Jeffrey Lee Pierce
| Jeffrey Lee Pierce | |
|---|---|
Pierce, seen performing live with The Gun Club in 1985.
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
June 27, 1958 Montebello, California, United States |
| Died | March 31, 1996 (aged 37) Salt Lake City, Utah, United States |
Jeffrey Lee Pierce (June 27, 1958 – March 31, 1996) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist. He was one of the founding members of the 1980s punk band The Gun Club, and also released material as a solo artist.
Jeffrey's mother is Mexican-American. As a teenager, Pierce moved from El Monte, a working-class industrial suburb east of Los Angeles, to Granada Hills, at the time a white working- and middle-class suburb in the San Fernando Valley. Pierce attended Granada Hills High School, where he participated in the drama program, acting in plays and writing several of his own brief experimental pieces.
Pierce's musical influences at this time tended heavily toward glam and progressive rock, and he was particularly fond of bands such as Sparks, Genesis, and Roxy Music. During the mid-70s, after attending a concert by Bob Marley (at which he was fascinated as much by Marley's shamanistic presence as by his music), Pierce became deeply engrossed in reggae; eventually he would travel to Jamaica to explore the music, a trip that left him ambivalent about the music's relevance to American culture. His infatuation with reggae overlapped with the emergence of punk rock, and Pierce became a fixture on the Hollywood scene as a writer for the Slash fanzine and, to a lesser extent, as a musician. While his later interest in American blues was presaged by his devotion to the rootsiest forms of reggae, his love for the more theatrical, complex sounds of glam and prog showed up in his support for the No Wave movement in New York City.
Pierce found himself disappointed by the swift decline of punk rock into strict formality, and his sense that reggae was ultimately a foreign import. Seeking music with the authenticity and simplicity of reggae but more deeply rooted in American history and culture, he found the Delta blues. By the late-1970s, Pierce had defined his own musical style and had developed a theatrical persona that would become an essential element of The Gun Club.
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