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Dark Tales
An interview with Tom Dark of The
Dark, Knifedance, and Stepsister
By Bob
Ignizio |
Tom Dark has been singing in Cleveland rock bands since
1980 when, along with his brother Scott Eakin on bass and backing vocals, guitarist Robert
Griffin, and Dave Araca on drums and backing vocals, he formed The Decapitators. The band
broke up for about a year, but in 1981 reformed as The Dark, one of
Cleveland’s best and best known punk bands of the eighties. Tom was also
responsible for releasing the ‘New Hope’ compilation album and later went on
to found the bands Knifedance and Stepsister. Tom was kind enough to chat
with me about all the phases of his musical career and the Cleveland music
scene in general. For the most part, though, this interview focuses on The
Dark and the early eighties Cleveland punk/hardcore scene.
Utter Trash: How did you get into music and what were
your early influences?
Tom Dark: My first exposure to rock n roll was Rock
Scene Magazine, Creem Magazine. My first records were of course like Elvis,
The Monkees and James Brown. I saw James Brown and that was like nutso, so
I said this is great. Then I later got into The Stooges. When I saw Iggy
Pop, I said man, this is it for me. And of course Cleveland back in the
heyday. Watching everything like The Ghoul, Superhost, Big Chuck & Lil’
John. So that was a big exposure to horror films. I love horror films, the
whole trash culture.
Believe it or not, my mom turned
me on to Alice Cooper. I was very young, I don’t think I was even 10 years
old. When I was in 6th grade my dad took me to see Iggy Pop with
Blondie opening up. We ended up sitting with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein
in the audience. My dad loved Iggy Pop, and he knew about him, too. He
said, “If he starts cutting himself we’re leaving” (laughs). We ended up
staying for 3 encores, and my dad said, “That guy is a great artist.” So
that was a big deal for me back in the day.
UT: What was the local music scene like at the time
you started getting into it?
TD: Growing up you had exposure to fanzines, and then
you found out about stuff from your home town like The Dead Boys and The
Cramps. At that point Drome records was the record store, and I picked up
everything by The Pagans there. I idolized the Pagans.
We were young, so we got snuck
into shows or got into free shows. Pagans, The Kneecappers, Lepers, Bernie
and the Invisibles. Whatever money we had we spent on seven inches and
albums. You also had that whole thing coming out of England like The Damned
and The Sex Pistols, and then the west coast stuff like The Avengers,
Crime. You had Search and Destroy Magazine. All that stuff. It just
escalates. The more you buy, the more you’re exposed to. The whole
mystique is that you just want to find out about it. That’s what we did
religiously, was just buy stuff and go see gigs.
UT: When did you & your brother Scott start playing
together?
TD: The first band was my brother and I, along with
Robert Griffin who went on to Prisonshake and Scat Records, and Dave Araca,
rest in piece. We formed a band called the Decapitators. This was in
1980. My brother and Dave had always been jamming but they never played out
until they became The Guns. But we formed a band called the Decapitators
and we finally got a gig at a church in Shaker Heights.
The whole thing was we had to
play for two hours, so we did eight of our originals and the rest was covers
of The Pagans, The Ramones, The Germs, and whatever else we had. We were
together with that band for maybe about a year or so. We broke up after
that gig, and then a year later we decided to get back together and that’s
when we became The Dark.
The Dark was formed in 1981. We
were together about a month and we contacted Mike Hudson, which was a big
thing for us at the time, about being on the ‘Cleveland Confidential’
album. He met with us and couldn’t believe how young we were. Bob and I
were like 15, and Scott and Dave were like 12 or 13. We had only been back
together a month, and we ended up recording a track for ‘Cleveland
Confidential’. Mike Hudson set up a benefit thing down at Tucky's, and that
was our first real gig with Mike as our manager. And then he became our
manager for a year and booked us shows, drove us to all the gigs because we
were too young to drive.
Then hardcore started happening,
and we started going down to Akron and ran into Zero Defex and all those
kind of bands. We loved punk, but we loved the speed and energy of
hardcore. Our hair started getting a little bit shorter, and we wanted to
play a little bit faster. I would say we mainly did the punk/hardcore
thing, but then we mixed it with death rock like Christian Death and 45
Grave. We thought that was really off the hook so we combined that. So in
a way it was pretty original, and I think bands back then were really
original. Before all this stuff was legendary today, bands like Minor
Threat, Negative Approach. Then after awhile it just got tiring. Bands
would just get up and just play two or three chords and play as fast as they
could. You can only do so much with that.
UT: Were you already using the name Tom Dark before
the band, or did you start using the name after the band was formed?
TD: When Mike Hudson managed us he tried to name
everybody like The Ramones. Tom Dark, Scott Dark, David Dark, Bob Dark. I
never sat there and said, “I’m Tom Dark”. I got stuck with the name. They
said, “You’re Tom Dark” so I became Tom Dark. That’s about it really. My
parents are used to it now. I haven’t legally changed my name, but I have
mail that still comes here addressed to Tom Dark.
UT: What was your first show like? Any stage fright?
TD: I’ve never had a case of stage fright ever,
believe it or not. We were also like really straight, never got into the
drug or drinking scene, even though I’m sitting here drinking now (laughs).
The night we played Tucky’s, I remember we took the Rapid down. We walked
through the snow. We had to be snuck in because we were underage. I
remember Mike Hudson falling down the stairs carrying these amps. I
remember Dave E. of the Electric Eels came and he had these mud boots on and
this big afro. That guy has always been notorious for being very mysterious
and not hanging out. And he came down and was mad about his track with
the Jazz Destroyers being on the ‘Cleveland Confidential’ comp. He
didn’t want it being used, so he hit Mike Hudson in the face. I
asked, “who was that?” and somebody told me it was Dave E., who hadn’t been
out in like 25 years, so I thought that was big. It was a great gig. Just
the whole fact that we were a band and playing in front of people we looked
up to. And from what they saw, they all said, “you guys are really good but
I can’t believe how young you are.”
UT: As you say, you guys were very young when you were
doing the Dark. Looking back on what you did with the band, are you still
happy with it or do some of the songs make you cringe?
TD: You know what, probably during the time I
recorded it I would have been very critical. Now looking back on it, I’m
not critical at all. The Dark CD is probably going to be over 40 songs, so
there are some clunkers here and there. But look at it this way. If you
only put a certain portion of the songs on the CD, there’s going to be those
diehards who are going to want to hear more. There’s really nothing as far
as The Dark or Knifedance that I’d find embarrassing. Maybe the first
Stepsister demo, where about half of it’s good and half of it’s throwaway.
UT: You say you’ve got about 40 songs by the Dark
recorded. How much of that stuff came out while the band was together?
TD: Just a few tracks on compilations. ‘Cleveland
Confidential’ 1 track, ‘They Pelted Us With Rocks and Garbage’ 1 track, 3
songs on the ‘There is More’ cassette compilation that Slam Magazine put
out. It’s all been compilations. We did record 32 songs in
Cleveland after playing the night before in Pittsburgh, and
that was supposed to be our album. But by that time we broke up. Probably
Grand Theft Audio, if they ever get this together, is going to put out a
Dark CD. It’s going to have all the stuff, and once we get that done a Guns
CD is going to come out as well.
UT: Who were some of the bands The Dark played shows
with?
TD: We played a lot of gigs with The Easter Monkeys,
who, by the way, we idolized. That was a great frickin’ band. Some of Mike
Hudson’s other bands like Les Raving Sounds, but we never got to play with
the Pagans. By the time he put the new version of The Pagans together we
had gotten into the hardcore, so we played with basically other hardcore
bands. We also got to open for The Circle Jerks, The Misfits, The
Five, and The Necros. We almost got to open for Black Flag, but their
van broke down in Canada and the show went on.
UT: What were the main places The Dark played, and
what was the scene like?
TD: The Pop Shop, The Lakefront, Vince Rancid had
assorted halls he would call Club Hell. Since we were so young at the time
and everything was 18 and over, we started doing our own hall shows to
promote the ‘New Hope’ compilation. Around this time, you also had records
like ‘Flex Your Head’ and ‘This Is Boston Not L.A.’. The 'New Hope'
benefit show we
did we had local bands, and Agnostic Front and Cause For
Alarm from New York came and played for free, along with Negative Approach, who we paid
like fifty bucks. Everybody in that scene, not just the bands but the
fanzines and the people, really made that scene. Even if bands weren’t that
good or were just starting out, everybody was just like a big family. Every
time you’d go to a show there were tons of people. So that’s what I kind of
miss nowadays. It’s more like a clique now, with everybody into their own
little cubicle of what they’re into. And that’s cool, I respect that.
UT: What led to the band breaking up?
TD: Robert Griffin had done his thing in The Dark and
just wanted to leave. We could have gotten another guitar player, but we
decided against it and just started a new band. There was no hatred or
anything like that. We were kind of let down. At the time everybody but me
was in other bands. Scott and David were in The Guns, Robert was in Spike
in Vein and Outerwear. All those guys were in like a million bands at
once. I think I saw my brother play one night in 5 or 6 bands all one after
the other. He was playing guitar, bass, singing, drums. But when you play
in that many bands you start to lose interest in some of them. And that’s
that. We’re all good friends to this day. I think The Dark ended about
1984.
UT: And then you started Knifedance.
TD: That was formed in 1984 because The Dark was
falling apart, and Charlie Ditteaux from The Easter Monkeys told me his band
was falling apart. So we started jamming as a three piece. It was myself,
Charlie on bass, and Dave Araca on drums. And then a year later we
placed an ad for a guitar player, and Andrew Lesica answered the ad. And that became the first
version of Knifedance.
Through the years, Dave
eventually quit and we flew in Sean Saley who went on to join Government
Issue in Washington, D.C. Later we got Ant, who was a member for a long
time. It was always Charlie and I. We always had different drummers. At
one time we had Sean Watkins from Starvation Army. After we kicked Andrew
Lessica out, we got my brother on guitar. So the first unit of it became
the ‘Who Then is Sane?’ sessions. When my brother joined we did the ‘Wolf
Hour’ sessions.
Then by the time that Charlie
quit we had Chris Smith from Keelhaul and Sam Lopicolo who was in Asphalt.
That lasted for about eight months or something. We were supposed to do
this tour, but Chris and Sam didn’t want to play in the band anymore. So my
brother and I decided there was no point in carrying it on. We just hung it
up. That band lasted about 7 years and 8 months.
UT: You have a reputation for a pretty intense stage
presence.
TD: There’s some people that can’t separate the stage
thing from the person. I’ve never been heavily into drugs or drinking.
Most people who hang out with me are surprised I’m a normal guy. I remember
I was at this bar and this girl’s boyfriend went to the bathroom and she
froze. She was sitting there speechless and I said, what’s the matter? She
thought I was going to be like I was in Knifedance. We started talking and
everything was cool. I think that’s a misconception about me. I’ve heard
some things like I’m this mean, intense guy and I’m not. I just want people
to be happy. I’m not into fucking people over.
UT: Why do you think the Cleveland scene of the
eighties never broke wider?
TD: I’ve always said Cleveland is the land of
almost. Nobody has come into this town like a Sub Pop and put all this
money into it because they so highly believe in it. Imagine if at that time
somebody did come in and swoop up all these bands like The Easter Monkeys,
Knifedance, Starvation Army, The Offbeats. But nobody wants to put their
money into it. There’s people who put on little things, but that’s only
going to reach a few people. People in this town don’t want to embrace
anything. When they do, it’s like after the fact.
UT: Are you happy with the place in “rock history” The
Dark and Knifedance have?
TD: It’s not about being like rich, but I think if a
book comes out on Cleveland music and you’re not included in it…it’s not
like we just made a little cassette or something. Some people who put out
books on Cleveland music should do a little more investigating. Now it’s
all legendary, like The Electric Eels and The Dead Boys and Death of
Samantha. But there’s a thousand other bands. How come the Easter Monkeys
aren’t mentioned? Who knows down the road, though. Somebody’ll dig it
out.
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