First Dead Boys Picture I Ever Took

It was November 3, 1977. The Dead Boys, a notorious punk outfit from Youngstown, OH via NYC and CBGB's, managed by Hilly Kristal himself, made their assault on the West Coast, landing on stage at the Starwood in West Hollywood. Mumps opened.

This is the first photo I took of the Dead Boys. They may call have called themselves "young, loud and snotty," but their audience was younger and more aggressive - if you can imagine that. I fired off two shots of Stiv with Cheetah in the background and then stepped back and stayed back.

In this shot, from left to right: Jeff Magnum in the shadow behind Jimmy Zero, Stiv is front and center, Johnny Blitz on drums, and the inimitable Cheetah Fuckin Chrome.

If you had told me back then that I would become close friends with Stiv, I wouldn't have believed you. But I became some kind of den mother to him and to Jimmy Zero as well. As the Dead Boys career progressed, the band's brotherly love/hatred/spite/contempt of one another grew so much so that attrition started. Two years later, only Stiv and Jimmy Zero remained in a band that played Dead Boys songs, and boasted two other guys from the greater Ohio area and one young lad from Toronto. That's when Stiv went solo.

The latter day/replacement Dead Boys got together in Youngstown this past February to put the finishing touches on a track for a Greg Shaw tribute record. Here they are:


George Cabaniss, Jimmy Zero, David "Quinton" Steinberg and Frank Secich.

The hours and hours that we didn't spend in the recording studio were spent in the Denny's that Stiv and Frank frequented as teenagers and young men, dreaming of playing to more people, dreaming of making records...and don't you know it, they made those dreams come true. Of course, when they were youngsters in Youngstown's Denny's, they were young, loud and snotty troublemakers to be sure. My kind of guys...