Every once in a while, I like to watch old black and white movies. I’m particularly partial to ones where men speak in clipped strong rhythms and people get murdered. But I’m open-minded and my TiVo recently suggested that I try watching The Wild One.

The Wild One is the classic 50’s flick where Marlon Brando’s Johnny character, when asked what he was rebelling against, famously answered “What’ve you got?” It is difficult to watch the movie in the present day and fully grasp the impact it had at the time. Supposedly many people felt that James Dean was a Marlon Brando wannabe and Brando’s swaggering performance in The Wild One informed the later acting careers of men like Steve McQueen and Jack Nicholson. The rival motorcycle gang, lead by Lee Marvin’s Chino in the movie, is called The Beetles and is believed by many people to have inspired the name of the band The Beatles with an a. I’ve seen mention that Sid Vicious of the Sex Pistols had a jacket based on Brando in The Wild One or possibly even the specific jacket used in the film, but I haven’t been able to find confirmation more solid than rumor on this. Regardless, even today, everyone from lesbian drag kings to Leonardo DiCaprio takes inspiration from the seminal role of troubled Johnny Strabler. Heck, I personally even commissioned a Cookie Monster Brando before I ever saw the movie in its entirety, so ingrained is this flick in the American consciousness.

Despite this, watching today, it is difficult to know what mood the movie could have evoked when it came out in the 50’s. The movie was released in America in 1953 and was banned in the UK upon its overseas release in 1954. Ben Maddow, one of the writers on the film, went uncredited at the time, probably because he was blacklisted due to McCarthy era paranoia. So the movie is about rebellion. It inspired generations of rebels. The bike Brando rides is apparently his own personal Triumph. Even one of the writers on the movie was an outlaw. So it just seems like the movie should feel truly menacing. But it honestly feels more filled with innuendo and symbolism than menace.

Rebel Johnny has a second place trophy strapped to his bike, which has given thousands of film students what to talk about for half a century. Chino keeps stressing that he really misses Johnny and really wants to “have a beer” with Johnny to the point where the viewer becomes certain there is some sort of homosexual code in the invitation. The man driving the car which injures one of Johnny’s motorcycle club followers is said to be hopped up on vitamin pills and overstimulated. Were they prescribing Dexadrine to seniors in the fifties? I have no idea, although I’m terribly curious. I think of leather jacketed bad boys as being feral and rail thin grifters, but the BRMC or Black Rebel Motorcycle Club guys all appear to be gainfully employed and capable of paying for their beer and coffee and maybe a nice sandwich.

Johnny Strabler and the guys just don’t seem that dangerous by today’s standards. It is hard to tell how much of that is attributable to the times or the intentions of the moviemakers. Sunset Blvd. for example is a far darker movie and it predates The Wild One by only three years. Perhaps McCarthyism lead to a lamer approach to cultural danger in movies. Perhaps the filmmakers wanted to create something camp, although this seems unlikely for a director like Laslo Benedek who first became known in America for doing the first movie version of Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, also a darker movie now that I think about it.

But maybe in 1953, a large group of guys dressed all freaky in leather and what my grandmother used to call “dungerees” were just terrifying. I certainly know some people in the here and now whose posturing for what they perceive as the normal folk makes me roll my eyes. And would probably come across campy in a movie. Yet a group of thirty or forty of them dressed to kill would probably frighten most small town dwellers. Marlon Brando’s Johnny Strabler is easily grabbed and beaten by the proper men of the town. This would probably be the same fate that would befall a lot of people whose eyeliner and hair frighten and horrify even now. You really can’t judge who will be dangerous by what they wear. A leather jacket or colored contact lenses might make a person doable, but it doesn’t make him dangerous. The same can be said for a suit. You just can’t tell what a cornered person will do by the cut of his gib. Actually, liking the cut of someone’s gib is a nautical reference, but doesn’t it seem like it should refer to haberdashery?

In March of 2003 I wrote an opening editorial for the late lamented Swag magazine project. The editorial was about how a lot of freaks internalize the negativity the larger society has for them. It was about how punk was supposed to promise the allure of a classless society. It was about how we shouldn’t hammer ourselves down because we deserve the rewards of the larger society, at least as much as anyone. The mere existence of this editorial is ironic in so many ways. I have no idea how many people read this the first time around, though, so I’d like to share it online now.

You should also definitely read the piece on Swag, by my old school, zine explosion compatriot Scott Hefflon, which ran first in Lollipop in print, and is now reprinted on Lollipop online. Part of what Scott had to say about the content Forrest Black and I and our pals created was, “It’s really surprising how rarely you find something unique in these “alternative” times. So many things still tow the line, the line is just called something else . . . So yeah, on the surface, Swag could look like a Gothic fashion mag. Lots of scantily-clad vixens, most of them models for one of the sites under the Blue Blood umbrella, but seeing as Amelia G and Forrest Black are top-notch Goth/fetish photographers and have great taste in hotties as well as the few bits of clothing the models wear, that’s far from a bad thing . . . What makes Swag cool is what doesn’t become clear right at first. Style . . . It was fun, I learned a couple things, and there was no nostagia back-in-my-day shit or mindless bashing of how everything sucks now and everyone’s a sell-out. No, it was well-researched bashing – funny, but not hatefully hipster ironic – and it read like something I’d write, or something one of my friends’d write. I wanna buy the writer a drink and see what they say next. That’s good writing, right? Hell, I even read Amelia G’s one-pager about buying a fuckin’ car. Sure, I know she can write and all, but who the hell care what car she bought and why and what it means to her? By the end of her story, I did. Who knew? It was a little tough to read cuz the text was one column across the entire page, but I read the whole thing, liked it, and I wanna buy Amelia G a drink to see what else she has to say. (OK, maybe I just wanna get her drunk. Heh.) . . . All in all, a damn fine publication, and one quite unlike anything else out there. And it’s got layers, baby, cuz these are not stupid fuckin’ posers spouting hipster slogans, parroting some review they just read and passing it off as their own wit. There’s eye candy, there’s smart, attitude-laced editorial (without being needlessly vicious), and there’s coverage of topics you didn’t know you were interested in until you found yourself absorbed in the piece.” Go to Lollipop and check out the whole feature on Swag there.

And now for the promised editorial:

I admit that sometimes I get discouraged with my subculture lifestyle. I think to myself that I started down this path by choice and maybe it is not too late to change direction. I think that, now that I have finally paid off my student loans and gotten my brain out of hock, maybe I should go back to school. Maybe business school could beat the importance of money into my head. Maybe I should become an attorney like my father. Maybe, at a bare minimum, I should steer my photography and writing towards more mainstream subjects.

There are a variety of things which will make me spin out into the headspace where I think such things. Inconsistent friends pretty much top the list. We’ve all known people who were our friends one day and the next they were blabbing our confidences or talking trash and then the next day they thought they could just be pals again. I’m not talking about plastic Los Angeles fair weather friends. Those are honest in their fashion and all you have to do to keep them pleasant is to keep doing well. I’m talking about alterna-identified people who have such deep-seated unhappiness about where they are at that they strike out at those closest to them because they just feel upset and are sure it must be somebody else’s fault. One of my pet peeves is cool counterculture girls who get to a certain age and start obsessing on how classy they are.

I became the sort of person I am today partly because my parents raised me to be without prejudice of class, color, or religion. On the face of it, one might think that bringing a child up to be genuinely colorblind was a very virtuous act. I believe it was. Of course those are the values I was brought up with, so I am biased. But it certainly contributes to my sense of alienation because some of the artificial things that other people use to identify supposedly kindred spirits just don’t apply for me.

One of the things which first attracted me to the counterculture was the lack of class boundaries. It was up to the individual what impression to make. You could be cool whether your parents were rich or poor, educated or illiterate, prominent in the community or living in another country. The lack of boundaries also meant a rich cross-pollination of ideas because everyone had a different background and there was not a this-is-the-way-it-has-always-been mentality.

Okay, over time, I have realized that there is one hidebound idea which really bothers me but which is endemic to subcultures. There is the notion that freaks should not be successful. This self-defeating sentiment can be found throughout most of the counterculture, whatever the specific affiliation of the people involved might be – Gothic, punk, deathrock, rockabilly, fetish, hippie, altrock, etc. No matter what I believe intellectually, my inner punk rocker believes that, on some level, success equals oppression. No matter how hard you work for it. On some level, like any minority, I have internalized the prejudice of the mainstream. I’ve been told that my weird hair and my perceived sexuality and my leather jacket all mean I do not deserve to be successful.

Well, the point here is to tell my inner punk rocker that there are rewards for being cool. Being able to express yourself with your appearance and being able to enjoy unique cool stuff are important rewards for taking the road less traveled.

And I deserve those rewards. And so do you.

Andy Laplegua is a busy man. In the past year alone he has released three full length albums. Icon of Coil, his most popular band in the US, did Machines Are Us, Combichrist, a noisier EBM project, did The Joy of Guns, and Panzer AG did This Is My Battlefield, a darker, more goth/industrial album. Andy Laplegua is the frontman of Icon of Coil, but Combichrist, and Panzer AG are his solo projects.

He has produced a track for Apoptygma Berzerk, and done numerous remixes for bands such as VNV nation, Funker Vogt, Apoptygma Berzerk, Hocico, De/Vision, Mesh, and just about any other electro project you can think of.

I caught up with him after a Combichrist show at Das Bunker in Los Angeles. He was still covered in blood from a photo shoot with Amelia and Forrest earlier in the day. Heres how it went.

Kellie: Great show. Nice fake blood by the way.

Andy: [laughs] Thanks.

You usually wear latex on stage. Are you into the fetish scene, or just the fashion?

I’m not so much into the fashion itself, I love the look and feel of it. I am very much into the fetish scene. I love rubber.

What other fashion do you like to wear?

House of Harlot, Skintwo, Marquis, Cyberdog, DSL, Lipservice. And anything else I see that I like.

What are you drinking?

Jack Daniels.

Straight?

On ice.

I see you have a Johnny Cash tattoo.

I got this tattoo by a great artist named Deacon at Holy Mother Tattoo in Atlanta, Georgia. He actually did this whole half sleeve. It’s a tribute to Johnny Cash, when he died. He is one of the most important artists to me, the whole reason to do music. The way he was a story teller, a great inspiration to all artists. Always the man for the little man. Always true to what he did.

What other music do you listen to at home?

I listen to a lot of cock rock, and real industrial. Not the shit that’s mostly played in this scene. Everybody seems to copy each other in this scene. I go out of this scene to find inspiration. Turbonegro, Manowar, Nitzer Ebb, Klinic, Backyard Babies. You know, they play Backyard Babies at the Kentucky Fried Chicken here in Germany.

KFC huh? You live in Germany now, right?

Yes. Everyone I am working with and everyone I want to work with is in Germany. I’m closer here than anywhere else in Europe. It’s a music metro. And Hamburg has got a great red-light district. You can do what the fuck you want, and no one will bother you.

You’re from Norway though. Do you know the guys from Zeromancer, or Apoptygma Berzerk?

Sure, they are all good friends of mine. We all started making music at the same time, going in total different directions. But ironically enough, we all ended up in the same scene. Being quite successful.

So, all you rock stars hang out together regularly?

We hang out as often as we can, we have an unbelievable time together. I hang out with Ronan from VNV Nation, Eric from Catastrophe Ballet, and Bjoern from Fortification 55, mostly, since we all live near each other. But when we go out, it’s everyone together. Suicide Commando, Dimmu Borgier, Mayhem, Hocico. Good times.

What are your immediate plans for the future?

A new Icon of Coil single is coming out. A new Combichrist EP is coming out in October, the same time I’ll be doing my Icon Of Coil US tour. The new Combichrist album should be out by January. I will be playing a lot of festivals this summer. WGT, Mera Luna, Industrial for the Masses, Infest, Summer Darkness.

You’ve got a very sexy accent. What languages do you speak?

Norwegian, Swedish, English. My German is Okay.

Say something hot to me in Norwegian.

Noe Varmt paa norsk.

What does that mean?

[laughs] I could show you.

And last, besides anyone here, who is your favorite Gothic Slut?

Hmmm…what’s the girls name with the blonde dreads and the tattoos from her arms to her legs?

Voltaire.

Yes, yes. Shes hot. They’re all hot. You want to introduce me to some? Then maybe I can give you a better answer. [laughs] I’d love to see more of the
Rubber Dollies site. I’ve only gotten to see what comes out in Marquis every month.

Thank you for the interview, the show was great. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. I look forward to seeing you live again.

No problem, thanks to you too.