Derf Scratch, Fear’s original bassist, died last Wednesday. Derf founded Fear with Lee Ving, played bass with them for four years, and got fired for reasons that are open to dispute. He played bass in an era of punk where strong bass lines were important and were high in the mix. He helped write a bunch of the original songs and was the guy who made friends with John Belushi, eventually getting them the awesome spot on SNL in which blood-filled pumpkins were smashed, shit was damaged, and Eddie Murphy told the band “Fuck You.” He joked in an interview once about recording a parody of the Fear album without Lee Ving called Fearlesslee. I think that’s pretty funny. Lee Ving always struck me as being completely humorless. If Lee Ving kicks you out of his band it is probably because you are awesome.
Here’s part of Fear doing “I Don’t Care About You” on SNL. For some reason their performance is one of the all-time most taken down videos on YouTube.
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I remember a friend of mine who wasn’t quite so punky once telling me “I’m afraid of Fear.” That’s partially why I liked them so much. At the time I was hanging around all these fucking crusties who thought bike riding, stinking, and getting high all the time was going to change the way people thought or acted. They were all smug and average.
I always appreciated the endless assholism of Fear. They’d play in San Francisco and say they were from LA, then go to LA and say they were from SF. They sang about having wars so you could go and die, New York sucking, hating your family. Fear stood out from their contemporaries in the LA “punk scene.” X were poppy and countryish. The Screamers and the Germs were artsy, Black Randy was even artsier and sometimes kind of bongo-y. Meanwhile, Fear were these crazy hateful cartoon assholes that basically took the caricature handed punk by the likes of C.H.i.P.s. and Quincy and ran with it. I’m not sure whether Lee was ever really in on the funny aspect of the band (see this interview) but Derf seemed like he was, and that made a lot of difference.
NICHOLAS GAZIN
