Peter Bell Remembers The Rage

Peter Bell called his friend JJ Loehr’s house in the Museum District the headquarters of the He-Man Woman Hater’s Club, and that’s where we met in August 1994 for four hours for a four-part interview. Part 1 appeared in the September 1994 issue.

Peter Bell moved from Blackstone to Richmond in 1974 when he was 14.

“I was going to be an artist. That was my lifelong ambition, to be a great painter. I went to Open High School. Then I went to the Parson School of Design for one semester, but it didn’t work out. I wasn’t ready to leave home, and I was too much in love with a girl.”

While in high school, he met Jimi Gore and Ira Marlowe. They wanted to be rock and roll stars, and they needed a bass player.

“They convinced me I would meet more girls as a musician than an artist. They didn’t have to prod me too much. I started playing when I was 16.”

The band was The Rage, “the most important band to ever come out of Richmond,” Peter said, defying the advice given to them by a musical equipment salesman to "not push the originals.”

“We never played covers. I loathe covers. I’ve been able to get through my whole career without playing covers. It was a bias built into me by Jimi and Ira. I looked up to them. They were a year older and seemed to know a lot. They were real musical snobs, so I became one, too, even though it goes against my nature. I didn’t listen to any important rock and roll then. We were anti-Southern rock, right down to Creedence. We didn’t like Bruce Springsteen and wrote off all the folk-rock stuff. I missed a lot that was happening during the ‘70s because of those guys and only discovered it years later.”

But it served a purpose, he said. “We established an identity that didn’t get diluted. We liked British glam rock like David Bowie, T Rex, Led Zeppelin, Queen. Everything that was American was unimportant.”

Ira wrote all the music for The Rage. They wore make-up on stage and Peter took a class at VCU to learn how to sew their elaborate, romantic-styled costumes.

“We played everywhere, Hard Times, Kosmos 2000 underneath where New Horizons used to be on Harrison and Broad. We became a phenomenon. Richmond music in 1975 was a void, a great darkness, horrible. It was horrible throughout the whole country, California country folk-rock, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, Poco, just horrible pseudo country-rock, so mellow, it was sickening. That’s why punk started. And Richmond was totally out of touch. It was all Southern rock cover bands at the Back Door where Chronos Café is now. That was the place to go, just like it is now but sleazier.”

When punk broke in Britain, there was a response in Richmond in the form of Ricky and the Whiteboys and L’Amour. The Whiteboys, Peter said, were a high energy, sort of retro band fronted by a guy named Ralph.

“They were great. They started opening for Single Bullet Theory, which was a bigger, New Wave band, Richmond’s version of The Cars. We’d go to see them and rag on them because they were older than us. We thought we could do this so much better! Back in those days, the drinking age was lower, but anybody could get into a club. When I was 15, I got into clubs all the time.”

The unifying element then was Richmond Graphics on the Southside, a business run by hippie types, Peter remembers.  “All the bands had VCU art students in them. The art school was where so many fresh ideas were coming from. Richmond Graphics made posters and flyers for the bands, big, professionally screened works of art. They’re prized if you still have one. The bands rehearsed there. It was constant parties, a Flood Zone type space.”

At one of the parties, Ralph got wasted, climbed out on the roof and jumped to a tree, which was not uncommon behavior for the wasted at these parties, but he missed the tree, broke his neck, was paralyzed and died after a long hospitalization, although Peter thought it was more a case of losing his will to live than the injury.

“It was the first casualty of a real mythical figure in rock history here. It reshaped the scene because afterward, the Whiteboys and L’Amour reformed into Beex, who still play now and then. And The Rage took over the void. We started opening for Single Bullet Theory, which was the first band to get signed from this town, and we killed them every single time.”

At one important show in Blacksburg, Bullet’s manager Flash (Craig Otero) told them they couldn’t play even though they were ready. Bell says it was because radio people were in the audience and Flash didn’t want the opening act stealing Single Bullet’s thunder. The other opening band, Beex, was deemed less threatening, and they went on.

“He gave me some smarmy tale and I said fuck you. We decided never to open for anybody again after that. Our band instantly took off like you wouldn’t believe. Every hip person in town came to our shows. We had a big gay following, artsy people, kids from Open High. We played every weekend. We made $1,000 a night when it cost $2 to get into a club. It was unbelievable. We were the only game going. People were losing their minds over us. And we weren’t even as good as we thought we were. We were just learning to play our instruments.

“We had an elaborate show, costumes, sets, sort of like Gwar, but not sexually shocking, not grotesque ever, just playing the best music we could play. We thought we were like the Beatles. We hated being called New Wave.”

A regular after-show ritual for Bell was being beat up by hecklers. “I was always ready for a fight, leading with my mouth and constantly getting clocked. I was somebody in a leotard with fuchsia make-up all over. I guess I was a target.” He learned to fight.

After they played a show at the Virginia Museum, they met an album cover artist from Los Angeles who urged them to move to L.A., promising to help them. “So after two years of being the only exciting band in Richmond, the only band to lead the way stamping out Southern rock, we packed up and headed out.” It was 1980.

“We showed up at the artist guy’s house. We came as you suggested! Let’s be famous! Point us in the right direction! But he was full of shit and wouldn’t have anything to do with us. Everybody blew us off. But no matter, we were The Rage, adored by hundreds of Richmonders! How hard could it be to be adored by thousands of Californians?”

The Rage had made enough money in Richmond that they didn’t have to work day jobs, but in L.A., they did. Bell got one right away at the telephone company, and his girlfriend Candy, who had followed him to California, found work, too.

When Bell learned his brunette girlfriend was seeing someone else in the band behind his back, he vowed to hook up with the first blonde he saw, and that was Candy, wearing a leopard skin jumpsuit and walking out of a Laundromat on Harrison Street. She was from New Kent County and had just enrolled at VCU. They were together for the next six years.

“She was really beautiful and got a job in L.A. as a model, but because she was too short, 5 foot 7, there was nowhere to go with it but nude modeling.” She did all the major men’s magazines, including a Playmate of the Month which earned her $10,000. Then there was nowhere to go except sleazier magazines. Ira and Jimi were working at warehouses and hating it.

“We had to rent rehearsal space, carry our PA equipment in and out just to practice for three hours. One night we were tired and left it in the truck, and it was all stolen. We had to fight back from that, buy more stuff, and we were nobody from nowhere. The Rage did not mean jackshit out there. We played Wednesday nights at 3 a.m. in Pasadena, one of six bands on the bill. Nobody there. We couldn’t deal with it. We had been used to playing anytime we wanted with guarantees.”

Now it’s 1981 and the others are homesick, but Bell is with Candy, going to fancy sleazeball parties, doing cocaine, and he doesn’t care. Jimi is getting into ska at L.A. clubs and starts writing music. Bell’s own efforts at songwriting are “god awful,” he recalls, but Jimi comes up with a great song which Ira won’t do because it doesn’t fit with their set. So Jimi goes home to Richmond for a vacation and his brother, Harry Gore, still has his ska band, The Good Guys, that started at Open High as a cover band and had opened for The Rage. With The Rage gone, The Good Guys have become big. So has a band with Mark Lewis and Bryan Harvey called The Dads.

“They were a retro band doing Beatles-sounding stuff. Between those two, they had all The Rage followers. Single Bullet is on the road. Harry let Jimi front the band a few times, singing, and it goes well. Jimi gives them his song, ‘Fun Lover.’ It’s great. He doesn’t come back to L.A.”

Ira wants the band to liquidate their assets in L.A. and go back to Richmond to reclaim their fans and save the band. They pack up and head out, but the van breaks down in Arizona, “a real, true odyssey with a lot of soul-searching going on.”

The effort to save the band works for only a few months. By early 1982, it breaks up despite even more elaborate costuming. “My vision was Adam and the Ants. People came at first, but went back to the danceable Dads and Good Guys.” Peter finds out Ira had told Jimi not to come back to Los Angeles in order to force Peter to leave. He had been content to stay, but when Candy also returns to Richmond, Los Angeles is over.

About the ultimate break-up, Peter felt they were doing well enough, but it wasn’t like before. “Jimi wanted to get out from behind the drums and sing. Ira wanted to try New York and was blaming me for L.A.” They were back to opening for bands that had built reputations in their absence, “which made sense, but we thought it was crazy. We wanted to headline like we always had. We were so split apart, I’m sure it showed on stage.”

The band breaks up. “Ira tells me the only reason I didn’t want to break up was because there was nothing else I could do. Those words were the most motivating factor in my life.”

Candy still has money, so they go to England to connect with the British musicians she had met in the California porn scene. They meet members of Queen. Peter auditions for the new Adam Ant band, but nothing happens. They return to Richmond and buy a house in Church Hill with the money that’s left, but they don’t know how to renovate it for resale.

“Candy really loved the way Peter Headley (Vapor Rhinos) painted, so we bought one of his paintings for $400. As a musician, Peter is a really good painter. We struck up a friendship and he moved into the house as the caretaker. We were living in an apartment. I hired all my friends to work on the house, paying them way too much. Tons of musicians worked on that house.” Eventually he ran out of money and had to leave the house to Candy.

Starting over was a challenge. The Rage had been an exciting time. “I didn’t mind all the ass-whippings. It was fun getting the attention. I had learned to play when I was on top. We had the attitude and the talent, but we didn’t have the chops. We changed the music scene in Richmond because so many other bands got their start opening for The Rage.”

He advertises for musicians to form a new band. Lee Johnson, another Open High student who drums in the band Kaos with Rock Coplin, is dating Peter’s sister. She wants him in the new band. Peter meets guitarist JJ Loehr, and the three form Bam Bam, named after Lee’s dog.

“JJ can really write songs, but the band wasn’t getting any better. I didn’t appreciate his talent at the time, but he became my best friend. That band never played out. We didn’t have a good singer.”

Then Peter found Johnny Procter, “a white soul guy who worshipped Prince and James Brown, an amazing performer.” But Procter didn’t want to sing in Bam Bam, so they reformed with other musician friends as Erol Flynn.

“We wore silly outfits, which I was used to, Prince-like stuff, trench coats, tons of make-up, stuff in our hair. We did the funk thing. Duran Duran was out and I was into that. We played the 538 Club, which used to be Kosmos, Hard Times, Benny’s. Candy was our manager."

Now it’s 1983 and they are recording. Johnny, Peter and Lee are writing songs, and Candy is fighting with Johnny. “We’re getting ready to play a big show at Benny’s on Halloween. Iggy Pop is at the Mosque and everybody is going to come over to Benny’s afterward. Candy and Johnny get into a big fight and he quits on the spot. That’s the end of the band. Lee and I are out in the cold.”

About the same time, Mark Lewis of The Dads has a falling out with his band. Steve Fisher, a keyboard player, leaves Glad Core, Johnny Hott’s band. “I always wanted to play with Mark. I wanted him to be the fourth member of The Rage, and it would have made a big difference, but he got into Single Bullet Theory. We met at Lee’s house and jammed. Everybody had songs we wanted to record, so we agreed to learn each other’s songs, split the costs, and record as the sidemen for each other. We’d all leave with three-song demo tapes. So we’re jamming at my mother’s house on Hanover Street, and in no time, we learn all the songs and realize we’re a band right there. We’ve got a band. Why make tapes to find a band when we are one? We played our first show at Rockitz and got a great response.”

They thought about calling themselves Faust 19, “the worst band name ever, but we wanted a name with a number in it. We had originally gotten together on Oct. 10, so we named the band Ten Ten.”