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‘Decline of Western Civilization’ director Penelope Spheeris on the pain of reliving the past, and the noble cause of helping others

Penelope Spheeris photo by Suzanne Allison

Between December 1979 and May 1980, director Penelope Spheeris shot The Decline of Western Civilization, documenting the exploits of Black Flag, the Germs, X, the Circle Jerks, and the denizens of L.A.’s early punk scene. The film spawned two sequels, 1988’s The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, and 1998’s The Decline of Western Civilization III—each offering a look into the lives of musicians in various states of desperation. Spheeris’ Decline trilogy changed the world’s perceptions of punk and metal forever. Although she achieved mainstream success directing later films such as Wayne’s World, The Beverly Hillbillies, and The Little Rascals, it is her work with Decline that defines her career.

Spheeris took a few minutes to talk about the pain of reliving the past, reconnecting with her daughter, and the noble cause of helping other people.

The mark of a truly timeless work of art is that you can revisit it 35 years later and find new meaning and relevance, maybe in wholly different ways than what you originally intended. How has the meaning of The Decline of Western Civilization changed for you?

Having done the films so long ago—I really shied away from watching them for so many years. I asked my daughter if she would come to work for me. She said she would but only if I released the Decline movies first. I thought, ‘Oh God, what a nightmare.’ But what has been very gratifying is to experience other people watching them 20 and 30 years later. That, for me, is astounding. When I look at them, I don’t think that I did something profound, but that is what other people say. I was just making movies about subjects I was interested in. They kind of turned out, all these decades later, to be interesting to other people. It’s been a real weird trip, I’ll tell you that.

I get the impression that you feel some anxiety over these films. Why do you say it was a nightmare to revisit them?

Anxiety … That’s an understatement. I have a lot of anxiety over these films. If you think about it, as a filmmaker or as any kind of creative person, you want to have the product of your creativity seen by other people, and hopefully appreciated. For me, so many of the movies I’ve done—certainly Decline I and III, not so much with II—were not really ever seen on a legitimate platform. Decline I was bootlegged to death. People passed it around like underground contraband for decades because it wasn’t in distribution. It was extremely painful for me to go back and deal with these movies because, on a subconscious level, they brought up a lot of pain. That pain was that people couldn’t see my work; people who seemingly were interested in it.

That happened with a film I did with Sharon and Ozzy, We Sold Our Souls for Rock ‘n’ Roll. Nobody got to see it. It happened with Dudes, which I did with Jon Cryer and Flea. It happened with The Boys Next Door that I did with Charlie Sheen. I had a long history of making movies that didn’t get seen. On the other hand, when I would do a comedy, it would definitely be seen. Especially Wayne’s World.

The thing to be said is that it’s hard to hide truly brilliant work. Even without distribution, I found a bootleg of Decline I in Omaha, Neb., in the early ’90s. That film put a face on punk rock for me and many others. It also made my relationship with the music more complicated—I had to put my life’s situation into context. I learned more about myself from Decline than I did from Wayne’s World—even though Wayne’s World is a fun movie.

Yeah, and the anxiety that comes along with putting out a box set is that, like you, I personally identify a lot more with the Decline movies than I do with the studio comedies. So I wanted it to be done right. When I am dead and gone, I want the right piece of physical items there to represent what they are. Once you do it, it’s done. It’s not like I can redo that. So that’s why there was so much trepidation involved with doing it. Now it’s like okay, you did it. Now you can die.

That has to be sort of rewarding.

What’s rewarding is that it’s no longer bearing down on me like a big dark cloud. For that, I really have to thank my daughter. Without her, I would have just died without doing it. I swear to God. It was just painful. Just watching the movies brought up so many memories, and she kept coming up with more pieces for the extras, which included a lot of interviews with me and with people I know from way back in the day. It was just hard to look at it. It’s like having your life flash before you. I just like to keep moving forward. I don’t like to look back. That’s why they never got put out before.

When you look back over the films—all three of them—are there subjects that stand out for you, or that you walked away from with some insight?

For Decline I, when I look at that movie I think, jeez, it’s pretty amazing that so many elements of today’s young people’s lives originated way back then. Now everybody has their tattoos and tight jeans and they have their haircuts, and it all started back then. So many social trends and philosophical ways of thinking started back then. So, for those reasons, I’m glad I was able to document all of that.

I don’t think there’s a profound lesson to be learned in Decline II except for trying to make it for the wrong reasons is stupid. That’s a pretty easy one.

For me, Decline III is the most important film of my entire career. It made me realize that I don’t want to be working in Hollywood anymore. There are more important things in life, and I should go help homeless kids, which is what I have done. If you go see it, bring a Kleenex, because it’s a heartbreaker. It was so hard to get it released because it is extremely sad. It reveals some really terrible domestic situations that happen with young kids that make them leave their homes and go live in the streets. Those are my buddies. Those are my family — the Decline III kids. Those are the people I’m close to.

There’s a kid named Eugene in that first film. I don’t have the same kind of anger in me, but I found him to be such a compelling character. How did you find him, and do you ever cross paths with him? Do you know how his life turned out?

He was friends with the HB kids—Huntington Beach, surfer punks. I saw Eugene up on the Slash office’s roof and I asked if he would be interviewed for the film. He kept saying no, but finally I talked him into it. He was 14 years old at that time. And he is very compelling. That’s why he starts the movie out. Today he lives in Berlin. I just sent him his 50 year-old birthday present. He’s a very good friend. He’s a folk singer. He’s known now as Euge From the Coast. He’s very happy in Berlin, and we email each other about once a week.

How have these films played a role in your relationship with your daughter Anna?

We sure do know each other a lot better after spending four years in the same room together!

Were the two of you estranged before this project?

In a way. When she was Four years old, her father died from a heroin overdose. So I raised her as a single parent. I think it wasn’t until it hit me in the face that addiction is extremely genetic. Five years ago, she had a drug problem that could have ended very tragically. We were fortunate enough that it didn’t. She wrecked a car with a kid in it. But she did a really good job with rehab and I said, “You have to come to work for me.” I wanted to keep an eye on her and make sure she didn’t relapse. She said she would do it, but we had to do Decline. You never know if something is bad or good until some time has passed. It was the most horrible thing in my life to deal with my daughter having that problem. But from out of that mess came this thing that people appreciate quite a bit—this box set for the DVDs.

She had been in touch with so many of the people who’ve been in the movies. She’s quite in touch with the people from Decline I and II. Whereas I’m the Decline III woman here. Those are my friends.

Honestly, Anna deserves 90% of the credit for the movies being seen again. I did the movies way back, but they would have never been seen in this form by so many people if she hadn’t virtually put a gun to my head and said you have got to do this. It was daunting and horrible. I would avoid it at all costs. She was down there with three editors at one time, sorting things out. She would have to drag me down to the editing room because I didn’t want to deal with it. For that, I am extremely grateful that she made me do it. She was so smart about so many things. She uncovered a lot and was like an archaeologist. A lot of the old tapes and old formats wouldn’t even play. She had to go and borrow chunks of equipment from friends—a DAT player—because nothing else would play them. She just kept going and going and going.

I could definitely see the evolution with the punks between Decline I and III. In Decline III, each individual was so much more tolerant, and kind, and not mean to the people that might be different from them. So there was some sort of evolution going on there. Flea is in Decline III and describes the original L.A. punk scene as being like an experimental art scene. Whereas in Decline III, even though everybody looks the same, physically, it’s not an art scene anymore. It’s pure and dire survival, and there ain’t no room for art in that world.

I think about those scenes from the first film and how all of the Black Flag guys lived in that church. That seemed dire…

It was fun dire. They were embracing their homelessness. They just had a different take on it. It wasn’t hurtful for them. It was fun. For the kids in Decline III, it’s painful.

What I learned from Decline III in getting to know those kids and their background: We don’t have any more noble assignment in life than helping our children and doing the right thing for them. These kids come from alcoholic and drug-addicted families that fought all the time and threw them out in the street.

It doesn’t make me feel good to sit down and have lunch with some major studio executive. Who gives a shit? It’s so vapid. What makes me feel good is being a foster parent. Staying in touch with my Decline III buddies, and going to these various cities and selling posters and donating the money to homeless shelters for kids. That, to me, is what makes life good. The rest of that jerk off stuff is so unnecessary. It’s funny to me that people get into such a frenzy to come to Hollywood and say “I have to make it in Hollywood!” Are you kidding me? No, you don’t! I guess I can say that because I kinda sorta made it, but not really. It doesn’t have any meaning next to helping people.

— Chad Radford

A version of this interview previously appeared in Creative Loafing.

RadATL Uncategorized

Beatles vs. Stones: Author John McMillian puts a new spin on an age-old debate

Author John McMillian wants to make one thing clear: He is a historian, not a rock critic. It is precisely for this reason that he doesn’t pick a side in the age-old debate that stands as the title for his second book: Beatles vs. Stones (Simon & Schuster). After all, what is there that’s left to be said about such a tired debate in 2013? As it turns out, there’s still plenty to be said. But for McMillian, who works as an assistant professor of history at Georgia State University, it’s not about riffing on which band had a better drummer, and whose records were chock-full of filler. “I have always been obsessed with both groups; the Beatles and the Rolling Stones are two of my favorite bands,” McMillian says. “But I didn’t want to allow myself to get drawn into a debate over which one is better, and have readers approach the book as if it was a treatise on behalf of one sensibility or the other.”

Rather, Beatles vs. Stones takes on a wholly different angle on how the greatest rock ‘n’ roll rivalry of all time was fostered by the fans, the music industry, the media, and by the bands themselves. By bringing to light mounds of source materials that most scholars and critics have never mined, namely the alternative newspapers and fan magazines of the late ’60s and early ’70s, McMillian taps into the stories of both bands as they unfold. By tracing their evolutions, side-by-side, as they appeared in the underground publications of the times, McMillian offers fresh insight into the dynamics of both groups as they grew and changed, with a real-time and palpable sense of excitement.

As such, Beatles vs. Stones came about as a happy accident of sorts—an unforeseen by-product from the time he’d spent researching materials that went into publishing his first book, 2011’s Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America.

While spending weeks combing through microfilm reels of archived underground newspapers, studying the revolutionary spirit and headlines of the late 1960s, McMillian also uncovered an antic, and very public discourse that was brewing over the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.

“The whole constellation of underground newspapers in the late ’60s were the most important primary source base for the book,” McMillian says. “A lot of them had never before been analyzed or brought to light in any other books on the Beatles or the Stones. I also spent about $3,000 on the fan magazines that both groups put out—The Beatles Monthly Book and The Rolling Stones Monthly Book. They’re not collected in any American libraries, so the next best option was to buy them off eBay.”

Naturally, both groups held strong connections to the youth rebellion of the times. The problem, though, was that there just wasn’t room to discuss it in Smoking Typewriters. Still, he couldn’t shake it. “The material was just too fascinating to let it go, so I set it aside for another time,” McMillian says.

Two years later, Beatles vs. Stones‘ opening chapter unearths Sean O’Mahony, the man who once published both bands’ monthly fan club magazines. O’Mahony explains: “The Beatles were thugs who were put across as nice blokes, and the Rolling Stones were gentlemen who were made into thugs … “

As the story unfolds we watch the Beatles and the Stones trade places, and this divisive assessment fueled the rich public sentiment that was kicked up circa 1963-1970 and still resonates 50 years later.

McMillian balances his own findings with already published accounts in dozens of other already published books and interviews, and even conducts a few of his own interviews. In the process, he uncovers a trove of often overlooked details, or finds new significance in them when telling the bands’ stories jointly.

Still, he refuses to step into the debate. “I like to think that a thoughtful reader can tell which band I like more than the other,” McMillian says. “But to spell it out would be a disservice to the book.”

A version of this review was originally published in Creative Loafing, October 13, 2013.

RadATL Podcasts & Interviews

A Bl’ast! from the past: ‘Blood!’ sheds new light on William DuVall’s secret history

Bl’ast! Blood! Photo courtesy Southern Lord.

In September of 1986, just six months after guitarist, singer, and songwriter William DuVall had moved away from his home in Atlanta, effectively disbanding the city’s seminal hardcore group Neon Christ, he turned up in sunny Santa Cruz, Calif. It was there amid the late ’80s flashpoint, when thriving surfing, skateboarding, and punk scenes had all converged, that DuVall joined the ranks of local hardcore outfit Bl’ast! Alongside his new bandmates, Mike Neider (guitar), Clifford Dinsmore (vocals), Dave Cooper (bass), and Bill Torgerson (drums), DuVall’s second guitar brought strength and focus to the group’s already snarling melodies.

With DuVall in town, and now functioning as a five-piece, Bl’ast! spent countless chaotic, and oftentimes bloody, nights on stages hammering out songs that would go down in history as the group’s crowning achievement — culminating with the 1987 LP, It’s in My Blood (SST Records).

The album arrived as a powerful step up from the terse but clumsy songwriting that Bl’ast! had delivered three years earlier with its debut, The Power of Expression. Nailing the high-speed tempos of songs such as “Only Time Will Tell,” “Something Beyond,” and the album’s title track became an audacious testament to the band’s physical and mental dexterity.

“They were pissed-off Reagan-era California kids who all knew each other since junior high,” DuVall says. “Then, much like what happened to Neon Christ on the opposite coast, one gets a little older and the music gets more sophisticated—it develops a different kind of swag.”

Although DuVall parted ways with Bl’ast! in March of 1987, less than a year after he’d joined the group, he co-wrote and recorded the early versions of the songs that would later be re-cut without his parts for It’s in My Blood. For more than 25 years, the only real document of the time he’d spent playing with Bl’ast! has been a few grainy live shots flashing across the screen in the “Surf and Destroy” video. But a recently unearthed cache of the original It’s in My Blood recordings, featuring DuVall’s guitar parts, reveals the significant role he played in the group’s evolution.

Released in August of 2013 via Southern Lord, and re-titled simply as Blood!, the re-released album compiles a more hard-hitting version of the group’s songwriting of the era in all of its teeth-gnashing glory. From the thundering bass and charged air of anguish that rushes in with the album’s opener, “Only Time Will Tell,” Blood takes aim at anything and anyone that gets in its way.

In the American music press, Bl’ast! was often saddled with Black Flag comparisons, and rightfully so. The visceral intensity and real-time emotional confrontation playing out in such songs as “Ssshhh,” “Winding Down,” and “Your Eyes” bear an unmistakable mark of Black Flag’s influence. But Bl’ast! adhered to a fiery and baroque dynamic. Stylistically, Blood! personifies the late ’80s era when punk and metal found common ground with a dark balance of catharsis and experimentation. The bombast of each of the album’s 11 songs builds both attitude and tension in the subtle interplay between Neider and DuVall’s guitar attacks, particularly throughout the songs “Sequel” and “Poison.” The music for the former was written by DuVall, as were most of the lyrics for the latter number.

Ultimately, this is the lineup that wrote and arranged these songs. As such, there’s a breadth and intensity here that the original release just doesn’t capture. Of course, mixing the album on the Sound City board at Dave Grohl’s Studio 606 gives the songs a thickness that the originals never projected. The members of the band worked alongside Grohl, Southern Lord’s Greg Anderson, and John “Lou” Lousteau — the latter of whom did some engineering work with Duvall for Alice in Chains’ 2009 album, Black Gives Way to Blue — to flesh out the sound. The lo-fi grit of the original release is lost, but it’s a small price to pay when setting such a powerful record straight. “The important thing for me is that with Blood!, the world finally gets to hear a more accurate version of what we were doing,” DuVall says.


Credibility aside, Blood! is a richly detailed redux that’s far more solid than anything else from Bl’ast!’s catalogue, making it an excellent artifact from a chapter in DuVall’s career that until now has remained lost in time.

A version of this story originally appeared in CL Atlanta.

RadATL Podcasts & Interviews

The Doors open and shut : Drummer John Densmore puts Jim Morrison’s legacy on trial with ‘Unhinged’ memoir

In October 1968, the Buick Motor Company paid the American rock ‘n’ roll group the Doors $75,000 to use the song “Light My Fire” in a commercial for a new luxury car, the Opel. For drummer John Densmore, keyboardist Ray Manzarek, and guitarist Robby Krieger, the deal was simply a way of getting paid for their song. But the group had previously agreed that every decision the Doors made was to be done unanimously, and each of its four members, including Dionysian front man Jim Morrison, had 100 percent veto power. When Buick came knocking, Morrison was out of the country, so the other three went forward with the commercial. When Morrison returned and found out, he was so angry that he threatened to smash an Opel with a sledgehammer on television if the commercial continued airing. For Morrison, the Door’s artistic integrity was at stake. He died in 1971, but his reaction to the commercial resonated with Densmore profoundly. So much so that it became the basis for waging legal action to stop Krieger and Manzarek when they tried to relaunch the group without him, and without Morrison, in 2002 as the Doors of the 21st Century. In his latest book, The Doors Unhinged: Jim Morrison’s Legacy Goes On Trial (CreateSpace.), Densmore chronicles the courtroom proceedings, and his subsequent victory, while justifying his actions against his former bandmates to honor Morrison’s vision.

Chad Radford: Why did you feel compelled to write The Doors Unhinged?

John Densmore: Several years ago, the Doors were knocked off of their hinges because the guitar player and the keyboard player thought they could continue without Jim. The Doors without Jim Morrison is like the Stones without Mick, or the Police without Sting. No. No. No. So I rallied Jim’s estate and we entered a legal struggle to stop them. At the time, some fans—the hardcore ones, certainly—said “What!? They’re suing the other guys?! Then it was ‘Ugh! … The other guys are countersuing for $40 million?! Oh my God, this is a train wreck.” If you read the book, you get that our goal was to preserve the Doors’ legacy, and to keep the original band and its intent intact. That’s why I wrote it. I want that story out there for those that are interested.

The word that keeps coming up around this case is “integrity …”

Jim Morrison—when he gave us that great line about “Come on Buick light my fire,” he said, “Great! I’ll smash one on television with a sledgehammer!” When he said that, he sledgehammered his feelings into my brain. I can’t get that out of my head, and the underlying thing that the book is all about is integrity. What’s interesting is that the song “Light My Fire” was primarily written by Robby. Jim wrote a couple of lines—”Our love becomes a funeral pyre.” But he went ballistic when he saw the commercial, so what does that say? He cared about the whole catalog and the meaning of the whole band. He’s dead; he’s my ancestor, and I’m going to honor him as much as I can.

Your perspective is from a very pure, circa 1965-67 kind of ideology.

That’s really smart, because when people talk about the ’60s, they really do mean ’65-’67. After that, 1968, ’69, ’70, that’s when people started getting burned out, and went from using street psychedelics to cocaine. Yuck.

Point being, you’ve carried that ideology into 2013, an era when a lot of bands would trip over themselves to have a song used in a commercial.

If you’re trying to pay the rent, the music industry is tough, man. If you have to use your songs to hawk stuff, do it. But if things get going for you, think about what Tom Waits said about selling your songs: “You’re turning your lyrics into a jingle, which means, you’re saying whatever you’re saying with your lyrics, plus you won’t be happy without this product!” And it’s true, when you sell your songs you’re selling your audience. It changes the meaning of your songs. I understand that in the beginning you have to do what you have to do to get going. But the Doors were in a different situation. People often ask, why not play Robin Hood, take the money and donate it to charity, or something, but turning a song into a commodity like that violates the sacred exchange that takes place between the artist and the listener.

Also, let me just say, a lot of people like to pooh-pooh the ’60s, and they did burn out toward the end. But it really was an incredible renaissance. The seeds of integrity, civil rights, the peace movement, feminism, and all these things were planted in the ’60s. These are big seeds! Maybe it’ll take 50 or 100 years for them to flourish, but they were planted. So keep your water cans out. Those seeds are going to grow into big beautiful trees that break up sidewalks.

Did you worry about being perceived as the villain when you took Ray and Robby to court?

In the beginning, yes, I did. Ray and Robby are great musicians, and I want them to be out there playing music, but let’s get the name straight, and it is straight now: Manzarek–Krieger, founding members of the Doors. Go see them play, they’re great. But I’m not there because Jim’s not there. Why would I play these songs without him, when I played them with him? At the beginning of the whole Doors of the 21st Century thing, people would ask, “Why aren’t you playing with them?” Truth is, a long time ago Jim said, “We’re all together in this. I don’t know how to write a song, or play a chord on any instrument. We’re going to share everything, equally. Everything! It was a beautiful pact. And you know, the Beatles are John, Paul, George, and Ringo. The Doors are Jim, Ray, Robby, and John—not Ray, Robby, Ian, Tom, Fred, Stewart, and whoever the hell else. That’s no slight on those guys, they’re fine musicians, but Ian is not Jim, and that was not the Doors.

That kind of pact—four equal shares, each with 100 percent veto power—was unprecedented at the time, correct?

It was completely unheard of in musical and in popular culture, but it made us all feel empowered to give 200 percent into those songs.

John Densmore. Photo by Scott Mitchell.

In the end, were you also putting yourself on trial by writing this book?

Yeah. Just bringing all of this up—money is such a volatile subject. It makes us crazy, and people have criticized me: “Obviously you’re just hanging out with rich socialists …” You can’t please everybody, but it affects you a little. The great thing about the Internet is that it unites us as a global village, but it gives a prominent voice to the fringe crazies. But yes, I really did feel like I was taking myself to task.

Are you willing to make amends with Ray and Robby now that the case is settled, and they’re not calling themselves the Doors of the 21st Century?

Yeah, and the road to recovery is open. I sent them the last chapter a few weeks ago, and want to make sure they get them. It’s a hard pill to swallow, but how could I not love Ray and Robby? We created this thing that’s bigger than all of us in a garage in Venice. They will forever be my musical brothers. Maybe we’ll hang again, and maybe we’ll make music again one day. Not playing Doors songs, but maybe a benefit, like Pink Floyd did a few years ago. That would be a nice, altruistic reunion.

Until then, you’re on the road with the book.

Yes, and I’m excited to come to Criminal, because I feel like one! The Doors were banned from Atlanta—oh my God. After Jim died, we tried to continue for a while, and it was kind of stupid. Anyway, we did a couple albums and were touring with one called Other Voices. We wound up on the phone with the mayor of Atlanta [Sam Massell] saying, “I don’t want no obscene Doors in my town!” Because of what went down with Jim in Miami. I said, “Our singer has passed and things are somewhat different …” He said, “I don’t care, the Doors are not playing in my town!” So we were banned from Atlanta, unceremoniously. This must have been 1973, give or take. So it’s an appropriately named venue for me. Hopefully I’ll be better received this time.

A version of this interview originally appeared in Creative Loafing on April 30, 2013.

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RadATL Podcasts & Interviews

Photographer Lyle Owerko’s ‘The Boombox Project’ offers lessons in urban Americana

Photo courtesy Lyle Owerko.

While nursing his morning coffee in his Tribeca apartment, Lyle Owerko‘s voice perks up over the phone as he recounts the chain of events that led to the creation of his first photography book, The Boombox Project. Subtitled, “The Machines, the Music, and the Urban Underground,” the book is more than just a collection of photos that fetishize the so-called “ghetto blasters” or “ghetto briefcases,” a term Spike Lee dismisses for its racist connotations in the book’s forward. At its core, The Boombox Project is both an oral history and an anthropological study. In the late 1970s and early ’80s, hip-hop, punk, and new wave were all at a flash point. The one thing that tied them all together was the ever-present but often-overlooked icon of the times—the boombox.

Owerko’s boombox series shows off the sleek designs and battle scars of this once ubiquitous machine. In the book, he juxtaposes his crisp color photos, which are set against a stark white backdrop, with a collection of historical images that illustrate the boombox’s cultural significance. Owerko likens its role to a “sonic campfire” around which people would gather to laugh, dance, tell stories, and exchange ideas.

To accentuate the reverential photos, Owerko conducted interviews with a cross-section of voices from the times: DJs, producers, and several generations of New York City hip-hop artists, including Fab 5 Freddy, LL Cool J, DJ Spooky, and Adam Yauch, aka MCA, of the Beastie Boys.

But before Owerko becomes too engrossed in tales of nostalgia, urban Americana, and his own passion for these antiquated pieces of stereo machinery, he relates the dark tale that ultimately helped fuel The Boombox Project. In late summer 2001, Owerko returned to New York for a photo assignment after a six-week stint in Africa. Visible from his living room, Owerko had always thought of the World Trade Center as the metaphorical tree in his front yard. “I could look at the towers and tell what the weather was going to be like by how much of them that I could see,” he says.

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he was up early, jet-lagged, and still functioning on Africa time when he heard the first plane slam into a tower. He hadn’t yet unpacked his camera bag, so he grabbed his gear and raced toward the buildings to see what was happening. “I composed a shot that showed one tower that was still virgin and untouched next to the other tower that had this gaping hole in the side of it,” Owerko recalls. “I put the sun behind myself and composed these two shots of the tower with the sun in the perfect lighting position, and that put me in the perfect place to catch the second plane hitting.”The image he captured of the second plane hitting the World Trade Center appeared on the Sept. 13, 2001, cover of TIME magazine, just 48 hours after the attack. In 2005, the American Society of Magazine Editors ranked it as one of the 40 most important magazine covers of the last 40 years.

Accolades aside, witnessing such death and destruction was traumatic for Owerko. But in the years following the 9/11 attacks, when the War on Terror was in full swing, the idea for The Boombox Project began to grow. “When everyone else was showing the worst side of mankind, I thought why not try to find something that really shows the best of mankind?” Owerko says.

The project was initially conceived as a series of 40 to 50 portraits of boomboxes, with a plan to have someone write an introduction, which Owerko hoped would lead to a book deal. But as the photos materialized, he began to see the boom box as a larger metaphor for free speech, empowerment, innovation of youth culture, and the powerful effects of pop culture on the voices of many generations.

Throughout the book, Owerko combines vivid color photography of various boom box designs, with portraits of dancers, rappers, and rock musicians, ranging from LL Cool J and the Beastie Boys to Bruce Springsteen and the Clash to shape a coherent and surprising narrative of the machine’s history and legacy.

In addition to its social, political and historical contexts, the book traces the equally intriguing evolution of boombox aesthetics.

“I was falling in love with the objects, and I wanted to celebrate the fact that they were beat up,” he says. “At the time of the photos we were really just being bombarded with so much militaristic imagery, that when I was designing the images, the boomboxes took on sort of a militaristic look themselves, and they had lived through an embattlement of the times—the late ’70s and early ’80s—that was a really tough time in America’s history.”

Owerko claims to own somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 boom boxes, many of which will be on display with the traveling exhibit accompanying the book tour. The artist bubbles with childlike enthusiasm when he talks about some of his favorite makes and models. “My favorite is the Sharp GF-9696,” Owerko says. “That one and the Rising 20/20, which was the first mint vintage one that I found.”

The boombox gracing the book’s cover now resides in London’s Victoria and Albert Museum as part of its permanent collection. “It’s a great-looking box with the crash bars on it,” he adds. “It looks mean.”

“Boomboxes are a kind of hidden archaeology for me,” says experimental hip-hop/trip-hop turntablist/producer DJ Spooky, who contributes to the book’s oral history. “I had forgotten how influential they are until I saw Lyle’s book. I don’t have a particular, specific boombox favorite. I just live through the memories that Lyle’s book brings back.”

A version of this story was first published by CL, Atlanta. June 21, 2011, when the Owerko’s show appeared at Jackson Fine Art Gallery.

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