The Cramps

Conjuring a diabolical potion from raw rockabilly, grease-slicked garage sounds of the sixties, campy horror flicks, lurid carnality, and the accumulated junk of half a century of U.S. pop detritus, the Cramps emerged as an authentically American invention on par with the Cadillac, the White Castle slider, the Fender Stratocaster, and Jayne Mansfield. Copied repeatedly yet never matched in psychic impact, they exalted the tawdry and the lurid with an impish glee that ensnared audiences through sheer fleshy excess, much like a bewitched confectionery cottage along the Las Vegas strip. Without their early embrace of the reverberant threat in rock & roll’s first wave, the entire psychobilly movement would never have materialized, and their influence quietly shaped both the rockabilly revival and the subsequent roots-rock surge.

The band’s chronicle opens in 1972 in Sacramento, California, where Erick Purkhiser—an avid LSD user and Alice Cooper devotee—offered a ride to hitchhiker Kristy Wallace, whose already distinctive rock & roll sartorial instincts caught his attention. Genuine chemistry ignited weeks afterward when both enrolled in the same Sacramento City College class on “Art and Shamanism.” The pair soon shared living quarters and a mutual obsession with rock’s more eccentric early recordings alongside the flamboyant sounds then current. This shared fervor prompted them to start a group; Kristy took up guitar under the adopted name Poison Ivy Rorschach, while Erick chose the stage persona Lux Interior after brief experiments with Raven Beauty and Vip Vop. In 1975 the couple relocated first to Ohio, living modestly in Akron for eighteen months before settling in New York City.

At a Manhattan record shop, Interior encountered recent Detroit arrival Greg Beckerleg, another aspiring musician. Beckerleg reinvented himself as guitarist Bryan Gregory and recruited his sister Pam to play drums, though she proved unsuitable. Ohio acquaintance Miriam Linna, who had met Lux and Ivy during their Akron stay, completed the initial lineup of the newly christened Cramps. Ivy’s spare, twangy single-note leads, Gregory’s explosive shards of noise, Lux’s unhinged banshee vocals, and Linna’s rudimentary pounding created a sound unlike anything else emerging from the nascent New York punk circuit; the quartet quickly drew crowds and attention at CBGB and Max’s Kansas City. Roughly a year later Linna departed—she would later co-found both Kicks Magazine and Norton Records—and fellow Ohio transplant Nick Stephanoff, known onstage as Nick Knox and formerly of Cleveland’s Electric Eels, assumed the drum stool. This configuration cut the band’s earliest sides: two 7-inch singles tracked in Memphis under Alex Chilton’s supervision and released on their own Vengeance label.

In 1979 Miles Copeland signed the group to his fledgling I.R.S. Records imprint; their debut 12-inch, the EP Gravest Hits, compiled those earlier Vengeance tracks. That year the Cramps toured Europe for the first time as support for the Police, frequently eclipsing the headliners. Returning to Memphis with Chilton, they recorded their first full-length, 1980’s Songs the Lord Taught Us. A planned American tour collapsed when Gregory abruptly quit, absconding with a vanload of gear; although rumors circulated that he had left to pursue Satanism, Lux and Ivy later attributed the departure to heroin addiction. The remaining trio relocated to Hollywood, California, and enlisted Gun Club guitarist Kid Congo Powers for their second album, 1981’s Psychedelic Jungle.

That same year the Cramps sued I.R.S. over unpaid royalties, halting new recordings for two years. They resurfaced in 1983 with the live set Smell of Female, captured at New York’s Peppermint Lounge. Kid Congo soon exited amicably. After an extended search for a compatible label, the U.K.’s Big Beat imprint issued the provocatively erotic A Date With Elvis in 1986; Poison Ivy overdubbed bass for those sessions following several short-lived guitarists. In 1987 the group found a permanent bassist in Candy Del Mar, whom Lux and Ivy met outside a liquor store. She appeared on the live album Rockin’ n Reelin in Auckland New Zealand and remained when the Cramps signed with Enigma Records and delivered 1990’s Stay Sick!.

The following year brought another studio effort, Look Mom No Head!, though Nick Knox had exited and Jim Sclavunos briefly occupied the drum chair before Nickey Beat (Nicky Alexander, ex-Weirdos) and then Harry Drumdini took over. Candy Del Mar also departed, succeeded by Slim Chance, formerly of the Mad Daddys. With Harry and Slim aboard, Lux and Ivy issued their first major-label release, 1994’s Flamejob, on the Warner Bros.–distributed Medicine label. Extensive touring ensued, including a 1995 cameo on the television series Beverly Hills 90210. The major-label phase proved fleeting; Epitaph released 1997’s Big Beat from Badsville, again featuring the same lineup.

Marking their twenty-fifth anniversary in 2001, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy Rorschach reactivated the dormant Vengeance imprint to reissue their post-I.R.S. catalog—excluding Flamejob—on remastered, expanded CDs and colored vinyl. A fresh studio album, 2003’s Fiends of Dope Island, introduced bassist Chopper Franklin. The following year they offered How to Make a Monster, a compilation of unearthed live recordings and demos. Their final concert occurred in November 2006 at the House of Blues in Anaheim, California, after which activity slowed. In February 2009 Lux Interior died at age 62 from an aortic dissection at Glendale Memorial Hospital. Tributes followed, and 2011’s File Under Sacred Music: Early Singles 1978–1981 underscored the enduring passion, foresight, and originality that defined the Cramps’ music.