In honor of Mad Marc Rude's birthday I'm posting the memorial I wrote 5 years ago for Destroying Angels, just days after learning that this legend of underground art would never drink, fight, fuck, or draw again. Hail the Zombie King! Happy Birthday, Marc Rude...
GOVERNMENTAL BLACK DOTS
The Legacy of Mad Marc Rude
The Legacy of Mad Marc Rude
I was laying on my couch watching My Bloody Valentine when, for the second time in one year, my own heart was torn loose. I had just come off a 13 hour non-stop marathon finishing up a drawing for deadline and watching stupid canucks pickaxe each other was all I could do to stay awake. The phone rang twice and we ignored it. Then a third time. Meadow checked the voicemail and it sounded like someone was trying to call collect. When the phone rang a fourth time she caught it and received a collect message from Las Vegas, Nevada. Mad Marc Rude was dead. Over the past year and a half I had spent months trying to track him down. It seems legend followed Marc like a shadow and he left a trail of urban myths, burnt friendships, dead-end leads, and art in his wake. Always the art. He was a specter missing in action and already more than a few people had chalked him up as a goner. Not so. He was simply underground, as he had been for more than 20 years. Mad Marc Rude (a.k.a., Marc Hoffman) was one of the original fathers of underground punk art.
Rude was old school back when the "Old School" was just a snot nose runt. In 1983 he spent more than 300 hours drawing the zombie epic album art for `Earth A.D.', the Misfits' proto-thrash classic. He was 29 years old. Now I'm no spring chicken, but back in 1983 I was still excited about Iron Maiden's new singer, the "Air Raid Siren", and sitting in my bedroom making badly drawn comics about ninja crime fighters. Marc was already well known for the artwork he had done for a local San Diego band, which he also managed at the time, called Battalion of Saints. Those insanely detailed album covers for Battalion of Saints, including lyric sheet art for songs like 'Cops Are Out', and the countless show flyers he designed are now relics of the first wave of hardcore punk. Although he later transcended the simple stigma of "punk artist" Marc's early drawings helped set the standard for D.I.Y. aesthetics that gave shape to the emerging southern California scene. Throughout the years he would tattoo his way back and forth across the country several times, up and down both coasts, and provide album cover art for Tex & The Horseheads, Hirax, The Offspring, The GC5, and many more. Art was so much a part of Marc's life that to call his accomplishments a career would be an understatement. He was one of a rare breed of artists who truly lived for his art. No art school shit, no fine art sellout, no compromises. Marc was an outlaw artist until his final day. The events leading up to that day are as extraordinary as his frenetic life and the official cause of death unclear. Marc had his demons and it seems they took a heavy toll. But all that is of little consequence now and it's really nobody's damn business anyway. Once again the world was too stupid, too insensitive, too busy to understand the mad visions of its living artists.
When I finally caught up with Marc he was nearly destitute, recently remarried, and pushing ink in Vegas. I sent him some of my drawings and asked if he would be interested in an interview for my zine. He responded by inviting me down to visit him and his old friend and current wife Lyn Todd. He would do the interview, share with me his recent work, and show me the town. I told him I had to wait until my tax-return check came so I could buy a plane ticket. When Lyn called to tell me he was dead I wasn't surprised. In our last brief phone conversation he had sounded old and tired when he told me I should try to visit soon because he didn't know how much longer he would be there. I thought he meant Vegas. When Lyn told me I was one of the first people she called I was a little disturbed. I had never even met him. Had Marc alienated himself from everyone in his life so much that nobdoy cared? She told me that two days before he died they received a package I had sent. It contained a copy of a drawing I had just finished, a portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald, and a short note telling him that I was still waiting for that fucking check to arrive. She said she could see Marc's spirit in the drawing and knew that I must have been inspired by his early work. She said that it had pleased Marc in his final days to know that someone cared so much about his art and that this younger artist had taken up the proverbial sword. Three days after she told me all this the tax-return check arrived.
The soul of the world is diminished when we lose artists like Marc Rude. Marc survived where most would fear to tread. Where eagles dare, as the song goes. He thrived in the dark places, permanently off the grid, those governmental black dots. Marc told me that his art always saved him. It could be argued in hindsight that art was the only consistent thread in his do-or-die existence. Family disappeared, friendships fell apart, musical trends ebb and flowed with the seasons, but Marc's fantastically stippled art was the one thing he could really take into his hands and control. And Marc's art is all about discipline and control. It takes hours and hours of confident patience to transform those tiny black dots into textured images. He put in the hours. One of his last major projects was a collection of 32 illustrations he created for Blag Dahlia's novel Armed To The Teeth With Lipstick. He spent 18 hours a day poised over the paper working on those drawings. I suggest everyone stop reading now and go find a copy of that book. Marc spent hours perfecting the delicate folds of clothing, the cracked forms of statues, the shine of leather and chrome, and the subtle expressions of the desperate characters it became his life's work to document. The skulls, the flesh, the clowns, the freaks, these are not mere artistic devices. This was his life. Marc said it best himself, "I firmly believe that there are some people that are born alternative, it's genetic and...it's in our hearts. We always go to the other side of the fence, it's the only way we can live, we're outlaws, we're an extension of every fuckin' outlaw that ever existed." Strange to miss a man you've never even met. But certainly stranger things are happening. And the sheep are still scared.
Dennis Dread
2002
Rude was old school back when the "Old School" was just a snot nose runt. In 1983 he spent more than 300 hours drawing the zombie epic album art for `Earth A.D.', the Misfits' proto-thrash classic. He was 29 years old. Now I'm no spring chicken, but back in 1983 I was still excited about Iron Maiden's new singer, the "Air Raid Siren", and sitting in my bedroom making badly drawn comics about ninja crime fighters. Marc was already well known for the artwork he had done for a local San Diego band, which he also managed at the time, called Battalion of Saints. Those insanely detailed album covers for Battalion of Saints, including lyric sheet art for songs like 'Cops Are Out', and the countless show flyers he designed are now relics of the first wave of hardcore punk. Although he later transcended the simple stigma of "punk artist" Marc's early drawings helped set the standard for D.I.Y. aesthetics that gave shape to the emerging southern California scene. Throughout the years he would tattoo his way back and forth across the country several times, up and down both coasts, and provide album cover art for Tex & The Horseheads, Hirax, The Offspring, The GC5, and many more. Art was so much a part of Marc's life that to call his accomplishments a career would be an understatement. He was one of a rare breed of artists who truly lived for his art. No art school shit, no fine art sellout, no compromises. Marc was an outlaw artist until his final day. The events leading up to that day are as extraordinary as his frenetic life and the official cause of death unclear. Marc had his demons and it seems they took a heavy toll. But all that is of little consequence now and it's really nobody's damn business anyway. Once again the world was too stupid, too insensitive, too busy to understand the mad visions of its living artists.
When I finally caught up with Marc he was nearly destitute, recently remarried, and pushing ink in Vegas. I sent him some of my drawings and asked if he would be interested in an interview for my zine. He responded by inviting me down to visit him and his old friend and current wife Lyn Todd. He would do the interview, share with me his recent work, and show me the town. I told him I had to wait until my tax-return check came so I could buy a plane ticket. When Lyn called to tell me he was dead I wasn't surprised. In our last brief phone conversation he had sounded old and tired when he told me I should try to visit soon because he didn't know how much longer he would be there. I thought he meant Vegas. When Lyn told me I was one of the first people she called I was a little disturbed. I had never even met him. Had Marc alienated himself from everyone in his life so much that nobdoy cared? She told me that two days before he died they received a package I had sent. It contained a copy of a drawing I had just finished, a portrait of Lee Harvey Oswald, and a short note telling him that I was still waiting for that fucking check to arrive. She said she could see Marc's spirit in the drawing and knew that I must have been inspired by his early work. She said that it had pleased Marc in his final days to know that someone cared so much about his art and that this younger artist had taken up the proverbial sword. Three days after she told me all this the tax-return check arrived.
The soul of the world is diminished when we lose artists like Marc Rude. Marc survived where most would fear to tread. Where eagles dare, as the song goes. He thrived in the dark places, permanently off the grid, those governmental black dots. Marc told me that his art always saved him. It could be argued in hindsight that art was the only consistent thread in his do-or-die existence. Family disappeared, friendships fell apart, musical trends ebb and flowed with the seasons, but Marc's fantastically stippled art was the one thing he could really take into his hands and control. And Marc's art is all about discipline and control. It takes hours and hours of confident patience to transform those tiny black dots into textured images. He put in the hours. One of his last major projects was a collection of 32 illustrations he created for Blag Dahlia's novel Armed To The Teeth With Lipstick. He spent 18 hours a day poised over the paper working on those drawings. I suggest everyone stop reading now and go find a copy of that book. Marc spent hours perfecting the delicate folds of clothing, the cracked forms of statues, the shine of leather and chrome, and the subtle expressions of the desperate characters it became his life's work to document. The skulls, the flesh, the clowns, the freaks, these are not mere artistic devices. This was his life. Marc said it best himself, "I firmly believe that there are some people that are born alternative, it's genetic and...it's in our hearts. We always go to the other side of the fence, it's the only way we can live, we're outlaws, we're an extension of every fuckin' outlaw that ever existed." Strange to miss a man you've never even met. But certainly stranger things are happening. And the sheep are still scared.
Dennis Dread
2002
Mad Marc Rude
1954-2002
R.I.P.
1954-2002
R.I.P.
8 comments:
fantastic piece dennis.
One of my favorite pieces of Mad Marc Rude's art is the "Ed Gein" flyer he did for THE MISFITS. Nice tribute, Dennis.
So can someone check out my Misfits postcard, and tell me if this was Marc Rude? I had it attributed as Pushead, but 1 person came in and told me it was Marc Rude -- can someone verify it? With a comment at the picture, not here? Thanks:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/clintjcl/200483866/
Clint~ I don't have a Flickr account but your Misfits postcard was certainly drawn by Mad Marc Rude (not Pushead). If you ever get a chance to look at that flyer up close you'll see Marc's signature written very small to the left of the Misfits logo at the bottom. Marc's art was frequently attributed to the wrong artist. Even after his death, Juxtapose magazine did a memorial article to Rude and incorrectly printed a flyer by another L.A. artist named Lee. So it goes...
Marc did the artwork for my band's (Murder-Suicide Pact) 2 records. He was an amazing artist and a punk legend
I have both M-S Pact records. The crazy doctor/lobotomist! Lots of good detail in those drawings. Around that same time Marc also did a pretty cool t-shirt design for Electric Frankenstein.
I have both M-S Pact records. The crazy doctor/lobotomist! Lots of good detail in those drawings. Around that same time Marc also did a pretty cool t-shirt design for Electric Frankenstein.
CLINT... Thats a flyer from San Diego.... Tim Maze productions at the NORTH PARK LIONS CLUB... Mad Marc Rude all the way. His flyers are legendary.... check the cover of the Battalion of Saints 12"
Twigman
Post a Comment