We Got the Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story of L.A. Punk [Paperback]

Marc Spitz (Author), Brendan Mullen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 13, 2001

Taking us back to late ’70s and early ’80s Hollywood—pre-crack, pre-AIDS, pre-Reagan—We Got the Neutron Bomb re-creates word for word the rage, intensity, and anarchic glory of the Los Angeles punk scene, straight from the mouths of the scenesters, zinesters, groupies, filmmakers, and musicians who were there.

“California was wide-open sex—no condoms, no birth control, no morality, no guilt.” —Kim Fowley

“The Runaways were rebels, all of us were. And a lot of people looked up to us. It helped a lot of kids who had very mediocre, uneventful, unhappy lives. It gave them something to hold on to.” —Cherie Currie

“The objective was to create something for our own personal satisfaction, because everything in our youthful and limited opinion sucked, and we knew better.” —John Doe

“The Masque was like Heaven and Hell all rolled into one. It was a bomb shelter, a basement. It was so amazing, such a dive ... but it was our dive.” —Hellin Killer

“At least fifty punks were living at the Canterbury. You’d walk into the courtyard and there’d be a dozen different punk songs all playing at the same time. It was an incredible environment.” —Belinda Carlisle

Assembled from exhaustive interviews, We Got the Neutron Bomb tells the authentically gritty stories of bands like the Runaways, the Germs, X, the Screamers, Black Flag, and the Circle Jerks—their rise, their fall, and their undeniable influence on the rock ’n’ roll of today.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

For years, West Coast punks have been ardently arguing for some much-deserved respect. Though the L.A. punk scene had a late start, it has turned out more relevant bands in the last two decades than the communities in New York and London combined. There's only been one roadblock in L.A.'s way until now, there hasn't been a book. Spitz, senior contributing writer at SPIN magazine, and Mullen, founder of the seminal Masque club that fostered many of the bands covered here, have fashioned a long-overdue oral history along the lines of Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain's Please Kill Me, Gotham punk's definitive history. Starting in 1971 with Jim Morrison and the glitter rock invasion and ending in 1981 with the Go-Go's commercial success, this book presents raw quotations from vital scenesters, promoters, and musicians. Readers will get glimpses into the formation and demise of acts like the Runaways, X, and the Circle Jerks. Much more thorough than Forming: The Early Days of L.A. Punk (LJ 11/1/99), this book not only titillates with insights and anecdotes that are alternately hilarious and grisly but also fills a gap in popular music history. Highly recommended for all libraries, especially those in the Golden State. Robert Morast, "Argus Daily Leader," Sioux Falls, SD
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist

Spitz and Mullen give the L.A. punk-rock scene the same treatment that Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain gave the New York scene in Please Kill Me (1996). Out of interviews with dozens of club owners, promoters, musicians, journalists, and groupies they shape an evocative oral history of the mid-seventies L.A. punk subculture, before bands like the Go-Go's made it to the cover of Rolling Stone. They show the small number of those who dug the New York Dolls and Iggy Pop transforming a stagnant West Coast scene dominated by the Eagles, Linda Ronstadt, and their cronies into a chaotic, culturally vibrant synthesis of art school, rockabilly, surf music, and hard rock. Producer-promoter Kim Fowley put together an all-jailbait girl band, the Runaways, which prompted others. X, the Germs, and Black Flag soon followed, offering a mixture of raw energy, aggression, and real, honest-to-goodness talent. Heroin, AIDS, and self-destructive behavior played a tragic but not unsurprising role in it all. An eminently colorful account. Benjamin Segedin
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Three Rivers Press; First Edition edition (November 13, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0609807749
• ISBN-13: 978-0609807743
• Product Dimensions: 5.2 x 0.7 x 8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,372 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A Solid Foundation, December 20, 2002

By 

Michael (Silver Spring, MD) - See all my reviews

This review is from: We Got the Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story of L.A. Punk (Paperback)

I'm as surprised as you are--a book about LA Punk that doesn't s**k! After the scrapbook "Forming" and the sub-Tiger Beat "Make the Music Go Bang", here's an actual narrative about how all that crazy noise and art erupted from our Western Rim.

Well, not a narrative really; it's modeled on Legs McNeil's "Please Kill Me", and consequently has no thesis or point of view--just a bunch of quotes from scenesters. And, as in PKM, many of the interviewees contradict each other, call the others liars, and basically pile on personal abuse, ancient diatribes, etc. So, as you may expect, the "authors" serve up tons of gossip, sex, drugs, violence, and almost nothing about music. Which (music) was the only reason anyone ever cared about these strung-out mutants, right? I mean, would you want to read a book about your neighbors in that slum right after college who used to shoot speed and have screaming fights and nod off in your begonia patch, if they didn't happen to be underground musicians? No, the music is what made you curious. So there's nothing about music, ok. You do get a lot of background on these artists, how they met, what their influences were, what seemed to drive them...well, too much background, really. Quick, without thinking: what was LA's most vital contribution to modern music? Ah no my friend, not art-damaged Farfisa cabaret bop, I'm talking h-a-r-d-c-o-r-e. Do you know how much of this book is devoted to hardcore? About a quarter. And most of that is material on bands like X, Fear and the Germs, which some would consider too corny and/or slow to qualify as HC, but...it wasn't their fault! No one from Black Flag would give them an interview! And hey, the whole hardcore thing has been played out in so many books already, right?

So we get tons of material on such obscure, underground artists as the Doors, the Stooges, David Bowie, and their glammy fan clubs, stuff that goes on a bit long, maybe, but other LA Punk books ignored this whole scene, so just see it as thoroughness. Iggy Pop, Kim Foley, Michael Des Barres, the Berlin Brats, Tomata du Plenty, Rodney Bingenheimer, Chuck E. Starr and, er, Brendan Mullen...if you want to know about their hang-outs and parties and the drugs and people they did, here's your source! And to be fair, the sass and transvestitism of these party kids helped set a kind of devil-may-care stage for what followed.

After page after page of this very non-punk stuff you hit paydirt: lots of great stuff on the Screamers, the Weirdos, Black Randy, the Bags, and other bands you don't hear much about these days. This stuff goes on for pretty long too, including more than I ever wanted to know about the myriad personal quirks of each member of the Runaways, etc., but there must be a lot of people out there who are interested in such things or they wouldn't be in the book, right? This section deals with a lot of music I hadn't heard, and after reading thousands of words on these bands I still have no clue what they sounded like, but that's what records are for, not books.

Next we hear the whole Germs story (riveting!), a lot of acrimonious sniping between members of the Darby Crash and X posses, some teasers about the Dickies and Middle Class, and finally a couple of slim chapters on LA's most potent export: the warp-speed thrash of Circle Jerks, Black Flag, Adolescents, TSOL, etc. There isn't much new material here, since Greg Ginn and company were typically uncooperative, but Keith Morris gets to run his mouth as much as he wants. And sandwiched between the hardcore chapters (oddly breaking the flow, some might say) are token offerings on the city's Chicano punk and rockabilly and roots revivals. The book trails off with mildly gossipy synopses of the Go-Gos' success and LA Rock's glam-metal twilight.

So, a convenient sourcebook that ensures no one will have to write about the highjinks of the LA glitter crowd again, and draws a nice outline for the definitive history of LA Punk, should anyone care to write it. The mere fact that Mullen and Spitz found all these people and managed to interview them points the way for a writer to take over.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The Darby Crash Story, December 9, 2003

By 

L. Alper (Englewood CO) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: We Got the Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story of L.A. Punk (Paperback)

This book tries very very hard to be as comprehensive as Legs McNeill's outstanding "Please Kill Me". It even features an endorsement from Legs on it's cover. Unfortunately for all concerned, despite the title being ripped off of a Wierdo's song, the book is really nothing more than the Germs story or "Darby Crash died for your sins".

There are so many bands and so many varying types of music that were considered "punk" in the period from 77-82 that Brendan Mullen's focus on just the bands that today would be considered hard core is difficult to understand. Mullen BOOKED most of those bands at clubs ranging from Madame Wong's to Cathay De Grande, yet not a single mention is made of the various different groups & venues. To someone who wasn't there in LA during this period, "We Got the Neutron Bomb" makes it seem like the entire music scene consisted of the Masque & the clubs on the Strip, & the only bands that played were X, the Germs, & the GoGo's. This isn't true.

LA's music scene from the late 70's thru the mid 80's was one of the most exciting; certainly it gave other vaunted scenes in London & NY a run for their money. You'd never know it from reading this book. Rockabilly & it's harder edged brother psychobilly (Jimmy & the Mustangs/ Levi Dexter)? Hardly a mention. The more 60's influenced bands such as the Plimsouls & the Twisters? Never existed according to "We Got the Neutron Bomb". An extremely avante gard club space run by a dedicated artist that gave gigs to bands such as the violin/cello punk trio the Hesitations? Nope, never was such a place, implies "We Got the Neutron Bomb".

If you just haven't heard enough Darby Crash stories, if the fact that no one EVER liked Belinda Carlisle is fascinating to you, buy this book. If you'd like an actual, factual, overview to the LA scene that spawned some incredible music, unfortunately that book is yet to be written.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Stars! The Bars! And those Oh So Loud Guitars!, July 3, 2003

By 

Glenn S. Hawley "glenn with 2 'n's" (NEW YORK, NY United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: We Got the Neutron Bomb : The Untold Story of L.A. Punk (Paperback)

I anticipated this Book greatly before it's Release, I was Not disappointed at all. Such a Great scene, The Masque, Disgraceland, The Canterbury. Plungers Pit... So much Great music, The Germs, X The Screamers... Great Stars Excene, Darby, Tomata, Black Randy... Great People working from the ground up to build a world for themselves. Needed after the seemingly rejection by the rest of american society. The thought, today, of being able to create, not only a longlasting musical legacy, but an actually original lifestyle is simply amazing. One that was on the edge. One that was not without it's casualties. It's all here, the story, of a Pre-MTV Musical World!