The Gun Club

The Gun Club’s Jeffrey Lee Pierce sounded like a singer haunted by ghosts. You can hear it in the cries and moans punctuating the band’s three most influential albums: their 1981 debut, Fire of Love; 1982’s noir-informed Miami; and 1984’s The Las Vegas Story. Formed in 1979 by Pierce and guitarist Kid Congo Powers (born Brian Tristan), The Gun Club belonged to a cluster of L.A. bands, including The Blasters and The Flesh Eaters, who filtered American roots music through punk rock. For Pierce, a Robert Johnson fanatic, this meant channeling the spiritual dread of pre-war Delta blues, a quality that helped make their live shows feel more like acts of possession. Toward the end of the ’80s, The Gun Club adopted a beefier alt-rock sound still faithful to the desperation and eroticism of their early work. Pierce’s health was in decline, however, and in 1996, three years after the release of their final album, Lucky Jim, he died from a cerebral hemorrhage at age 37. Never commercially successful, The Gun Club are now punk-blues legends whose long list of descendents include The White Stripes, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, and Mark Lanegan.