Doc Watch- Stiv- No Compromise No Regrets

 I watched the Johnny Thunders documentary on streaming and all of a sudden got hit with suggested related content. 

Stiv Bators makes sense as a cult punk icon. In the 80s, he even hung out with Thunders and like minded musos members of Hanoi Rocks and a supergroup was rumored with Thunders and Dee Dee Ramone though of course a group with members like that (covered in the doc) was notoriously unreliable. 

I first heard the Dead Boys in a documentary on New York City punk. The footage of Stiv at full tilt playing at CBGBs immediately made me a fan. 

I bought the band’s first album Young Loud and Snotty which I think is a near perfect album. It’s not quite like anything else- punk or otherwise. 

Around this time, I will never forget, I read a church pamphlet on explicit rock lyrics and they mentioned the Dead Boys. I always thought it was hilarious because I couldn’t imagine anyone but myself even knowing who they were- a band that had been defunct over a decade and hardly got any press. 

You also have to remember that while “Girl I don’t really want to dance, I just want to get into your pants” may not be appropriate for all audiences and the title “I Need Lunch” is suggestive (though it’s a reference to protopunk, feminist and shock rocker Lydia Lunch)

But bands like Motley Crue and WASP had come along and even at this point, they were passingly relevant eclipsed by Slayer and 2 Live Crew. There was no secret agenda to get people to listen to the Dead Boys except in my house. 

I was lucky to see Bators main partner (Dead Boys guitarist) Cheetah Chrome in concert. I thought I had heard Chrome had passed but apparently he’s still kicking. I have heard both that he played often on Nashville (where I saw him) and played rarely. I am not sure which is true 

I never saw Bators but friends had seen Lords of the New Church and said guitarist Brian James was drunk and unruly. 

I had become a Bators fan when he was alive and when he died due to being hit by a bus in Paris. He had been working with a bit of a supergroup that featured Kris Dollimore of the Godfathers (another favorite band of mine at the time) Vom from Doctor and the Medics and Neal X from Sigue Sigue Sputnik. This was covered in places like Rolling Stone magazine but Bators died before an album was released. 

I have never seen the Last Race album that would have consisted of those songs and there’s not a ton of info about it. However, looking at Discogs, I believe it currently exists as “Do you believe in Magyk” (sic) and is available on streaming listed under Stiv Bator (sic). 

Stiv: No Compromise, No Regrets is a documentary much like the Johnny Thunders one. Yet, I don’t think it got the same publicity. There are certain similarities and of course the careers intertwine a bit. 

With his ambition and sense of daring, Stiv was probably always going to make it. There’s a lot of early footage and it’s. Interesting that Stiv was doing what he was doing a good five years before the CBGBs and London punk scenes. He was a fan of Iggy Pop and Alice Cooper and that in you face energy shows. 

His girlfriend suggests he was the ‘only’ punk rocker. This is a bit of fond rememberance but she’s not entirely wrong. There wasn’t much in that NYC scene like him, and you can’t list too many frontmen who gave their all like Stiv. 

The band travelled from Ohio to New York City and CBGBs owner Hilly Kristal saved them by becoming their manager. He got them to work with Genya Ravan. 

I won’t detail everything but the Dead Boys second album (like LAMF by Thunders) wasn’t properly produced. It’s a fine album but the guitars were buried. 

There are some fantastic stories here but Cheetah Chrome had drug problems and it broke up the band. Stiv now at this point wanted to make Nuggets style garage rock and recorded Disconnected for Bomp Records (an album that I love, although it was a detour from punk). On the talk of the album, Stiv said he wasn’t interested in success but wanted a great album influenced by Paul Revere and the Raiders and The Raspberries. 

Stiv’s career (like Thunders) gets messy. Sham 69 singer Jimmy Pursey was leaving the band so Stiv joined with the others to form the Wanderers. 

He then forms The Lords of the New Church with the Damned guitarist Brian James and Sham 69 drummer Dave Parsons. There’s two ways to talk about the Lords and they both are presented here. One was that Stiv was a great lyricist and got MtV play. The other was that the goth tint wasn’t for Stiv and that they never quite got the attention they deserved. 

I think both can be true. There are Lords moments like “Russian Roulette” that are fantastic and others that sound stuck in the 80s. 

I am not sure if Stiv hated goth but I think the band did come before the age it would have really been popular. 

Famously, Stiv got hurt and James puts out an article looking for a new lead singer without telling Stiv. 

Stiv dies in the freak accident in 1990 at age 40 a year after the end of the Lords. The documentary leaves open whether Stiv was obsessed with dying young to make his legacy or it was truly accidental. 

The doc is fine with a great deal of those people who knew Stiv best. It does cover his lows- the drug use, the infighting with band members, a broken heart which led to a drop off in quality on the third and final Lords album - but it does a good job of telling the story and telling the legend. It shows his sense of humor and look at his personal life. I didn’t need to see Stiv taking his pants off repeatedly but otherwise I think it is a solid punk rock documentary.