Eater - Biography
By Johnny Whiteside
Formed in Finchley, North London, Eater were one of Britain’s earliest and most unadulterated punk bands. After founders Andy Blade and Brian Chevette started to boast to all the girls in school that they played in a band, the fifteen-year-olds realized they had better actually start one; “The fact that we couldn’t play and had no instruments,” Blade later wrote, “never really bothered us.“ With purloined guitars and a much ballyhooed, non-existent “gig“ on the horzon, Blade and Chevette, courtesy of the Damned’s Rat Scabies, found a drummer in 13-year-old Dee Generate, and added twenty-something bassist Ian Woodcock; what began as an act of sheer teenage braggadocio roared into life on November 26, 1976, when Eater found themselves opening for the Buzzcocks at Manchester‘s Holdsworth Hall. Their first single “Outside View”, (written mid-lesson at a classroom desk) was released in March of 1977, sold over 15,000 copies and was quickly followed by both “Thinking of the USA” and later that year, by their self-titled long player, one of the first punk albums ever released.
It's sixteen amphetamine-fueled tracks, many clocking in at barely two minutes, have--unlike so many of their contemporaries--easily withstood the test of time, and the album remains one of the signal achievements of punk rock’s lurid ‘77 break out . Eater's rabid tempi, staccato, frenetic bass lines and minimalist guitar solos defined the classic reved-up, stripped down, ‘77 London punk sound, as their covers of the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane," Waiting for the Man" and Alice Cooper 's "18" (necessarily re-titled "15") emphatically demonstrated. Their original material was equally savage, fraught with dark, sardonic humor, adolescent tension and uncontrolled rage. Blade’s vocal delivery, a strangulated snarl that spat out lyrics as if they were venom, could manage both an almost tender vulnerability and reach obscene extremes (hear “Raped”). Eater clearly relished the creative freedom which punk rock granted, closing the album with “Love and Peace (H-Bomb)” a weird, bad acid satirical concept piece brimming with otherworldly atmospherics, wild studio effects and free form semi-psychedelic indulgence--no small feat for a handful of rag-tag kiddies.
Stung by japes about their age and ability, Eater were outspoken iconoclasts: “Johnny Rotten is too old,” they told a reporter. Bolstered by Rat Scabies, who frequently stated that Eater was his favorite band, they toured with the Damned, and played every club liberal enough to book such an unorthodox outfit. Having helped kick start the punk rock movement, Eater was hyper-sensitive to the idiom's swift degeneration into commercialism and phoniness and soon called it quits, playing their last show to a small handful fans at a Finchley pub in 1979. Years later, the band periodically performed in the UK (first at 1996’s Holidays in the Sun festival) and have been the subject of several superb CD compilations; Blade‘s autobiography, “The Secret Life of a Teenage Punk Rocker” was published in 2002. The best surviving record of Eater’s furious dynamism is their memorable, pig head mutilating live performance of “No Brains” captured in Don Letts’ documentary The Punk Rock Movie (1978).
