Born October 22: Stiv Bators (Lords of the New Church), prophet of chaos

Stiv Bators was born in Youngstown, Ohio (USA) in 1949. Along with Iggy Pop and the (fake) Ramone brothers, he is an iconic figure of American punk rock.

His voice from beyond the grave first made its mark with the Dead Boys before becoming that of Lords of the New Church, where he was the admittedly decadent and eccentric, but also undisputed, leader.

In the 1970s, he carved out a niche for himself on the Cleveland punk scene. Inspired by Iggy Pop's Stooges and David Johansen's New York Dolls, he launched the Dead Boys with guitarist Cheetah Chrome (sic!) in 1976 like a live grenade. Their raw energy, their often violent and always provocative concerts made them, along with a few others, pioneers of American punk. Some of their songs, like "Sonic Reducer" and "Ain't It Fun," became anthems of the No Future Saves Ketchup era. On stage, like Iggy and Lux ​​Interior (The Cramps), the singer sometimes self-inflicted injuries, pretended to hang from his microphone cord, and became one of the pioneers of "stage diving," throwing himself into the audience without ever fearing the occasional crash to the ground. With the Dead Boys, it's a feast for the eyes and the ears...

After their inevitable split, too much excess kills excess. Stiv Bators attempted a brief solo career in London and, for the first time in his career, discovered a sense of (almost) pop melody with "Disconnected" (1980). Two years later, he entered the Lords of the New Church. He became its high priest alongside two ex-English punks, Brian James (The Damned) and Dave Tregunna (Sham 69), who converted to his gothic and new wave breviary. But once again, with tracks like "Open Your Eyes," "Dance With Me," and "Russian Roulette," he subtly juggles a (falsely) apocalyptic approach with a romanticism that's also cheap. The seducer's ambiguous potion, sometimes mystical, sometimes cynical, thus seduced cohorts of devotees who still worship the three chapters of the Bible according to St. Bators: his self-titled debut album (1982), "Is Nothing Sacred?" (1983), and "The Method To Our Madness" (1984).

Nevertheless, tormented by real demons, Stiv Bators prided himself on living, as in his songs, intensely, dangerously, and always without a safety net. Figuratively speaking, he boasted of systematically crossing the road, to the point of being stupidly knocked down while crossing a street in Paris in June 1990 and dying on the spot. He was just 40 years old and, inevitably, his tragic disappearance further embellished his image as the cursed poet of pun. His group survived him until 2023 but without the various singers who took over managing to make us forget him.

(MH with Stéphane Soupart - Photo : © Etienne Torodoir)

Photo: Stiv Bators backstage at the Night & Day festival in Louvain-La-Neuve (Belgium) in the fall of 1983