Sunday, June 02, 2019

The Cramps, Beast and Beyond: A Book About Bryan Gregory by John Wombat

I am fairly certain that this brief (67 pages) tome about the legendary guitarist is a self-published labor of love from a fan. Due to its brevity, it really doesn't do more than give an overview of the man's life, which was also all-too-brief, as he died at just 49 years old in 2001. Wombat does touch upon the important milestones, of course, and a good amount of time is spent on Gregory's tenure and friendship with the Cramps, which he helped to found after becoming friends with Lux and Ivy. The dreaded musical differences caused him to leave the group and he formed the more gothic, Siouxie-ish Beast. Quite a contrast to the Cramps, I did enjoy this line-up and was able to see them at the Club Lingerie in Hollywood where they were easily accessible and quite friendly. Bryan never lost his unique identity and was always a charismatic and captivating performer.

After Beast split, Bryan wandered musically, romantically and physically and held various work positions including running sex shops as he tried to get numerous projects off the ground to no real success until his sudden death.

As I said, there is not much room here for anything other than a quick synopsis of the man's life, but Wombat does try to imbue the story with as much personal info as possible and with interviews from important figure's in Gregory's life. Nicely done, although I would love a more in-depth biography if anyone was able to get such a thing published.