Heavy Metal Thunder: Lou Waxman on Blue Cheer’s Vincebus Eruptum

Influence.  Lou knows a little about influence.  Lester Bangs, Charles Bukowski, David Berman.  Influences.  Hold on a few seconds and let Lou take a sip of some influence right now at 6am on a Sunday morning.  The pause that expresses.  Excesses that lead to successes.  The palace of wisdom is located at a corner bar on a one-way street to oblivion.  Ok.  Lou is ready to roll.  Or be rolled.

There is a copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico at The Vogue.  For many reasons, this album is often described as the most influential LP of all time.  

VU found

Inspiration

In degradation

Writing poetry

From the streets

Not Tin Pan Alley

Peace and love

That shit’s

So Cali

All those Michelles

And Barbara Anns

VU wrote of

Other heroines

And the Man

It’s cliche to say

That all who listened

Started a band

But you have

To understand

That with VU

Alternative

Became a brand

To be sold

On Bandstands

Thank god

By then

The Velvets

Had disbanded

Never quite

Giving the public

What it demanded

Which is why

They are so great

If I may be

So candid

 

You all know about that.  We will move on.  

From time to time, The Vogue has copies of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  For some, this LP is the most influential album of all time.  

About the

Fab Four

What can be said

That’s not been

Said before

Are the Beatles

The best

Will be debated

Forever more

As for great bands

They were the first

That’s a fact

I won’t rehearse

But have you

Ever thought

They really made

Rock worse

I’ll sip my beer

And let you

All converse

You all know about that.  We will move on.  Lou is not buying that stuff.

Recently in The Vogue, Lou was sipping on some influence in the form of a pint of Narragansett when he stopped short.  In the bin was what Lou considers (as well as many hipsters and connoisseurs) as one of the most influential albums of all time:  Blue Cheer’s Vincebus Eruptum.  The band was formed in San Francisco in 1966 by Dickie Peterson.  Named after a variety of LSD created by hip chemist Owsley Stanley, Blue Cheer was a band that was simultaneously so much of their time and yet years ahead of it.  The band was managed by Allen “Gut” Terk, a former Hell’s Angel, so they had the outlaw, counterculture cred.  They were named after a brand of acid, so they had the drug cred.  Even more of the era, they had multiple line-up changes and were completely mismanaged.  They could not get out of their own way which was per usual for the time.  

Steppenwolf, Iron Butterfly, The Stooges.  Blue Cheer is right in there with these proto-metal Cro-Magnons, except Blue Cheer was there first.  Heavy metal started at Monterey Pop in 1967 with The Who and The Jimi Hendrix Experience.  The boys of Blue Cheer heard the future and ran with it.  Vincebus Eruptumcame out in January 1968.  With their cover of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues”, they created a sound and that sound was heavy metal.  This is widely acknowledged.  Black Sabbath defined and refined it, but Blue Cheer first put heavy metal into practice if only tentatively.  

John Kay of Steppenwolf sang of “heavy metal thunder” in “Born to Be Wild” so quite possibly he named it, with help from William Burroughs in his novel Soft Machine.  In that book, Burroughs introduces Uranian Willy the Heavy Metal Kid.  The drug was not LSD but heroin, which is captured by the distorted, sludgy sound of Blue Cheer.  Soft Machine was first published by Olympia Press in Paris, France in 1961, but was largely introduced to the States by the 1966 Grove Press edition.  So,the term “heavy metal” was of recent currency when Blue Cheer’s first album came out.  It could be argued that The Who were there first, with their cover of “Summertime Blues” or Cream with Disraeli Gears, but what makes Blue Cheer so brilliant is how they dumbed and numbed the sound down.  Their version of Cochran’s classic was also influential in terms of acid rock and grunge and psychedelic rock and garage rock and noise rock and blues rock.  Quite simply, it is one of the most influential tracks ever.  Blue Cheer helped establish the power trio as a key configuration in rock.  Add that to the mix.  

You might only know of the one song, but the entire album is awesome, and it still sounds fresh.  Lou was pleasantlysurprised.  It had been a while since he spun it.  That said, Lou is firmly of the belief that if Blue Cheer had never released another album with their constantly jumbled line-ups, then Vincebus Eruptum would be considered one of the most revolutionary albums of all time on par with The Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bollocks.  But Blue Cheer fumbled and bumbled along and diluted the power of their druggy debut.  

This is all well and good.  But what makes Vincebus Eruptum so important is that it is undoubtedly a key influence in the sound of the River Bottom Nightmare Band.  Listen to any of Blue Cheer’s tracks, particularly the opening to “Summertime Blues” and tell me you do not hear the satanic sound of the Nightmare.  Chuck, a committed motorcycle enthusiast, probably had ties to the Hell’s Angels and maybe the Nightmare was managed by Gut.  I suspect that the vermin from the Nightmare were dropping acid (or more likely shooting heroin) in some flophouse in River Bottom when the needle dropped on Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues”.  Shaken out of their drug haze, the River Bottom crew found their sound and their calling.  The rest is history.  Fuck Black Sabbath.  Blue Cheer was the inspiration for The Nightmare.  For those of a certain age, we have yet to wake up from the consequences.

Suggested Sites and Sounds:

Fifty Influential Albums:  The 50 albums that changed music | Music | The Guardian

The Bear:  OWSLEY STANLEY INTERVIEW

Who Invented Heavy Metal Part I:  Who Invented Heavy Metal? Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum

Who Invented Heavy Metal Part II:  Who Invented Heavy Metal? Blue Cheer - Outsideinside - YouTube

Did They Invent Heavy Metal?:  Did They Invent Heavy Metal? - Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum

 —Lou Waxman