Once upon a time, Lux Interior was born in Akron, Ohio.... a desolate industrialized part of America. Little Lux was heavily into EC comics, b-movies, TV and radio - especially the radio DJ the 'Mad Daddy' who introduced Lux to early rock n roll. He played an eclectic mixture of R&B, Doo Wop, crazed rock'n'roll and novelty songs. Also there was the Ohio character of Ghoulardi, a TV horror host. Some of Ghoulardi's catch phrases stayed with Lux and the Cramps.... "Stay Sick!" "Turn Blue!" and "Purple Knif" (...which is fink spelled backwards.)
Ivy was born and raised in Sacramento, California and was the youngest of three children. Ivy's course in life was set when she bought her first record, Sheb Wooley's "Purple People Eater". She was fanatically obsessed with primal rock n roll and loved the instrumentalists Link Wray and Duane Eddy and surf bands. She taught herself guitar as she listened to old records, watching b-movies and horror movies....much like Lux Interior who eventually found himself in Sacramento.....
He picked up Ivy hitch-hiking around 1972 (or did they meet in an art class? )-- and they have been inseparable ever since. The records they voraciously collected would be the basis of the band they would be forming. They survived by selling "illegal stuff", second-hand clothes on market stalls and taking part time jobs that would never last long.... Eventually they moved to Ohio. Lux first adopted the name of Raven Beauty, and then Vip Vop, but settled on Lux Interior --from a Cleveland car advertisement which was illustrating the latest features! Ivy's name came to her in a dream....Poison Ivy Rorschach. Lux and Ivy decided to move to N.Y.C. in 1975 to begin their musical career. A lot of revolutionary bands were playing at the time: the Heartbreakers, Television, Dead Boys, Ramones, Suicide, Talking Heads, and Blondie. Lux met Bryan Gregory as they both worked in a record store, and quickly became friends. Bryan quickly bought a cheap guitar--not realizing Ivy was the guitarist! Since no one was willing to play bass, they became the first rockabilly-influenced band in history with no bass player!
In the spring of 1976, The Cramps began to fester in a NYC apartment. Without fresh air or natural light, the group developed it's uniquely mutant strain of rock 'n' roll aided by only by the sickly blue rays of the late night TV. While the jackhammer rhythms of punk were proliferating in NYC, The Cramps dove into the deepest recesses of the rock 'n' Roll psyche for the most primal of all rhythmic impulses, rockabilly, the sound of southern culture falling apart in a blaze of shudders and hiccups. As late night sci-fi reruns colored the room, The Cramps also picked and chose among the psychotic debris of previous rock eras instrumental, surf, psychadelica and sixties punk. They then added the junkiest element of all, themselves.
J. H. Sasfy, Professor of Rockollogy, from the liner notes of The Cramps 1979 release Gravest Hits.
It would be almost impossible to have never heard of The CRAMPS. Their career has been the stuff of legend. Dangerously bizarre but most of all cool, The CRAMPS represent everything that is truly reprehensible about rock'n'roll. Founding members Lux Interior (the psycho-sexual Elvis/Werewolf hybrid from hell) and guitar-slinging soul-mate Poison Ivy (the ultimate bad girl vixen) are the architects of a wicked sound that distills a cross of swamp water, moonshine and nitro down to a dangerous and unstable musical substance. Their cultural impact has spawned a legion of devil cults and dance-floor catfights, and created in its wake a cavalcade of cave-stomping imitators. As punk rock pioneers in the late seventies, they cut their teeth on the stages of CBGB and Max's Kansas City and recorded their first record at Sam Phillips legendary Sun Studios, funded mainly by Ivy's income as a dominatrix in NYC. They coined the now popular term psychobily on their 1976 gig posters. With the addition of legendary drummer BUSTER BATEMAN (ex-BLASTERS and BLUE SHADOWS) and bassist/guitarist CHOPPER FRANKLIN (ex-MAU MAUS and MR.BADWRENCH), their hair raising live performances are still a total, no-holds-barred rock'n'roll assault. After a quarter century of mayhem' they're too far gone to even consider any other course.
Sadly The Cramps journey came to an end on February 4th 2009 when Lux Interior died from aortic dissection. His passing was "sudden, shocking and unexpected", he was 62 years old.
