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« on: August 21, 2007, 06:17:49 AM »
Peter Laughner, who played guitar in two of my favourite Cleveland bands Rocket From The Tombs and Pere Ubu, who also jammed with Television and wrote some killer obnoxious punk rants for Creem and other such high quality publications, died 30 years ago. Today while reading a back issue of BACK DOOR MAN w/ a Dead Boys i/v I came across this that I thought I'd share with you in his memory.
PH: Phast Phreddie, interviewer
CH: Cheetah Chrome, motherfucker
ST: Stiv Bators, retard
CH: There's a pretty good chance that we may do a song that Peter Laughner [who was also in RFTT, wrote for Creem and passed away this last summer] wrote that was a Rocket from the Tombs song, that will go on the next album. It's called "Ain't It Fun."
ST: Best part is that it all came true. Everything he wrote in it applied to his life later. Like "Ain't it fun when you're always on the run/ Ain't it fun when you gotta buy a gun." 'Cause he used to carry a gun all the time. The last words in the chorus are "Ain't it fun when you know you're gonna die young."
CH: Peter had these lyrics and he and I wrote the song in just about five minutes.
ST: Ya know what's weird? About two weeks after he died we played somewhere. That was a night a huge fight broke out where Johnny bashed a kid's face open. Some kid came up to me and says "I thought that the other kid was gonna get into the fight, too." I said, "What kid?" He says, "The kid you threw off stage at the Punk Benefit, meaning Peter. I figured the guy just thought he saw someone who looked like him. Stella, Peter's wife, told me once that Peter ain't really dead. That he's probably off having a good time somewhere like Toronto or New York. When we played Toronto another really violent fight broke out. Michael, our roadie, said that when he went through the crowd he went past somebody and he thought it was Laughner. He was gonna say something to him, but he didn't. Then he remembered: hey, he's dead. So he turned around and he couldn't find him. He went all through the crowd looking for him.
CH: He swears to God that he saw him.
ST: So both times at the most violent fights we've had so far, Peter was there.
PH: That's bizarre.
ST: He wanted to join us, too. I remember one time he wanted to join the band. He told me, "Aw, c'mon, I wanna be a Dead Boy."