Dee Generate, Eater’s 14-year-old drummer, as captured at Hope & Anchor in 1976 by Erica Echenberg (no. 1, 4-5) & Peter Marlow (no. 2-3).
Eater was one of the youngest bands, if not the youngest, in the UK punk scene, its members being 14–17 years. Dee Generate had joined a military drum band at school but it was this guy called Chris Miller who played in a local band that started to teach him for about a year, then joining the Damned and started calling himself Rat Scabies.
Having the right style and backround and being this young in a burgeoning scene turned him into some kind of punk popstar at the time, posing for teen and girlie magazines who focused on him since he appeared to be living the teenager’s ‘sex-and-drugs-and-rock’n’roll’ dream life, while hiding under people’s coats when the police raided Hope & Anchor because the band was reported as being underage.
As one can guess, all this proved to be too much to handle for a kid, so after a year or so he was sacked from the band because booze and drugs had affected his drumming and he started missing gigs -though the real reason might have to do with his high profile and the internal dynamics of the teenage band.
In life after Eater, Dee Generate drifted off the scene, unable to even get in the gigs -because he couldn’t get in free anymore- got into heroin and in a short time had no drums, no friends -since people started to get tired of him throwing up and nicking stuff from their houses- and had nearly killed himself, becoming an outcast. Eventually he got his shit together, did a Degree in Fine Art Sculpture in London and through that got involved in social work with young people.
“Are you proud of your punk past or was it just a teenage phase?
D: I am not proud of it, there is no sense of achievement, as the music (ours particularly) was rubbish. But I am glad I did it, I had a great time and experienced a life time of risk and excitement in the space of 18 months. It did take a toll and I suppose my life would have been very different, but maybe not better, if it had not happened.”
http://i94bar-dev.info/ints/deegenerate.html
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