Jeffrey Lee Pierce was haunting, tormented, chaotic, and one of those songwriters other musicians described as brilliant. He was adored, preferably from a distance, because he was notoriously hard to be around. But such a character. He was the teenage president of the Blondie fan club and not only dyed his hair to emulate Debbie Harry’s, but he also carried her handwritten hair-dying instructions around with him as his most prized possession.
He was joined, not always but often, by his pal Kid Congo Powers, the self-appointed teenage president of the Southern California Ramones fan club. Clearly it was destined that these two would meet at the Whiskey A Go Go in 1979. Pierce handed Powers a guitar, tuned it to open E, and taught him a one-chord Bo Diddley song. Shortly thereafter, The Gun Club was born.
Powers went on to play with the Cramps and Nick Cave but boomeranged back to The Gun Club until Jeffrey Lee Pierce died in 1996. He was 37.
Unsurprisingly, dozens of artists have covered Pierce’s music. Friends and collaborators have also taken unfinished songs he left behind and brought JLP back to life on a series of albums called The Jeffrey Lee Pierce Sessions Project. His teenage crush Debbie Harry eventually recorded five of his songs after his death, four of them with Nick Cave, including “The Breaking Hands.”
