Going to Hell Again

Seeing Bauhaus was like being on drugs… and I loved it.

When I was in the Navy, I took a lot of LSD.

A shipmate named Skip introduced me to acid. He’d turned me on to Hunter S. Thompson and a ton of great music, so when he said I’d like it, I believed him. And I did. I loved taking acid.

The first time I dropped acid was on the ship, which was a mistake. I had a hard time holding it together around my shipmates. Passing through the mess decks, I got sucked into a movie playing on the ship’s closed circuit television: Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice, a 1969 psychodrama about sex and therapy. At one point a character says (and I’m paraphrasing from memory): “I don’t believe in violence! I don’t even have porch lights!” I almost lost my shit.

After that experience, I did my drugs off the ship. Skip and I would walk to the trolley stop outside the naval station and go… somewhere. Downtown was very different then. There was no Gaslamp district. The hotels were of the rent-by-the-hour variety. There was nowhere to go and nothing to do. So we made our own fun.

Skip always brought his tape player along and at some point during the trip we’d listen to Bauhaus. We’d find an empty parking lot and set the player down and see how far we could wander until we couldn’t hear the music anymore. One time the lights in the parking lot clicked off and we howled like loons to find our way back to each other.

Another time we were outside a theater downtown when all these old people in formal evening wear came out at once. They wore extravagant gowns and elaborate tuxedos and looked absolutely ancient, like a horde of well-dressed undead.

Sometimes we went to shows on LSD. We saw Peter Murphy and the Lords of the New Church on acid. We saw Love and Rockets and Jane’s Addiction on acid. We even went to see Hunter S. Thompson on acid. Bauhaus was the soundtrack for all of these trips, and the song we loved best was “Bela Lugosi’s Dead.”

Incredible, right? It’s so sparse and minimal and lean but, man, does it soar. Peter Murphy’s non-sequiturs tease the imagination while his vocals climb and climb. Daniel Ash’s icy guitar licks hang in the air like frozen bat wings, a description a friend from college came up with and I’ve never forgotten, probably because we also did a lot of acid together. David J’s bass line is barely there and his brother’s drumming does all the heavy lifting.

“Bela Lugosi’s Dead” is Gothic rock’s signature song. It’s the song that best anticipates the 1980s. There aren’t any synthesizers in “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” but somehow feels like there is. It’s a deconstructed rock and roll song.

There weren’t any Goth clubs in 1979 when the song was recorded, but by the mid-1980s every major city in the country had one, including San Diego. When “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” came on everybody danced even though it’s not really a dance number. Over nine minutes long, what “Bela” provided was an experience. It was a song you could get lost in and come out the other side a different person. That sounds corny, but nine minutes is a looooong time when you’re on acid.

I think the reason my memories of that time are so vivid is because they are full of experiences. When I went to college in southwest Virginia, I was stunned by the lethargy of my classmates. They were content to drink and do drugs and watch TV and maybe go to a party where people would drink and do drugs and maybe listen to the music.

The first time I took acid in college, I tried to get everyone to go down to the river that was just a few hundred feet from our front door. There were no takers, so I went by myself. I forded the river, clawed my way up a hill on the other side, found myself in an AT&T complex, was immediately picked up by security (but the lady on duty continued with her rounds and left me in the truck with her toddler), and hitchhiked home. When I made it back to my apartment no one believed me when I told the story of what had happened.

The point I’m trying to make is that my circumstances in the Navy made it necessary to get creative with my drug taking, and this conditioned me to go out into the world and seek experiences and Bauhaus was the soundtrack to many of those adventures. I don’t do drugs anymore, but I’m always seeking new experiences. So driving up to L.A. to see Bauhaus for the first time on a Sunday night at the end of a holiday weekend was a no-brainer.

All these memories came flooding back when Bauhaus took the stage at the Hollywood Palladium. They opened with “Rosegarden Funeral of Sores,” which I didn’t realize is a cover until this instant, a slow song that let the players get warmed up. Then they dropped the hammer with “Double Dare,” which opens with a ferocious guitar lick that made the hair on my arms stand up. I closed my eyes for fifteen or twenty seconds and tried to summon whatever vestigial traces of LSD might be lurking in the darkest reaches of my mind. It didn’t work, but it’s the closest I’ve come to praying in decades.

The show wasn’t perfect. Peter’s mic malfunctioned at the beginning of “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” and he angrily chucked it backstage. We went to get another mic and the show went on. A roadie ran out with a replacement but he chucked that one, too. I suspect Peter has been fucking up “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” for decades. The song is nine minutes long and there’s only about two minutes seconds of singing in it. That’s a lot of down time for a diva like Peter.

I couldn’t get over how good Daniel Ash looked and sounded. He was always scary cool with his huge hair, dark lipstick, and savage cheekbones. On Sunday night he sported a Mohawk, sunglasses and a sleeveless shirt and his guitar playing sounded amazing. During “She’s in Parties,” Daniel’s plunging reverb-laden hook come on like the sound of the howling void that fills your ears when the trapdoor opens under your feet.

(Maybe that acid did kick in after all. Or maybe it was a contact high from the all the weed being smoked, but the fact that I characterize this as a good feeling is, perhaps, what separates Bauhaus fans from normal people.)

The band played “Stigmata Martyr,” “The Silent Hedges,” and “The Passion of Lovers,” a trio that showcases the dark majesty of Goth, a style of music Bauhaus essentially invented, and that was the climax of the show as far I’m concerned.

A few years ago I befriended an L.A. poet named Joe whose father is none other than David J, the bass player for Bauhaus. Joe sent me a signed copy of his father’s memoir called Who Killed Mr. Moonlight, and I’m finally getting around to reading it. It’s full of astonishing things like how “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” was recorded in January of 1979 in a single take. David J, Daniel Ash, and Peter Murphy were all 22 years old. Kevin Haskins was 20. It was the band’s first single, recorded six weeks after they’d formed. I feel badly that it’s taken me so long, but I’m grateful to be reading the book at a time in my life when I can supply my own ending to the story.

Lit Pics for 12/5-12/11

Recommendations for literary events in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Seattle? Yes, Seattle, where I’ll be this weekend and part of next week.

Thursday December 5 at 7:30pm (SD)

Laura Trethewey will be at The Book Catapult to discuss and sign her new book, The Imperiled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea. Tretheway will be in conversation with Katherine Leitzell, Communications Coordinator of California Sea Grant at Scripps Institute of Oceanography. Highly recommended and I’m planning on attending this event.

Friday December 6 at 8pm (LA)

I’m biased, but there’s only one place to be if you’re in L.A. on Friday and that’s Stories Books & Café for the curiously titled event “Punks, Music, Underground Then and Now…” with Keith Morris (Black Flag, Circle Jerks, OFF!), Chris D (The Flesh Eaters, Divine Horsemen), Iris Berry (Punk Hostage Press), Annette Zilinskas (The Bangles, Blood on the Saddle) and Hudley Flipside. Legends walk among us and several will be at Stories Books & Café on Friday.

Saturday December 7 at 10:30am (SEA)

Civic Saturday, a “salve for the civic soul,” founded by Eric Liu, author of Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy at the Town Hall Forum on 1119 8th Ave (West Entrance). This event will also feature poetry from Naa Akua. Admission is free and child-care is available. Please RSVP.

Monday December 9 at 7:30pm (SEA)

César Cuauhtémoc García Hernández will discuss his new book Migrating to Prison: America’s Obsession with Locking Up Immigrants at the Town Hall Forum on 1119 8th Ave (West Entrance). This is a ticketed event but is free for youth.

Tuesday December 10 at 7pm (LA)

Rex Weiner, Heather Havrilesky, Daniel Brummel, David Bash and S.W. Lauden will read and discuss their essays from Go All The Way: A Literary Appreciation of Power Pop at Chevalier’s Books – L.A.’s oldest bookstore.

Plan B (SEA)

Terry Tempest Williams will discuss her new collection Erosion: Essays of Undoing in an event sponsored by the Elliot Bay Book Company at the Central Seattle Public Library at 1000 Fourth Street at 7pm.

Wednesday December 11 at 7pm (SD)

Remember Ryan Griffith from Relics of the Hypnotist War? Students from his creative writing class at Grossmont College will be reading at Verbatim Books. Free and open to the public.

Thanks for reading Message from the Underworld. See you in the slithering shadows.