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    The Art of Rozz Williams: From Christian Death to Death
    The Art of Rozz Williams: From Christian Death to Death
    The Art of Rozz Williams: From Christian Death to Death
    Ebook610 pages1 hour

    The Art of Rozz Williams: From Christian Death to Death

    By Rozz Williams and Rikk Agnew

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    About this ebook

    THE ART OF ROZZ WILLIAMS - FROM CHRISTIAN DEATH TO DEATH New revised book with 8 extra pages includes updated discography, new art images and foreword by Rikk Agnew. The book features the work of the multi talented artist ROZZ WILLIAMS including his musical career, outsider-art, and poetry. Lyrics, discographies, performance history and photos of his bands CHRISTIAN DEATH, SHADOW PROJECT, PREMATURE EJACULATION, ROZZ WILLIAMS solo work (featuring GITANE DEMONE among others), and the film PIG.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCult Epics
    Release dateOct 1, 2020
    ISBN9780999862704
    The Art of Rozz Williams: From Christian Death to Death
    Author

    Rozz Williams

    "Rozz Williams was a truly unique human being. Rozz was an artistic genius who wasn’t afraid to take chances in life through music and art. He was one of the pioneering artists in the musical sub-genre known as Death Rock, and he used that as a springboard to strike out in a multitude of directions, electronic music, spoken word, visual arts, and hard rock. His impact on the musical scene was far reaching and his influence can be seen and heard in the work of many other artists. –Peter Heur, Triple X records

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      Book preview

      The Art of Rozz Williams - Rozz Williams

      REFERENCES

      Introduction

      On November 6, 1963, Roger Alan Painter was born in Pomona, where he grew up in a religious Baptist family. In his teenage rebellion against this strict upbringing, he found an escape in Pomona's underground scene, and music became his art. This book is not about Roger Painter, but about Rozz Williams, who found his name on a Pomona grave stone and took it as his own. Using this name was his way of expressing his inner pains with no hold barred. Rozz started out in bands like the ASEXUALS, NO, THE UPSETTERS, and THE CRAWLERS, but it was in 1981 that the seventeen-year-old made his immortal contribution to music with the now classic Death Rock album Only Theatre of Pain with the original CHRISTIAN DEATH cast of Rikk Agnew, James McGearty and George Belanger. The band's name came about when Rozz and a friend were playing anagrams by using the words on a Christian Dior T-shirt. The dark rhythms and mature poetry of this seventeen-year-old have kept their impact, even by today's standards. After instantly gaining a cult following, the band followed the album up with the European-only release, Deathwish, on the French L'Invitation au Suicide label, which contained demos of the first album and featured three unreleased songs. In 1983, Valor, David Glass and Gitane Demone of POMPEII 99 joined the CHRISTIAN DEATH line-up. They toured extensively in Europe and recorded the last true CHRISTIAN DEATH albums, Catastrophe Ballet and Ashes. After Rozz became displeased with the band's direction, he decided to leave under the agreement that Valor would change its name to SIN AND SACRIFICE OF CHRISTIAN DEATH and would not perform Rozz's works.

      In the 1980s, Rozz was also involved with the performance art project PREMATURE EJACULATION, formed in 1981 with Ron Athey, and later on with musician Chuck Collison. The performances of PE involved everything from attacks on politics and human behavior, to nailing dead cats on crosses. PE used its visual and audio effects with the intention of making their audiences feel ashamed of themselves, and often storms of outrage were the result. Other people involved in PREMATURE EJACULATION, said to be Rozz's favorite project, included Lee Wildes, Kris Fuller, Erik Freeman, and Paris, among others.

      During the first CHRISTIAN DEATH, Rozz met his future wife, Eva O. They were involved in many projects together, the main one being SHADOW PROJECT, named after a U.S. military research project on the effects of atomic explosion. They recorded several albums with both of them singing. From the Heart was Rozz's last vocal recording in 1997. Among Rozz's other projects were the reincarnation of CHRISTIAN DEATH and CHRIST DEATH. After these broke up, Rozz formed the band DAUCUS KAROTA with Mark Barone and Christian Omar Madrigal. The name came from a character in an Ambrose Bierce novel - Karota had feet made of roots and each step he took forward ripped them from the earth and made him scream in agony. During 1993, DAUCUS KAROTA played in Europe and recorded the album Shrine, produced by TIN MACHINE's Hunt Sales. The following year Rozz returned to Europe and, with a new band, he played a double bill with Gitane Demone. This led to a collaboration between Rozz and Gitane that resulted in the album Dream Home Heartache, featuring the intimate ballad Flowers. The two toured and performed the album's songs in selected cities worldwide. Throughout the years Rozz had been writing songs, poetry and short stories expressing his views toward mankind, society and his personal life. Most of these came from automatic writing, in which he allowed us into his world and revealed its inevitable end.

      Rozz and I met on a personal level during his 1994 tour, and we became friends over the course of several more tours. Then, when I moved from Europe to Los Angeles, we started working together, and the film PIG was our offspring. During these last years Rozz expressed his bitterness toward the music industry, where he had struggled too long and too hard to be creative while surviving financially. He showed more interest in creating art through paint and collage.

      Although Rozz and I originally planned this book as a collection of his art and writings, after his sad passing, I decided to include all of his artistic work, including his music, writings, collages, art pieces and other forms of expression, with as much detail as possible. I feel a biography on Rozz would be senseless, as everyone he knew had his or her own impression of him, and he was a master at telling different stories to different people in different ways. This, his art, was what he wanted the world to see.

      Although it may depict sadness or anger, this was not the man he was all the time. As Roger he was shy and warm-hearted once you got to know him. He had a great sense of humor and a way of making things happen. As Rozz Williams, he showed a remarkable talent for seeing things in an extraordinarily original manner. Although he has been labeled as Gothic, which he didn’t consider himself, he found the exotic allure of darkness endlessly fascinating. His intrigue came from his absorption with humanity's faults, rather than with fascism or Satanism, as some have suggested or may believe.

      On the first of April, 1998, having had enough suffering, Rozz left our world. The inheritance he left us was a sad and deeply personal, in-depth view of the last two decades of the twentieth century. There is much speculation surrounding the reason for his suicide, but it was probably a combination of bad health, a troubled youth, money problems, oncoming age, lack of a love life, numerology and many other things in his head. All I know is that two days before, when we walked to Errol Flynn Canyon (where his ashes are spread) he was in poor health but in good spirits, and he called me - and many other friends - the night after, sounding very happy. He will be missed; I hope this book keeps his art alive.

      With love, Nico B

      Nico B & Rozz Williams at Kenneth Anger’s house 1997

      photo: Cecelia Trevejo

      THE SWASTIKA

      Known to most people as the symbol of the Third Reich, right wing-wise. Rozz's use of the swastika was partly for the shock value that it caused. In his artwork he used the symbol in combination with American institutionalized fascistic government issues. By wearing these symbols, it was one sure way for Rozz to let people know if they wouldn't look beyond what they see, he wasn't interested in dealing with these (small minded) persons anyway. He associated 1334, the year of the plague, and Hitler's Third Reich with today's society he lived in.

      I am no artist

      I am an art-ist

      An art(be)ast

      -R.W. 1981

      PORTRAITS

      I met him in 1980; the first time I photographed him was at a performance in 1981. The photographs for Only Theater of Pain followed later that year. The graveyard images were shot in Pomona (a suburb of LA). We did a couple of different shoots there, one with George and the other with the whole band while they were shopping. The urn in the photograph of Rozz on O.T.O.P. is from that cemetary. That was in Rozz's bedroom in Pomona, where we did the first portraits and group shots.

      It is interesting that Christian Death came out of a punk scene and were a lot more radical than most of the punks, from what they were doing and had to say. Rozz was a unique person, with lyrics way beyond his age. He seemed like a wise old man as a teenager.

      It is a real shame he is gone. I don't understand why that transpired. He was here in my studio a month before and I did not perceive a problem. He seemed as happy as ever. I am glad he came by and visited although it was the last time I was to see him. I miss him.

      Edward Colver

      Although we met in 1990, and engaged in many mischievous activities over the years, it was not untill the last two years that I worked with him. When I shot the photos for PIG (March 1997-finish) my purpose for being there was not as a photographer, but as a friend (and driver). I see these photos as an unstaged document of the movie. It was not posed, so Rozz seemed unintimidated by me taking photos of the moment.

      In January 1998, I shot a few pictures of Rozz during the Eric C. memorial show, Rozz's final performance. It was difficult to get an image. The set was short and Rozz had a forceful energy that whipped the stage.

      A few months before his death in April 1998, he asked if I could find a Polaroid camera to take some snapshots he had in mind for the cover of Wound of Exit. I use the word snapshots because that's what his idea was, something scary, like the way a serial killer would document his victims. We went to a small underground dungeon in West Hollywood (about 2 blks from his house) and began shooting Polaroids of him wearing a latex Halloween mask and laying on a German flag. Then we began to experiment with the development, we burned, crumbled, scratched, pounded, and Rozz even chewed on the photos. Rozz expressed complete satisfaction with the outcome. They were exactly what he wanted, plus we had a good time. Unfortunately his record company was not so happy, and couldn't use them because of the swastika. We shot one last time, in March 1998, this time using an American flag as the background but with the addition of Rozz holding a Nazi youth-dagger to his throat. Rozz was very happy with the final booklet idea for Wound of Exit. It's composed of Polaroids from both photo sessions. They were also the last photos he did in his life.

      Cecelia Trevejo

      CHRISTIAN DEATH

      1983

      photo: Edward Colver

      1983

      photo: private collection

      circa 1982

      photo: private collection

      1981

      photo: private collection

      1982

      photos: private collection

      1981

      photo: private collection

      1984

      photo: Nico B

      1984

      photo: private collection

      Valor, Gitane, Rozz, David, Constance 1984

      photo: Edward Colver

      SHADOW PROJECT

      1989

      photos: private collection

      1991

      1989

      photo: Stephen Messer

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