Garbage Days Revisited #84: Johnny Thunders - "Hurt Me" (1983)

 

"You're just a bastard kid and you got no name/'Cos you're living with me, we're one and the same" - Johnny Thunders - You Can't Put Your Arms Round A Memory

This is probably something I should've set right a while ago to be honest. Although I've written columns on both the New York Dolls' 21st century reincarnation and Walter Lure's saga of carrying on the Heartbreakers' name in the 1990s via the Waldos, I've yet to really cover Johnny Thunders himself in Garbage Days Revisited (whenever I've referenced the guy in the past, you'll notice I've linked to the Waldos article as Rent Party was essentially the great missing second Heartbreakers' album and several of the songs have Johnny T's DNA all over them even if he'd sadly passed on a couple of years before.

The issue was, as with quite a few bands and artists I've covered on here who were big enough to have cult followings but still had enough of a mystique about them to be worth a Garbage Days Revisited column (see the Mission, the Cult and indeed the Dolls themselves), where do you start with Thunders. L.A.M.F., the sole Heartbreakers Mk1 album seemed a bit too obvious to be honest - it's a great album don't get me wrong but literally EVERYBODY seems to have sung its praises down the years and the story of that band has been told a million times. I mean I guess all I can say is that if you're maybe one of the younger readers of this ‘ere site and still haven't been introduced to this album yet then you really need to put that right asap. Proper guttersnipe Noo Yoik punk rock at its best.

Following the collapse of the Heartbreakers towards the end of '77, Thunders would find himself signed up by Sire records for 1978's So Alone album and thrown in the studio with an all-star backing band featuring Steve Jones and Paul Cook from the Pistols (supremely ironic given that said album featured a re-recording of the Heartbreakers' scathing Pistols-baiting anthem London Boys), Thin Lizzy's Phil Lynott, Paul Gray and Steve Nicol from Eddie & The Hot Rods (the former would join the Damned soon afterwards), Peter Perrett from the Only Ones and a pre-fame Chrissie Hynde. Despite this, the album was a bit of a disappointment with some good tunes sunk in muddy production and felt like it stopped a bit short of showing what Thunders could really do. It failed to sell, he would be gone from Sire soon afterwards and following an aborted attempt at starting a new band, Gang War, with the MC5's Wayne Kramer (a posthumous album of demos and live recordings would surface in the mid-'80s), Thunders would simply disappear for a good four years.

Which brings us on to Hurt Me, the album we're covering here today. By 1983, Thunders had been leading a nomadic existence for a few years, living in the UK, the States and various places in Europe. But after his crash and burn exploits with the Dolls, the Heartbreakers and his solo career, not to mention his very well documented drug problems, the music business, it's safe to say, wouldn't touch him with a bargepole. In 1982, pretty much flat broke, he would finally be signed by notorious French underground label New Rose who would issue his In Cold Blood EP, the swaggering title track a reminder that the guy was at least still there and kicking back against the pricks in style. As a result, he'd end up recording a full album for New Rose (who also had the Saints, the Outcasts, the Dead Kennedys and a number of '60s garage survivors like Sky Saxon, the Troggs and Roky Erikson) in the form of the acoustic based Hurt Me.

I think the reason that Hurt Me probably edges it as my favourite Thunders album is that it shows a bit of a different side to the guy. If you've ever read Nina Antonia's excellent biography In Cold Blood then it paints the picture of a guy who could be mouthy, nasty and unpleasant but had a heart of gold underneath and was a genuinely nice sensitive guy when things aligned which kind of makes it frustrating when he gets held up as an influence by dunderheads like Nikki Sixx and Axl Rose (that dreadful G’n’R cover of You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory where Duff basically forgets half the words…shudder…). Hurt Me is that quiet sensitive side writ large even if it's a bit lyrically questionable in places such as the title track (a real shame as it's a beautiful sounding song with some great guitar work if you can disregard the decidedly disturbed lyrics to it - I'm not even sure if sexist is the right word as it's a bit unclear if JT is actually having a dig at girls who allow guys to treat them like dirt or the guys who treat girls like dirt to begin with...eesh, it's a bit of a headfuck)

Elsewhere, the version of You Can't Put Your Arms Around A Memory on here absolutely smokes the one on So Alone, cutting out the endless guitar overdubs and letting the gentle heart of the song beat properly. Sad Vacation is a surprisingly touching tribute to Sid Vicious (who'd been in Thunders' band for a while after the Pistols imploded) and the likes of Lonely Planet Boy and Ask Me No Questions also get a new lease of life in this form. Elsewhere, covers of Barry Ryan's Eve Of Destruction and Dylan's It Ain't Me Babe are handled well while MIA shows the more traditional Thunders spite rising to the surface and the instrumental Illegitimate Son Of Segovia shows off his guitar skills. Like I say, it's a good listen.

Johnny would manage two more albums before his death - 1985's Que Sera Sera was a pretty solid effort with the likes of Endless Party, a plugged in version of MIA, Alone In A Crowd and the gentle piano led I Only Wrote This Song For You being highlights and featuring Michael Monroe and Nasty Suicide from Hanoi Rocks, Stiv Bators and Dave Tregunna from the Lords of the New Church, John Perry from the Only Ones, JC Carroll from the Members and Wilko Johnson doing guest spots.

1988's Copy Cats, meanwhile, would be a covers album of the old doo-wop and early rock 'n' roll standards that Thunders had grown up with as a teenager in New York with versions of Dion's Born To Cry and Elvis' Crawfish being handled well although it's Patti Palladin, formerly of Snatch and a frequent collaborator with Thunders from So Alone onwards, who steals the show with a heart-rending take on the old Shirelles classic Baby It's You.

Thunders was working on a new album at the time of his death in 1991 with his then-band the Oddballs and it's a real shame it never got finished - I remember finding an online bootleg of a gig in Japan shortly before Johnny's passing where he was playing several of the songs from it like Society Makes Me Sad and Children Are People Too and they definitely showed a more mature side to his writing - I genuinely think it could've been his most realised work if it had happened. In the end, a fair few of those songs were recorded by his associates on the I Only Wrote This Song For You tribute album.

It's weird to think that a) Johnny would have been 70 this year and b) it's now over thirty years since his passing. I can't really claim to have been there first time round as I was only 12 years old when he passed away but I do know that, similar to Hanoi Rocks, when I discovered his music in my early twenties it had a bit of a profound effect on me - at the time I was in an old school punk band and not really going anywhere fast and listening to Thunders, Hanoi and the Lords kind of demonstrated to us that actually, we didn't have to be hemmed in by playing three chords ad infinitum and we could still try to branch out and be more musical without turning into Franz bloody Ferdinand. To be fair, I would say that all of Johnny's stuff is worth a listen (even So Alone, despite its shonky production, has plenty to recommend it) but I would say that Hurt Me, LAMF and Copy Cats at the very least definitely demand a listen. Here's to ya Johnny - thanks for helping to give me some pointers with both my music and my life way back then.