskey, quickly followed by an exile from other local venues because of vandalism off- and onstage; the seminal "GI," produced by Joan Jett; the increasingly erratic behavior of the drug-addicted Crash and his departure from the band for a brief, unsuccessful solo career; a Germs reunion show at the Starwood on Dec. 3, 1980; and Crash's suicide by heroin overdose four days later -- just one day before John Lennon was fatally shot in New York.

Crash was 22.

"It was shocking, but it wasn't a surprise," Smear says of Crash's suicide. "He'd been talking about it for years: 'This is my [five-year] plan, this is what I'm doing . . . and then I'm going to kill myself.' Then it was oh, [expletive], he really did what he said he was going to do! That was the surprise."

And the stuff of legend. Just look at Sex Pistol Sid Vicious, who had followed the same path a year earlier.

The Germs, the first Hollywood punk band to veer into hardcore, made aggressive, technically uncomplicated music that would inspire scores of bands, including Nirvana. Kurt Cobain invited Smear to join that band the year before his own suicide in 1994. Drummer Dave Grohl's post-Nirvana band, Foo Fighters, also featured Smear in its original incarnation.

A decade ago, filmmaker Rodger Grossman began work on "What We Do Is Secret." After years of interviews and preparation, shooting finally took place last year. The film is in postproduction, targeted for next year's film festivals. Made for Rhino Films, it features Rick Gonzalez as Smear, Bijou Phillips as Doom, Noah Segan as Bolles and West in a performance that gives the 28-year-old, best known for family dramas such as ABC's "Once and Again" and such films as "A Walk to Remember" and "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," the opportunity to reinvent himself as an actor.

He already has one fan.

"I loved Shane the minute I met him, thought he was perfect," Smear says.

West does bear an uncanny resemblance to Crash, underscored (in the movie) by a copycat panther tattoo, blue contact lens and prosthetic crooked teeth so strongly affixed to his own that they had to be chipped off. Deeper is the actor's affinity for the music as both a lifelong punk fan and the leader of his own punk band, Jonny Was.

West says that when he met with Grossman and producer-writer Michelle Baer Ghaffari (the drummer in a pre-Germs band with Crash and the gay rocker's "PR" housemate in "The Decline of Western Civilization," Penelope Spheeris's legendary 1981 documentary on the early L.A. punk scene), "we got along very well, and they realized they were talking to someone who knew about punk. It had always been my favorite type of music when I was little -- my dad was in a punk band. It was something that not everybody knows about, but I knew about it, and I was a fan of the Germs and of the scene. I practiced with Pat and Don, started learning the songs, and it just kind of grew from there."

"It was good that Shane already knew how to be a singer, but it wasn't the same thing," Smear says. "I'm not sure how much was in character when he was doing it. Because it seemed too natural for him, I never questioned it -- he was singing for the Germs." Smear admits that the actor's transformation "was kind of weird to watch. It was cool but kinda scary, too. I wasn't around that much on the set, but when I went, I was always blown away. At first, it kinda shocked me, gave me chills, but after that I got used to it."

West didn't just facilitate an external likeness; he also sought the internal Crash, starting with Brendan Mullen's 2002 oral history, "Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs" (the source for an upcoming documentary). He also read many of the same books Crash had read ("Introduction to Scientology Ethics," "Helter Skelter," "Season in Hell," "Brave New World") and listened to "GI" and David Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars" album, one of Crash's key influences. West points out that that album's first track is "Five Years," and, he says, "it's what Darby's legacy was: I'll be gone in five years, and I'm here to do whatever I want to do."

Smear got the role he wanted: working on the music and training non-musician actors to play instruments, sort of. "My attitude was this is a punk rock band, anybody can learn to be a punk rock band," Smear says with a laugh. "Most of the scenes are of the band live, and I didn't want to try and fake this in the studio." The film will mix Germs music with what Smear calls "Baby Germs" music, and Smear also produced the other faux bands, the Mae Shi as L.A. synth-punks the Screamers and the Bronx as hardcore legend Black Flag.

Smear had the actors play at a 2004 party "to have the experience of playing live as a band." During that performance, the actors handed over their instruments to their Germs counterparts for an impromptu reunion. "We did one rehearsal the day of the show, and it just all came back, which was really weird," Smear says. "Me and Don always played with a weird ESP anyways -- and we'd played together since then -- so it was more scary than emotional."

But Smear says that when he asked Doom, who seemed a little tentative, when she had last touched a bass, she told him it was Dec. 3, 1980 -- "Our last show!" he says. "Which I thought was really cool. Her intention was never to be a bass player in a band. It was: 'I'm the bass player for the Germs. The Germs are over, I'm not a bass player.' "

Last year, the Germs and West (whom Bolles nicknamed Shane Wreck) began playing around the Los Angeles area. Smear says, "The more we did it, the more we liked doing it, so the more we booked -- Chicago, New York, San Diego -- mostly weekends because Shane was booked up Monday through Friday with 'ER.' "

Saturday's Black Cat show is one of nine concerts in 14 days, and West says he wants to make it clear that "no one is replacing or necessarily trying to be Darby. It's getting the Germs music out there to people who haven't been able to hear it and to people who did and want to enjoy it again."

Still, this might be it for the actor-musician duality that dots West's CV.

"I'm pretty much trying to stay away from that now," says West, noting that in his second year on "ER," he was "fired from the band after a practice because I didn't want it to be about that anymore and didn't want to cheapen the legacy of the show." Even Jonny Was is on hiatus while West spends the summer in punk fantasy camp.

"This is the experience of a lifetime for me," he says, "and in a weird way, kind of a dream come true: to be part of such a famous and infamous band in the scene that I loved and play with and meet people that I looked up to when I was growing up." (The Germs have shared bills recently with Suicidal Tendencies, Fear and Flipper, among others.)

The role, West says, "was a big learning process, but I at least had some knowledge of the chaos that scene brought at that time. The bands that I'd been in growing up were all a little chaotic ourselves. . . . Nowhere near the Germs, obviously."

And Smear thinks the end result is neither caricature nor mimicry.

"I'm not sure how much Shane was in character when he was doing it -- it seemed too natural for him. I never questioned it -- he was singing for the Germs! To me, it was his own thing. We sometimes get 'He's so Darby' or 'I wish he were more Darby.' Shane does his thing, and we like the way he does it."

Aside from his stints with Nirvana and Foo Fighters, Smear has maintained a generally low profile, with occasional acting roles and a stint co-hosting MTV's "House of Style" with pal Cindy Crawford. He has recently rejoined Grohl -- "probably my favorite person I've ever played with" -- on the Foo Fighters' acoustic summer tour, which sold out Constitution Hall last week.

"The thing that's really great is how schizophrenic my summer has been," Smear says. "I'm touring with the first band I was ever in, the Germs, and the last band I was ever in, Foo Fighters. Second of all, Foo Fighters is acoustic, mellow, nice, a sit down in [concert halls]. With the Germs, every night's a little mini-riot, bottles flying at my head . . . sweaty, stinky awfulness. It's hilarious, and I was thinking if I was doing just one of them and not the other, I might get sick of it. This way I just don't. Every time I'm done with one, I'm ready for the next one. I couldn't be luckier this year."

The Germs with Deep Sleep and Polynation Appearing Saturday at the Black Cat Sounds like: Impressed by Shane West's biofilm performance as Darby Crash, the surviving Germs thought it would be fun to tour again 26 years later. So if you missed "Sexboy," "Forming," "Circle One," "Manimal" and "Lexicon Devil" the first time around, remember, punk's not dead.