Pod Insights DISGRACELAND Wendy O. Williams: The Shocking Final Act of a Shock Rock Provocateur About this episode This is the story of one of the most extreme shock rockers in music history. On stage, Wendy O. Williams would smash TV sets with a sledgehammer, chainsaw electric guitars in half, and blow up Cadillacs. Her reputation for chaos, violence, and sexual provocation was so extreme that it led to a brutal assault by police officers in Milwaukee. But what happened to such a fearless, uncompromising artist that she would take her own life? Listen to hear this unbelievable and tragic story.
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0:01 Speaker 00 This is exactly right.
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2:20 Speaker 04 This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.
2:28 Jake Brennan? Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis.
2:43 Jake Brennan? The story of Wendy O. Williams is shocking. She was a sex show dominatrix turned rock and roll frontwoman who blew up Cadillacs onstage. She also smashed TV sets with a sledgehammer and cut guitars in half with a chainsaw. And she did so with nothing but electrical tape or shaving cream covering her bare breasts. Her stage show was so violent and so sexual that she was banned from clubs and blacklisted by promoters. In one city, she was beaten so badly by local police that she suffered a broken nose in a concussion. Like our best rock and roll outlaws, Wendy O. Williams was provocative to her core,
3:26 Jake Brennan? as provocative as they come, actually. Although I'm not sure I can go as far as to say that she made great music. Did she? Did she not? I don't know. But I do know that the music at the top of the show here, that was not great music. That was a preset loop from a Mellotron called Times Square Titillation MK1. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to "All My Life" by KC and JoJo. And why would I play you that specific slice of Jodas-y adjacent cheese? Could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on April 6, 1998. And that was the day that Wendy O. Williams's life came to a tragic end in the woods of
4:11 Jake Brennan? a small Connecticut town, worlds away from the urban mayhem that defined her career for so long. On this episode, exploding Cadillacs, sledgehammers, chainsaws, sex, violence, rock and roll, and Wendy O. Williams. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.
5:06 Jake Brennan? From a young age, Wendy Orlean Williams knew that her life would be an uphill battle. Because the life that she wanted to live was, by definition, a resistance. She felt no obligation to be polite or to playkey, nor did she desire to be pacified as a mindless consumer. Her life was a life of revolt. But Webster, New York, the town outside Rochester where she grew up, was built to quell uprisings of the mind, the body, and spirit. A non-conformist like Wendy had the odds stacked against her from the jump. And the battle that she would fight for her entire life began where many battles begin: at home.
5:53 Jake Brennan? Mitch Ryder's voice screamed through the turntable's lone speaker, loud and distorted. It was as inspiring and life-affirming as the rest of the house was dull. And before you could say, "Fii fi fi fi fo fo fum", this small bedroom in sleepy upstate New York had been transformed into a gritty street scene. Mitch Ryder's Detroit wheels were turning fast and loose, kicking up dirt, coughing up smoke, splattering the canvas of post-war America with a lust for life. And 16-year-old Wendy O'Williams was throwing herself around the room, singing along into a hairbrush. She may have been physically here, in her family home,
6:36 Jake Brennan? but in her mind, she was somewhere else. A place where you weren't told what to think, or what to do, or what to buy. A place where you weren't defined by your automobile, or your television set, or even by the clothes you wore. The only problem was, that place was temporary, at least for now.
6:57 Jake Brennan? The devil with a blue dress 45 was only halfway done when the door to her bedroom suddenly flung open. Big, rumbling footsteps announced the arrival of Wendy's father. He stormed across the room to the turntable, and he tore the needle from the record. He ripped the record off the platter, and with his hands firmly gripping the 45 on either side, he snapped it in half. Imagine that. Imagine you're just chilling in your bedroom back in the 90s or whenever, early 2000s, and you're staring up at your Cranberries poster on the wall, or playing Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville on your stereo, whatever it is. Maybe you had a Depeche Mode poster. Maybe you're listening to Nine Inch Nails' Downward Spiral at high volume, whatever it was.
7:42 Jake Brennan? Imagine that your dad, or your mom, breaks down your door, tears the poster off your wall, rips the CD from your CD player, forbids you from listening to your music in their house, forbids you from doing the kinds of things a teenager is supposed to do, which is, in a word, to rebel. Wendy O'Williams may not have equated listening to Mitch Ryder in the mid-1960s with rebellion, and she simply may have just liked the raw sounds of the rock and roll song more than the dulcet tones of another Mitch, Mitch Miller, or whoever the hell her parents were into. Regardless, it was an early indicator that Wendy O'Williams was different, just like
8:23 Jake Brennan? another incident a year prior, when she was arrested in town for sunbathing in the nude. The goal of the arresting officer, like her father's goal, had been to shame her, to put her in a box, just like everyone else. But it didn't work. The shame, the arrests, the broken record, even the prescription drugs that her parents tried to get her to take, nothing could silence Wendy's opposing force. Because there was no other choice. That was a reality that Wendy now made crystal clear. I'd rather be dead than be zombified in the world you're living in. This is what Wendy allegedly told her parents right before she left home. At just 16, she was a runaway, a nomad, determined never to look back.
9:13 Jake Brennan? She hitched a ride out west, landing in Colorado and then south to Florida. She traveled abroad to Europe, finding work as a bartender and a dancer. She bounced around like this for years. And in her downtime, she combed the pages of Timothy Leary's The Psychedelic Experience, as well as books on tantric yoga and any and all transmissions from the fringes of so-called normal society. But life as a non-conformist had its struggles. For one, it didn't pay enough. So Wendy stole. She used counterfeit money. And when she was caught, arrested, given a slap on the wrist and released, the authorities sent her packing back home to the United States.
9:57 Jake Brennan? Just another child lost, looking for people like her. The freaks out there willfully violating cultural taboos. The artists and eccentrics. Truly authentic and truly transgressive types.
10:11 Jake Brennan? In 1976, at 27 years old, Wendy O. Williams landed in New York City, when Times Square was about as authentic and transgressive as it got. Boston had the Combat Zone, and New York City had Times Square. A spot for drugs, sex, and all other manner of illicit activity too shocking and depraved for polite society. Here was ground zero for prostitutes and pimps. Here were peep shows, derelicts, and dealers. And here was where Wendy O. Williams met the man who would change her life forever. Captain Kink.
10:55 Jake Brennan? In the bowels of a rundown burlesque hall, where the neon lights guide the way to the throbbing sights and sounds of urban titillation. It's Captain Kink's Sex Fantasy Theater. Watch as Captain Kink and his troupe of fearless performers save the day by making your deepest, most hardcore fantasies come to life. There, running down Broadway, ducking inside a crumbling theater with sticky floors and even stickier seats, is a Bird. It's a plane. It's Captain Kink.
11:27 Jake Brennan? I shit you not. Captain Kink was the dude's name. Captain Kink was the gnome de smut of Rod Swenson. A Yale graduate who told the establishment that they could stick their master's of fine arts degree up their tight disapproving ass and then went and put his education to use on the mean streets of 1970s Times Square. It was Rod, aka Captain Kink, who had the last laugh, however, and by 1976, he was laughing all the way to the bank. Captain Kink's Sex Fantasy Theater, a live show in which performers staged absurd comic vignettes that included scenes of live sex, became a local sensation.
12:09 Jake Brennan? In the rundown theater that Rod rented, it seated 150, and soon he was selling out all 150 seats. Five shows a day, seven days a week. It's a lot of kink. Now, true to his production's name, Rod did all this by exploiting other people's fantasies and their kinks. And when it comes to kinks, you know, it takes all kinds. Some people like to be humiliated. Some like to do the humiliating. Some like pain. Some like feet. Some like simple pleasures, like butter in their ass and lollipops in their mouth. I don't know, man. And there's also grown men who like to pretend that they're babies. I'm serious. Zeph, who works here at Double Elvis, used to own a retail store that sold, among other things, baby stuff. Long story.
12:54 Jake Brennan? And he told me once about these dudes who would call and get a female employee on the line and ask, "Do you have cloth diapers?" And when the female employee replied, "Yes, they did," the man would ask for details like, "What materials are they made of?" And, "How much liquid do the diapers hold?" And, "What about diaper creams? Can you describe how you would apply those?" So, I'm not kidding. Zeph told all of this to me. Anyways, I'm digressing big time here. Anyhow, just to finish this story, after being told by the employee how to apply said creams and how much liquid a diaper could hold, and even more detailed instructions on cleaning soiled diapers, I know gross, and after having done all this while simultaneously giving the false impression that they were placing a huge phone order in the neighborhood
13:39 Jake Brennan? of $2,000 or $3,000, the dude with the kink about shitting their pants or whatever would suddenly get off of his kink and then the call would just abruptly end.
13:50 Jake Brennan? Anyways, kinks, they come in all kinds. That's what I'm saying. And back in the seventies, you could get off on this, or particularly any other type of kink, for a price over in Lower Manhattan at another experimental theater group called The Project. But at Captain Kink's, there was no pretending you're a baby type of stuff. There was just the newly arrived Wendy O. Williams, who had joined Captain Kink's cast as the troupe's resident dominatrix.
14:22 Jake Brennan? She was blonde, she was hot, and she got off on getting other people off. And she got off knowing that what she did pissed other people off as well. And when people pissed her off, when some paying customer decided to put his hands on her, she got off of the pain that she was able to dole out on them, being a true dominatrix and all. Her clenched fist meeting the saddle-shaped area of some macho fucko's nose, the nasal root, as it were, hearing the bone or the cartilage or whatever was in there crackle and splinter and collapse and watching the blood spurt and then trickle down. Macho fucko hears quivering lip. Well, that intoxicating mix of sex and violence, it helped boost Wendy O. Williams's notoriety.
15:06 Jake Brennan? And the more her notoriety grew, the more she irritated the status quo, which is, well, that's what really made her happy. And when the looming Democratic Convention in 1976 put pressure on the New York Police Department to clean up the streets, an anti-Vice campaign resulted in Wendy being arrested eight times in a 12-week period. But she didn't care if she was handcuffed and hauled off to a holding cell, because it was validation that what she was doing was working. She was getting under people's skin. But still, Rod Swenson, aka Captain Kink, could see the writing on the wall. It was only a matter of time before their show would be shut down for good,
15:49 Jake Brennan? before Times Square went from the combat zone to Disneyland. So Rod and Wendy needed a more legitimate business venture through which they could continue to kick against the pricks, so to speak. And they only had to look down the road to know what that would be. In the Bowery, punk rock was taking shape at CBGB's. But what came next would have made Wendy's Mitch Ryder-loving 16-year-old self proud because she was about to become the singer in a band. But not just any band, a band that would push punk and rock and roll to a new extreme of violence and sexuality. A band that would become, by definition, the Resistance.
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17:25 Speaker 06 Hello, hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with IBM's Ana Paula Acees about what digital sovereignty actually means in the age of AI.
17:36 Speaker 03 AI now moves from somebody operating a system to the technology actually making decisions. So you have to have a much better visibility of what AI is touching, data it is accessing, and where.
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17:56 Speaker 00 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories From real people like Daniel.
18:10 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant. So I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
18:21 Speaker 00 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone. One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies. So join us and hear their stories and more. Because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.
18:57 Jake Brennan? These days, Pier 62 on the Hudson River in New York City is the site of a skate park, a carousel, and a lush entry garden designed by one of the city's preeminent public garden designers, Lyndon Miller. In other words, that is, if New York's tourism agency is to be believed, it's a family-friendly space. But back on September 12th, 1980, Pier 62 was the site of chaos, violence, and near-total destruction. Let me set the scene. Along the edge of the pier, a makeshift concert stage, five feet high and built out of plywood. Screaming fans crowd the perimeter and watch from the rooftops of nearby buildings as a helicopter touches down.
19:40 Jake Brennan? Inside the helicopter are the members of one of the hottest punk bands in town at the moment, The Plasmatics. One by one, The Plasmatics emerge in their typical eye-catching attire. The guitarist Richie Stotts wears a white French maid's outfit with a white tutu to match. His mohawk is inspired by Travis Bickle, who, four years later, still haunts the filth and the scum of this city. Another guitarist, Wes Beach, is dressed in a tuxedo with fat streaks of eye black drawn across his cheeks, like a linebacker ready to eat shit on the gridiron. No one in the crowd knows that the instruments that they're about to play are cheap and disposable, the kind that are made to be destroyed. Nor does anyone watching know that sitting just beneath the stage are giant
20:25 Jake Brennan? oil drums cut in half and filled to the brim with gasoline, waiting for a spark. The band plays hard and fast. They're like the Ramones on speed, if you can imagine that. After a few songs, their lead singer, Wendy O. Williams, her blond hair highlighted with streaks of shocking pink, puts on a motorcycle helmet and runs offstage to an idling Cadillac, with its driver's side door ripped off. She slips behind the wheel and feels the engine purring. She puts it in gear. The crowd roars. The Cadillac surges forward, approaching a plywood ramp that leads up to the stage. The caddy gets closer, and Wendy's bandmates
21:06 Jake Brennan? are scattering now. She sinks her foot into the gas pedal, even closer, and...now! She bails from the caddy, and as her body hits the pier, the car races up the ramp, just as the fuse is lit and the oil drums filled with gasoline explode. The Cadillac soars into the air, passing through a giant fireball that is now engulfing the stage and all of the band's instruments. And when it lands, it does so with a thunderous crash, right into the Hudson River.
21:42 Jake Brennan? One year prior, in 1979, at the Palladium on 14th Street, the Plasmatics blew up a Cadillac onstage for the first time. It nearly killed Wendy O. Williams. What happened was, they didn't think to tie down the hood, so when the charges went off, there was the expected explosion, the fire and the smoke. But then, the caddy's hood just rocketed into the air, and it landed with a thud, right next to where Wendy stood. But being nearly flattened by the smoldering hood of a Cadillac car, it didn't frighten Wendy, none in the least. She and the man formerly known as Captain Kink, Rod Swenson, had designed the Plasmatics to be as extreme and as provocative as possible.
22:25 Jake Brennan? This wasn't Keith Moon driving a Rolls Royce into a pool. This was blowing up caddies and Mercedes Benz's and Mustangs and Chevy Novas. This was smashing TV sets with a sledgehammer. This was slicing a Les Paul in half with a chainsaw. This was shooting down a lighting rig with a sawed-off shotgun. Actually, there were blanks in the shotgun and the lighting rig was rigged to fall on cue, but still, you get the point. And nevertheless, Wendy did all these things live onstage, night after night, taking great pleasure in destroying objects that indicated one's social or economic status. Well, actually, the Les Pauls, they weren't real Les Pauls.
23:06 Jake Brennan? They were like cheap knockoff models painted to look like Les Pauls, which was the point. Fuck your expensive guitar and your materialism. Kill your television. Blow up your fancy automobile. The Plasmatics, led by the sexually provocative Wendy O'Williams, who often took the stage in little more than a pair of skin-tight leather pants and pieces of electrical tape over her nipples, and who simulated sex acts with a sledgehammer, thus blurring the line between sex and violence. The Plasmatics were truly a non-conforming, anti-commercial, anti-capitalist force.
23:44 Jake Brennan? And there are plenty of bands out there who claim to be on a similar trip. Take a band I happen to like a lot, The Strokes, for instance. It's great to see The Strokes out there, melting faces at Coachella and using their platform to hard-sell a politically-charged message of non-conformity. But if I want to go buy a ticket to see The Strokes, it's going to cost me about 500 bucks, and that's before the fees. How is that non-commercial? How is that anti-anything? Give me a fucking break. I love The Strokes, and I don't mean to pick on them, but like the majority of the mainstream bands out there right now, they're simply cosplaying as non-conformists. And look, I'm complicit in this too. I'm a hypocrite, just like the rest. I like anti-conformity, but I also like the comforts
24:28 Jake Brennan? of having my podcast be distributed by a major media network, okay? I'm not gonna, you know, I get it. My point isn't that I'm- My point is that Wendy O'Williams and the Plasmatics actually were the real deal. They were arguably the most non-conforming group of the entire New York City punk movement of the late 1970s, and that is saying something, okay? While plenty of ink has been spilled over the years about the Ramones and television and Blondie and Patti Smith, including here on this podcast, the Plasmatics get bupkis when it comes to props in the history books. And this was a band that was selling out CBGBs on the regular. And when they outgrew CBs, they started selling out Irving Plaza and the Palladium. Even more impressive, they did all this without a record contract.
25:13 Jake Brennan? Because as popular as they were, and although people were lining up for blocks to get into their shows, no record label would touch them. They were just too dangerous, they were too provocative, they were too violent, too sexually explicit, and they did things on stage that were illegal in at least half of the music venues in the country. But it was outside the country where Wendy O'Williams and the Plasmatics would eventually find support. In October 1980, one month after the Pier 62 stunt, the band released their debut album, New Hope for the Wretched, on Stiff Records in the UK. Now, Stiff was co-owned by a like-minded musical provocateur named Jake Riviera. Jake Riviera was a guy who told a singer-songwriter named Declan Patrick Aloysius McManus to
25:58 Jake Brennan? change his name to Elvis Costello. And the entire reason he did this was because Elvis Elvis Elvis Presley, that is, had just died at the time. And announcing oneself as Elvis at that particular moment in time was not only bad taste, but it pissed off a whole bunch of people. And that, this is kind of the point. Jake Riviera, like Wendy O'Williams, was in the pissing people off business. Now, this record, New Hope for the Wretched, it really pissed people off. David Frick gave it a one-star review in Rolling Stone magazine at the time, calling Wendy "a miserable singer who is all but drowned out by the moronic ba-ma-lama of the band." Is that a word? I love that word, ba-ma-lama.
26:41 Jake Brennan? I gotta say, David Frick here, he wasn't wrong. The allure of The Plasmatics and of Wendy O'Williams has never really been about the music. It's about the spectacle. It's about the shock, which was exactly Wendy's intention. She was using her music, her art, to provoke, to prod, to make comfortable people uncomfortable, which was the exact same thing she had done to her father with that Mitch Ryder 45 all those years ago. Now, it was just being done on a much larger scale, and that scale was then magnified at the start of 1981, when The Plasmatics appeared on an episode of the TV show Fridays, which aired on the ABC Network. Now, part
27:22 Jake Brennan? of Wendy's notoriety was her past history as a performer in a Times Square sex show. Her manager, Rod Swenson, aka Captain Kink, was not seen as an industrious Brian Epstein type of manager. He was becoming known at this time as Wendy's porn Svendali. Remember that this was the early 80s. This was right as the vilification of rock and roll, as a pornographic and/or satanic vice was reaching its apex just a few years from Tipper Gore and the Parents Resource Music Center and all that. This was the climate in which Wendy and The Plasmatics made their national television debut. This was the climate in which Wendy stripped down to her bra, covered herself in whipped cream, and suggestively thrust
28:07 Jake Brennan? a Toro chainsaw through a splintering Les Paul. To the easily offended, to the pearl-clutching consumer types, to the middle-of-the-road normies, Wendy O'Williams was their worst nightmare. Savage and depraved, right there on their television sets. And they were her target audience. But just as she had targeted them, soon, they would target her, and deliver a response that was even more shocking and more violent than what a Wendy's notorious stage shows could ever be.
28:47 Speaker 03 We'll be right back after this.
28:49 Speaker 04 Word, word, word.
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29:24 Speaker 06 I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I spoke with Dr. Laura Jayhai of Cleveland Clinic about how advanced computing is helping shorten the path from medical discovery to treatment. The moment that there is a compound that someone in a lab thinks it would be effective to treat a certain disease, it takes about 10 to 13 years from that moment to when that drug is on a shelf for a patient. A big part of that gap could be computationally solved. Better simulation of compounds, designing drug trials that are more efficient, that would finish faster. That was the motivation to bring computational tools
30:08 Speaker 06 and technology closer to biomedical researchers. Learn more about how Cleveland Clinic and IBM are using AI and quantum computing to revolutionize biomedical research at ibm.com/smarttalks.
30:24 Speaker 00 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
30:39 Speaker 07 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
30:50 Speaker 00 And while there are challenges, there are moments that Remind you, you're not alone.
30:55 Speaker 01 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
31:01 Speaker 00 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat, it's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
31:25 Jake Brennan? January 18th, 1981, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
31:30 Jake Brennan? Rod Swenson leaned against the bar of the Palms nightclub and counted the money in his hand. Not bad for a sold out show, but not great either. For any other touring band, the take would be great, because any other touring band didn't have the overhead that the Plasmatics had. The TV sets, the Les Paul knockoffs, the Cadillacs, these things cost money, a lot of money. You might as well just set your money on fire, seeing that these things all eventually got destroyed, but then that wouldn't be a Plasmatics show. And even here in Cheese Town, USA, far from home, that's what the paying customers were expecting. That said, ordinances vary from city to city. So while one outrageous element
32:14 Jake Brennan? of Wendy's act was allowed in some places, in others, it was prohibited. Tonight, for example, here in Milwaukee, Wendy had been forbidden from wearing the customary strips of electrical tape across her nipples. So instead, she covered her bare breasts with shaving cream. And while there would be no exploding Cadillac on the stage of the Palms, the crowd did get to witness Wendy's handiwork with a sledgehammer, which she stroked provocatively before using it to bash a TV set to pieces. Now, the show was over, and her work here was done. And it was time to get into the van and drive to the next town.
32:53 Jake Brennan? Wendy hollered to Rod that she'd see him outside, and then she walked out the club's front door, into the parking lot, where she was surprised to find, waiting for her, the cops. At least half a dozen plainclothes Milwaukee detectives. They leered at her, they taunted her, they stared at her with contempt and disgust. And they did so while informing her that she was under arrest for jerking off her sledgehammer during the show. That could have been it. They could have put her in a police cruiser, or a paddy wagon, or whatever, taken her downtown and booked her. And she wouldn't even talk shit about the titty bar directly across the street that she assumed at least a few of them frequented during after hours.
33:36 Jake Brennan? But first, one of these plainclothes cops slipped his hand under her shirt and grabbed at her breasts. And then another cop began to faunal her ass. Wendy pushed the cops away, and then she cocked her arm and threw a punch and caught one of them right in the jaw. Which of course, was exactly what they were hoping she would do. When the fist hits the woman's face, the knuckle rips into the cheek, just above the third molar. And as the blood spurts from inside the woman's mouth, it does so at a 45-degree angle, splattering onto the freshly fallen white snow. And when the billy club strikes the woman's nose, the bone fractures and more blood gushes out. And her body, thrown off its axis,
34:20 Jake Brennan? spins around one-half revolution before crashing to the ground. The size 12 men's shoes slam into her stomach and her ribs, like mechanized pistons firing. And the bile sizzles there in the back of her throat. Her diaphragm muscle spasms, and her lungs cease all expanding and contracting. The cop's knees come down on her back, holding her in place. And her bruised and bloody cheek goes numb against the snow and ice. And as the frigid air slowly returns to her lungs and she begins to breathe again, she feels the steel jaws of handcuffs snap tight around her wrists.
35:02 Jake Brennan? By the time Rod Swenson made it outside the Palms nightclub, Wendy was in the middle of a vicious attack at the hands of seven Milwaukee police officers. And when he tried to come to her aid, the cops then turned their attention to Rod, beating him so badly that he lost consciousness. Wendy suffered a broken nose, a concussion, and two black eyes. She was charged not only with "conduct prohibited in a licensed premises", that's the dirty sledgehammer thing, but also with battery to police and resisting arrest. Wendy and Rod were eventually released on bail, but word travels fast. And just two nights later, after a show in Cleveland,
35:45 Jake Brennan? Wendy was arrested again on the same obscenity charge. But it was the Milwaukee charges that were the most concerning. Assaulting a cop was a felony. There was a distinct possibility that Wendy could do real time. Back in New York, benefit shows for her legal defense fund were held at Bonds International Casino in Times Square. Not only a stone's throw from where Captain Kink once held court, but the same venue where The Clash notoriously stuck at the ticket scalpers by staging an unprecedented run of shows. Incidentally, The Clash were playing those very shows in the summer of 81, at the exact same time that Wendy, Rod, and the rest of the band were sitting in a Milwaukee courtroom. So, while The Clash sang about fighting the law,
36:30 Jake Brennan? Wendy and the Plasmatics actually fought the law. Wendy pleaded her case, and she did so authentically. Not as the person that her lawyer or the judge wanted her to be. She was 100% herself, rocking this skunk hairdo and unruly black mohawk that was perched on top of bleached blonde sides. And she was convinced that the Milwaukee PD had a vendetta against her, even though she couldn't prove it. But it was her word against the word of the Milwaukee Police Department, who, by the way, claimed that the injuries Wendy had sustained were not the result of their brutality because she had slipped on the ice. And this straight-up falsehood was soon proven to be a party-line cover-up when it was revealed that a photographer had been on-site during the attack.
37:15 Jake Brennan? And the picture shown during the trial clearly documented the cops beating on Wendy. As a result, the charges were dropped. But Wendy then sued the Milwaukee Police Department for millions of dollars. But she, too, would lose in the end. And I'm not just talking about the lawsuit, which, to be clear, she did lose. But all this publicity, the dust-up with the cops, the arrests, the trial, the explosions and destruction and dangerous stunts, would eventually make things much harder for Wendy. Clubs would turn her away, promoters would refuse to work with her, the licensing board of Quincy, Massachusetts would suspend the operating license of a club where Wendy was
37:57 Jake Brennan? booked to perform solely to prevent her from doing so. Not that it dampened the spirit of Wendy O'Williams. Not yet, at least. She lived the life of resistance, which meant that she did not back down. She was a non-conformist, which meant that her actions and reactions did not align with those of the masses. The alternative would be to give in, to become "zombified," as she once told her parents. And to become zombified, well, that was tantamount to death. It was a subject that was never far from Wendy's mind. A few months earlier, days before the Pier 62 stunt, she had purchased the '72 Cadillac Coupe Deville that she intended to destroy.
38:40 Jake Brennan? The car's previous owner, when learning of Wendy's intentions, said, "I don't want my car to die." And Wendy's response was both simple and empathetic. "Everything must die," she said, "but your car will be immortalized."
39:19 Jake Brennan? Fair warning, guys. This is where the story of Wendy Williams, it starts to get really dark. I suppose the darkness was there all along, from the very beginning. A darkness deep inside of her that she tried to keep at bay, aggressively, loudly, and often violently. But to paraphrase the great Brian Wilson, Wendy just wasn't made for these times. Or rather, she wasn't made for this world. And when she was no longer able to revolt against that world in the only way that she knew how, that's when she became consumed with the belief that she had no other way out of that world. So let me just say, this is as hard for me to write about as it will be for you to hear about. But in order to understand where Wendy wound up,
40:04 Jake Brennan? not just emotionally and spiritually, but also geographically and socially, we've got to talk about what happened in the years following her multiple arrests, her beating by police officers, and the ensuing court cases. In 1982, Wendy and the Plasmatics released Coup d'Etat, their sole album on Capitol Records, believe it or not. And signing to Capitol was a triumph for a band that couldn't get 99% of record labels to give them the time of day just a few years prior. But the album was a commercial flop, and Wendy's controversial personality continued to preceder. Capitol quickly dropped the band. Enter fellow musical outlaws, Lemmy Kilmeister and his band, The Guys in Motorhead,
40:48 Jake Brennan? who were riding high on their latest album, the most excellent Ace of Spades, a big hit in their native UK. Pairing the Plasmatics and Motorhead seemed like a good idea on paper. But the resulting EP, which featured Wendy and Lemmy duetting on the country chestnut Stand By Your Man, was so poorly received that it caused Motorhead's guitarist, Fast Eddie, to quit the band. Next up, Gene Simmons of Kiss. In 1984, Gene Simmons was wearing that loved-on look. This was the look of a man who had just come out of a four-year relationship with none other than Diana Ross, a relationship he began while he was still dating Diana's best friend, Cher.
41:32 Jake Brennan? But Gene Simmons also wore a look of desperation, the look of a man who had finally washed off all of his cartoonish makeup, perhaps a little too late even. What I'm saying is, he needed Wendy as much as she needed him. Kiss was losing their edge, and by producing an album for the Plasmatics, Gene Simmons and Kiss could lock down some much-needed credibility. However, the resulting album, "Wow!" was technically not a Plasmatics album because, due to a legal snafu too boring to get into here, it couldn't be called a Plasmatics album. And because of this, Gene used whatever musicians he wanted to, most notably all four members
42:13 Jake Brennan? of Kiss at the time: Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, Eric Carr, and Gene himself, under the pseudonym Reginald Van Helsing. So "Wow!" was not only the secret Kiss album, but it was also the vehicle to lift Wendy O'Williams out of the punk performance art basement and into the big-league penthouses with a big-haired, leather-studded hard rock sound. It even earned Wendy O'Williams her first and only Grammy nomination. But Wendy wasn't seeking out these trappings of success and fame. She didn't want the penthouses, or the awards, or even the accolades. Her mission was purer than all of that. She was here to remind anyone who heard her music or witnessed her live show that you didn't have to be like everyone else.
42:58 Jake Brennan? You didn't have to wear the same clothes from that store in the mall, or eat the same shit-ass fast food that your friends ate at those crappy restaurants. You didn't have to watch the same TV show. And better yet, you didn't even have to own a TV.
43:13 Jake Brennan? But on those TV sets, as the 1980s gave way to the 1990s, Wendy was being featured more than ever before. Only there was a catch. She had become this captive zoo animal for conformist America to poke at and prod. The ways in which she was different, dangerous, and weird were being amplified to a level as cartoonish as the black and white makeup on Gene Simmons's face. On daytime TV talk shows, there were huge at the time, by the way, huge ratings for shows like Donahue and Sally Jesse Raphael. Again, I gotta say, it's some of the biggest shows in the country at the time. Millions of Americans would watch as the hosts and their studio audiences gawked at Wendy in disbelief.
43:56 Jake Brennan? None of this attention boosted album sales. And for a touring musician, the grind is real, and it's real hard. It's super difficult, super stressful, and the stress, the wear, and the tear, the living hand to mouth, it takes its toll. And if none of it's working, if you're not getting results, well, then, life isn't working. Now add into that equation the limited opportunities that Wendy O. Williams continued to receive based on her reputation, and the fights, and the arrests, and the lawsuits. At some point, it was no longer "fiscally prudent," as the conformists would say. It just wasn't prudent in general. It wasn't possible anymore.
44:40 Jake Brennan? So Wendy had to stop doing the one thing she'd been doing since she arrived in New York City in 1966. She had to stop being Wendy O. Williams, the one and only thing that was holding her together. And that's when the troubles started. In 1991, at the age of 42, Wendy and her longtime manager and life partner, Rod Swenson, moved to the town of Storrs, Connecticut. Here, life was as far from a Captain Kink matinee or a sold-out night at CBGB's as you could possibly imagine. Rod built a geodesic house in the woods where the two were surrounded by nature. Wendy worked at a local health food store and volunteered at a wildlife center,
45:24 Jake Brennan? where she helped injured and orphaned animals, mostly squirrels. For many, this would be an idyllic life. But for Wendy, it was a tortured existence. It was that so-called zombified life that she'd vowed she would never be a part of. And now, that she was part of it, she was plunged daily into deep emotional pain and hopelessness. We can all relate to emotional pain. We've all been hopeless at times. I know that I have. But I've been crushed by disappointment and disillusionment, and by life simply not turning out the way that I thought it would. But thankfully, for me at least, and for many of you too, I hope, and I would gather, there's always been a way out, a road out, a light.
46:08 Jake Brennan? And but for some, like Wendy O. Williams, the emotional pain and the hopelessness is so intense, so all-consuming, that it leads to extreme crisis. The first time Wendy O. Williams attempted suicide was 1993. She used a hammer to bang a knife into her chest. But when the knife got stuck in her sternum, she panicked. And Rod rushed her to the hospital, where the knife was carefully removed and she was patched up. Four years later, in the summer of 1997, she tried again. This time, by overdosing on ephedrine, aka herbal ecstasy. But the dose wasn't strong enough. Or maybe Wendy was just stronger.
46:53 Jake Brennan? And then, on April 6th, 1998, Wendy, determined as ever, walked into the woods just outside the home she shared with Rod Swenson. And in her hand, she held a .38 caliber revolver. She found a spot that felt right, and sat down on a rock, surrounded by nature's crushing stillness. The sun peered out from behind some clouds. And then, she pressed the barrel of the .38 to her head, and pulled the trigger.
47:25 Jake Brennan? Perhaps Wendy O. Williams thought she had no other option, or that she simply needed more time to find the next thing that would satisfy her nonconformist soul. Either way, her death at age 48, it robbed the rock, punk, and metal worlds of one of its greatest advocates for resistance. And that is a disgrace.
47:50 Jake Brennan? I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgrace Land.
48:06 Jake Brennan? All right, guys. Thanks for checking out this episode on Wendy O. Williams. Question of the week: What is the most shocking thing that you've ever seen a musician do onstage? 617-906-6638. Voicemail and text at disgracelandpod on the socials, [email protected] if you want to email me. Make sure you got auto downloads turned on, all you Apple Podcast listeners. Here comes some credits.
48:35 Jake Brennan? Disgrace Land was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis, the Exactly Right Network, and iHeart Podcasts. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgrace Land All-Access member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com/membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgrace Land ad-free. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook @disgracelandpod, and on YouTube at youtube.com/atdisgracelandpod. Rock or roll.
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