Pop Culture UFO’s 2: Alan Vega: The Revolutionary Force Behind Suicide

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Exploring the audacious journey of Alan Vega and his groundbreaking band, Suicide.

In the first article of the series “POP CULTURE UFO’s”, we talked about the awesome and mysterious African musician William Onyeabor.

You can read this article HERE

For this second instalment of the series, we are going to delve deeper into Alan Vega, one of our favourite musicians, both solo and alongside his band SUICIDE, together with Martin Rev.

Preliminary

• Alan Vega was part of one of the last rock ‘n’ roll experiments with his band Suicide, alongside Martin Rev.
• Suicide was a risky project, influenced by classics like the 50’s R&B or Iggy Pop and The Stooges, but absolutely oriented to take a step forward.
• Formed in Brooklyn, NY, their first significant appreciation from the audience came in Europe: France, Belgium, Germany, the UK, and beyond.

Alan at Danceteria Club, NY. Pic by Frank Rispoli

• Their first appearances on stage, finished, most of the time, with riots between the audience and the band.
• Their music was not well understood in the New York scene at that time. They chose not to be entertainers; instead, they followed their own path.
• Chaotic things could happen on stage, every minute, every live act.
• Alan Vega’s singing and dancing style involved physically attacking the audience, and vice-versa.
• Years later, Alan Vega acknowledged in many interviews that he may have been out of his mind when engaging in such behaviour, but at the time it felt right and beautiful.

Alan’s little Portrait

In the vast landscape of musical creativity, few figures stand as tall and as audaciously experimental as Alan Vega. Akin to literary luminaries such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Samuel Beckett, Vega’s idiosyncratic style has carved a unique path that resonates with both whimsy and profundity.

His artistic journey, meticulously illuminated throughout his career and portrayed in several documentaries, reveals a resplendent tapestry of innovation and brilliance. Yet, despite his undeniable genius, commercial success has remained elusive, casting him as an outsider in the often cutthroat world of music, while being considered a genius by most in the industry.

Alan Vega was an outsider and will never renounce this status.

Born as Bermowitz, and known artistically as Alan Vega, was an musician and visual artist. Born on June 23, 1938, in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

Vega’s true age was often misunderstood until the release of his recordings in 2008, which revealed that he was actually ten years older than previously believed. Despite this confusion, Vega’s passion for music was ignited during his childhood when he watched Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show as a young kid.

The Birth of Suicide: A Unique Blend of Punk, Rock, and Experimentation

Alan Vega and Martin Rev formed the band Suicide in the early 70’s, creating a sound that was as unique as groundbreaking for that moment.

Influenced by artists like Terry Riley, La Monte Young, and Silver Apples, Suicide’s early days in the New York music scene were marked by a lack of context and understanding. They were the only band rehearsing in an empty environment with no clubs interested in their proposal, playing for hours in a Manhattan loft and questioning their own sanity.

Their roots lay in the old rock and roll sound of the late ’50s and ’60s, which they discovered together and began to develop by mixing it with primary electronic synths and performance elements—a rara avis in a New York scene immersed in the Glam rock and a Punk boom that would soon lead to the “No Wave” movement.

Facing Hostility and Challenging Norms

Vega faced hostility and criticism as part of Suicide, but his intense performances and the use of unconventional instruments challenged the norms of conventional rock and roll music.

Alongside his band-mate Marty Rev, they faced backlash for their innovative approach, causing authentic perplexity to their audience. Vega’s extreme stage presence, including self-harm and confrontations with the assistants, garnered, surprisingly, attention and respect from fans.

The negative energy from the audience helped shape Suicide’s unique identity and success as a band. Despite facing backlash and booing, Alan Vega and Suicide thrived on the animosity and used it to their advantage, ultimately becoming a performance that was finally acclaimed on European stages.

Suicide’s Ethereal Soundscape

Imbued with a mesmerising audacity, Vega’s melodies possess an uncanny ability to strip away the superfluous, leaving behind an ethereal soundscape reminiscent of Samuel Beckett’s theatrical aesthetics mixed with a punk rocker attitude on stage, and the repetitive schemes of the expansive electronic sound.

This rendered him a veritable rock virtuoso, blazing a trail that forever altered the trajectory of rock and their songs. Fearlessly treading where others dared not venture, he danced with danger, evading the clutches of adversaries while pushing the boundaries of musical expression through his mastery of synthesizers and the unique support of Martin Rev, another fearless myth of musical risk.

A Rich Career in Music: From Minimalism to New Horizons

Suicide’s long and rich career in music spans from his early minimalist style to his latest projects. Both musicians, Vega and Rev, have manifested the desire to create new music, defending publicly the coexistence of their solo careers with the band project and jumping without fear between music, performance art, and visual installations.

“People always say “Are you guys reformed again?” We never broke up. It’s probably what keeps us going, the fact that we have all these other things to do. Suicide is almost like a pure democracy: we both have to like a song to do it. In other words, Marty might like something he just wrote and I can’t get a lyric for it and I can’t deal with so we won’t do it. So he can take that thing and use it as a solo thing. It keeps him happy that way. Same for me with other stuff. Sometimes Marty says he doesn’t like my vocals or something or I don’t like what your doing, let’s not do this song or something like that. That’s okay. There’s no resentment that carries into this thing. So in many ways it keeps Suicide alive. When we we get together we never know when were gonna do another record. We just drift into another one or not. I don’t know and it really doesn’t matter. As far as I’m concerned, Suicide is still very much alive. We do do shows but then we’ve got other things to do. Marty’s working with another band or laying some tracks down. with such and such a band. I’ve got a lot of vocal requests from bands, a lot of electronic bands. It’s kind of cool for me because most electronic bands don’t have vocalists. So I always get requests to sing on things, most of which I turn down, anyway. The ninety-nine percent I get but occasionally I’ll sing for a band like Panasonic. I did a couple of albums with them. They’re a really great band. A few other things come along here and there. I’ve got things too. Marty’s always got some things going on, mixing… I love those kind of jobs. You get all this money to do remixes for band that are already successful bands. Get a ton of money and they come to you and say “Hey, make this crazy for me.” That’s the new thing, by the way. They used to tell us to tone it down, make yourself commercial, make it accessible, and now I get things from A&R people from record labels. “Can you make this band crazier?” A complete reversal.”

Alan Vega on Suicide, the band, and their parallel projects.

Alan Vega on Stage (Suicide FB group)

Influence on Electronic Music and Beyond

Alan Vega’s influence on electronic music spans decades, with new techno bands like Pansonic becoming fans of his work and asking for Vega’s participation in two of their albums.

He has been working with bands and prestige musicians like Mercury Rev, Alex Chilton and Vince Vaughn and being covered by bands like Primal Scream, Spiritualized or Grinderman.

While he appreciates the musical talent of techno bands, he finds most of the techno technical stuff to be repetitive and unoriginal.

Suicide: Demolishing and Reshaping the Music Industry

Suicide, discusses their role in demolishing and reshaping the music industry. Their love for science fiction and their disappointment in the lack of new ideas in the genre have been recognised along their career making their project evolve from the complete non comprehended first moments to the absolute recognition of the whole musical industry.

In this video, I share my first and only opportunity to see the band on stage—a unique moment that I will never forget, both as a fan and as a music lover, in general. From that weird Brooklyn duo to conquering the large audiences at massive festivals.

However, life took an unexpected turn for Alan in 2012 when he suffered a debilitating stroke. Coupled with knee troubles, these health challenges urged him to redirect his creative energy toward less physically demanding art forms, such as painting.

Nonetheless, Vega remained dedicated to his craft, performing at select concerts and pouring his soul into the music that ultimately shaped his final studio album, aptly titled “It.”

Throughout these trans-formative years, he called finally downtown New York City his home.

Vega’s passed on July 16th, 2016, at the age of 78, his final album, “It,” was released posthumously on July 14, 2017, through Fader. To honour his memory and artistic legacy, two posthumous art shows, namely “Dream Baby Dream” at Deitch Gallery and “Keep IT Alive” at Invisible-Exports, showcased Vega’s extraordinary work in his beloved city of New York.

We will never forget him and his legacy.

Waiting for your comments and thinking’s about Alan and Suicide band.

Don’t hesitate to leave a comment and I will give you more information about them.

This article was originally published on Differ, but as part of the “Pop Culture UFO’s” series, I have decided to rewrite it for this magazine in order to complete the 3 articles that conforms these collection until now.

Soon the chapter 4, who will be chosen? I will see… The future is unwritten.

Suggestions are accepted in the comment section.

Pop Culture UFO’s series

• Pop Culture UFO’s 1: Celebrating William Onyeabor, a pioneer of Nigerian Funk and Electronica.
• Pop Culture UFO’s 2: Alan Vega, The Revolutionary Force Behind Suicide.
• Pop Culture UFOs 3: Piero Umiliani, The Godfather of the Cocktail Generation.
• Pob Culture UFO’s 4: Coming soon…