Larry Hardy talks The Cramps' Gravest Gravy
In the Red’s Larry Hardy talks The Cramps’ Gravest Gravy, out August 21, 2026, on Vengeance Records.
Gravest Gravy is a collection of tracks The Cramps cut with Alex Chilton at Ardent in 1977. Four of the songs appeared on the first two Cramps singles, while many of the them remained unreleased or were later re-recorded. Present on Gravest Gravy is the Songs the Lord Taught Us lineup of the group—Lux Interior, Poison Ivy Rorschach, Bryan Gregory and Nick Knox. A must-have for Cramps aficionados and fans of Memphis music.
Presently, Hardy is working with Henry Rollins and Ian MacKaye on preserving The Cramps’ legacy. Gravest Gravy is their initial effort in what looks to be an on-going project.
Interview by Ryan Leach
Ryan Leach: When did you first encounter The Cramps?
Larry Hardy: When did I first see them?
Ryan: When did you first hear of them? They were such a visual band, I imagine you initially encountered them in Rock Scene or The New York Rocker.
Larry: Yeah, I saw their photos in Rock Scene before they even had a record out. I knew of Miriam Linna. A friend of mine was pen pals with her. He took me to my earliest shows and turned me onto a lot of music. He told me, “Miriam’s in this band called The Cramps.” I was aware of The Cramps early on. I bought their first 7” (“Surfin’ Bird”) right when it came out (in 1978).
Ryan: What was your friend’s name again?
Larry: Mike Dratch.
Ryan: That’s right. You’d mentioned him to me before.
Larry: He was a really good guy. He was mail ordering the early Pere Ubu singles directly from the label (Hearthan). He went to New York, stayed with Miriam, and came back with Suicide’s first album. Miriam worked for Red Star Records. I’d never heard of Suicide before.
Ryan: Red Star was Marty Thau’s label, right?
Larry: Yeah.
Ryan: You were one of the first people in Anaheim, California, to be aware of The Cramps.
Larry: I was amongst the first five, that’s for sure.
Ryan: I know you took photos of The Cramps when Kid Congo Powers was in the band. He played that great Ibanez Explorer. Was that the first time you’d seen them live?
Larry: No, that was the first time I saw them with Kid in 1980 or thereabouts. Gun Club opened. I saw them in 1978 when they first came to Los Angeles. They opened for The Runaways. I was 15 years old.
Ryan: What an experience!
Larry: At that point, they’d only had one 7” out with “Surfin’ Bird” and “The Way I Walk” on it. It was a cool single, but it didn’t give you a real idea of what they sounded like. Had I heard “TV Set” first, I might have been better prepared for the show. I went because I was curious. Joey Ramone was on Rodney on the ROQ a couple of weeks earlier. I heard him say that The Cramps were his favorite band and the best group in New York. I took that endorsement seriously. They were an insane band. I’d never seen anything like it. Runaways fans at the front of the stage were backing away from them.
Ryan: You mentioned the Vengeance single (“Surfin’ Bird”) which was part of the Ardent session that makes up Gravest Gravy (2026). Let’s talk about how that 1977 Memphis recording session came together. Obviously, Alex Chilton and The Cramps were living in New York at the time.
Larry: I don’t know how the session was arranged. The Cramps knew Alex in New York and his history with The Box Tops and Big Star. Lux (Interior) and Ivy were such devotees of rockabilly, recording in Memphis would’ve been a dream for them. Initially, when The Cramps went down to Memphis to record with Alex, their intention was to do just two songs for a 7”. “TV Set” was going to be the A side. Originally, it was planned to be issued on Ork Records. I’m sure Alex’s connection with the label is how that happened. That’s what they set out to do, but when Alex got them in the studio, he said, “I want you to record everything you have. That way we can pick the best songs for the release.” That’s what they did. They recorded 16 songs. They tracked a ton of stuff there and ended up releasing two 7”s (“Surfin’ Bird” and “Human Fly”) from the sessions. Those came out on The Cramps’ label, Vengeance, in 1978. I don’t know what happened with Ork Records. The label must have folded or something. The rest of the tracks had just been sitting in the can.
Ryan: In Holly George-Warren’s book on Chilton (A Man Called Destruction), she writes that Lux and Ivy flew out to England with Chilton and Terry Ork. Apparently, Ork was trying to get his label distribution through Phonogram Records and was promoting The Cramps and Alex.
Larry: It’s amazing there were no takers.
Ryan: Did you get these Ardent tapes from Ivy?
Larry: Yeah, I helped Lux and Ivy move all of the master tapes they had in their possession from an office they were renting in Glendale, California, back to their house. This would’ve been around 2002. I’d seen all the tapes that they had. They stored them in their garage. About a year before Lux passed, they’d been telling me that they were going to release this stuff. They had the title picked out, Gravest Gravy. They were excited because the material had never been bootlegged. “These tracks have just been sitting and we’re finally going to put them out.” Then Lux passed away in 2009 and it never happened. I talked with Ivy over the years about finally releasing it. She’d lost interest. Now that we’re doing it; the first thing I asked her was, “Can we get your tapes out of the garage?” They weren’t in good condition. There were leaks in the garage and some mold on boxes. Ivy gave me the tapes and I went through them. I found what looked like the Ardent sessions with Chilton. I could tell by the song titles written on the case. I got the tapes transferred and sure enough, that’s what it was. We worked with the tapes we got out of Ivy’s garage.
Ryan: Did these tapes have outtakes or were they the final mixes and selected tracks?
Larry: There was a bunch of outtakes on them. Multiple versions of most of the songs. What was interesting to me was that all of the reels were mixed by Lux and Ivy in 1989 in North Hollywood. We know that from the boxes and the dates on them. It was all Ivy’s handwriting on them. So, they were going to do something with them in ’89. I know one of the songs ended up as a bonus track on the 1990 CD reissue of Songs the Lord Taught Us. That might be the reason they went in and mixed the stuff. But one of the reels was mixed by Alex Chilton. In big letters, the case says, “Mixed by Alex Chilton.” The lettering and the writing was different on that particular reel.
Ryan: Do you speculate that Chilton was working with Lux and Ivy as late as 1989 or were those tracks mixed by him in ’77?
Larry: I don’t know. There was no date on them. I think they were mixed back in 1977. Since we got those tapes, people in Memphis have given us other stuff. Henry’s (Rollins) been transferring it. There’s a lot more stuff they cut in Memphis than what appears on Gravest Gravy. The Cramps had an impact on Memphis. The Cramps definitely influenced The Panther Burns.
Ryan: Oh, yeah, Ross Johnson told me once that in their scene The Cramps were number one, The Gun Club was number two, and The Panther Burns were number three. Of course, don’t tell Tav that!
Larry: Oh, boy! Of course, nothing ranks higher than The Cramps.
Ryan: There are songs on Gravest Gravy that The Cramps never recorded again in a studio. Stuff that only appears on early live bootlegs. You’re such a Cramps completist. A couple examples are their cover of Paul Revere & the Raiders’ “Hungry” and “Problem Child” is another one.
Larry: “Problem Child” has never been released. This is the only studio version of “Weekend on Mars” and “Rocket in My Pocket”. “The Natives are Restless” was on Psychedelic Jungle but with totally different lyrics. There’s a lot to chew on for Cramps fans.
Ryan: There’s “Rockin’ Bones” by Ronnie Dawson, a Texas guy, that’s covered on Psychedelic Jungle. That’s got Kid (Congo Powers) on guitar. On Gravest Gravy the same song has Bryan Gregory’s playing on it.
Larry: Yeah, there are four songs on Gravest Gravy that ended up on Psychedelic Jungle. You’re right and it also has Gregory on backup vocals.
The Cramps recording Songs the Lord Taught Us with Chilton in Memphis. Bryan Gregory speaks!
Ryan: Not long afterwards, The Cramps and I.R.S. had a falling out and lawsuit that hindered the former’s career. Do you think that held up the release of these tracks? I know that five of the songs from the Ardent-Chilton sessions appeared on Gravest Hits (1979), the I.R.S. EP that compiled the two Vengeance singles.
Larry: The lawsuit came later between The Cramps and I.R.S. These recordings took place prior to them being under contract with the label. They own them.
Ryan: Right. But it was such a major blow to the momentum the band had built. I remember chatting with Kid Congo Powers about it and he’d mentioned the sort of inertia it had created. They couldn’t record anything and everything got very litigious.
Larry: When they sued I.R.S., there was a period from about late 1981 till 1983 when they couldn’t release anything. They weren’t allowed to.
Ryan: As I recall, that was a contributing factor to Kid rejoining Gun Club. It really took the wind of out The Cramps’ sails. There was just nothing to really do.
Larry: Absolutely.
Ryan: Ivy has retired from music and public life. How’s she doing these days?
Larry: She’s doing fine. She’s moved on and doesn’t really care too much for this old stuff. That wasn’t always the case, even after Lux died. She wanted to do something with it back then, but I think it was hard for her. She hasn’t done an interview since Lux died and she likely never will.
Ryan: The Cramps were bootlegged and their records were pirated. It’s great seeing this official release come out. Obviously, Ivy is going to be a benefactor.
Larry: Ivy is the main benefactor of all of this. That was the primary reason for doing it. She wasn’t making money from this band of hers. Some of that was her fault. She didn’t want to deal with it, so records went out of print. We fixed that. We got her a merchandise deal. That’s where a lot of the money is—T-shirts. There’s a lot of money in bootlegging T-shirts, so now she’s getting paid for official Cramps shirts. People are approaching us with Cramps tapes, so now this material can be released legitimately. We can make sure they sound great and have good artwork.
Ryan: It sounds like you’ve got a number of Cramps projects potentially in the pipeline.
Larry: We do. We’ll be working on this stuff for a while. There’s loads of stuff. It should be on Vengeance, not a bootleg label.
