Patricia Morrison: The Godmother of Goth
- jamesgeraghty
- 8 minutes ago
- 8 min read
She had a musical career that spanned three decades or more, but remains something of an unknown figure despite having been a part of three fairly well known bands during that time. Then, for the last twenty years, she melted into the background, seemingly content to live the family life. But, who is Patricia Morrison.
Patricia Rainone, as she was originally known, was born in Los Angeles in 1962. Now, she may not be a name familiar for many of you, but her life and musical career has dissected two bands that I like, 5,000 miles apart.
And it nearly never happened… At the age of twelve, she recalled saving up all her money to buy a guitar, but when she went to the store to get it, she realised, “I could afford the guitar, but not the lessons… So I walk out of the store empty handed, a decision I [would] always regret.”
It was her Bag
However, the course of music was back on track when, at high school, she met Alicia Armendariz and formed a band called Femme Fatale around 1976. They met in the very un rock n roll surroundings of the line to see Elton John’s guest appearance on the Cher tv show. It seems the life of a full time musician was never considered, the young Rainone wanted to become a vet at that point. But the realisation that she would never be able to afford to study veterinary medicine, along with the onset of punk on the west coast - meant that life started to change.
She noted to Dangerous Minds; “When punk came along it opened up opportunities with like minded people deciding to give it a go and I was one of those people….. It was all so exciting between ‘being in a band’ and going to see concerts of old and new bands.”
Femme Fatale practised in Montebello and made their own business cards up - learning to play the instruments was apparently secondary! They did though, for whatever reason, apparently have an early tune called You Are The Eggplant Of My Dreams. In April 1977, the members saw the first ever gig by The Germs at The Orpheum, and they became the Bags - Janet Koontz was with them on guitar for a while.
They developed their idiosyncratic stage style; often wearing bags over their heads whilst playing. To go with this, the girls also adopted monikers - Alice Bag and Pat Bag. For this incarnation they were joined by Terry Graham on drums, with Rob Ritter and Craig Lee on guitars.
The Bags: Survive (audio only)
Their first gig, in September 77 at The Masque (Hollywood) was followed by their one and only record release, the single Survive, which came out in 1978 on local independent Dangerhouse Records. But Pat and Alice fell out soon after, and Pat left the band.
Here’s to you Mrs Morrison
By 1979, Rainone had left high school and was now in a band called Legal Weapon, which she started with Kat Arthur, and called herself Paterica. The band managed to get one record out, the No Sorrow EP in 1981.
Legal Weapon: No Sorrow (audio only)
That was also the year that Pat first got married, hooking up with Rick Morrison of fellow L.A. punks, Catholic Discipline (and hence the change of name).
Pat joins the Club
This is where Morrison’s storyline crosses into my world of interest. In 1982, her former Bag bandmate Terry Graham persuaded her to come and join him in the Gun Club. They were not the first or the last band to be led by a genius who effectively sabotaged every possibility they may have had of making a name for themselves.
Jeffrey Lee Pierce was something of a lunatic shaman visionary, fusing together punk with the swampiest of the blues and the dirtiest of American folk myth. Some of the work they produced in a fifteen year lifespan was truly mind-blowing, with Pierce providing influence for future artists such as Nick Cave and Jack White.
She was initially reluctant to join - after all she knew what Pierce was like, that he could be difficult to get on with and not the most collaborative of bandmates. “But I heard the tape for [the album] Miami and I thought the songs were amazing. So I said, I’ll give it a try. So I had three days to learn 30 songs, and one ten minute rehearsal where Jeffrey was blithering drunk.”
The Gun Club: Moonlight Motel (live on The Tube, 1984)
She played bass on 1984’s The Las Vegas Story and stayed on for the subsequent tour (her second with the band), before moving on again. While she loved working with Pierce, she struggled with his self-sabotaging way of doing things - he was “his own worst enemy and despite loving the band it was going nowhere and I was finding it hard to watch.” She later reflected (to Dangerous Minds) that “Gun Club was a real one off and innovative in its glorious insanity and sense of adventure in music and touring… special one off musical moments [that were] exhilarating and excruciating.”
While Pierce wrote pretty much everything, once he trusted her, he let Morrison work on the bass lines for songs. For all his myriad faults, Morrison acknowledges how great a songwriter he was and that she enjoyed spending time with him at his home, working on the song frameworks.
The album was recorded in two weeks, but most of the material on it had already been played live on the tour that Morrison had already done with them, so it wasn't much of an issue with most tracks going down in just one or two takes.
During her two years or so with the band (she was about the longest serving member they ever had) fifteen other people came and went around her. Pierce, she says, “was his own worst enemy. That band should have been huge. I sat there and watched as we were offered record deals and he would turn them down, to take less. It was just his personality, but that’s what also made him Jeffrey.”
The Gun Club: Eternally Is Here (live on The Tube, 1984)
The perfect line up of the band by her (and possibly many others) reckoning, was the last one she was involved in - with her and Pierce, being joined by the returning Graham on drums and Kid Congo Powers on guitar. “And we made a pact that if anybody quits, it’ll end. And we all said this. Then, I quit. And Kid quit.”
My ex L.A.
New year, new city. Now Morrison found herself in London with fellow ex-Gun Club partner, Powers. They had both decided that 1984 was the time to move on, and so they found themselves in a new city forming a new band, Fur Bible. They wanted Tex Perkins of Australian band Beasts of Bourbon as their singer, but he was denied entry into the UK because he didn’t have the right visa.
Not deterred, Fur Bible toured in the Netherlands as a backing band for psychobilly pioneer the Legendary Stardust Cowboy. They did finally unite with Tex in London, but things didn’t work out between them and he went back to Australia. There was a solitary EP, Plunder The Tombs, and another tour, this time as support for Siouxsie & The Banshees on their Cities In Dust tour. They were supposed to complete 60 dates, but it all finished in Maastricht in March 86, when Morrison got an invite to go elsewhere.
A Sister of Mercy
On the other end of that line was Andrew Eldritch, leader of up and coming goth band Sisters of Mercy, who Morrison knew from when they had supported Gun Club back in 83. With Morrison going that way, Powers took up an offer to join Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds, and Fur Bible was no more.
Morrison joined the Sisters in time to appear in promo videos for second album Floodland, although she didn’t feature on the record. Jennifer Park, who wrote a book on goth rock and fashion, stated that Morrison was the “perfect goth pin-up girl with her high arched eyebrows, black eyeliner, blood-red lips, teased out hair, long black nails, and fetich meets renaissance wardrobe.”
Sisters Of Mercy: Lucretia My Reflection (official video - Pat is in the video but not on the record, that was done by Eldritch)
Eldritch was seemingly quite enamoured with her (at least to begin with), comparing her to the legendary Italian figure of Lucrezia Borgia, and had already written the tune Lucretia My Reflection about her for Floodland.
She didn’t stay very long in the end though. It seems that Eldritch fired her from the band owing her money in 1989, with Morrison saying that he told her that she was sh*t. In fact, the resultant lawsuit saw her quit the musical life for a while, working as a motorcycle courier in London instead - leaving her joking that she made more money that way than being in a band. The settlement that resulted with Eldritch meant that she got some of her money back, but had to sign a non-disclosure agreement and could never really talk about what went on.
Then, her bike got stolen but she had decided to go back to music by that point anyway, putting out a solo record, Reflect On This, in 1994 (only released in Germany it seems). While she toured the record around eastern Europe for three months, she felt her band (except for the drummer) weren’t committed enough and decided to fire them and move onto something else.
Damned if you do…
She knew the guys in The Damned already, and was indeed a big fan of Britain’s great old uncles of punk. They had spun a trajectory over the last twenty years from raw young punks to goth rock darlings of the eighties. When Paul Gray got injured by a glass thrown at him from the audience and decided he’d had enough, Captain Sensible suggested that Morrison might be a good replacement on bass.
But she didn’t just replace Gray, she also married lead singer Dave Vanian in 1996.
The Damned: Democracy? (audio only)
She appears on 2001’s Grave Disorder, the band's first new material in fifteen years. It was, she felt, the best record that she had yet appeared on, the only one she didn’t wish “most of it were different.” She went on the road for some long tours, and also started arranging some of their personal appearances and concerts too. Then, in 2005, having given birth to their child Emily, Morrison retired from The Damned. “I stayed in the band until I was eight months pregnant with Emily. By the end I had to hold the bass to the side of me. I did a US tour, one last London gig and put my bass away.”
The Damned: New Rose (live on Jonathan Ross, 2002)
Her iconic fashion sense, which had some calling her ‘the godmother’ of punk, stems from her love of late 60s music and a love of film star glamour, which she then translated into a more punk look. She would rifle through thrift stores, like Lila’s in Pasadena to find her outfits, as well as warehouses that sold off old stock. She felt that Los Angeles allowed punks to develop a more individual style, rather than the more defined looks of London and New York.
When she reconciled with Alice Bag some three decades later, they looked back on their early days and what drew them into the music scene. Morrison recalled the attitude that was needed; “having that have-a-go attitude. Where you don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you’re not good enough or that you can’t do it.” The punk scene was notable for its great gender equality, “it was acceptable, it was as it should be.”
The lesson that Morrison believes was the strongest thing punk taught her was, “to stand up for yourself and be strong. To create, not follow.”
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