As I’m starting this blog, Lux Interior of The Cramps has just died of a heart condition. Technically he was 63, but really he was a timeless, in a way only true originals can be. I don’t mean that his music or his band were timeless (they draw heavily on early rock’n’roll but rarely pushed past those influences), I mean Lux himself was an archetype – a raconteur – and in that he’s timeless.
The thing about The Cramps is you always knew exactly what you were going to get, yet they always managed to be surprising. There are some middling efforts, especially towards the end, and all of it is stolen (there’s a cottage industry dedicated to tracking down all of The Cramps’ reference points, from Ghoulardi and the Mad Daddy to obscure early rock’n’roll songs by Andre Williams and Ron Haydock and beyond), but The Cramps delivered. They took the tools they had at hand and did everything they possibly could with it.
They also loved a good gimmick, something I share with them. In many ways, Lux was the embodiment of the classic American gimmick: he looked so weird you couldn’t take your eyes off him. To seal it he’d be jumping around with a mic in his mouth, throwing out some of the most ridiculous and obscene lyrics every to scorch a teen’s ears (well, mine anyway).
The lyrics were corny. He reveled in it, and made that work. “Can Your Pussy do the Dog?” is a double entendre worthy of the drunkest moment at the Elk’s Lodge, circa 1955, and he made it work. Rock’n’roll wasn’t just an excuse to be lewd and drunk, it was an essential motivator. All this cheesy stuff? That’s were life’s at.
Every news report I saw about his death said that his real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser, but that’s not true. His name really was Lux Interior – it was on his driver’s license and it’s what he signed to the checks. He became what he had made, something forged carefully out of what he loved most in the world.
So the world enters into it’s second Lux-free period. I’d say it’s better off for that bit in between – the bit with the definitive carny of our times fronting a solid rock’n’roll combo in high heels and leather pants riding obscenely low.