Wreck and Rule: Wendy O. Williams and The Plasmatics

Plenty of bands play at being subversive. But the final arbiter of the threat a band poses to the Establishment is ultimately how the Establishment reacts to their provocations. 

Rod Swenson, impresario for legendary Punk/Metal band The Plasmatics, got an unequivocal response from the Man one fateful night in the form of gloved fists, police jackboots and billy clubs: “They beat me to a bloody mass of unconsciousness...”

Formed in 1977, The Plasmatics were the twisted brainchild of two great American originals, both dedicated to the lifelong pursuit of prick-kicking. Rod Swenson’s issues with authority started when he was a Fine Arts major at Yale University. “They tried to throw me out. I abandoned painting for conceptual art and performance art,” Swenson recalls. “I believed painting was dead, I thought the art scene was irrelevant.” 

After receiving his masters degree, Swenson settled in Manhattan where he created a radical, sex-themed theatre troupe in Times Square called ‘Capt'n Kink’s Sex Show Theatre'. “It was a place I could do things without limits, and if it was good enough, draw an audience,” he reflects. The show was a smash hit.

Wendy Orlean Williams, a blonde bombshell who had fled dreary upstate New York, auditioned for Capt’n Kink’s show and found her true calling there. And Swenson had found a kindred spirit in Wendy. “She had this attitude that she rather be dead than be part of this conformist world. She didn't like consumerism, she didn't like materialism. When she came upon my theatre, she was very comfortable, for the first time in her life,” he recalls. “Our chemistry was just unbelievable. Whatever anyone thinks of The Plasmatics, it was what came out of that chemistry.”

And around the same time, the punk rock scene had started up at CBGB’s in New York’s seedy Bowery district. Swenson soon made his bones by filming early shows by acts like The Ramones, The Dead Boys and Blondie. It was here that he and Wendy began dreaming up what would later become The Plasmatics. “It was a concept set up around Wendy Williams,” Swenson says. “She would be the centerpiece.”

Upon forming, The Plasmatics quickly became the hottest ticket in Manhattan. They reached a level of notoriety and built a following that no other CBGB's band could boast. Fueled by their outrageous onstage theatrics, their shows became instant sellouts and the buzz soon spread. As Swenson stated the original idea was to offer an alternative to the decadent goings-on uptown: “We started out as an anti-Disco movement.”

The Plasmatics merged the shock-rock of Alice Cooper and the Sex Pistols with the transgressive aesthetic of big-city smut and the exhilarating nihilism of Z-grade exploitation films. Wendy O. Williams seemed to have stepped straight out of a Russ Meyers film, centerfold figure and ass-kicking attitude fully intact. And lead guitarist Richie Stotts’ taste in stage outfits - tutus, nurse's outfits, wedding dresses - clashed wildly with his nearly seven-foot frame. The Plasmatics were Middle America's worst nightmare in living, lurid color, Sodom and Gomorrah on the march.

And unlike other Punk bands, The Plasmatics put the Punk philosophy in action. It was one thing to deride rampant consumerism or police brutality, it was another thing entirely to blow up a Cadillac or police cruiser onstage. It was one thing to complain about the fetishistic and infantilizing aspects of pop culture, it was another to smash a TV set with a sledgehammer or chainsaw a Les Paul in lieu of a guitar solo.

Despite the fact that they were the biggest live attraction in New York, they scared the major record labels shitless. At a time when anyone with a skinny tie and a Rickenbacker could ink a deal, The Plasmatics were radioactive. “They were signing these bands and the only way they could go out on the road was with fifty grand of tour support,” Swenson says. “We were able to pay for ourselves and blow up automobiles.” So after a series of self-financed EPs, the Plazzies inked a deal with stalwart English indie, Stiff Records.

The Plasmatics' debut LP, New Hope for the Wretched, was ostensibly to be produced by veteran producer Jimmy Miller (Rolling Stones, Blind Faith) but due to Miller’s ongoing struggles with heroin, most of the heavy lifting went to engineer Ed Stasium. Swenson said of Miller, “He was a serious heroin addict. When he got his first advance he went over to 42nd Street, and got a lot of pretty bad smack. Wes (guitarist Wes Beech) found him slumped over in the bathroom.”  

Undeterred, Swenson and Stasium took the tapes to London for the final mix. With the record in the can, The Plasmatics began their first major assault on the rest of America.

As soon as The Plasmatics hit the road, the media was on them like white on rice. The press dismissed them as a hype, saying the band was nothing but ‘porn svengali’ Swenson’s wind-up dolls. Those accusations still raise Swenson’s dander: “I was not a puppet-master in any sense. It's sometimes caricatured that way as a way of marginalizing Wendy, but anybody who looks at who she is or what she did would have to understand that couldn't be true. We were mutually inspiring.” 

Whatever the critics thought, TV producers couldn’t book them fast enough and The Plasmatics certainly did not disappoint.

A booking on the ABC-TV late-night variety program Fridays made The Plasmatics the most notorious band in America, literally overnight. Fridays had already showcased some of the biggest New Wave bands of the time with little controversy, but none of those acts were given to chainsawing guitars, sledge-hammering TV sets or running around nearly nude while ranting about the living dead. American conservatives, breathlessly awaiting the coronation of Ronald Reagan the following week, found themselves confronted by a Hell that made Woodstock look like a church picnic.

The Plasmatics had run into trouble with the authorities before and would do so again, but few rock bands ever faced the sort of police-state tactics Rod and Wendy would encounter in Milwaukee, two days after the Fridays slot. After a sold-out gig at the Palms night club, Swenson was settling up with the promoter when one of the band's roadies told him Wendy had been arrested. As Swenson went out to deal with the arresting officers, another roadie rushed up and told him that the police were beating Wendy up outside. 

"When I got outside I saw a whole phalanx of police and on the inside of the circle I could see half a dozen police on top of her and around her,” Swenson recalled. “One huge guy was kneeling on her back and her face was bleeding. At that point, I ran through the phalanx and started trying to pull them off. They dragged me around between two cars and started beating the hell out of me with their nightsticks. I woke up in a pool of blood on the way to the hospital.”

Swenson later learned what had precipitated the blowout. As Wendy was being put into the paddy wagon, she recounted that one cop reached up under her shirt and started grabbing her breasts. "She turned around and belted him. So she was thrown on the ground. They could have handcuffed her at that point, but they just kept beating her,” Swenson remembers. “Even though her nose was broken and she was bleeding profusely, they threw Wendy into the back of a paddy wagon and took her to the police station. Fortunately, as soon as they got there a policewoman said she's gotta go right to the hospital.”

Swenson recounted that the Milwaukee Police made no secret that The Plasmatics' appearance on Fridays had brought their wrath upon the band. "They were very angry, they were very, very vicious and they made a lot of remarks that made that pretty clear. Things like, 'your band is made up of niggers and queers.'"

The next day, The Plasmatics had to postpone a gig in Cleveland because Swenson and Williams were in jail. Swenson had wanted to cancel, but Wendy insisted on going on with the show the next night. 

"She was not to be deterred by having the shit beat out of her,” he says proudly. 

Their reputation had preceded them and Cleveland had sent its vice squad to videotape the show. At the end of the show Wendy had passed out, possibly from an undiagnosed concussion from the previous night’s beating. The paramedics were called to treat Wendy and as soon as she was revived, the vice squad swooped in and arrested her for indecent exposure and making obscene gestures with a sledgehammer. Wendy was taken to the hospital and eventually was let out on bail. Ultimately, she was found not guilty when the case was brought to trial.

To raise the money to fight the criminal charges, three benefit shows were hosted to raise money for The Plasmatics Legal Defense Fund at Bonds International Casino in Times Square. They would need every penny. In Milwaukee, Swenson and Wendy were charged not only with obscenity statute violations, but also with assaulting a police officer, a felony charge that could garner serious prison time. But as the case went to trial, a photo of the cops beating Wendy surfaced, bolstering Rod and Wendy’s case of police brutality. “The cops denied the whole thing,” Swenson said. “They said I slipped on the ice.”

COUP D'ETAT

Swenson and Wendy were nothing if not ambitious. Although the purest expression of The Plasmatics aesthetic was encapsulated by their first two punk-oriented albums, punk was still too esoteric for the mainstream American pock fan. If The Plasmatics were to twist the brains of the pock fans most in need of Swenson's liberation eschatology, they would have to speak their target audience's vernacular: Heavy Metal. And as Swenson says, “As soon as we heard the term ‘New Wave’, we moved hard in the opposite direction.” 

They tested the waters with their landmark Metal Priestess EP, which combined their patented subversive hilarity with an up-to-date metallic sheen provided by former Edgar Winter Group prodigy, Dan Hartman. Then they set to work on their 1982 metal opus, Coup D’Etat. That LP would have an influence that far outweighed its sales figures. Most American Metal bands were still stuck somewhere in the mid-70's and the shock-rock clichés of Alice Cooper had grown stale. The confrontational and subversive tactics of The Plasmatics would have a significant impact on underground metal in the Eighties and beyond.

The Plasmatics' move to Metal came at a fortuitous time. KISS, who had been struggling in the early 80's, signed the Plazzies up as their support act. By doing so, Kiss was able regain some of the danger and shock-rock street-cred that their concerts had lost, and The Plasmatics were able to corrupt young minds in towns they could never play alone. KISS would prove later to be invaluable allies.

Fresh off the KISS tour, the Plasmatics found themselves the object of another legendary metal band's admiration. Swenson was approached by Motorhead manager Doug Smith with the idea of having Wendy join Lemmy and the boys for a mauling of Loretta Lynn's hayseed weepie, “Stand By Your Man.” Plans were made for Wendy O to rehearse with Motorhead in New York. Things did not go smoothly. 

“Fast Eddie and Lemmy were having some problems. They weren't talking to each other.” Swenson recalls, adding that Motorhead “were fairly serious meth addicts. Lemmy was stoned most of the time.” After attending a raging afterparty following an Ozzy gig at Madison Square Garden, Motorhead had failed to show up for rehearsal. Another session was booked in Toronto with Fast Eddie set to produce, but a row with Lemmy caused Clarke to storm out of the sessions, and ultimately, the group itself. Eddie later said his dislike of Wendy and the duet was the reason for his departure from Motorhead. Undaunted, Swenson and Wendy O would remain friendly with Motorhead and Rod would later go on to direct the “Killed by Death” video for the British legends.

KISS THIS

Following the KISS tour, Gene Simmons had expressed interest in producing the next Plasmatics LP, but the band name was tied up in a contract dispute. “We were having a fight with Capitol Records,” Swenson recalls. "We realized that if we didn't use The Plasmatics name we could get it out six months earlier.” Swenson notes Simmons’ interest was focused not on The Plasmatics as an entity, but on Wendy herself: “Gene wanted to produce a Wendy O record, he didn't care what it was called.” Thus sessions begun for the 1984 WOW album.

Some KISS fans have wryly noted that WOW was KISS' best 80's album. Simmons agreed to produce on the condition that he was able to choose which musicians to use, so not only had Gene taken over bass (under the pseudonym Reginald Van Helsing) and co-songwriting duties, he enlisted Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley and Eric Carr to sit in on the sessions. Simmons also recommended a Kiss applicant, Michael Ray, to become Wendy and The Plasmatics’ new lead guitarist. Stanley and Simmons also penned the rousing anthem “It's My Life”, which garnered Wendy some much-needed airplay.

Due to schedule conflicts, Simmons was unable to produce Wendy’s next record, so Rod Swenson took the reigns himself. Kommander of Kaos, again released as a Wendy O solo album, tapped into the nascent speed-metal movement and brought back the breakneck tempos of the early days. 

Freed from contractual limbo, The Plasmatics name would return for one last studio set, the outrageous concept album Maggots. But all of the controversies and bad press had taken their toll. “We had towns we couldn't play, promoters that wouldn't put us on because there was always a hint of trouble,” Swenson recalls. “We kept crossing off towns we couldn't go into. This is how the power structure choked us off at the end. When we stopped in 1988, we said we were going on hiatus, but we knew we were quitting.”

After a ten-year frenzy, Wendy and Rod retired The Plasmatics and settled in Connecticut. Rod began lecturing at the University of Connecticut and Wendy volunteered at an animal shelter. Suffering from depression and having difficulty to civilian life, she committed suicide in 1998 at the age of 48.

Unjustly overlooked today, The Plasmatics are the missing link between Alice Cooper and Marilyn Manson. Theatrical shock-rock had been around since Screaming Jay Hawkins in the '50s, but The Plasmatics raised the ante, and in many ways have yet to be matched. Bands like Gwar, Mudvayne and Slipknot have adapted the shock tactic theatrics that The Plasmatics pioneered, but none of those Rock 'n' Roll bad boys had half the daredevil cojones Wendy did. She was a true original, and we may never see her like again.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF PLASM

NEW HOPE FOR THE WRETCHED: One of the greatest Punk Rock albums of all time, New Hope bridges the gap between 70's Punk and 80's Hardcore with one hilarious, triple-speed neck-breaker after another. An absolute must-have for fans of 70's porn, Grade Z drive-in movies and Loud Rock of any kind.

BEYOND THE VALLEY OF 1984: Beyond shows the Plasmatics expanding their musical palette. Alice Cooper drummer Neal Smith mans the kit, and the breakneck tempos are slowed on several numbers. Sixties girl-group death-rock gets a punchy power-chord update on “Summer Nite,” and “Masterplan” and “Headbanger” poach on Judas Priest’s land. Highlight: Wendy's love song to the Milwaukee Police, "A Pig is A Pig".

COUP D'ETAT: Coup documents The Plasmatics' evolution from Punk pioneers to Molten Metal Mutants. Taking their cues from AC/DC, the new tracks boast muscular march-time rhythms, pig-iron riffs and shrieking, dentist-drill leads. Wendy continues her vocal evolution from peep show seductress to avenging angel. You can hear the flesh in her throat shred as she wails on cuts like “Put Your Love in Me” and “Damned”. A cover of Motorhead's “No Class” pays tribute to kindred spirits.

WENDY O WILLIAMS - WOW: A Shock Rocker’s wetdream come true. Gene Simmons’ reverb-soaked production lends the proceedings an anthemic edge, and Wendy puts the pedal to the Metal on every cut.. The Simmons/Stanley track “It's My Life” brings to mind Joan Jett on steroids and the aching power ballad “Opus in Cm7” adds melodic variety amidst all the huffers and puffers. KISS exile Ace Frehley shreds the strings on “Bump and Grind”.

WENDY O WILLIAMS- KOMMANDER OF KAOS: Kaos brings back the breakneck tempos of early Plaz, this time as Speed Metal not Punk. Wendy's scorching vocals are her most extreme, rivaling the overdriven guitars for sheer glass-shattering power. Imagine early Anthrax or Megadeth with a hell-spawned succubus on the mic. Highlights: A pile-driving cover of Motorhead's “Jailbait” and “Fuck that Booty,” a triple-time homage to backdoor luvin.'

MAGGOTS: A satirical concept album featuring a hilarious series of skits depicting Earth being taken over by giant man-eating maggots. After each skit, Wendy weighs in like a one-woman Greek chorus on bone-crushing stampedes like the “Day of the Humans is Gone” and “Brain Dead.” A fitting end to a ten-year run of chaos, mayhem and subversive social commentary.