Suicide

Although barely acknowledged at the time, Suicide—singer Alan Vega and keyboardist Martin Rev—served as the originating spark for nearly every synth pop duo that flooded the early-'80s pop market, particularly in England. Absent the pioneering efforts of Rev and Vega, groups such as Soft Cell, Erasure, Bronski Beat, and Yaz would never have emerged, and although many observers dismissed those acts as unremarkable, they borrowed only the duo’s keyboard-and-vocal presentation while ignoring Rev and Vega’s fiercely confrontational stage presence and embrace of dissonance. The handful of artists who adopted the latter elements, among them Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire, were widely regarded as too extreme for mainstream consumption.

During the early and mid-1970s New York Dolls period, Suicide participated in the performing-arts milieu of New York City’s Lower East Side. Rev generated sparse, eerie, hypnotic layers of clashing keyboards and synthesizers while Vega delivered neo-Beat lyrics through abrupt, fragmented vocals that shifted between singing, ranting, and spitting. In live settings Vega deliberately provoked audiences, frequently inciting chaotic outbursts that escalated into violence directed at him. Once their notoriety as provocative performers was established, it overshadowed the fact that Suicide also produced music of striking allure and dread. A partnership with Cars mastermind Ric Ocasek expanded their reach and attracted unexpected admirers, including Bruce Springsteen, who publicly praised the Vietnam-vet narrative “Frankie Teardrop”; nevertheless, repeated splits and reunions left Rev and Vega far more influential than commercially successful.

The 1990s unexpectedly validated Suicide as industrial dance music gained traction through Chicago’s Wax Trax! label and its associated acts, among them Revolting Cocks, Ministry, and 1000 Homo DJs. Although Suicide played a diminished role in the scene after the late ’90s, their deep impact on subsequent generations of bands remained evident. Their 2002 return with the studio album American Supreme—their first in a decade—generated considerable attention, aided by Vega’s concurrent visibility as a visual artist whose exhibition opened earlier that year at the Jeffrey Dietch Gallery in New York. Vega maintained an active presence on collaborative and solo projects, releasing the album Station in 2007, five years after American Supreme. He died in New York City in 2016 at the age of 78.