Sonny Vincent

Born and raised in New York City, Sonny Vincent has embodied the raw drive of rock music across his entire existence. By thirteen he was living without permission inside a girls’ dormitory, picked up guitar and began singing at fourteen, and soon afterward shuttled repeatedly through reform schools, displaying a ferocity onstage and off that most musicians never match even after decades.

In 1976 he assembled the Testors, a formative unit that nurtured his rapidly developing skills. The initial lineup consisted of two guitars and a drummer who owned no cymbals; what the trio lacked in polish they supplied through sheer bravado. Once a bassist joined, they restricted themselves to three-chord songs and set out on a U.S. tour alongside the Dead Boys. Following an especially volatile stretch of gigs marked by frequent clashes, Vincent was placed in New York State’s Windale mental hospital in 1980. He soon returned to Manhattan, experimenting briefly with film and mixed-media work before departing in 1981 for Minneapolis, where he immediately launched another group. Sonny Vincent & the Extreme issued several singles, played live dates, and paused activities long enough for their frontman to complete an eight-month prison sentence.

By 1985 Vincent had resumed filmmaking and visual art; his short Mannequin World screened on the art-house and museum circuit. A few years afterward he started Model Prisoner alongside the notorious ex-Replacements guitarist Bob Stinson; the hard-partying outfit dissolved after a single Twin/Tone album. Undeterred, Vincent formed Shotgun Rationale, a project that over the ensuing six years enlisted or toured with Moe Tucker, ex-Dead Boy Cheetah Chrome, Bob Stinson, and Half Japanese. The band issued two albums and an EP under shifting personnel; Vincent also found time to appear on Tucker’s I Spent a Week There the Other Night and to put out his own solo collection Recordings 1979-91.

In 1993 Shotgun Rationale released Roller Coaster while Vincent simultaneously launched the Dons in Holland with two local musicians. The Dons eventually produced two albums—Naked in 1995 and Good Dogs Die Young in 1997—though the latter was effectively a Sonny Vincent solo record, its core material having been tracked in the late 1970s and early 1980s. His subsequent endeavor, Rat Race Choir, included alumni of the Damned, Dead Boys, and Stooges; a 1997 Pure Filth single from that group contained three songs first cut with Stinson under the Model Prisoner name. Extensive European touring followed.

Turning again to solo projects, Vincent recorded Hard in Detroit with German players, guest contributions coming from Wayne Kramer on guitar and backing vocals. Both that album and its companion Parallax in Wonderland found favor with his growing European audience, prompting further road work. A run of 10-inch releases occupied 2000, followed by the Hell’s Kitchen LP in 2001. One of those singles, Original Punk Rock Recordings, New York, 1976-77, Pt. 2 on Incognito in Germany, reunited the original Testors lineup. Issued at the turn of the millennium, the disc underscored Vincent’s two-decade-plus commitment to uncompromised rock. Though never a mainstream figure, he had collaborated and toured with many of the most revered and notorious names in the American underground of the late twentieth century, earning a measure of belated recognition.

February 2003 brought Acetate’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, its tracks supported by a rotating cast of guitarists. Peers such as longtime associate Wayne Kramer and Television’s Richard Hell appeared alongside younger artists shaped by Vincent and the Testors—Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Jim O’Rourke, the Offspring’s Dexter Holland, and Street Walking Cheetahs’ Frank Meyer among them. A summer 2003 tour with Rocket from the Crypt was scheduled, the Californians serving as both backing band and openers. The partnership proved durable enough to yield an album; a studio fire delayed completion for years until Vintage Piss finally surfaced in 2015. Throughout the 2000s Vincent maintained an active schedule of European and American dates with various ensembles, and in 2015 he revealed plans for the new studio album Spiteful, recorded with his group Spite and featuring Rat Scabies of the Damned, Steve MacKay of the Stooges, and Glen Matlock of the Sex Pistols.