Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs

Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and The Germs
by Brendan Mullen with Don Bolles and Adam Parfrey,

Publisher: Feral House
Copyright: April 15, 2002
Paperback: 312 pages

This is not what you’d expect a punk rock book would be. With LEXICON DEVIL the reader climbs into a time-travel capsule jettisoned into Los Angeles throughout the ’70s, when New Age cultists taught strange things to high school kids, chickenhawks ruled Hollywood Blvd, and television gameshow stars played Hollywood Squares with Darby Crash’s teenage hustler boyfriend. Might this book be a lost chapter of Hollywood Babylon, or Joan Didion’s rewrite of Play It As It Lays? More than 100 participants, in interviews done at the time, and today looking back, reveal themselves and others in amazing confessions, accusations and anecdotes, which are startling in their arrogance, confusion, viciousness and sense of loss. LEXICON DEVIL is a book so big that three authors were needed to capture the elusive truths, and more than a dozen photographers to provide visual perspectives of the time and place it all occurred.

Bottom line: I devoured this book in no less than five of my ritualistic post-hockey game Gatorade-soaked Mr. Bubble baths. It was captivating exploring the intelligence and enigmatic personality of Darby Crash; he was a true prankster who absolutely refused the status quo.