I first became aware of this interesting character when I watched Penelope Spheeris' 1981 LA punk documentary, Decline Of Western Civilisation.
Intrigued by his brief appearance in the film, all cutting French wit and acerbic put downs, I made a quick search for him online to find out more - and what I read then, meant I knew I would have to come back at some stage and dive deeper.
So, here is a little of what I found out about the incredible and interesting life of the man who was briefly known as Kickboy Face.
Claude
Claude Bessy was born in Normandy, France on 20 June 1945. I couldn't glean a lot of his early life, but the trail picks up when a young Bessy is studying at the Sorbonne, the highly regarded Parisian university. He is expelled following an incident where he shows up at 9am, already drunk and brandishing a bottle of brandy, before going on to threaten a teacher. This is already a good early clue for the life he will go on to lead.
It seems he shows up in the States for the first time around 1966, eventually ending up in LA in 1967. Next, he was off to Afghanistan to sell hashish, before we find him detoxing from methedrine in a French asylum. Then it was back to the US, where he worked a series of jobs like busboy and the one where he would meet his future wife.
He was a waiter at Al's Kitchen, a well known local haunt on Santa Monica Pier, which is where he would meet Philomena Winstanley, the English born animation artist, who would become his wife. Stephen Randall, an executive editor with Playboy, would later recall Bessy's abilities as a waiter:
"Before Slash, Claude's notoriety derived mostly from being a terrible waiter at Al's Kitchen on Santa Monica Pier circa 1973, cigarette hanging from his lips, ashes flicking in your food. He was semi-vigilant, grabbing the empty plate in front of you, even though you were just taking the first bite of your burger. Of course, because it was Claude, it all seemed like great fun. That was the best thing about hanging out with Claude and Philomena - everything became great fun. He was never boring and he never got bored, which made it easier to overlook the ashes in your food."
Fanzines
In 1975, Bessy's love of reggae (which he got in large part from Philomena) led him to establish the first reggae fanzine in LA, Angeleno Dread. He would also take his future moniker, Kickboy Face, from a 1976 song and album of that name by Jamaican reggae musician and DJ, Prince Jazzbo.
In 1977, when Steve Samiof and Melanie Nissen founded the punk fanzine Slash, Bessy (AKA Kickboy) and Philomena would both be there as writers and editors, throughout its three year existence. The fanzine was known as a punk magazine, but also delved into other overlooked genres like reggae, blues and rockabilly. Some people assumed, since the first issue had a photo of punk-goth Dave Vanian on the cover, with red writing made to look like blood, that it was a fanzine about horror movies.
Bessy kicks off his contribution in a style that would become familiar. In his article, So This Is War, Eh?, he sets out his stall; "Enough is enough, partner! About time we squeezed the pus out and sent the filthy rich old farts of rock 'n' roll to retirement homes in Florida where they belong."
This is where I first meet him - being interviewed in 1980 for the aforementioned punk documentary. When Spheeris asks him on camera, "Does Kickboy Face have a lot of enemies?" Bessy almost spits out his reply, "I should hope so, otherwise I am wasting my f@@@ing time."
Catholic Discipline and the Hardy Boys
While he was writing for Slash, Bessy also formed his own punk band up the coast in San Francisco. Catholic Discipline formed there in 1979, with Bessy handling vocals, Phranc on guitar, Rick Brodey on bass, Richard Meade on keyboards (replaced by Robert Lopez) and Craig Lee on drums. They played their first show at the Hong Kong Cafe in August of 79, played a handful of live dates through spring 1980, before splitting up because most of them were in multiple bands and so never devoted all their energy to the project. This was not before they had turned down an opportunity to tour Europe supporting Echo and the Bunnymen!
A compilation of live bits would eventually surface as Underground Babylon in 2004. Here they are in Decline, sounding like an off-kilter post-punk mix of Wire and the Velvet Underground.
Now, Bessy's career took another unexpected, if brief, tangent, this time into the world of acting. 1977 saw the start of a three season tv re-boot of the Hardy Boys Mysteries, based on the Edward Stratemeyer detective novels. Bessy's appearance in the show was again the result of a wild moment. Animation artist Judith Bell tells the story of how she, Claude and Philly found themselves crashing the birthday party of some big tv casting agent. At the peak of the celebration, Claude grabbed a bottle of 1965 Dom Perignon out of the birthday boys hands, taking some swigs, before the three beat a hasty exit.
"Come Monday morning, birthday boy and his partner at William Morris [a well known Hollywood talent agency] wanted to do lunch with Claude... Claude went to read for a part in some remake of the Hardy Boys. With no previous acting experience whatsoever, Claude got a contract for six episodes and a SAG card to play 'Frenchy', a transient bohemian rock star. The agents just loved the whole bad boy thing, his inimitable dark, dangerous beauty, his catlike grace and, of course, the lurid cussing in that heavy accent."
The UK Beckons
By the end of 1980, Samiof and Nissen had left Slash, with the new owner steering it towards becoming a record label. Then Reagan got elected. Philly returned to her native UK, followed by Claude.
He picked up a job as a Press Officer with the Rough Trade label. He tried promoting some of the bands he loved, especially the southern gothic sound of The Gun Club and Panther Burns. His job was made harder because he mostly had to promote bands that he didn't actually like, like the Raincoats.
In 1982, Tony Wilson asked him to be a VJ at the up and coming (and infamous) Haçienda club in Manchester - living in London, he would commute up for the weekends.
He also picked up work producing videos for the likes of The Fall and the Virgin Prunes (featuring Bono's best mate Gavin Friday, and Edge's brother, Dik Evans), for whom he worked on their Sons Finds Devils live retrospective. He also worked on the Ikon FCL video label (part of Factory Records), another job for which he could barely hide his contempt.
In London, he worked for the new Forbidden Planet retail store, which, like the tv show of the same name, focused on sci-fi and fantasy. He also picked up the odd vocal job, singing on tracks by the likes of Sonic Youth, Howard Devoto (Buzzcocks, Magazine) and Graham Lewis (Wire).
Barcelona Bound
By 1987, Claude and Philly had had enough of the UK, Bessy commenting, "The English weather was a big incentive as far as getting out." They wound up in Barcelona, where Claude took up painting, and teaching English to earn money.
Through his friendship with Wire's Graham Lewis, he contributed to their 1991 album The First Letter, although at this stage they were known as Wir (because one of the four original members, Robert Gotobed, had left). A recording of him reading some of his work became the backdrop for the song Naked, Whooping And Such Like.
It was there, on 2 October 1999, that Claude Bessy succumbed to lung cancer.
His former colleague Steve Samiof paid fitting 'tribute':
It's really unbelievable it wasn't his liver that got him. Unbelievable. He taught me how to drink with abandon, he was my guru. He taught me red wine, and he taught me brandy. And when we'd get loaded, we'd lament all the assholes in the world, wishing they'd f@@@ off and die.
Who Was Claude ?
It is clear that Claude Bessy left an indelible mark on all those who met him.
Warped Reality's Andrea Feldman called Bessy a "profane French chain-smoker who is utterly contemptuous of any kind of hipster canonisation of punk or any other music form."
Brendan Mullen, who ran another of Bessy's Santa Monica haunts, the Masque, wrote in LA Weekly after his passing, "Claude's editorial seemed to mobilise every sleepy misfit music creep and art wanker in the county into writing letters or starting bands."
Moe Bishop in Vice remembered him being "ruthlessly critical, relentlessly negative, sceptical, wasted, lovely, funny, charming, smart."
Friend and art collector Kerry Colonna summed it all up nicely.
Claude Bessy entered my life like a tornado, disrupting everything in his path and hurtling French avant-garde culture in all directions. Claude was quick to be sure I was familiar with Rimbaud, Artaud and Celine. He said the best contemporary art was the found -- or ready-made -- work in the spirit of Duchamp. He loved the English language, particularly when pushed to distortion by the likes of Burroughs, the Kipper Kids or the evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman. When I met Claude in 1975, he had just dedicated his singular body of poetic essays Hallelujah, the Madness Is Spreading: "To Philomena, who understands me, and to the Rastas, who don't." The writings were composed entirely in English and read like an amalgamated translation of the radical French literature he insisted I be familiar with. This last year, Claude had been reading Henri Michaux, and when I told him that I had been reading some recent translations of a few French Surrealist writers, Claude barked back that he hated the French.
A Fitting Coda
With Claude's passing, there was little keeping Philomena in Spain.
A random parting gift left ripples many years later. Claude and Philly's Santa Monica house had been party central in their US years, hosting all the visiting musicians that came to LA, including people like Nick Cave, Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks and Madness. Philly took lots of photos.
Spanish journalist Ivar Muñoz-Rojas was handed a bundle of Philomena's old photos. He realised it was a great gift. He explained to Andrea Feldman that Philly had given a boxful of photos to a girl working in a store she had been shopping in, who was into punk - telling her, "what you do with the pictures, be sure it is just for the love of art."
Ivar eventually found out that Philomena was still alive and tracked her down to where she was helping a benefit organisation in Sucre, Bolivia. Conversations with her, led him to interview many of the other people that had been a part of Claude Bessy's life, put them together with the beautiful photo archive and make a book, Underground Babilonia - sadly, as far as I am aware, still only available in Spanish from Spain.
Ivar got to know Bessy through his research - "Almost everyone I talked with described Claude as a charismatic, brilliant and extremely fun person."
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