walking upstream…
Suicide
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In 1970, at a 24-hour multimedia squat near NYU called the Project of Living Artists, a keyboard player named Martin Rev — freshly thrown out of NYU for playing Beethoven "his way" — wandered in and said nothing for weeks. The man he eventually approached, visual artist Alan Vega, would become his singer. Vega came from light sculpture and had spent 1969 getting shattered by a Stooges show; Rev arrived from a decade of studying jazz drumming and doo-wop, a record collection almost nowhere in Vega's own account of the band. Their self-titled 1977 debut ran a drum machine Rev bought for weddings and bar mitzvahs under Vega's screamed, reverb-drowned voice. The result sounded like rock and roll's oldest gestures — swagger, crooning, confrontation — stripped down until they became something closer to punk before punk had the word.
the sound in question
1977
Ghost RiderSuicide
walk the tributaries ↓
The Stooges1970s · Proto-punk / Garage rock
Vega was a visual artist, still fooling around with electronic sound, when a 4 a.m. phone call sent him to see the Stooges open for the MC5 in 1969 — "I Wanna Be Your Dog" already blasting from a car radio on the way. "He pretty much changed my life," Vega said of Iggy in a later interview, describing a twenty-minute set that ended with the singer cutting himself onstage. Asked directly if that night made him a frontman, Vega didn't hedge: "That's what the Iggy thing did." The confrontation crossed over into Suicide; the guitar did not.
listen: upstream & heresource: Vice — "People Would Boo, And I Would Scream Back At Them" (corroborating the Stooges origin story) ↗
1969
I Wanna Be Your DogThe Stooges
1977
Ghost RiderSuicide
listen for"I Wanna Be Your Dog" rides one wah-wah riff and Iggy's flat, taunting vocal for its full length, refusing to develop into a second idea — the show Vega saw ended with him bleeding to the same three chords. Suicide's "Ghost Rider" runs the identical trick through electronics: a single pulsing bassline stands in for the guitar, and Vega's flat, repeated chant ("America, America") replaces Iggy's taunt. Both songs dare you to look away first.
Elvis Presley1950s–70s · Rock and roll / Rockabilly / Pop / Gospel
Vega named Elvis first whenever he was asked what he grew up on, and the reason wasn't musicological — it was survival. "I grew up on Elvis," he said. "I didn't want to go to school and I needed something to push me out the door, so the only way you could get me to school was by putting on 'Hound Dog' or something." Years later the debt had hardened into scripture: "Elvis Presley to me is like God," he told The Quietus, "and Roy Orbison and Jerry Lee Lewis, they're my triumvirate."
listen: upstream & here
1956
Heartbreak HotelElvis Presley
1977
ChereeSuicide
listen forElvis's 1956 "Heartbreak Hotel" buries his voice in the tape slap-back Sam Phillips ran at Sun Studios, turning loneliness into an echo chamber — a link Vega's own interviewers have drawn explicitly. Suicide's "Cheree" pushes the same trick further: Vega's crooned come-on drowns in reverb until the doo-wop ballad underneath goes soft-focus, the words dissolving into pure atmosphere rather than lyric.
Roy Orbison1960s · Rock and roll / Pop / Rockabilly
Of the first-generation rock and rollers Vega rattled off by name, one voice got singled out from the list: "Roy Orbison had the greatest voice in rock'n'roll," he said. "He had a profound effect on me, the way he looked with those shades." Orbison also filled out the third slot in what Vega called his personal "triumvirate," alongside Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis — but it's the voice specifically, not the songwriting or the persona, that Vega singles out for praise.
listen: upstream & here
1961
CryingRoy Orbison
1977
Frankie TeardropSuicide
listen forOrbison's "Crying" spends its first half hushed before erupting into an unhinged, operatic wail that seems to outgrow the song's own arrangement — grief performed at full volume. Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop" runs the same structural trick across ten minutes: Vega's flat narration curdles into a scream that arrives with no build and no chorus to contain it, Orbison's melodrama turned into something closer to a horror story.