I Don’t Fit In by Paul Collins
I Don’t Fit In by Paul Collins
Paul Collins was the drummer of The Nerves and founder of The Beat. To this day, The Nerves have yet to receive proper recognition for their groundbreaking work.
I’m from Los Angeles. When I graduated high school in 2000, power pop was starting to hit a serious revival. A number of local bands in the area were inspired by The Nerves and Collins’ later band The Beat—the biggest group at the time was likely The Exploding Hearts out of Portland, Oregon. There were two records seemingly everyone in L.A. wanted: The Nerves’ Self-titled EP (1976) and Jack Lee’s first solo album (1981). Both were hard to come by and expensive when you found them. Jack Lee was a mystery—a man missing in action. Lee was a talented songwriter who hadn’t released a record in a long time.
I Don’t Fit In flushes out the story of The Nerves, The Breakaways (Collins’ short-lived band with Peter Case), Jack Lee and The Beat. In regards to The Nerves, they should be recognized in the same manner The Buzzcocks are in the UK for the latter’s pioneering work with their independent label, New Hormones. The Nerves seemingly beat everyone on the West Coast to the punch by self-releasing their debut EP. Before SST broke ground creating a US touring infrastructure, The Nerves did it back in ’77. For a band that had trouble getting arrested, their self-confidence and innovative thinking was impressive. Collins lucidly recalls the struggles and occasional moments of success The Nerves experienced in both San Francisco and Los Angeles. At the time of writing, I Don’t Fit In is the definitive story of The Nerves.
With his chapters on The Beat, Collins captures the late ‘70s/early ‘80s major label excesses and some of the same scummy details Fredric Dannen highlighted in Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business (1991). There was a brief moment where money showered on Collins, powerhouses like Bill Graham got involved, and a revered debut LP was cut. And then the shit hit the fan, The Beat were dropped by CBS, and the struggle continued. The stories of drugs and groupies aren’t altogether very interesting; the subsequent struggles Collins and Steve Huff encountered trying to rebuild The Beats’ momentum are. The shortest section of the book—where I can only speculate that Collins suffered a nervous breakdown (you’ve got to be in a bad place to light your houseboat on fire)—is one of the best chapters. Being a musician is pretty fucked, especially in America as you age. You likely lack health insurance and have been through the ringer a dozen times. Paul Collins lived it and his openness in the book is admirable.
So what about Jack Lee? Collins leads me to believe that Lee’s manic episodes spawned a lot of The Nerves’ unorthodox thinking. You have to be a little out there in the mid-‘70s to think you could not only cut a record yourself, but tour the country with no support in custom-made Yves Saint Laurent suits. Of course, Jack Lee is a songwriting genius—revisit his catalog if it’s been a while—and I had no idea the influence Lee had on Collins.
The Nerves were comprised of three exceptional songwriters who, at least until the early 1980s, were ahead of their time. And as personal aside, Jack Lee’s story of Jeffrey Lee Pierce handing Blondie a tape with “Hanging on the Telephone” is the manner in which Blondie first heard the song. I had a couple of people confirm that story over the years.
Pick up a copy of I Don’t Fit In and tell Todd Novak over there at HoZac Books that Ryan Leach sent you. -Ryan Leach, HoZac Books.
