The Plasmatics

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a rock and roll band. Oh, they weren’t your ordinary, everyday, garden-variety rock and roll band. Oh no.

There was a giant named Richie who played lead guitar and who wore everything from a tutu to a waitress uniform and who had a thin strip of brilliant blue hair on top of his head. Oh, and he had a chainsaw tattooed on the side of it, as well.

There was Wes, a shorter guy with grayish-coloured hair that stood up on top of his head as though it had been electrically charged. He played rhythm guitar and wore anything from a white lab coat to black tie and tails on stage.

Jean was a black guy with a thin white Mohawk and who appeared in WHITE tie and tails and played a mean bass after the original bass player, a non-English speaking Japanese guy left the group.

There was a guy called Stu who sat behind the drum kit. You didn’t see him very much as a result, but you always knew he was there. He even looked a little reminiscent of Ringo Starr in his black leather jacket and dark hair, beard and moustache.

And then there was the glue – or black electrician’s tape – that held everything together, the heroine of our tale, Wendy O. Williams, who loved to blow up Cadillacs during concerts and cut up ‘live’ televisions with a chainsaw. Wendy used to have long blonde hair with a pink patch on the side until she decided to cut it into a Mohawk she left long and dyed black on top. She was a very uninhibited young woman who would come out on stage at one point during the show wearing either nothing but shaving cream on top with black electrician’s tape over her nipples whilst she destroyed the televisions. They were from New York City and they were called The Plasmatics.

Now, The Plasmatics liked to have fun although, admittedly, the kind of fun they liked to have wasn’t your ordinary garden-variety-type of fun that every other band had. I mean, after all, they DID smash and cut up televisions, flower pots, guitars and drums and blew up a car or two during their career.

Yes, they really enjoyed themselves on stage for a couple of years. Then a record company from England called Stiff Records heard about them and called them up, offering them a recording contract, which they very happily agreed to in order to make records and also to make lots of money for both Stiff records and the band. They made a few records – singles, EPs and even an album or two.

Then stiff Records decided that it would be a good thing to do to send the band around the world so that their fans in other places could experience the fun too and to help sell the records and make even more money for everybody. The band was scheduled to play in England but alas, they weren’t able to make it. But, still, their records continued to sell well, making lots of money for everybody. Well enough, in fact, that their debut album, ‘New Hope for the Wretched,’ went gold, even before anybody there had been able to see the band live, and that made everybody very happy indeed.

Well, Stiff Records still thought that it was a good idea for the band to tour, so they began arranging one in America. It would become the stuff of rock music legend. So the band set off to begin their onslaught of the States. They were already very popular in New York City and would soon become very popular in major cities and small hamlets throughout the country, causing shock in some people and praise in others, and everybody was very happy. Well, almost everybody. They played a place called Los Angeles and were seen on televisions all across the country smashing a television when they were on a programme called ‘Fridays.’ Yep, Wendy took a sledgehammer to a television and a chainsaw to a guitar. It also showed a band playing very LOUD music.

The band were very well-received on ‘Fridays’ and they got lots of applause from the people who had come to see them in the television studio. Then, after the show, they went to a place called Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where they did the same things on Sunday that they had done on television – but everybody was NOT happy. And it was only two days later.

See, the people in the audience who went to see The Plasmatics play WERE very happy to be able to see their idols and loved them just as much as the people in Los Angeles had loved them, and they gave the band lots of applause. Well, all but about 22 people. They were from the Milwaukee Police Department Vice Squad, and they weren’t there to see The Plasmatics PLAY. No, they didn’t think The Plasmatics were very good at all. In fact, they thought that Wendy was terrible.

They didn’t like the way she used a chainsaw to cut a guitar in half. They didn’t like the way she smashed a TV with a sledgehammer – or the way she ‘played with it’ before smashing up the telly. And they didn’t like the fact that The Plasmatics played such loud, violent music. but, most of all, they didn’t like the way Wendy O. played half the show in a pair of panties and nothing else other than some shaving cream on top which melted very quickly to show nothing underneath except for two crosses of black electrician’s tape covering her nipples. She didn’t wear THIS outfit on television Friday night. They didn’t like the way she touched herself while she performed – and they DIDN’T like Wendy.

You, see, after the show, all 22 of these highly trained professionals went backstage to ‘talk’ to her. They didn’t let the fact that none of them had a backstage pass stop them. And they definitely didn’t have a warrant or any other legal document. No, they didn’t go backstage to say, ‘Hi, we really liked your show. Please come back soon.’ No, they went backstage to tell Wendy ‘You’re under arrest.’ Like I said, they didn’t like Wendy. Oh, no, not one bit. And Wendy didn’t seem to like them either. She also didn’t like what they said to her, but she still went outside with them to the police truck. She was still wearing nothing but the remains of the shaving cream, the two crosses of black electrician’s tape covering her nipples and the white cotton panties she had been wearing on stage. The police didn’t seem to care. But Wendy cared. She cared a lot.

They tried to ‘search’ Wendy, which was ridiculous considering what she was wearing – or NOT wearing! Wendy didn’t want to be searched by these people who hated her music and didn’t like her. She also didn’t want them to touch her at all in places where she didn’t want to be touched by them. They touched her anyway. They said it was ‘their job.’

Wendy tried to stop them, but she couldn’t. They wouldn’t stop. In fact, they knocked her down. Her nose got broken when she fell. She also got a cut above her left eye which required stitches, and a black eye on top of it all. Wendy ESPECIALLY didn’t like this treatment.

The 22 highly trained professionals took Wendy and the band’s manager, Rod Swenson, downtown to the police precinct and left them in jail overnight while the policemen went home to their families. When they went to see a judge in the morning and he said that they could go free (since they still had other shows in other cities and small hamlets to play) but he wanted them to come back to Milwaukee on 3 March 1981 because he wanted to see them again, not because he liked them or anything, but because he was a judge and they had to be in his courtroom on that day so he could see if Wendy was really as bad as the 22 highly trained Vice Squad professionals said she was. They were going to have a trial.

So, Wendy and the rest of The Plasmatics left Milwaukee after assuring the judge that they would come back to have a trial and they came to a place called Cleveland, Ohio, where they were going to play in a place called The Agora. They were going to do the same show that they did in Milwaukee and do the same things to televisions and guitars that they did on the ‘Fridays’ TV programme – exactly as they had done in Milwaukee.

The show was supposed to start promptly at 10 pm, but the sold-out crowd (all the crowds were sold-out crowds everywhere they played because a LOT of people wanted to see The Plasmatics do the show they did in Milwaukee) wanted to see Wendy so much that they wouldn’t move away from the stage at first, but they finally did and the show finally started and it began with a bang.

Now, this was an indoor show, so it began with a little film that showed Wendy driving a Cadillac car filled with dynamite. She drove it into the stage at the end of Pier 62 in New York City, where they live. The car blew up. The stage blew up. It was a BIG explosion. Wendy O. Williams did NOT blow up because she jumped out of the car before it hit the stage and everything went kaboom. The people inside The Agora erupted in a huge cheer. Afterward, someone in the film asked Wendy why she would want to blow up a Cadillac and a stage. Wendy answered in the time-honoured fashion by saying, ‘Someone has to do it,’ in her husky, smoky voice. She also went on to say, ‘I hate expensive things so I destroy them!’ the people in The Agora cheered loudly, the lights came up and the band exploded into their first song. But they didn’t blow up. First, a man in a black executioner’s hood came out on stage. He had a small radio with him, which he turned on, set down on a table in the middle of the stage, Wendy came out with a sledgehammer and smashed the radio into tiny little bits. What remained of the ex-radio flew up into the air in every direction. The people watching cheered loudly. That’s when the music began and you couldn’t hear the people cheering anymore. They still were because you could see them – you just couldn’t hear them because the music was LOUD.

While The Plasmatics played their songs, Wendy shook from side to side, swaying with the music. it was ear-shatteringly loud, but the people watching still loved it. They loved Wendy, or at least her on-stage appearance – the ‘sex-goddess’ they had come to see.

She did the ‘bump and grind’ to such songs as Want You Baby, Corruption and Butcher Baby (the band’s theme song). All these songs – and the rest of the show – came from the record that Stiff Records (whose idea it was to send the band around the country to make lots of money for everybody) album ‘New Hope for the Wretched,’ which had only just been released in America. The record was made out of fluorescent yellow vinyl with bright pink splotches and swirls in it, just like Wendy’s hair used to be. 

After a little while the man in the executioner’s hood came back out on stage pushing a large black and white television set. The telly was turned on and there was a real programme showing on it. Wendy picked up her sledgehammer and waved it around her head a few times before bringing it down soundly on top of the television set. The people loved it and cheered loudly (which you could hear because the band wasn’t playing right then). She handed pieces of the broken television to the crowd members closest to her so that they could have a souvenir of the show and remember Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics forever. Sparks and smoke flew everywhere along with bits of the ex-television. Some people then came out (one of them had rainbow-coloured hair) and cleaned up the stage. And the show continued.

The band played a little longer and went into an instrumental jam. Wendy left the stage to the band to play by themselves for a little while and disappeared. When she reappeared a short time later all she was wearing were white cotton panties and shaving cream on top. It was the same outfit she had been wearing in Milwaukee a couple of nights earlier that made the 22 highly trained professionals so upset. She also wore two crosses of black electrician’s tape over her nipples to make sure that nothing showed that wasn’t supposed to show. The crowd loved this most of all. Well, MOST of the crowd.

The show continued on and Wendy and the band played all the songs the fans wanted to hear and the crowd continued to cheer loudly and wildly after every song and Wendy smeared the shaving cream all over herself. She took handfuls of it and handed it to people in the crowd that were closest to her because they loved it. Then someone from the crowd handed Wendy some of his OWN shaving cream, and she smeared it all over herself.  She took a flower pot and dumped the dirt over the top of her head, even further covering her body.

She took one of the drums from the stage. It wasn’t being used anyway. Wendy smashed it with her sledgehammer and gave little pieces of it to the people in the crowd who were closest to her because they loved it and they cheered loudly. The show continued.

The man in the executioner’s hood came out on stage once again and this time he was pushing a rack. Wendy lefty the stage again, but this time she came right back carrying a Toro chainsaw in one hand and a black Gibson guitar in the other hand. She put the sacrificial guitar on the rack. She hit the strings and it made a sound to show people that it really was a working guitar and was plugged in to an amplifier waiting to be played. Then she started up the chainsaw and showed the people that it, too, was ready to be played. She made a few small cuts in the body of the guitar to make sure that the chainsaw worked, teasing the crowd who loved everything they were seeing and cheering very loudly. Then she went ahead and cut the screaming guitar in half. Wendy then handed out more souvenirs and the crowd cheered very loudly because they loved the spectacle of it all. 

By now, most people would think that this would be about the end of our story. But it isn’t. Not even close. During the last song the band played, the man in the executioner’s hood came out one more time and handed Wendy a funny-looking box with knobs and switches and buttons on it, she pressed one of the buttons and a large box that looked just like an amplifier on stage exploded. Sparks flew in all directions and it looked like a small 4th of July fireworks display.

Now, once upon a long, long time ago (way before this story ever began) there was another very popular rock and roll band called The Who. They used to do all kinds of things to their equipment after their shows were over, like throwing guitars neck-first into amplifiers, smashing guitars into little pieces and destroying drum kits, just like The Plasmatics did. They even used explosives sometimes, just like The Plasmatics did. The man in leather who was a little reminiscent of Ringo Starr smashed his drums all up. The giant called Richie knocked down a stack of amplifiers. They came crashing down and the people cheered loudly because they loved it. They also had to jump back when the amplifiers came crashing to the deck.

The band finally left the stage, but the fans didn’t and they continued yelling very loudly. They weren’t yelling because they didn’t like the show, but because they loved everything they saw that night. They wanted more. But, alas, there wasn’t to be any more music that night because it was only two days after the Milwaukee show and Wendy was still injured. The people DIDN’T love that, but they had to deal with it and they finally left the Agora. They had all really loved the show knowing that they would have something to talk about for a very long time and memories even longer than that.

Yes, the show was great, according to almost everybody who was there, but Wendy wasn’t in great shape and she collapsed backstage. An ambulance had to come take her to the hospital because she was still injured after the beating in Milwaukee. She didn’t have to stay long at the hospital, though, fortunately, and the stunned workers at St. Vincent Charity Hospital (which was very close to The Agora) told her that she would have to rest for 24 hours and that she had to eat something.

Ah, but alas, all is not yet a happy ending to our story. No, we’ve only really come to the end of the first half of it. The day after the show at The Agora, 22 January 1981, Wendy had a couple of uninvited visitors to her hotel room before she could check out and leave Cleveland for the next city and the next wildly cheering crowd. Since she hadn’t invited anyone Wendy couldn’t imagine who could be knocking at her hotel room door. When she opened it, however, she discovered that NOT everyone who was at The Agora loved her show. Some of the attendees really HATED it and the things she had done on stage – with the radio, the television, the guitar, the amplifier, the sledgehammer (they really didn’t like some of the things she did with it), the chainsaw, the fireworks and especially not the white cotton panties with nothing but shaving cream and two crosses of black electrician’s tape over her nipples so the ‘naughty bits’ wouldn’t show. There were eight people in the hallway outside her door that didn’t like the things she had done on stage. They were Cleveland Police officers. They were called the Vice Squad. They arrested Wendy and took her to see a judge. He said that she had to pay $200 and then she could go home to New York City to get ready to go and play all over Europe, but she had to be back in Cleveland on 8 April for a trial, just like in Milwaukee. But not like in Milwaukee, Wendy said the Cleveland police were nice. They didn’t try to touch her in places she didn’t want them to touch her. They didn’t even touch her at all.

So The Plasmatics left Cleveland to go home to New York City to get ready to go play their long-awaited tour all over Europe. They started by playing in  Rome at The piper Club, then Oddesio in Milan, Volkaus in Zurich, Rotation in Hanover, Lux Club in Herenthout, Le Palace in Paris, Musikladen in Bremen, two days at Paradiso in Amsterdam, then Brussels, Stoskvishalle in Arnheim, De Prinz concertgebov in Venlo, Markthalle in Hamburg, Metropole in Berlin and finally, London.

When The Plasmatics got home to the United States after visiting all those cities, they had all kinds of stories about how much all the people loved them in Europe. They had NO stories about how people tried to touch Wendy in places she didn’t want to be touched. They didn’t have any stories about beatings or arrests or any of the things that had happened to Wendy in Milwaukee and Cleveland in her own home country, ‘the Land of the Free.’

And now for the second half of our story. Wendy was supposed to go back to Milwaukee on 3 March to begin The Trial of Wendy O. Williams, but Judge Clarence Parrish said she could wait until 3 June. She DID, however, come back to Cleveland on 8 April for her trial here. Richie, Jean and Wes came too, along with their manager Rod Swenson. Bruce Kirkland, the president of stiff Records-America came along too. He brought 15 or 20 of Wendy’s friends and fans from New York City with him, in a bus.

Wendy’s trial was supposed to begin promptly at 9 am, but it wasn’t until almost 1 pm before the proceedings actually got underway. First they had to pick a jury, which they should have already done long before but didn’t. the very first person they talked to about being a juror said he Had been at the show way back in January and he wasn’t allowed to be on the jury. Another man wasn’t allowed to be on the jury either because he said he didn’t like the way Wendy looked and he couldn’t be fair and impartial.

The jury was finally picked and Wendy’s two attorneys, Pat D’Angelo and Tim Marshall, and the two prosecutors, Pat Roach and Nick Tamino gave their opening arguments. Wendy was on trial for something called ‘Pandering Obsceniuty,’ because of the way she touched herself, some of the things she did with the sledgehammer and appearing on stage in nothing but shaving cream and two crosses of black electrician’s tape over her nipples. The prosecution had two witnesses: Ron Bero, a Vice Squad officer for the Cleveland Police department and Ed Verba, a cameraman for WKYC-TV news. He filmed part of the show for that night’s news broadcast, which probably wouldn’t have been done had Wendy not been beaten in Milwaukee two nights earlier after her show there. That film was also the only evidence that the prosecution had for their case.

The prosecutors said that Wendy’s performance ‘would not meet community standards’ and was ‘obscene.’ Her attorney’s said that The Plasmatics were a ‘legitimate rock and roll band who were exercising their Freedom of speech and Choice under the First Amendment.’ Tim Marshall also said there were 900 people there, including a prospective juror (what are the odds of THAT happening?), who wanted to see a world-renowned band … ‘not 900 perverts.’ He said the band had been playing fir three years by that time and mentioned that The Agora is not known as a ‘sleazy bar.’ He said, ‘Keep in mind this is not Russia and she is innocent.’

The prosecutor showed the tape that Ed Verba had shot for the news department at WKYC-TV, which was their only evidence in the trial, but there were too many problems with the quality of the videotape. Verba said it was because at one point during the show the camera crew had to change the batteries in the recorder. Why they didn’t have sufficiently charged batteries in the machine to begin with is beyond me. The camera and the recorder were ‘not in-sync’ at times. There were other recorder problems as well.

Wendy’s attorney said, ‘Kids were yelling and screaming and applauding, right?’ Verba replied, ‘never stopped.’ Ron Bero was next to take the stand and he was asked by Wendy’s attorneys about the strip clubs in the area near The Agora – strip clubs that don’t require their employees to wear two crosses of black electrician’s tape over their nipples and whose naughty bits are allowed to show – and why THEY were never bothered, the prosecution objected. The judge sustained the objection. He would not allow Wendy’s attorney to mention the strip clubs where the naughty bits were allowed to show. 

The judge read the description of ‘Pandering Obscenity’ to the jury. He also read to the large crowd in the courtroom. He read that ’… participating in a performance open to the public which is obscene according to Ohio Supreme Court ruling, “consisting of nudity, masturbation and displays of same in an open performance taken as a whole designed to appeal to puritan interests [lust or sex interests] and are patently offensive to community standards”,’ is considered ‘Pandering Obscenity.’ Wendy’s attorneys pointed out that The Agora was a classy place and Wendy didn’t go in there to perform and turn anybody sadomasochistic. Besides, Wendy was never ‘nude’ and she didn’t actually perform masturbation either, so both those aspects of the Ohio laws against Pandering Obscenity were never accurately met. And, of course, there’s still that infamous United States v Larry Flynt case where the US Supreme Court said it couldn’t ‘define obscenity’ but that it could recognize it when it saw it, which set a precedent for the definition of obscenity that the Cleveland v Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics never met either.

The jury went out that Wednesday afternoon at about 5.30 pm and came back about an hour later. They had not reached a verdict. They said they wanted to see the videotape one more time. They wanted to be sure they didn’t make any mistakes. They wanted to be fair with their verdict. The judge told everyone to come back the next day.

At 9 the next morning everyone went back to the courtroom to finish the trial. The jury got to watch the videotape again. There were still camera/recorder synchronisation issues on the tape and the quality hadn’t gotten any better overnight either. The came back two hours after the judge sent thtm to reach a verdict and they said Wendy was Not Guilty. The crowd in the courtroom went wild and cheered loudly because they loved it. Wendy smiled and went to thank the jury. The newspeople went crazy about the trial and asked many questions about the trial which Wendy happily answered.

And later, at the trial in Milwaukee, amid many stares from passers-by and casual observers in the halls of justice Richie played with a yo-yo and Wendy and Rod Swenson were both acquitted of all charges there too. Later still, The Plasmatics changed their sound and became a heavy metal band, even going on tour and opening up for KISS for their 10th anniversary in 1983.

This went on for some little while and then the band eventually broke up. Wendy went on to a solo career, calling herself simply W.O.W. and recording a single of ‘Stand By Your Man’ with Lemmy Kilmister of Motörhead. Richie played in a couple of bands and put together a demo tape for the labels consisting of four songs that didn’t sound anything like The Plasmatics. Jean Beauvoir put out a couple solo albums tha, unfortunately, didn’t get much attention, did some production work and played bass for Little Steven the Disciples of Soul for a couple of tours. Wes, Stu and the original Japanese bass player more or less disappeared from sight. Unfortunately, everybody DIDN’T live happily ever after. Wendy O. died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in April 1998. her suicide note read in part:

‘I don’t believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time. I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me, much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm.’

It was Wendy’s third attempted suicide, following a knife in her chest in 1993 and an overdose of pills in 1997. Swenson saved her life on both previous attempts before the gunshot that ended the life and career of one of the most dynamic and controversial performers to come out of the punk rock movement and, really, out of the latter part of the 20th century.