handsome productions presents:
peter laughner
peter's links:
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peter laughner:
a true cleveland original...
If you're reading this, you probably have some idea of who Peter Laughner was. If by chance you don't, then you've somehow managed to stumbled across the legacy of a very interesting guy. Either way, you're probably a rock & roll fan; if you know Peter, you're probably a really BIG, and pretty selective, rock & roll fan, in fact, who has trolled the internet in search of information on him. We hope we'll provide it for you..
Why are we doing this? Why put up a tribute to someone who has been dead for thirty years, and who, with the exception of a couple of singles by a then-unknown Cleveland band named Pere Ubu, never released a record during his lifetime?
There are several reasons. First and foremost, Peter was a friend of some of the musicians who created Handsome Productions. He was a treasured influence, and a brave and interesting soul. Far more than the one-dimensional punk rock pioneer many imagine in their heads, he was a bona fide roots musician in the mold of a Woody Guthrie or a Bob Dylan, and he had the dynamic personality (and problems, too) of a major "star." He had a strong impact on those around him, some of whom were carried to fame on what they absorbed from him. In fact, he catalyzed a scene in Cleveland that, one could safely say, is the virtual blueprint for the independent music scene, even today.
The information on these pages has been lovingly assembled and slaved over by several individuals. Among them are Derek DePrator, a current young lad of a musician in Cleveland who has taken an interest in Peter and done the bulk of the work in chasing down the music we offer on this site, and Don Harvey, who played with Peter in his first Rock & Roll Band, "Mr. Charlie," while Pete was in high school in the late 1960s. We're grateful to them and to all the others whose words are reproduced on these pages.
We hope you'll enjoy reading about Peter, and we'd love your contributions, additions, corrections, etc. All contributors are welcome and will be credited. Please Contact us if you'd like to contribute.
Peter Laughner: A Brief History
by Derek DePrator
Peter played guitar on the first two Pere Ubu singles and that's how most know of him. But the real legacy lies in his own music. The songs that he wrote and the many bands that he led. Insisting nobody would be interested in his own songs and that nobody would want to play them, his bands mostly did half covers/half originals. Peter formed a band in High School in 1968 with friends Dan Pliske, Rob Stewart, Craig Ferrier, and Russ Williams (who was eventually replace by Don Harvey), which he christened Mr. Charlie (perfect name for a white blues band, isn't it?) At graduation, everybody went their separate ways. Peter went off to San Francisco with Charlotte Pressler for a couple months. According to Charlotte, Peter solo acoustic didn't really work out there because "'What Goes On' doesn’t really work too well on the folk guitar".
Peter played lead for Cleveland’s prime blues act at the time, Mr. Stress, in 1971 into 1972. At the same time, he was working on music with friends under various band names such as The Original Wolverines, doing more country/blues type material. Stuff by the Holy Modal Rounders, David Blue, Jimmie Rodgers, and such. In late 1972 Peter formed Cinderella Backstreet with Cindy Black, Scott Krauss (also later of Pere Ubu), Rick Kalister, and Albert Dennis after an impromptu jam. This was completely covers, and largely of course, Velvet Underground material. Rick played most of the leads, his fluid finessed playing clearly distinctive from Peter’s edgy riffing. Their last show from June 1973 is available here (with approval from Rick Kalister himself) consisting of a few Velvets tunes, and All Along The Watchtower (with extended Mellotron solo from Cindy) jammed out into submission, with 5 tunes it's an almost hour long set!
In a conversation with my friend/former bandmate in The Tellers (plug, plug) J.P. Lenahan (who I knew lived at the Plaza and had played with Peter) whom I was in a band with for a while, we were talking about what covers Peter liked to do in that period (we're talking circa 1974 here.) Baby's On Fire by Brian Eno came up and my eyes lit up. He started talking about having played it and a bunch of other faves with Peter and assorted folks at the Plaza that came and went. And I realized, this was The Finns (named after the Eno 
song ‘Seven Deadly Finns’.) He had no idea the Finns 45 came out on Singles Only, had heard of the Take The Guitar Player For A Ride album from me but didn't know what was on it. He remembered experimenting with two bass players and the other bassist being a woman that played a Fender Precision. So I'm assuming this might be either Cindy Black or Debbie from Friction but with time and past drugs and drink clouding a person’s memory, who really knows. J.P. also recalled why the guitar sound was really ratty on these recordings. Peter had an old Fender amp that only made a clean sound, so he borrowed J.P.’s Pignose practice amp and cranked it all the way up. Between the ratty guitar distortion and the two bass players, the sound of this outfit was very jagged and raucous.
June 1974 saw the formation of the first Rocket From The Tombs. A four piece with David "Crocus Behemoth" (One of many names used by David in writing for Scene Magazine to make it look like there were different people writing all the articles he did) Thomas, Kim "Charlie Weiner" Zonneville who both traded off vocal and bass duties, Glenn "Thunderhand" Hach on guitar, and Tom Clements rounding out on drums. Peter was drafted in a couple months later.
The end of the year saw a total reformation of the band with later Dead Boys Gene "Cheetah Chrome" O'Connor and John Madansky (later Johnny Blitz.) From there the band would go thru many incarnations until it's demise in August 1975. Madansky left in April, and was replaced (for one show, a WMMS broadcast at the Agora) by Don Evans. Wayne Stick was brought in soon thereafter and very soon the band fragmented into the equivalent of the Beatles in the Let It Be movie. By this time, due to the fact that Crocus was more about heart and soul than hitting actual notes, he was now only allowed to sing his epic "30 Seconds Over Tokyo". Laughner sang most, taking over "Sonic Reducer" and "Final Solution" among others. Cheetah and Craig both grabbed a couple tunes as well. Crocus was stuck on either also sax or Acetone Organ (the organ only being audible in the "We Will Fall"-esque intro to "Sonic Reducer") for the bulk of the set. The Rockets sound was highly influenced by Laughner’s now frequent visits to New York and being introduced to bands like Television. Not as punk as what would later become The Dead Boys and more of a traditional rock band than the later Pere Ubu.
Peter was in another group at this time called Cinderella’s Revenge with Sue Schmidt, Debbie Smith, and Eric Ritz. Debbie and Sue had been playing together for a long time. They had been in the 60's pop all girl group The Poor Girls and would later be once again drafted by Laughner into his band Friction in 1976. Sue and Peter did a 50/50 on the lead vocals. This, believe it or not, was a band that both did a lot of original songs and had the most original sound of any of Peter’s outfits (other than Friction, which mostly had the same people.) With lots of strong original material including an r&b take on the Mr. Charlie song “I’m So Fucked Up”, complete with the sax player quoting Elephant Walk by Henry Mancini in the solo, this lineup really would’ve been a good ongoing outlet for Peter you’d think but sadly in mid 1975, they too disbanded. Also, Peter and Debbie were doing some acoustic guitar/bass duo gigs.
The Rockets inevitably did the sensible thing and broke up. Immediately splitting off into two: the arty (originally intended to be psychedelic, which is why Laughner joined) Pere Ubu, and the straight ahead punk rock of Frankenstein, which very soon would be renamed (after the first line in Down In Flames, a former Rockets song) the Dead Boys. Cheetah and original Rockets drummer John Madansky grabbed (literally, sometimes) Jimmy Zero out of Strongsville, and singer Steve "Stiv" Bators (a big Rockets fan.) Bassist Jeff Mangum rounded out the lineup. Contrary to the rest of the Pere Ubu clique, Peter liked the Dead Boys "screw art, lets play rock'n'roll" attitude. He even played cowbell on Frankenstein's demo of Sonic Reducer. (Later lovingly credited on the record Eve of the Dead Boys as "Raging Cowbell".)
Pere Ubu was formed by David Thomas (still going under the alias of Crocus Behemoth, which wouldn't be dropped until the 2nd Ubu album) just to have something to show of Rocket From The Tombs since they never released anything. The intent was only to put out a 45 and then be done with it. Maybe do one show to promote the release so people knew about it and that's that. They went into Cleveland Recording and cut renditions of Rockets' "30 Seconds Over Tokyo" and a song they'd just come up with in practice called "Heart Of Darkness". Due to the band having three guitar players, one of them obviously had to always play bass. Meaning Peter had to play bass every once in awhile. After the one gig it was decided that "gee, that was fun, wasn't it?" so they did another show, and another. This grew and grew and a few months later another single was recorded and released. A remake of Final Solution again with a new Ubu song on the flipside: Cloud 149.
During this time, as always, Peter was still singing and writing his own songs. He had another band, Peter and The Wolves. They did the standard Laughner diet of Velvets and Dylan, but he was doing more (albeit just a few more) originals. This was the band that did the "electric versions" of what became acoustic Laughner classics, thanks to the demos on the Take The Guitar Player For A Ride album on Tim\Kerr Records released in the early 90's. Songs like "Baudelaire" and "Rock It Down". The Wolves didn't play that many gigs, probably actually something like 5 or 6 gigs ever, and everybody from Cinderella Backstreet passed thru this band at one time or another. Tom Herman and Scott Krauss, also in Pere Ubu with Peter, played in this band too. Cindy Black, formerly on Mellotron, now on Bass. Rick Kalister played with the later incarnation. He was also, of course, playing solo acoustic gigs. And Peter certainly knew lots of songs spanning all sorts of genres, old and new. Mixing old country blues tunes with originals and other covers. These covers being songs written by Cleveland friends, such as Terry Hartman, rock covers such as "Slow Death" by the Flamin' Groovies, and also tunes written by his new New York friends such as Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine of Television.
By mid-year, Peter's drinking and drug antics (and new found interest in guns) were taking it's toll on Pere Ubu. And it had gotten worse after he and Charlotte were separated in late 1975 (to eventually divorce in mid ’76). Scott Krauss: "We were playing in New York and Peter was doing these lines of coke on the counter, and then he took out his gun from under his leather jacket, slammed it on the counter and yelled 'Gentlemen, check your guns.'" The band broke up in May 1976, to be reformed in June without Peter, who was replaced by local blues guitarist Alan Greenblatt. Alan, being in a working blues band and making money, decided that was a better gig than making no money with Pere Ubu.
Peter subsequently formed Friction with Anton Fier on drums, Debbie Smith on bass, and Sue Schmidt on guitar and violin. This would prove to be Peter's tightest musical unit to date. Anton had done some time in The Styrenes and Electric Eels, and would go on to form the successful Golden Palominos in the early 80's. Friction didn't last very long either... one reason brought up by Sue Schmidt being that "he just kept on drinking shots and would go onstage and then change the songs around and expect us to follow him, he was so off, it was just too hard to work with him."
After Friction broke up, Peter gave The Wolves one last try. The previous Wolves, and Friction, were Peter's attempts after doing the RFTT/Ubu thing to play with old friends from his earlier bands that he could trust. Rick Kalister was playing guitar for Peter at the last show Peter ever played. He remembers Peter getting on the floor screaming the chorus during their cover of "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction". Which reminds one of the stories of Robert Johnson on his hands and knees barking like a dog hours before he died.
Peter sat down on the night of June 22, 1977 before going to bed, now living again at his folk’s house in Bay Village, and recorded a cassette which he titled Nocturnal Digressions. His voice was totally roached. You can tell he’d been drinking, and he even tells you what cigs he’s smoking (Lucky Strikes.) He tried to play harmonica on one track (a cover of "I Ain’t Got You" by The Yardbirds) but barely had the breath left in him for it. He did a lot of old favorites, The Velvet’s ballad "Pale Blue Eyes", Jesse Winchester’s "Do It" and "Isn’t That So?" "Slim Slow Slider" by Van Morrison with the landmarks in the tune replaced with Cleveland landmarks (something he’d done with the Wolves in "Playin’ With Fire" by the Stones: "now she gets her kicks on Prospect, instead of Chagrin Falls.) Also a few originals, including a Wolves tune called "Everything I Say Just Goes Right Thru Her Heart". The last tune on this tape, the last tune that Peter ever recorded, was actually Summertime Blues by Eddie Cochran, and it got cut off at a little over a minute. And Peter knew the tape was running out, so he did one verse, then proceeded to do some strange riffing as only he could, and hit the last chord right before the tape ran out.
He purportedly went to sleep when this was all done, and never woke up. (There is some debate about this; he may have died a day later.) He died in his sleep of acute pancreatitis brought on by the years of drinking and drugging. He was laid to rest at a large cemetery in North Olmsted. His headstone reads "Play on, beloved son." And no doubt, wherever he is he’s jamming with whoever he can find…and he’s recording all of it.