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Review [published April 2006]
Suicide: David Nobakht: No Compromise
Chris Mitchell
Just finished the top notch hardback edition of David
Nobakht’s biography of synth-rock pioneers Suicide.
I would have loved to have written this book. Very
much a band biography rather than a personal history
of Suicide’s two members, Alan Vega and Martin Rev,
Nobakht assembles a wealth of material that traces
Suicide’s genesis. From the first tinkerings with primitive
electronics in the early 1970s, endless confrontational,
blood-smeared gigs, through to the release of
their seminal self-titled debut album – “up there with
the first Stooges or Velvet Underground album” – the
extreme reaction they provoked touring with The Clash
at the height of punk in the UK (one night someone
threw an axe at the stage. A fucking axe!), the involvement
of Ric Osacek from The Cars who spent a good
chunk of his own popstar earnings on them, through
to their gradual acceptance during the 1990s and their
triumphant string of gigs that they’ve been playing
since 1997 to an increasingly enamoured audience –
Nobakht covers it all, and it’s one of the strangest and
most fascinating pop history stories I’ve read.
Over 30 years, Suicide have not simply survived,
BUY Suicide music online from and
they’ve thrived, and now they are getting as much acclaim
as they used to get abuse. It’s just as well, given
that both Rev and Vega must be getting on towards 60
now – and having seen them live twice at London’s
Garage, it’s evident that age won’t stop them from
generating some of the most beautiful and vicious
noise you can ever hope to hear. For all their supposed
influence on industrial music, Suicide have an intense
warmth and humanity to their music – even when
they’re sonically scaring the crap out of you – which
is wholly absent from the more po-faced knobtwiddlers
that came after them. Suicide are still as vital
as ever within an increasingly moribund music scene,
still outside it even as they become accepted and assimilated
into it.
What’s interesting from Nobakht’s book is how
aware of their own position in pop history Vega and
Rev are – much of the book is written in their own
words, and they are reluctant rock stars. Clearly they’re
quite thrilled at finally getting some recognition and
earning some money to support themselves – because
despite being hugely influential, no one actually bought
499
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