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OBEY x SUICIDAL TENDENCIES from OBEY CLOTHING on Vimeo.
It is hard for me to believe that it has been 30 years since the first Suicidal Tendencies album came out. I first heard about Suicidal in 1984 while reading an interview with skateboarder Corey O’brien. He referenced Suicidal as a “punk” band he liked along with others like Black Flag, The Dead Kennedys, and Bad Brains. I was already a fan of the last three bands so I was curious to check out Suicidal T. I also noticed that Gator wore a Suicidal hat in the “Skate Visions” video. Growing up in Charleston S.C., it was not always easy to get punk records, and I was generally broke anyways, but now and then a friend would have a cool older sibling with a good record collection willing to share. In the case of Suicidal Tendencies it was the “one person’s trash is another’s treasure” scenario. My friend John Reigart who I skateboarded with had been given a copy of the first Suicidal record by a BMX’er neighbor who claimed the record was “that punk shit” instead of the heavy metal he’d been promised. Ironically, a lot of my punk friends would claim the Suicidal album was “too metal”. The mid-80’s were a time of warring cultural factions. The punk/skate faction considered itself opposed to the metal/BMX faction. Most of the differences were superficial… punks had spiked hair longer in the front, metal kids had spiked hair longer in the back. Punk was generally faster, metal generally slower. Then came along Suicidal Tendencies screwing up everyone’s categories. It’s ironic how cultures about rebellion develop rules and orthodoxy, but ultimately the rules are meant to be broken, the kids like what they like, and attitudes shift.
When I first heard Suicidal I was attracted and repelled at the same time. The music was pretty hard and abrasive, with some dirgy metal influenced moments that I was scared might not suit my “punk” self-image. However, after playing the album a few times, mostly to try to scatter some rednecks congregated near a ramp I was riding, I began to love it. The music was heavy and energetic. The lyrics like “I’m not anti-society society’s anti-me”, “Mind control the easiest way, sponsored by the C.I.A., it’s a weapon you cannot see, it’s propaganda subliminally”(from the song Subliminal, which inspired the name of our art gallery: Subliminal Projects), and “No mom, I’m not on drugs, I’m OK, I was just thinking, why don’t you get me a Pepsi” were very provocative to me as I was just starting to question authority and develop a sense of personal and world politics. It helped also that I found out that Mike Muir, lead singer of Suicidal was the brother of Jim Muir, founder of Dogtown Skateboards… firmly putting Suicidal in the easy to endorse “punk camp” as far as I was concerned. Still, I would soon discover bands like Motorhead, Black Sabbath, and Metallica who I embraced more fearlessly seeing a crossover connection to Suicidal. I even saw some Suicidal songs as having a stylistic kinship to Rap. I think Suicidal helped break down barriers between the various underground music cultures, and hints of their more ambitious stylistic explorations can be heard all the way back to their first album. In addition to digging the music on the album, I was mesmerized by the artwork on the sleeve. The Suicidal Tendencies type treatment is iconic and has an aggressive barbed look to fit the music. There was also a disturbing photo of the band hanging upside-down from a jungle gym at dusk. My favorite aspect of the sleeve was the many photos of hand-drawn shirts that used variations of the Suicidal type and skull iconography. The anonymous creators of the shirts seemed like a dangerous secret society of outsiders I wanted to be a part of. The closest I could come to joining the Suicidal army was listening to the album obsessively and making my own Suicidal tee on top of a turquoise tee with wave and palm tree my parents had brought me from Hawaii. In those days, hip threads were hard to come by so I ended up making a lot of my own tee shirts. One day when I wore my homemade Suicidal tee to school, I was pulled into the guidance counselor’s office to discuss my “suicidal tendencies”. The guidance counselor saw the shirt as a cry for help, but I explained it was a band and I was no more maladjusted than any other teenager whose parents just don’t understand.
I took a trip to NYC with my friend Jay Haley in 1986 to see GBH, The Cro-Mags, 7-Seconds, and The Smiths who were all playing in a ten-day span (I have no idea how we knew that pre-internet). We also skated the Brooklyn banks daily. One of the benefits of being in NYC was access to great record stores with underground music and tee shirts. Our favorites were 2nd Coming Records and Bleeker Bob’s. From one or the other I used my “emergency” money my parents gave me to buy not one, but two, Suicidal Tendencies tees, one in black and the other in white… the essentials. Considering how little disposable loot I had, and how many band tees I wanted, the Suicidal expenditure gives a snapshot of my passion for the band. The image on both of those tees was the cover shot of the band hanging upside down that I later discovered to be by photographer Glen E. Friedman.
Glen also managed the band and produced their first album. I found out that Glen had also shot covers for the Circle Jerks and Minor Threat that I knew well, but I did not connect all the dots until many years later. Another connection I did not make at the time was between some of Suicidal’s other iconic tee and sticker graphics and Lance Mountain, a pro skateboarder I admired, who was friends with Glen E. Friedman. Suicidal turned out to be the connection between many things I had no idea were related. I’ll break down the family tree simplistically: Glen E. Friedman was friends with skateboarders Jim Muir and Stacy Peralta from the Dogtown and Z-Boys scene in Venice and Santa Monica. Jim’s brother Mike Muir started a punk band, Suicidal Tendencies, and Glen became their manager. Glen decided to ask his friend Lance Mountain, who was an amateur skater for Powell-Peralta Skateboards (yes, co-owned by Stacy Peralta) to draw some tee graphics for Suicidal, and the result was the now iconic Suicidal Skeleton Pool Skater and Suicidal Skull with bandana and flipped up hat. I knew these graphics well from stickers, tees and issues of Thrasher, but I did not know they were done by Lance until much later.
OK… here is how the project came together… I heard that Lance had found his original Suicidal drawings in a drawer after nearly 30 years. I saw the drawings and marveled at the clarity of the line work and how much the images had degraded (in true scuzzy, punk fashion) over the years. I reached out to Lance to ask if I could buy them and we began talking about a potential Lance/Obey/Suicidal art collaboration. Glen, who I have worked with on many projects, introduced me to Jim Muir and we began a limited edition collaboration for Dogtown Skateboards that used my illustration of Jim based on one of Glen’s photographs. I talked to Jim about my chat with Lance and he brought his brother Mike Muir of Suicidal by my studio to hang. Mike liked the collaboration idea and I now have the honor of presenting a tribute to Suicidal Tendencies marking the 30th anniversary of their first album. I feel very lucky to know all the parties who helped inspire and bring this project together. Thank you Lance Mountain, Glen E Friedman, Jim Muir, and especially Mike Muir, the creative force behind Suicidal.
– Shepard Fairey
