Lux, We Hardly Knew Ye

Cramps founder and punk pioneer Lux Interior dies

By ANDREW DALTON, Associated Press Writer

LOS ANGELES – Lux Interior, co-founder and lead singer of the pioneering horror-punk band the Cramps, has died, the group's publicist said. He was 60.

Interior — whose real name was Erick Lee Purkhiser — died Wednesday of a pre-existing heart condition at a hospital in Glendale, Calif., publicist Aleix Martinez said in a statement.
Interior met his future wife Kristy Wallace — who would later take the stage name Poison Ivy — in Sacramento in 1972.

The pair moved to New York and started the Cramps with Interior on lead vocals and Ivy on guitar. The group was a part of the late `70s early punk scene centered at Manhattan clubs like CBGB, alongside acts like the Ramones and Patti Smith.

Their unmistakable sound was a lo-fi synthesis of rockabilly and surf guitar staged with a deviant dose of midnight-movie camp. Some called it "psychobilly."

The pale, tall, gaunt Interior appeared shirtless with black hair and tiny, low-slung black pants, looking part zombie, part Elvis Presley as he crawled, writhed and howled his way across the stage.

The group had the raw intensity of punk, but took the music in new directions by incorporating theatrical elements, often horror-themed, in songs like "I Was a Teenage Werewolf" and "Bikini Girls With Machine Guns." Their breakthrough debut EP was 1979's "Gravest Hits."

The band made a notorious appearance at a California mental institution, Napa State Hospital, in 1978. The performance, whose video is still popular on YouTube, was a punk-era echo of the Folsom Prison concert of Johnny Cash, one of the band's influences.

Interior was widely rumored in 1987 to have died from a heroin overdose, and his wife received flowers and funeral wreaths.

"At first I thought it was kind of funny," he told the Los Angeles Times at the time. "But then it started to give me a creepy feeling."

The Cramps' lineup changed often through the decades but Interior and Ivy remained the center. Their bluesy, trebly sound — the group didn't have a bass guitarist — resonates in modern minimalist groups like the White Stripes and the Black Lips.

The band's last release was the 2004 rarities collection "How to Make a Monster." They were still touring as recently as last November.