CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Imagine what might have been?
It's the first thing that comes to mind whenever someone dies young. We see the talent, the possibilities, the life -- but we also see how it ended: so soon, so fast.
It’s part of a much-romanticized myth… “Live fast, die young, and have a good-looking corpse,” as author Bud Billiken once famously wrote.
For decades, that myth shaped the story of Peter Laughner.
Story by John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer
Peter Laughner live with Cinderella Backstreet at JB's, Kent, March 1973. (Photo by and courtesy of Cynthia Black)
The Cleveland singer-songwriter, guitarist and writer died of pancreatitis on June 22, 1977. He was only 24. As myth has it, he was on the road to stardom... If only he hadn’t died so soon, from years of alcohol and drug abuse.
Laughner, you see, co-founded two of Cleveland's most important 1970s bands, punk pioneers Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu. He also co-wrote or played on "Sonic Reducer," "Final Solution" and "Ain't It Fun" -- songs covered and quoted by everyone from Pearl Jam to Henry Rollins to Peter Murphy to Guns 'N Roses to Wilco.
An early version of Rocket from the Tombs, circa 1974, featured David Thomas, seated, third from left, and Peter Laughner, far right. (John Clinefelter/Bradley Fields, Courtesy John Nikolai, Smog Veil Records)
And yet his career barely spanned a mere five years. He never even released an album in his lifetime.
Imagine what might have been had he lived?
The thought first crossed Frank Mauceri’s mind in 2001 when he started prepping the release of “The Day the Earth Met the Rocket From the Tombs” on his Smog Veil Records imprint.
The album consisted of a much-bootlegged live recording of Rocket From the Tombs -- a Cleveland band that played a dozen shows between 1973 and 1975.
Rocket became legendary – not just because it pre-dated punk rock or because its break-up would lead to the formation of the Dead Boys and Pere Ubu. There was also that thing about living fast and dying young. Rocket took off, crashed quickly and ended up changing the course of underground music. The stuff of legend.
Peter Laughner live at the Bottleworks, Cleveland, Jan./Feb., 1976. (Photo Credit: Mik Mellen)
Laugher, the band’s guitarist, was central to that legend.
“I realized there was a larger story with Peter when I started working on the Rocket From the Tombs album,” says Mauceri, via phone from his home in Miami, Florida. “But I didn’t realize how long or what form it would take.”
(Smog Veil Records)
Eighteen years later, Cleveland-born and Miami Beach-based record label has just released the deepest, most definitive chronicle of Laugher’s brief but bright career.
The boxed set, titled “Peter Laughner,” features five discs consisting of 56 home recordings, demos and live recordings – both solo and with a variety of Laughner’s bands: from Rocket From the Tombs to Friction to Cinderella’s Revenge.
(Photo courtesy Jenn D’Eugenio, Furnacxe MFG)
The boxed set is accompanied by a fascinating 100-page book that features music reviews, poetry and assorted writings by Laughner that appeared in publications such as Creem, Exit, Zeppelin and Star. There are also stories by and about Laughner that appeared in The Plain Dealer, which chronicled many of his bands at the time. There are countless images chronicling Laughner’s life – ads from his concerts and evocative shots of him from taken by 15 photographer and friends of his, like Cynthia Black and Anastasia Pantsios. Thoughtful essays about his life and music bring insight and context to it all.
Handwritten note and Photo Booth photo of Peter Laughner, October 1976. (Courtesy of Carol A. Aronson, via Smog Veil)
“Peter Laughner,” you see, is more than the usual career-spanning retrospective. Assembling this boxed-set was akin to a figuring out a jigsaw puzzle without having all the pieces before you.
Laughner performed before there were cell phones hovering over every moment like a shadow. He often played to handful or perhaps a few dozen people. Yes, he was at the forefront of Cleveland’s 1970s scene, which was taking off and cranking out a number of bands that would alter the course of music. But few people knew it at the time and even fewer had cameras.
A Dec. 26, 1975 Scene ad for Pere Ubu's debut show appears in a 100-page book that accompanies the boxed set. (Courtesy Smog Veil)
Artifacts for the boxed-set pieces came together here and there, and then were assembled to create a fleshed-out portrait of an artist and a young man who was immensely talented but also flawed.
“We tried to present a balanced picture of Laughner – an artist that worked in a variety of genres but was also a writer and a journalist,” says Mauceri. “It required reaching out and interviewing and tracking down and going through hours and hours of recordings. There are 40 hours of live performances that didn’t even get used.”
Jan.1975 article on Cleveland's rising underground scene, which would go on to capture the national spotlight in 1977-78. Cleveland musician Peter Laughner was a driving force in that scene, even if he died too soon to enjoy the spotlight. (The Plain Dealer)
Mauceri and Smog Veil reseachers Andrew Russ and Nick Blakey reached out to more than 40 musicians and friends that performed with and knew Laughner intimately. They visited and searched archives and online resources. When it came to the latter, they learned that spelling words a variety of ways – in other words, incorrectly – were key, because artifacts were often listed incorrectly.
"Working on a project such as this, you come to understand the importance of archives," says Mauceri. a Cleveland native. "Research libraries and archives have a tremendous value and contain thousands and thousands of stories waiting for people to uncover them."
The Viking Saloon became the epicenter of the Cleveland scene in the mid-'70s. The club burned down in 1976. It's now part of CSU's Krenzler Field. (Photo by John Petkovic, The Plain Dealer)
Blakey, a Boston resident who also runs Peter Laughner social media accounts, spent hundreds of hours chasing down articles, photos and even the most-minute details to piece together Laugher’s timeline.
The undertaking was as much about piecing together an era in Cleveland as it was the story of a Clevelander. Many of the old haunts and all the of the old clubs had disappeared, including the legendary Viking Saloon.
The epicenter of the Cleveland scene in the mid-'70s, it employed Rocket from the Tombs singer David Thomas (aka Crocus Behemoth), who worked there as a bouncer. The club burned down in 1976 and the area where it once stood is now part of CSU's Krenzler Field.
(Special Collections, Michael Schwartz Library, Cleveland State University, Cleveland Press collection).
Entire landscapes have changed since the music scene of Laughner's time. For instance, Old River Road -- seen here in 1977 -- once housed Pirate's Cove, a legendary club that was a stomping ground for Laughner and Cleveland bands such as Pere Ubu, Devo, the Dead Boys and the Pagans. The area is now part of the Flats East Bank, a mixed-use development that includes bars and eateries such as Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville.
(National Archives)
In the 1970s, Cleveland lost 23.6 percent of its population, a staggering amount, even considering national trends. In that same decade, it became the first major American city since the Great Depression to default on its loans. Playhouse Square had a date with the wrecking ball and was slated to become a parking lot. Mob violence earned Cleveland the nickname, "Bomb City USA." Yet, the decade was also a great one for music -- with an underground rock scene that achieved international acclaim.
(The Plain Dealer)
Peter Laughner co-founded and played guitar in the earliest version of Pere Ubu, the Cleveland band that cranked out the musical equivalent of the industrial landscape. A December 1975 story on the formation of a new band, Pere Ubu. "We're pointing toward the music of the '80s," proclaimed the forward-looking Laughner.
Peter Laughner, Cleveland, Spring 1976. (Photo by and courtesy of Cynthia Black.)
“Peter was widely known as for his association with Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu,” adds Mauceri. “But casting him as a punk-rocker is a miscasting of who he was. Peter was a chameleon who could play folk and blues and rock. He had a keen sense of popular styles and was a musician who was trying to appeal to a wide range of fans.”
An Oct. 5, 1973 in the CWRU Observer that appears in the Smog Veil book on Laughner. (Courtesy Smog Veil)
Tony Maimone, who played with Laughner in Friction and would go on to play bass in Pere Ubu, remembers him as the ultimate musician who transcended genre.
“Peter could do whatever he wanted to do,” says Maimone, via phone from New York, where he operates a recording studio. “He was instrumental in crafting the Pere Ubu sound, but, even at such an early age, had a deep understanding of all kinds of music.”
He played in a variety of bands -- including Mr. Charlie, Peter and the Wolves, Mr. Stress and Blue Drivers.
Peter Laughner at The Plaza circa 1974. (Courtesy of Robert Bensick)
Maimone met Laughner by chance. He lived across the hall from him in the Plaza, an apartment building that housed a variety of artists and musicians in the 1970s.
“I had just moved in and would play my bass and Peter heard my bass through the walls and knocked on my door,” he says. “We started talking and then he went back and grabbed his guitar and some beer and we started jamming right away.”
Maimone recalls the time he and Laughner moved a piano in a van back to the Plaza.
“Here I was driving his green Chevy van down Cedar Avenue and there he was in the back of the van rocking out on the piano,” says Maimone. “He was so special – a pure musician.”
(Columbia Records/Plain Dealer Historical Photograph Collection)
Laughner often came commandeered the piano once they got it up the stairs and into Maimone’s apartment.
“One time, he just jumped up and started playing it and singing a Bruce Springsteen song,” he says. “He loved to turn people onto the artists he admired.”
Laughner dragged people out to see Bruce Springsteen's first Cleveland show, in 1974, at the Agora.
"I remember him telling me, 'You have to see this Bruce Springsteen guy,'" said Pantsios, in a 2017 interview with The Plain Dealer. "There were about 200 people there and a lot of them came because of Peter."
WMMS deejay Kid Leo, left, with Peter Laughner at a party in 1973-1974. (Photo courtesy of John Gorman)
Laughner extolled the virtue and demanded that WMMS play artists such as Springsteen. "He was an honorary member of WMMS," said former WMMS program director John Gorman, in a 2017 interview with The Plain Dealer. "He was always turning us onto the newest music."
Photo courtesy Jenn D’Eugenio, Furnacxe MFG.
The Smog Veil boxed set features a number of Laughner’s own compositions, including “Sylvia Plath,” “Dear Richard” and “Baudelaire” – songs that could’ve been hits in an alternate universe. It also contains covers by his many musical heroes, from the Rolling Stones to Bob Dylan to Television to Lou Reed.
Laughner ended up extolling the virtues of artists, national and local, in articles reprinted in the book that accompanies the boxed set.
(The Plain Dealer)
Laughner was especially fascinated Lou Reed, who was a major influence on the wave of Cleveland musicians that Laugher was a part of. Reed's influence on Cleveland goes back to La Cave, the legendary Euclid Avenue club that doubled as a second home to the Velvet Underground. The club hosted 24 shows by the group in the late-1960s, back when Reed and the band couldn't get booked in other parts of the country. The shows inspired a number attendees, who proceeded to form bands that defined the Cleveland underground rock scene of the 1970s.
(The Plain Dealer)
Laughner often traveled to Manhattan to soak in its burgeoning punk scene and to hang out with its icons: Patti Smith, Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine of Television. He convinced seminal punk band the Heartbreakers to play their first out-of-town gigs here. He booked and opened up for Television (with Rocket From the Tombs). (Pictured: A ticket from the 1975 concert by Television and Rocket from the Tombs at the former Cleveland club Piccadilly Inn.) By 1976, Laughner almost was a full-time New Yorker. "He was jamming with Television and supposedly was going to join the band," said Cheetah Chrome, in a 2017 interview with The Plain Dealer. "But he ended up coming back to Cleveland."
(The Plain Dealer)
Laughner -- who also wrote about music for Creem and The Plain Dealer, among other publications -- was a big supperter of the music scene. In this October 1974 Plain Dealer piece he raves about 15-60-75, Jimmy Ley and Mirrors.
An Aug.1, 1975 notice about Cinderella's Revenge, which went on to perform under the name Friction. (The Plain Dealer)
He also sought out local musicians, including Susan Schmidt Horning, who would go on to play with him in Cinderella's Revenge and Friction.
“He came to see a band I was in and came up to us and said he would really like to play with us,” says Schmidt Horning, via phone from her home in New York. “The music scene was dominated by men, but Peter was different. He was very open to working with women and took us seriously as musicians.”
(The Plain Dealer)
“He was so energetic and driven, but his energy couldn’t be regulated,” says Schmidt Horning, who also played in the acclaimed Akron band Chi Pig and is currently an associate professor of history at St. John's University in New York. “It could make it hard to play with him; he was so anxious and wouldn’t take a methodical approach.”
The energy led to all sorts of activity. The inability to harness it led to his bands breaking up – all too soon.
“Sometimes I wonder what might have been if we had moved to New York,” says Schmidt Horning. “He wanted to play music more than anyone, but he wasn’t career oriented. A lot of bands save up money to record, but he was spending his on drugs and booze.”
A tribute to Peter Laughner ran in The Plain Dealer on June 24, 1977 -- two days after his death. (The Plain Dealer)
It underscores why so many of the recordings on the boxed set are home recordings and, perhaps, why Laughner never became a rock star.
Imagine what might have been?
The release of “Peter Laughner” has led Mauceri to ponder a very different side of the romantic legend that always ends with that question.
Peter Laughner's obituary in The Plain Dealer, which ran June 23, 1977. (The Plain Dealer)
“People wonder what might have been had he stayed alive,” says Mauceri. “Peter had a terrible illness, one that science still can’t cure, and in doing the research, it was clear to us that he was trying to find a way toward sobriety.”
“But I think it’s important to focus on and think of the quality of the work that he produced in such a short time,” he adds. “His life story is an example of the creative process and that’s why we spent so much time trying to document that. He was a great artist.”
"Peter Laughner," a five-disc boxed set that chronicles the career of Cleveland musician and writer Peter Laughner, is out now on Smog Veil Records. The release also features a 100-page book filled with essays, photos and archival stories by and about Laughner. It retails for $99.99 (CD) and $119.99 (vinyl) and is available in area stores, via online retailers and through Smog Veil. Go to https://www.smogveil.com/
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