Annihilation Man

How Darby Crash lost control. Of the Germs. Of Circle One. Everything.

A A A Comments (2) By Brendan Mullen Wednesday, Dec 27 2000

...continued from page 7

SQUABBLES BROKE OUT AMONG THE FIERCELY protective women who ran the Circle One cult as to who was and who wasn't cool enough to attend the funeral, and there were lots of sour grapes among those who weren't invited. Nicole Panter: "If you saw the movie Suburbia, you saw the funeral, basically. It was this really sad little punk rock funeral. Darby looked like they'd put green clay on his face, and his hair was dyed black." The autopsy identified the cause of death as "acute heroin-morphine and ethanol intoxication."

That was 20 years ago. A search for recent anniversary coverage in the Lexis-Nexis® news-research engine turned up 580 listings in the database defined by the parameters All Newspapers/Previous 60 Days/"John Lennon" AND "death." The same search, but substituting the name "Darby Crash," turned up one.

The loneliest fucking number I ever saw.

Brendan Mullen is currently co-writing, with Don Bolles, a biography of Darby Crash, scheduled for release by Feral House in Fall 2001.

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07/14/2011 10:14:00 PM

An absolutely amazing read. I've only recently (like in the last two weeks) started listening to the Germs and I've already been inspired to write music and songs about them, and Darby, in particular. I don't think that calling them one of the greatest punk bands of all time does them enough justice. From a garage band that could barely put two chords together, to making some of the greatest punk songs in history in the space of four or five years is nothing short of pheonomenal. The small (yet sad) tie that I share with Darby is that his death anniversary is the day before my birthday (obviously meaning that my birthday is the same day as John Lennon's death anniversary). I'm not sure about Shane West being the newer vocalist for the Germs. As much as it's great that Lorna, Don and Pat wanted to restart the band, they perhaps should have left the band as it was. Thank you to the late Brendan Mullen for writing this fantastic article. A truely great read!

Will 06/29/2010 1:30:00 AM

This article is nothing more than fantastic. This 8 page article makes the Germs biopic "What We Do Is Secret" look like a joke. I can relate to Darby Crash on so many levels. To the fact of both of us being the youngest in our families. For both of us having a fixation of Frederich Nietzsche. To the both of us being Libra's (His birthday is September 26th, 1958, mine is September 30th 1992) I sometimes wonder what Darby would be like today. Or even if he would want his music to be in the mainstream to grow Circle One and the D.C.C. (Darby Crash Committee). I dont think Shane West should really be singing in the Germs. To me, thats offensive and sick. Darby would be a pissed mother fucker, just as i am. But thanks to Brenden Mullen (R.I.P) And thanks for putting this up LA Weekly. Your's truly. Will Scabiez of South Jersey Punk Rock. "I'm not one, i am two"