From L-R Junior Romanelli, Wes Beech, Wendy O. Williams, Richie Stotts, T.C. Tolliver
1977-1979
The legendary Wendy O. Williams (WOW) and the Plasmatics, the band of changing musicians built around her, as rock writer John Levy said in a recent interview on VH1 "were a phenomenon". From 1978 to 1988 the "Queen of Punk", Queen of Shock Rock", "Dominatrix of the Decibels", and "High Priestess of Metal" as she later came to be known, assaulted the conformist culture of the status quo to radicalize and transform mass culture and music in ways that are still being played out today. As Chris Knowles from Classic Rock has put it, Wendy O. Williams and the Plasmatics were "the Ramones times ten; the Clash times ten; the Sex Pistols times ten."
"Conceived as a battering ram from day one", as former KERRANG! deputy Editor Dante Benutto has put it, the Plasmatics was a concept put together around the now legendary Wendy O. Williams by radical 'anti-artist' (or neo-Dadaist) Rod Swenson in 1977. Swenson who got an MFA in art from Yale where he specialized in conceptual, performance, and neo-dadaist art held the view that the measure of true or high art is how confrontational it is. After getting his MFA from Yale in 1969 he began a series of counter-culture projects which by the mid-70s found him in the heart of a pre-Disneyfied Times Square producing experimental counter-culture theatre as well as video and shows with the likes of the then little known Dead Boys, Ramones, Patti Smith and others. It was here that he and Wendy O. Williams (her actual birth-given name, the O. standing for Orlean and her initials spelling "WOW") met.
Williams had walked out as a teen on a repressive home and high-school life in a small town in upstate New York where friends remember her saying "I'd rather be dead" than become a cog in the disassociated hypocrisy of the materialist, consumer culture she saw around her. For the next several years she hitchhiked her way across the U.S. and Europe working variously as macrobiotic cook in London, lifeguard in Florida, living in a tent in Boulder, Colorado and performing throughout Europe in with a gypsy dance troupe. By the time she arrived at the Port Authority Bus terminal in NYC Wendy was more convinced than ever that the only authentic way to live was in complete opposition to the banality, lethargy, complacency, and hypocrisy of the status quo. In the Port Authority she happened upon a copy of Show Business weekly someone had discarded on the bus station floor where it lay open to a page with an ad in the casting calls for Rod's theatre, She answered the ad and applied for a job and the rest as they say "is history".
The chemistry between them was incendiary. What began was a relationship that saw Wendy's career as culture-shattering icon launched less than 2 years later as frontperson and certerpiece for the band that Boston's WBCN's Oedipus would call the "most outrageous rock and roll band in the world". Wendy and Rod began auditioning potential band members in 1977 and in (July) of 1978 the "Plasmatics" gave their first public performance at later to become rock shrine CBGB on New York's Bowery. The earliest version of the band which changed almost half its members with each album and had over 17 different members playing with it over the 10 years that Wendy performed was a 3 piece put together with a strong emphasis on visuals. It was quickly realized that the group needed another guitarist to hold the group together musically and guitarist Wes Beech was added to become, after Wendy, the only permanent member of the group playing or touring behind or involved in the production of every Wendy O. Williams record ever recorded.
From its conception, designed to assault the status quo at every level, as UK writers Benutto and Dickson have written 'here was a band that actually stood for something...and what they stood for had nothing whatsoever to do with compromise, surrender, or radio-friendly platinum crap." The favorite targets were hypocrisy, sexism, and assumptions about thte nature of music itself and most particularly American consumerism whose icons, TVs and automobiles (often a cadillac) Wendy symbolically destroyed on stage. In addition to wielding a sledghammer at TVs and other objects Wendy's use of a chainsaw to saw a guitar in half during the song Butcher Baby established in no uncertain terms that this was a woman who was not to taken as passive, submissive or setting out to make people comfortable.
From their initial gig at CBGBs Wendy and the Plasmatics took the NY underground by storm. From playing a single weekday night they moved quickly to playing repeated stands of four nights straight with two sold ouit shows each night, lines stretching around the block and bringing more fans into CBGBs during this time than any other band in its history. The group quickly outgrew CBGBs because there were no intermediate rock venues to play in NY at that time. So Rod made a deal to book a then little known polka hall called Irving Plaza from the Polish War Veterans who ran it. The sold-out crowds Wendy and the band drew here helped put Irving Plaza on the map and launch it on the path to becoming an established rock venue in NY. Having now caught the full attention of anyone who was anyone in the entertainment world in NYC Wendy and the band were now on their way to headlining the Palladium Theatre, the first group in history to do so at full ticket prices without a major label recording contract. The date was November 16, 1979 and it was historic for another reason. It was the first time Wendy, or anyone else, would blow up a car live onstage.
1980
Now selling out shows in Philly, Boston and venues in NJ and elsewhere in the Northeast and although as Chris Knowles of Classic Rock Magazine has writtin: Wendy and the Plasmatics "were the biggest live attraction in New York...and the media was on them like white on rice...they scared the record companies shitless." It's one thing to play at 'suversiveness", "wrote Chris Knowles in Classic Rock Magazine, but Wendy and the Plasmatics "unlike other Punk bands..put their Punk philosophy into action." What everyone fully knew was that Wendy was no poseur, a true radical...and this scared the shit out of the establishment. But whereas corporate governed US lables were running the other direction, Stiff Records the irreverent British independent was hot. Picking up on the buzz they'd gotten from all away across the pond, they flew over their head A&R guy to see a show in person and determine if what they'd been reading and hearing could possibly be real. The day after seeing the performance Stiff put in an offer and a deal was inked within a month and only a few months later Wendy and company were laying down trax in NY for the New Hope for the Wretched album.
Stiff had thought it would add interest to the project if former Rolling Stones producer Jimmy Miller as producer on the project. Unfortunately Miller's heroin addiction took almost complete control from the day he arrived in NY and he was virtually useless to the project, nearly bringing the whole project down with him. The record company gave Miller his walking papers and the album had to be finished by Engineer Ed Stasum and Rod over in England. In addition to songs like Corruption and Living dead linked to TV smashing and automobile destruction the song Butcher Baby featured, as with the live shows, a chainsaw sawing through a guitar in place of a guitar solo. Stiff released it as single where it made it into the top 40 on the UK charts.
For Wendy and the Plasmatics UK debut they were booked into the famed Hammersmith Odeon with the intent of blowing up a car. The entire band and crew flew to London for the sold-out show and Wendy, who had changed into a nurse's uniform on the plane announced to the throng of reporters that had come to greet her at the airport... interested in what this 'anarchist' had to say...announced that she had come to the UK to give the British people a 'cultural enema". All went well until the day of the show when the Greater London Council or "GLC" announced they wanted to see a further demonstration of the way the car would be detonated. It turned out later they had already made up there mind: the show would be banned.
Banned in the UK but with an album coming out in the States where Stiff America had scheduled a release and a full blown US tour set to go to the West Coast for the first time plans were already underway to work off the friustration of the UK Hammersmith banning and get the momentum back. Wendy would drive a breakless Cadillac towards a stage loaded with explosives jumping out moments before the car would hit the stage and the stage and all the equipment on it would blow up. The permits were hard to get and only allowed for an estimated 5-6,000 people, but the day of the performance over 25,000 showed up jamming the downtown streets and lining the rooftops. Even though it cost virtually the entire advance for the US release of New Hope to do it Wendy was quoted by a reporter from the Associated Press as saying "it was worth it because it showed that these are just things and...people shouldn't worship them", a point she'd repeat more than once.
Wendy and the Plasmatics debut in the LA market was at the famed Whiskey A Go Go where 2 nights were extended to 3 and then extened to 4, all of which sold-out with lines as in NY around the block. "Even LA punks were shocked" headlined the Associated Press about the performances, the buzz so strong that Avalon attractions now wanted Wendy and the band to return to the LA market just 6 weeks later to headline the Santa Monica Civic Center. Then on November 30, 1980, prior to returning to do the Civic Center, Wendy shaved her hair into a Mohawk something she'd wanted to do since before the forming of the band but dilligently held off on until the public became aware of her the other way with the belief that it would be a stronger statement. It must be pointed out there were no bands with mohawks and no women at all in the public eye at that time with mohawks. Most generally speaking no one had ever seen a woman with a mohawk, and the result was shocking. "I want say 'Fuck You!' to all the cosmetics companies" Wendy said in a much publicized interview.
The show at the Civic Center was one of many shows that was almost shut down before it happened (and the Hammersmith Odeon Show the first of many that were), but Rod was able to get both the authorities on the phone and appease them by agreeing to do a demonstration of the car explosion in the parking lot just hours before the doors were set to open, and the show went on as scheduled. In the meantime, the ABC show Fridays which was looking to be a more cutting edge version of Saturday Night Live only on Friday nights booked Wendy and the Plasmatics to appear roughy 4 weeks later and go live on nationwide TV. Struggles with the censors again went on to within minutes of airtime. was looking to be a more cutting edge version of Saturday Night Live only on Friday nights booked Wendy and the Plasmatics to appear roughy 4 weeks later and go live on nationwide TV. "Conservatives (across) America," Chris Knowles would write in Classic Rock, "all of a sudden had castration anxiety when they say Wendy wielding a chain saw."
1981
The jackboot response from the establishment came down hard just 2 days later when Wendy was arrested and brutally beaten by Vice Squad police officers after a performance at The Palms Nightclub in Milwaukee. Arrested on a supposed obscenity charge for allegedly simulating a sex act with a sledgehammer once outside the club Wendy was thrown to the ground and beaten into semi-consciousness. Rod was also dragged off behind a car and beaten to unconsciousness when he attempted to come to her aid. Both were taken to the hospital in ambulances and later thrown in jail. Others we also arrested on lesser charges and others threatened with arrest in an effort to keep people from seeing what was going on. Bail was raised but there were now mammoth legal bills to pay, and the actual threat of jail should a potentially conservative midwestern jury take the word of the police that no beating had occurred and Wendy (and later Rod) had actually attacked them, Fortunately, a local photographer had been able to photograph the beating that refuted the claims of the police. There was a show in Cleveland the next night but with Wendy and Rod in jail the show could not go on. It was re-scheduled, however, for the following night where again, following the massive national press of the Milwaukee incident, Wendy was arrested again, although not assaulted as she had been in Milwaukee. Legal bills continued to mount as in the words of Chris Knowles, the establishment attempted o "put the straps back on."
Still recovering from a broken nose, ruptured sinuses, and other injuries, within 12 days Wendy and the band were playing in front of a sold out crowd in Milan at the beginning of a 3 week European tour which saw her blowing up a Mercedes on the German Musikladen TV show and riots in Zurich. By the time the band reached Berlin Rod along with agent Jim Kramer and Bruce Kirkland who was running Stiff America in the states had organized the first of what would be three historic shows at Bond's International Casino in Times Square NY as part of the effort to raise additional funds to offset the legal fees that were now accruing. The show had to be launched with little time for promotion but word of mouth spread and fans lined up beginning in the early morning in the bitter New York cold with some 2,000 people beyond the legal capacity packed in like sardines for the first "Wendy Will Win" show in NYC. The crowd cheered as the show opened with Wendy bursting through a giant banner saying "Stop the Gestapo!" referring to the Milwaukee police and at the new song "Pig is a Pig" (lyrics penned by Rod) also dedicated to them and fascists everywhere.
A second album was long overdue but due to the ongoing legal battles and the Miller debacle with the first album which was costly both in terms of time and money it was agreed that this one had to be lean and mean, and Bruce Kirkland at Stiff agreed to put up the funds as long as Rod produced and the album was done in less than 3 weeks at a quarter of the cost of the first. Given the recent turn of events Rod proposed the name 'Beyond the Valley of 1984" and the tour, in 1981, became "The 1984 World Tour". In between touring drummers Alice Cooper's Neil Smith was brought in to do the drumming for the record, and the album with its Orwellian and apocalyptic theme and songs such as "Masterplan", "Pig is a Pig", and "Sex Junkie" was released a few months later. In the meantime the Wendy and the group were booked on the Tom Snyder late night TV show where Wendy sledgehammered a TV and chainsawed through a guitar and Tom Snyder introduced them (following appearances by the Ramones and Iggy Pop) as possibly 'the greatest punk rock band in the entire world."
After shooting the epic album cover for 'Beyond the Valley" in the Arizona desert where Wendy appears on horseback with the band (without a drummer), the "four horsemen of the Apocalypse" critics would write (photo by "Butch Star", Rod's pseudonym for the photography and design he did for the band), Wendy had to go to Cleveland for the trial there. Protesters lined up on Wendy's behalf and Wendy grabbed headlines criticizing Cleveland's District Attorney for prosecuting the case "flushing the taxpayer's money down the toilet she said," because he's "either afraid of the real criminals or paid off by them" she said. "This woman's gone too far", the Prosecutor told the jury, "it's time for you to draw the line!" and after deliberations that went on into the next day they did, bringing back a "not guilty" verdict to a cheering courtroom. Touring continued with repeated attempts by local authorities to shut down shows, which in some cases they managed to do. Reporter Lance Evans expressed it succinctly in the Scranton PA Sunday Times when he wrote "When the Plasmatics...were booked to come to town Saturday night there were two chief fears: The first was that , due to their ongoing legal troubles centering around recurrent charges..aimed at the act's star Wendy O. Williams, the performers wouldn't show up. The second was that they would"". Scranton's Director of Public Safety, it was quoted in the same paper "hit the roof" when he 'found out the details of the concert" and announced that the towns 'entire police department'...is "to stand by during the concert".
Wendy and the band were booked into Bond's for another two-nite sold out stand, where she blew up two facsimile Milwaukee police cars and then back on the Tom Snyder show were she blew up a car again during the song "Masterplan" and then it was back to Milwaukee. The trial began June 3, 1981 in the Circuit Court, Milwaukee County, State of Wisconsin with Rod as the sole defendent. The DA wanted to get out from under the intense scrutiny of the media that had been on the case to that point and felt if they tried Wendy and Rod separately and tried Rod first the media would lose interest. It failed. The trial was still construed as the Wendy O. Wiliams/Plasmatics trial and the media was there full force. Fans came in from more than 2,000 miles away and it was standing room only in the court room.The trial lasted over one and a half weeks. Wendy's testimony was strong and when the jury saw a full color blow-up of her being beaten on the ground it couldn't have not created a shocking impression. Courageous citizens who'd witnessed the events came forward crucially too, and after days and days of testimony, the jury deliberated only 3.5 hours: Not Guilty was the verdict and the courtroom erupted in applause. The DA had already decided that if he couldn't get a conviction against Rod, he'd drop the charges against Wendy and so it was a victory all around.
The 1984 World Tour continued with the bold slogan "Down On Your Knees and Pledge Allegiance" through city after city from the Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco, Golden Hall in San Diego and then back into the LA market to Perkins Palace for four consecutive nights with a car blown up every night. During the last part of the tour Rod had been contacted by music wunderkind Dan Hartman's office asking that Dan have a meeting with Wendy and Rod.
Hartman who first came to the publics attention as the teenage bass player for the Edgar Winter group and writer of such classics as "Frankenstein' and others, later going on to produce .38 Special, James Brown and others had been working on a session in LA when he picked up a copy of 'Beyond the Valley of 1984" and couldn't stop playing it. It was "ground breaking" he said, "I knew I wanted to meet these people and do something with them." Dan came down to the Tribeca loft met Wendy and Rod and month later he and Rod were working on the production of the Metal Priestess EP. The band needed more product but another album was premature, partly because Capitol records was now making overtures for the next one. Bruce at Stiff was ready to release the EP and that summer Metal Priestess was recorded at Dan's private studio off his schoolhouse turned home and studio in CT and released early that fall. It included such favs as "the Doom Song" and "Black Leather Monstor" as well as "12 Noon". Then it was back on the road in September where Wendy and the band closed the season of New York's Dr. Pepper Festival and then continued through January...the controversy, and attempts at repression only escalating with continued attempts to shut shows down, one, at the the Strand Theatre (with a show promoted by 60's radical Abbie Hoffman's brother Jack) succeeding when local authorities called a special meeting of the Town Council and revoked the theater's permit.
1982-1983
By the spring of 1982 a worldwide deal was inked with Capitol Records and Dan Hartman offered to produce a demo of the album for Capitol with Rod at Electric Lady Studios, Jimmy Hendrix's old studio, in NY. The whole album was arranged, recorded and mixed within a week. In the meantime Dieter Dierks who had just come off a number one album with the Scorpions also expressed interest in producing. Capitol felt the buzz around Dierks would be better and the chores went to him. The Hartman demo was re-discovered and released 20 years later under the name "Coup De Grace" with the Capitol record released as "Coup d"Etat". The rawness in Coup de Grace which took less than a tenth of the time and probably a 20th of the budget has been lauded by many, although Coup d'Etat was certainly a landmark album on its own. Coup was a breakthrough album that "forced," in Chris Knowle's words, two groups together, namely punks and metalheads, who otherwise despised each other. The political and Orwellian themes, which would become popular in avant metal later, although typically in a watered down form, were not being heard at that time. In addition,there simply were no women singing hard and heavy the way Wendy did. In fact, she pushed her vocals so hard she had to make trips into Cologne (the album was recorded in Germany) each day for treatments to avoid permanent damage to her vocal chords.
The reviews made the point. The LA Times, at a time when AC/DC ruled hard rock, called Coup D'Etat the "best slice of...heavy metal since the last AC/DC album..." adding that "Williams makes Ann Wilson and Pat Benatar," the major female rock singers at the time,"sound like (the folk singer) Judy Collins". The newspaper's question about whether a 'male-dominated' heavy metal audience would "accept a female screecher" underscored how ground breaking what Wendy was doing was. This was previously entirely male territory. As a far as the sheer power of the vocals the Aberdeen Press from Janis Joplin's home state said that Wendy was "doing vocally what nobody since Janis Joplin" has done while the review in Creem Magazine called it a "breakthrough" record, "an agressive female," the review went on "kicking down traditional barriers". Wendy's "physicality...is (now) coming out of her voice." The Cream review, by Cyril Blight, attacked the sexism of those who "can't handle" or 'even resent the very idea of a woman like Wendy Williams singing rock and roll with ferocity-which is to say the same qualities they would applaud if they were coming from a man, providing there was a man around today with the balls to do that." Capitol had agreed to put up a very modest sum of money for a video but the video Wendy and Rod had in mind would not be modest either in it's symbolism, logistics, or danger. The video of "The Damned" would feature Wendy driving a schoolbus through a wall of TVs climbing onto the roof of the moving bus which had been loaded with explosives and then signing from roof and jumping off the a few moments before the bus goes through a second wall of TVs and then blows sky high.
There was only one day allocated to do the run-throughs and then shoot the vid and this made it all the more challenging and dangerous. And of course only one time the school bus could be blown up. During a run through of the jump off the bus Wendy sprained her ankle and it looked like the shoot might have to actually be cancelled, but the only time Wendy ever cancelled anything she was in jail or unconscious and cancelling was not a choice from her point of view. "Put tape around it," she instructed one of the crew members, and with her ankle firmly taped with gaffer tape the shoot went on. The A&R guy from the record company loved the video and so did the only-a-few-years-old MTV which ran a feature on it in their Rockbill Magazine where they were talking about how popular the video would become from being in heavy rotation on MTV. Before the premiere, however, MTV's legal department was getting cold feet, and so was the record company. They insisted that a warning be put at the beginning of the video warning the audience not to try anything like this at home. The warning was added, and the premiere, hardly now promoted at all went on, but the video was put instead in extremely light rotation and then pulled within weeks. In the meantime, as the tour itself started it was clear that Capitol was running in the other direction. A fluff group like Duran Duran could generate ten times the sales with none of the political liability and fallout. What was clear at that time was that by the time the album was released the record company had effectively made up their mind to drop the group.
1984-1985
In the meantime KISS had asked for Wendy and the Plasmatics to appear as a Special Guest on their tour. KISS wanted the controversial street edge that Wendy would bring as part of their tour and for the Plasmatics it was a chance to play in front of different audiences in different markets than they would ordinarily play so the answer was "Yes" with the result that a lot of people were exposed to something they'd never seen. By the end of the tour with KISS it was clear that, although the formal notice that Capitol would not pick up their option for a second album didn't come in for six months, the relationship with Capitol was done. It had taken months and months for the deal to be done, months to record and release the album and now months to get out of the deal. Bills still loomed from legal battles and now after mammouth momentum: no label. In the meantime Gene Simmons had approached Wendy and Rod about producing the next Wendy O. Williams album. So as to avoid any wasted time in legal issues with Capitol it was decided not to use the Plasmatics name on the record at all; it made no diffference to Gene, in fact, he felt it would give him the freedom he wanted to more add new players to the album.
A common error one sometimes finds in poorly researched articles on the band is that the Plasmatics 'broke up' at this time in 1983. This of course is false; there never was any band per se to break up, The Plasmatics was a name created by Rod Swenson for the concept band of changing musicians built around Wendy. There were always 1-2 members changed with every recording and there was no difference here. It was simply a choice by Wendy and Rod not to use the Plasmatics name on this album. In fact Wes Beech (the only other permanent member besides Wendy) remained to play rhythm and lead (including the album's theme song "It's My Life") and T.C.Tolliver the drummer on Coup and the drummer who recorded more Wendy O. and the Plasmatics albums than any other drummer remained on drums. Gene Simmons would play bass under the pseudonym of "Reginald Van Helsing" and the only other new player to play on the whole album who was brought in was wunderkind lead guitarist Michael Ray to solve the technical challenges that had been a problem for several albums and which had come to head with the more complex music of Coup D'Etat. Gene also pulled in the talents of Ace Frehely, who hadn't played with KISS since leaving the band years before as Special Guest, and Paul Stanley and Kiss drumer Eric Car did one song as guests. Shy of majors who wanted to own you and then do nothing the record was released through Passport/JEM who had just had an injection of capitol under the WOW label. Jem had agreed to put up funds for a video which several of the others who also made offers on it did not.
When the review copies were sent out to the various media outlets it was the KERRANG! magazine review that Wendy, Rod and everyone else who was into loud hard rock waited to see since during these years in the mid to late eighties KERRANG! was nothing less than the Bible of hard, heavy, or real rock and roll. The reviewing task had been assigned to the well-known and often hard-nosed Kerrang critic Malcolm Dome whom neither Wendy, nor Rod, or anyone knew personally at all at that time only by reputation. The verdict came in the following week. Malcolm Dome had picked the WOW album as his album of the year. Later Wendy got a Grammy nomination as 'Best Female Rock Vocalist of the Year' which was a completely remarkable achievement for someone who had completely thumbed her nose at record company A & R guys and whom radio, by and large, had refused to play.
With mohawks now starting to become common, Wendy decided to let her hair grow in, and the cover for what would be called the "album of the year" in the pages of KERRANG! was the very opposite of the earlier covers; total simplicity. In contrast, however, the video was to be perhaps the most dangerous Wendy had ever done. The first part of the video was shot in LA at the Olympic Arena with Wendy wrestling two female wrestlers, but it was the next part, which got the most attention and for which a crew was once again assembled in the Arizona desert. Wendy would attempt a transfer from a moving car to an airplane with a rope ladder and no safety harness. The heat in the desert that day made it that much more dangerous and difficult to get lift for the plane. Multiple runs were done, pilot, Rod and cameraman in radio communication. Finally the ladder landed in just the right place for Wendy to grab it and be able to hold onto it. Everyone held their breath the seem to remember for the next 8 minutes while she held onto the ladder and the car, driverless careened off a cliff and exploded and Wendy was able to climb up into the plane.
1986
In the meantime, material for the next album was acruing. Mainstay guitarist, song writer and core performer Wes Beech had to take a sabbatical for personal reasons and would not tour with the band on the next outing. At first there was the thought of getting at least a temporary replacement for Wes to round out the band to its usual 4 pieces but that soon gave way to using this situation to fulfill a dream of Wendy's and Rod's from the beginning which was to play, at least for this tour, and album as a 3 piece. This was how the band had started out at the very beginning but the musicianship wasn't close to being able to pull it off at the time. Historically, real rock bands that have been able to really pull off a three piece and do it well have been few in number. Everyone realized it was now possible. Wes came in as Associate Producer with Rod on the album and worked on writing, arranging and recording, but the recording would be Michael, TC, and Greg (who would go on to play with Alice Cooper, Richie Blackmore and others and who had been brought in as the touring bassist for the WOW album). And the touring band for this album would remain a 3 piece too. There was tremendous excitement in tackling the project a kind of minimalist, stripped down concept, or rite of purification. The songs, including the lyrics would be also be minimalistic or archetypal again giving Wendy a chance to take her vocals step further. The tempo of the WOW album had been slower than previous albums in an effort to open it up, but the new album Kommander of Kaos or KOK was to bring back the speed and then some. Songs would be played at breakneck speeds, with screaming leads and vocals. The recording was done in Fairfield NJ at the giant Broccoli Rabe Recording complex which would be home to numerous Wendy O./Plasmatics Projects including three studio albums with what the group fondly called "The Fairfield Sound". A white Cadilac Eldorado appeared again on the Kommander of Kaos album cover only this time seen crashing through a wall Wendy riding on the hood.
Having laid down what Chris Knowles of Classic Rock would call Wendy's most extreme vocals ever, and the album in the can but not yet released Wendy and the band flew to London to perform at the Camden Palace for the TV show "Live From London" which would be broadcast throughout Europe. Thirty days later Komander of Kaos was released worldwide with Glenn O'Brian from Andy Warhol's Interview Mag writing in a rave review that Wendy "completely blows Motley Crue and all the rest away", and Chris Knowles of Classic Rock would write "Kaos brings back the lightning-fast tempos of early Plasmatics, this time not as punk but speed metal (and) Wendy's scorching vocals are her most extreme rivalling the overdriven guitars for sheer glass-shattering power."
Wendy had done a part for the film Reform School Girls that was now in post-production. Neither she nor Rod liked the film when it came out, saw it once and never looked at it again, but at this point the producers had heard Kommander of Kaos and wanted to include 3 tracks from the album in the movie score. They also approached Rod about producing the title track for the film and having Wendy sing it. The song was not something he or the band would have written or Wendy would have ordinarily sung but it was an up tempo song and under the circumstances they agreed to do it. Uncle Brian from the Broc joined Rod as co-producer and also played sax, he also appeared in the video that the film company had asked Rod to produce and direct playing the sax and wearing a tutu. The video consisted of live footage shot of Wendy singing the song at the Ritz in NY cut with scenes from the film.
1987
During the Kommander of Kaos tour Wendy had taken to putting guitarist Michael Ray on her shoulders during various parts of the show and performed the feat on the Joan Rivers Late Night show which had been launched to run opposite and as a competitor to NBCs Tonight show. The band flew into LA from the road and would do two songs for the show: Goin' Wild where Wendy would make her entrance chainsawing through the Rivers set and then Fuck that Booty which was negotiated with the censors to be sung as "Unh That Booty Instead". In the meantime, Wes had rejoined the band to both tour and play on the next album where the re-formed 4 piece band became a centerpiece for perhaps the most complex arrangements in the band's career. The band, now consisting of a 3 piece that could completely stand on its own plus a 4th piece that could then add a dimension rather than just covering the limitations of the 3 piece as the very earliest configurations required. In addition, after the archetypal minimalism, both lyrically and musically of Komander the new album, which would again carry the Plasmatics name, was again filled with complexity and returned to central Wendy O./Plasmatics social and political themes previously found most strongly in Coup but in 1984 before it: environmental decay and a world where excess and abuse led directly to a doomsday scenario. Maggots: The Record was recorded in 1987 and set 25 years in the future where environmental abuse and the burning of fossil fuels have created a greenhouse effect that then leads to an end of the world scenario. Called by many the first "thrash metal opera" the album also featured dialog of the hapless "White" family through three days of the their lives until one by one they meet their end until the final scene of the record when effectively the entire human population is headed for immanent annihilation. The album was released through Profile Records under the WOW label in the U.S. and overseas by GWR Records which had been started by Motorhead's longtime Manager Doug Smith.
Wendy did a performance piece to inaugurate the album at NYC's Palladium which had been transformed from a proscenium theatre into huge multi-level club where she sledgehammered and chainsawed to smithereens a facsimile all-American living room, and "Maggots: The Tour" began a week later using the Plasmatics name for the first time in two albums with slogans such as "Those Now Eating Will Soon Be Eaten," "The Day of the Humans is Gone," and lyrics such as "soldiers for the DNA dissidents are put away, dragged off in the dead of night, disappear without a sight". Just part of the chilling prophecy of the album which returned to many of the major political Orwellian themes including environmental disaster, abuse and decay. The review in KERRANG! came out shortly there after: A 5 out of 5 Ks, "Quite simply a masaterpiece...a work of genius." Wendy's vocals "recue Celtic Frost's Tom G. Warrir's 'death grunts' to mere whimpers" it went on coupled with "a mixture of hedonistically operatic melodies..gutforged to some of the heaviewt armadillo beats you're ever like to hear committed to vinyl"..all in the backdrop, the review continued of "an all-American family, the Whites, is devoured whilst watching a TV game show; Valerie tthe girlfriend of hot-shot tele-reporter Bruce is (devoured) by three phallic maggots whilst lying in her boyfriend's bed (and) scientists and politicicians are overheard discussing their impotence in the fact of spreading malignancy..." Maggots the Records, the review concludes is 'indespensible.." Rear screen projectors ran film of human disasters, fascists and other historical horrors, environmental carnage and human rights violations on huge screens behind the band during all the songs from the Maggots album.
1988
Although Wendy was called the "Queen of Punk", "she'd outgrown punk", wrote rock writer Chris Watts in a feature story in 1987, " before the Plasmatics were noticed led alone outlawed. Since those heady days Wendy O. Williams has become an institution...(and) she has never stopped campaigning....(and) it is entirely appropriate," Watts continued, "that Wendy O, Williams should make a...thrash rap...album called "Deffest and Baddest" (and) it's also appropriate that she should stir reaction once again and stray so far from the beaten track that she's almost washed away." The album, the last of the 7 full studio albums (or 8 counting Coup DeGrace) that make up Wendy O's and the Plasmatics career, was never intended in its original concept to have Wendy's or the Plasmatics name on it at all. The artist is listed as Ultrafly and the Hometown Girls, an imaginary fictitious group that was part of the concept.
The whole album designed to be fresh and spontaneous as a kind of a 'blurt' was written in about a week and recorded and mixed in two. It allowed Wendy to do a few things she'd wanted to do and hadn't done including bring in a female guitar player to play alongside Wes Beech and use female voices for backup. The guitarist was Katrina Astrin, the guitarist from a Wisconsin all girl hard rock band that had opened a number of mid-west gigs for Wendy and the band in previous years. Katrina sang back up vocals on the album and on stage along with La Donna Sullivan who had travelled with the band for two tours and sold T-shirts when she wasn't on stage. After Maggots, Profile had agreed to pick up another album for distribution but balked when the package they were presented with only said "Ultrafly and the Hometown Girls" as the artist and Wendy's name was added at the last minute, spoiling what might have been an interesting effect. When Wendy and Rod decided to go ahead with the project Wes flew into NYC and he and Rod with Wendy checking vocal parts, wrote the entire album in less than a week, moved out to Brocolli Rabe and recorded and mixed it there. "With Wes Beech," wrote Watts, "drilling his guitar across Wendy's gruff raw vocals like a crazed dentist 'Deffest and Baddest" is erotic agony". The album is filled with archetypal Wendy O,/Plasmatics themes of which what Watt's called the "demented thrash rap" 'Lies' is a centerpiece dealing with lies through the media, by corporatiions, cosmetic companies and government. "This fantasy world that the media creates", Wendy told Watts, "that is getting bigger,more dangerous and more sophisticated..is the real enemy...People don't realize how much bullshit is around them...".
For the Deffest tour the band was back to two guitars, bass and drums since all the tours always contained favorites from all the previous records. The tour was filled with enthusiastic fans in city after city, but it was the last tour Wendy and the Plasmatics were to do although the decision wasn't made until several months after the tour ended and then fairly quickly. Wendy and Rod had agreed from the beginning is that when a point came where diminishing returns meant having to compromise the integrity of the effort, they'd shut down and bail out, and the point they felt had been reached, or at least was too close to gamble. About doing material that would appease rather than assault the status quo, there could be no compromose; about softing the image, the edge, the trademark vocals, the attitude so as to be more acceptable to radio or corporate America tthere could be no compromise; and without such compromise there was a price to pay and it wore on over time. Beginning with Milwaukee there were more towns added to the list with almost every tour that Wendy could not go back and play. Town after town where confrontations of one kind of another made it impossible to get bookings. Promoters would privately say how much they loved Wendy but many would not take the local heat. Conservative groups would send shills into shows to make complaints and the complaints would start as soon as shows were announced. And there were it seemed endless numbers of threatened males who either needed to prove 'who was the man' and pick some kind of a fight and try and win with Wendy, or else do something that would engender a response and then file a lawsuit to try and get money.
The funds were not there to take all these things on, and with widening gaps between tour bookings particularly in the heartlands of the country, it was at a point where to continue would have meant compromise in one or many ways or another. That was never an option so in 1988 it was officially announced that Wendy was "going on hiatus" although as Rod told Classic Rock magazine later, they both knew they had stopped. The world has spent the last three decades trying to catch up and in most regards never has, and has never seen anyone really like Wendy ever since.
Death
Williams died at age 48 in 1998 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a wooded area near her home. While some argued she committed suicide rather than compromise her art, Swenson reportedly described her as "despondent" at the time of her death. This is what she is said to have written in a suicide note regarding her decision:
I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.
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