Phast Phreddie – Fanzine Hemorrhage

The pre-punk era of LA captured by Back Door Man and here in Radio Free Hollywood #1 is endlessly fascinating for those of us who love to marinate in the whos, whys and wherefores of the sparks that had to ignite to make that particular music scene as combustible as it became starting in 1977. But the argument here, in early 1977, is that the sparks have already ignited. There had recently been a “ground zero” event on August 24th, 1976 with The Pop!, The Dogs and The Motels playing a show in Hollywood, billed as an antidote to the fern bars, disco and cover bands plaguing greater Los Angeles.

While it’s hard for me to imagine that these particular bands could be a catalyst of any kind, you take what you can get sometimes, don’t you? The opening editorial sets its mission as wanting to capitalize on what’s been growing out of that one live show. You’ve got people who write for Back Door Man taking part in this as well, including Phast Phreddie Patterson and Gregg Turner. To them, what’s happening is something they’re calling “street rock”, so accordingly there’s a big column looking at what’s going on called “Out in the Streets”.

“At present, there are over a dozen good bands playing steadily on the Hollywood circuit, among them Quiet Riot, The Pop!, The Berlin Brats, The Dogs, The Motels, The Quick, The Boyz, Shock, Van Halen, Sway, Wolfgang and Zolar-X”. There’s even a letter to the editor talking about what a shredder of a guitarist Eddie Van Halen is. Street rock!! But as punk encroaches, Phast Phreddie, at least, is ready. He talks about some exciting new 45s and loves “(I’m Stranded)” by The Saints and the third Pere Ubu single. And I guess The Motels had a song at this point called “Whatever Happened to the Modern Lovers?”. This gives credence to just how barren and bereft rocknroll must have felt to so many who’d lived through the Sunset Strip-60s, and/or who marinated in The Stooges, MC5, Velvet Underground and even Can and Hawkwind. I’d certainly list 1976 as one of my bottom-five years to have been young and searching for hot raw sounds in the United States of America.

But you can always pretend, right? That’s how you get a piece like “The Pop – Rock n Roll Monsters” by Gregg Turner. I guess I can sort of see if you’re into this sorta street rock/headbanger/AOR/vest-rock bullshit, a la Van Halen and Quiet Riot and The Pop!, you might see the arrival of bands like The Germs and The Weirdos and The Screamers in a few months as something of a threat – which could be why Turner and Vom were sending it up somewhat, only to reverse course and in a can’t-beat-’em-join-’em move, start the Angry Samoans in 1978.

Radio Free Hollywood #1 is basically one large sheet of newsprint folded up. I find it quite entertaining in its way, and I’m glad to have it around.

If you’re as ludicrous a person as I am, it can be tempting to mentally place oneself in a particular year “at age” and wonder how you might have responded at the time to rocknroll’s past, present and potential future. If I put myself in 1974, I’d probably want to respond a lot like Phast Phreddie Patterson and the Back Door Man crew did at the time. I’d want to be blathering to everyone who listened about The Stooges, Velvets and Roxy Music; I’d have a reverence for rockabilly and 60s garage rock; I’d know what “punk” was three years before 1977 told me what it was; and I’d be searching, grasping for anything that hinted at the musical future I wanted to will into existence. (If I’m really stretching the imaginary point, I’d be putting out a fanzine praising Les Razilles Denudes, current krautrock, crate-digging 60s punk 45s, Simply Saucer and whatnot).

To date, every fanzine I’ve talked about here has been something that I physically own an original copy of. Not Back Door Man #4. In the early 1990s my good friend JB was spending quality time at his local San Diego Kinko’s making ersatz photocopies of his classic fanzines for certain friends, of whom I was luckily one. I got a package once with multiple Back Door Mans, a Brain Damage and a gaggle of the Patti Smith fanzine Another Dimension, all stapled and assembled beautifully. Given that they were from the mid-70s, I could almost pretend that they were the real deal, in their original form. This Back Door Man came from that batch, and yet it’s “worth” plenty to me.

I hadn’t really looked at it in a long time, this “only 40¢” fanzine from Torrance, CA. They really were a crew of “hardcore rock’n’rollers” at BDM; they included within their ranks Patterson; co-editor DD Faye (whom I confused for years with her equally lovely sister Danielle, who was in The Zippers and Venus & The Razorblades), Don Waller and Thom Gardner. At this point, 1974, considered by many far & wide to be a true low point in rock music, they are grasping at anything rebellious and wild they can get their hands on that might hint at the abandon and rawness they need. Blue Oyster Cult, Aerosmith, Ron Ashton & Dennis Thompson’s new band New Order; Mott The Hoople, Nico, Patti Smith and John Cale – even the execrable Tubes get a big write-up by Lisa Fancher, who’d later go on to run Frontier Records. It’s what you did in 1974, and it makes me think that the search for musical redemption in the bins and on the radio was actually a far more fun and ultimately rewarding environment for rocknroll fandom than, say, 2023 is. There just weren’t many clubs in which to go see local bands, nor many local bands who weren’t playing covers in fern bars.

When there were, Back Door Man #4 is all over it. Phast Phreddie does a proto-scene report called “South Bay Rock’n’Roll” talking over local live shows with the reformed Blue Cheer, along with Shatterminx, Heavy Transport, Atomic Kid and The Ratz! The Imperial Dogs, who formed that year and featured Back Door Man’s Don Waller on vocals, are also duly raved about, as well they should be. There’s also a great piece about how flummoxed they all are by Lou Reed’s new Metal Machine Music but how they appreciate its rawness and its place in th culture as a big fuck-you nonetheless.

The staff also writes in various places about having to rely on AM radio (KHJ) to get their musical kicks, again grasping, grasping…..they’re really excited about The Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz”, which they should be because that song rules (we also discussed it previously on this blog here). I’m assuming that FM rock Radio was already pumping that heavy-lidded dopesmoker AOR sound around that time that I remember from my precocious Sacramento childhood: Jethro Tull, Yes, Led Zeppelin and whatnot, and these guys and gals were instead looking for the proverbial teenage kicks.

Anyway, there’s much, much more to be told in the Back Door Man saga here – but mostly elsewhere. I leave you with an interview that Scram fanzine did with Don Waller about the magazine; here’s a great RockWrit podcast interview with Phast Phreddie himself. Enjoy.