The Cramps are one of those bands you either get or you don’t. If you are already a fan of The Cramps you’ll understand exactly what I mean, and if you’re not, then maybe this article will help you re-evaluate thatposition, because underneath the sound of The Cramps is a love story of true genius.
As the tale goes, Lux Interior met Poison Ivy in Sacramento California in 1972 while she was hitchhiking. Lux and an unnamed friend stopped to pick her up and the two became inseparable. They bonded over a shared love of music, movies, and art and decided to form a band together, The Cramps.
Lux Interior took his name from a car ad – the advert claiming the automobile had a lux interior – while Ivy took her name froma dream she had, and by 1975 they had taken the blossoming Punk scene in NewYork by storm by becoming a fixture atCBGB’s.
Over the next 30 plus years The Cramps would go on to have a successful career, but would always be seen as a band that would remain a cult act, never quite reaching the heights of the likes of The Ramones or Blondie, two bands they had played with back at CBGB’s,yet the truth is the carved ot a niche for themselves with a community of fans that were attracted to their B movie inspired, lyrics their electric live shows and their, seemingly, simplistic musical style, but like everything associated with The Cramps, nothing was as cut and dried as it seemed.
For example, after their initial stance as a band who mixed old school horror and sci-fi into their lyrics, they would eventually move away from thqt and lean more into their sexuality when it came to the words, managing to turn Lux Interior into a sex symbol along the way.
They also refused to tow the line and jumped from record label to record label, doing whatever was necessary to maintain complete artistic control. The fact is that if The Cramps didn’t like how a company was promoting them, or dealing with the album artwork, they would simply pack up and move on. This was something to be admired as a true artistic stance that said “To hell with you, we know what we want” and instead of tying themselves down to one label, allowing that label to dictate what The Cramps were. They gambled on their own abilities and it paid off. Sure, they might not have seen the kind of money that would have just let them kick back and relax, but then The Cramps weren’t in it for that, they were in it for The Cramps.
They continued recording and touring the world until 2006, and with Lux Interior’s sudden passing in 2009, The Cramps ceased to be.
The reason behind this was simple. Lux Interior and Poison Ivy were The Cramps. They were the only two constant members and they were the driving force behind the band. Lux Interior was quite unlike any other front man to ever tread the boards. A wirey, serpentine, sex god that stalked the stage using sex appeal and danger in equal measures. Lux Interior sang, snarled, and screeched his way through song after song, inviting you along for the ride, enticing you and intimidating you, but all the time entrancing you with his persona, and usually doing so while wearing high heels a stripper would have trouble walking in. He was unique, he was off the wall, he truely was something else, and he is still greatly missed to this day.
But if lux Interior was the focal point of The Cramps, the face if you will, then Poison Ivy was the heartbeat that drove the band on. I’ve heard people claim – quite wrongly I might like to add – that Poison Ivy wasn’t a brilliant guitar player. Did she play like Eddie Van Halen? No, because she didn’t need to play like Eddie Van Halen. What Poison Ivy did was paint soundscapes for Lux Interior to spin his yarns of teenage werewolves and bikini girls with machine guns upon. Her guitar work sounds remarkably familiar, but at the same time quite unlike anything you’ve ever heard. Yet if you know The Cramps, all it takes is for a few notes of a song to appear on the radio or on a TV show and you know instantly just who you’re listening to, and that was the true genius of The Cramps.
They knew who they were, they knew what they wanted to play, and they never apologized for it or allowed their artistic vision to be watered down in any single way. They should be held up as the template for how every band carries themselves. Do what you want, believe in what you do, and success will find you, you won’t have to go looking for it.
