don’t let the sun blast your shadow
darby crash death tour

Rudy is a huge fan of The Germs. Honestly, I didn’t know much about them before meeting Rudy, and I’m not much into punk music. But I think the story of Darby Crash is a fascinating one, and that he’s an important figure in gay history who is often overlooked. Rudy works at a video store in Silver Lake, where one of his customers is “noted fashion photographer” Mark Segal. Mark is making a spread based on the life of Darby Crash, so Rudy invited him over last week to watch his bootleg copies of The Decline of Western Civilization and The Germs playing live at The Whisky. Yesterday I had the day off, after defecting from the production of Bratz: The Movie– a story I’ll get to as soon as I’ve recovered my senses– so I was happy to join Rudy and Mark as they visited the site of Darby’s death and his grave.

Mark’s Silver Lake pad. It’s very professional photographer-y.
This is the back house where Darby Crash killed himself with a lethal dose of heroin. Any publicity he may have hoped for in this rock n’ roll suicide was squandered– the next day, Mark Chapman killed John Lennon in New York.

We kind of slipped into this backyard when no one was home. The people who live there now are Hasidic Jews.

The cemetery where Darby is buried is a Catholic pasture south of the 10 freeway in Culver City. There aren’t any above-ground gravestones or elaborate statues like at Hollywood Forever.

On the drive over, we passed through some endless oil fields, with their sad, symmetrical nodding donkeys at work. Someone said, “What if he’s just buried out in these oil fields?” and I couldn’t stop thinking about fossil fuels.

Los Angeles, Photo | posted on February 16, 2007 at 5:35 pm

  • grave robbers, man. rock and roll bones are rolling stones; you can bet darby’s hanging with jim morrison somewhere in a basement and you know what, they don’t mind all those pentagrams.

    Posted by neil on February 19th, 2007 at 2:26 am

  • Dude, I was wondering about those piles of bones in Sabrina Simonton’s basement ;)

    Posted by grahamko on February 19th, 2007 at 11:15 am

  • I’ve been obsessed with Darby Crash for some time now. They were making a movie about him staring that guy from that Mandy Moore movie. Shane West, that’s his name. I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’m also not sure if the picture ever got finished or found distribution. Can you shed any light on this subject?

    “A social blast,”
    Carla

    Posted by Carla on February 21st, 2007 at 1:08 am

  • Yeah, it’s supposed to come out this summer. It’s co-written by the chick in the kitchen with Darby in that youtube video I posted, but who knows how good it will be… it’s kind of weird that last summer Shane West toured with the three remaining Germs in Darby Crash drag. They played at Warped Tour, even.

    Posted by grahamko on February 21st, 2007 at 9:23 am

  • I had the privilege of seeing “The Germs” perform at Warped in Pomona, it was a bit odd seeing Shane West pretending to be Darby especially midway through the set when he smashed a prop beer bottle on his head in true Darby fashion, and I met the three remaining members later on that day I think I showed you and Rudy the pictures the next day. Im pretty envious of you right now, Ive never had the oportunity to vist Darby’s grave let alone the place of his suicide.

    Posted by mark aka rudys nephew on February 21st, 2007 at 3:53 pm

  • He even had dental work done so he looked more like darby and actually got real tattoos to match. so that is kind of impressive.

    Posted by Carla on February 22nd, 2007 at 4:15 pm

  • ohhhh if only i really did have darby crash and jim morrison in my basement

    Posted by sabrina on March 7th, 2007 at 6:56 pm

  • This day was so fun and crazy..thanks for coming

    Posted by rudy on April 5th, 2007 at 12:04 pm