The Germs were one of the savage Los Angeles punk banks during the early 1980s. They released one album titled
G.I., and before you could even lower your tone arm down on the the record, they were gone. The group's leader, singer/self-destructive icon Darby Crash, succumbed to a heroin overdose in December 1980.
Lexicon Devil is the story of Crash's life, but it also uncovers the scarred underbelly of the punk scene. Dozens of local musicians and oddities provide memories and anecdotes and sad tales in constructing this oral narrative: the Runaways' Joan Jett; unofficial mayor of Hollywood, Kim Fowley; X's John Doe, and many others are included.
To many, Darby and his Germs were heroes, vanguardists at the forefront of a musical movement recognized as much for the amount of blood you personally let as for any hint of melody or rhythm. To co-author Mullen, a Hollywood fixture and promoter of punk shows and purveyor of punk mayhem, Crash was a "fun loving, daredevil kid who got in over his head and deep-sixed on drugs and alcohol." Maybe.
Whoever he was and whatever he did, it's all here contained here in the words of people who were there.