Imperial Dogs Vs. 'Babylon's Burning: From Punk To Grunge'

When Clinton Heylin wrote Babylon's Burning: From Punk To Grunge back in 2007, this is how he described the rockin' role played by the Back Door Man fanzine, the Back Door Man Records label, and the Imperial Dogs:

"However the story of L.A. punk starts with an earlier rock zine, Back Door Man, which propounded a punk aesthetic as far back as 1975, before there were any bands prepared to live up to such an ideal. As editor 'Phast Phreddie' Patterson points out, 'We had Ted Nugent and Blue Oyster Cult on the cover -- (at least) it wasn't the Eagles or Elton John! The image was very important to (Slash), (but) to us, it was (about) rock & roll.'

"Back Door Man was obligated to admit very little was happening out west in the mid-seventies -- especially after Patterson started receiving early singles by Television, Pere Ubu, the Damned and the Sex Pistols -- so the magazine attempted to start its own indie record label, much like Greg Shaw's Bomp.

"Unfortunately, they took the garageband aesthetic a little too far with their first single, issuing an a actual garage rehearsal of the Imperial Dogs, an L.A. Dolls with all of the slop, but none of the chops.

"After that disaster, they decided to recoup some money before any further 'new' releases, issuing a bootleg EP of Velvet Underground demos. The coffers refilled, they proceeded to issue a Zippers single, but it got caught in Glam's tail-light, even though it came out a year after Phast Phreddie sensed the new vibe emanating from the east, reaching all the way to la-la land, via Seattle."

Trouble is, there are so many errors in these four paragraphs that we really don't know where to start or where to begin. For openers:

1) The Imperial Dogs were still playing shows when the first issue of Back Door Man hit the streets -- the band's break-up is mentioned in the second issue -- so there was at least one L.A. band living up to the ideal of a punk aesthetic.

2) The first two singles on Back Door Man Records were by the Pop! ("Hit And Run Lover" b/w "Break The Chain" and "Down On The Boulevard" b/w "Easy Action" and "I Need You"). Both were issued in 1976. Both were released before the Imperial Dogs single ("This Ain't The Summer Of Love" b/w "I'm Waiting For The Man."), which came out in 1977.

3) That bootleg EP by the Velvet Underground was never issued on Back Door Man Records, but was issued solely by Gregg Turner -- who was one of the three principals in BDM Records along with Tom Gardner and Don Waller -- on a white label disc that bears neither a mention of nor the logo of Back Door Man Records.

4) Turner, Gardner and Waller each put up $100 to issue the first Pop! 45, then rolled that investment over into the second Pop! 45, then the Imperial Dogs 45, then the Zippers 45 ("You're So Strange" b/w "He's A Rebel"). They never lost money on any of these. After the Zippers 45, they all decided to go their separate ways, so they each took their original investment of $100 back, and that was that.

5) The only reason the Imperial Dogs 45 was ever released was because the Blue Oyster Cult had re-worked and recorded the Imperial Dogs' original version of "This Ain't The Summer Of Love" on their platinum-selling 1976 Agents Of Fortune LP, and the BDM Records principals thought the public should know the origins of the song.

As for "all of the slop, but none of the chops," here are both sides of the Imperial Dogs 45, so you can be the judge of that …

This Ain't The Summer Of Love (Original Version)/the Imperial Dogs



I'm Waiting For The Man/the Imperial Dogs



But as James "The Hound" Marshall has written on his thehoundblog here: "Bands in the years 1972-74 that were precursors to the punk explosion are a subject that really deserves a book, by anyone but Clinton Heylin, who couldn't find CBGB on the map. I stopped reading his book when he put it on 'the corner of Bowery and 2nd Ave.,' two avenues that run parallel and never meet, although I had a feeling I wasn't going to finish it when he called Raw Power -- mellow, I think was the term."