Chrome is an experimental rock group founded in San Francisco, California in 1976. They were pioneering their own sci-fi sound from the very beginning and are one of the most influential experimental rock bands of the post-punk era.

The band recorded and released their first album, ‘The Visitation’ in 1976, composed of Damon Edge, John Lambdin and Mike Low. Low soon left the band and was replaced by guitarist and vocalist Helios Creed. Together with him the band released ‘Alien Soundtracks’, a record that has reached a cult status. Helios Creed continued with an intense career and is still very active.

Cleopatra Records recently issued the 13th studio album by Chrome. Still helmed by long-time Chrome guitarist and mastermind Helios Creed, this line-up welcomes back Hilary “Stench” Hanes who was Chrome’s bass player for the band’s classic ’80s albums [‘Blood On The Moon’, ‘3rd From The Sun’, et cetera] as well as familiar faces Tommy L. Cyborg, Aleph Omega, and Lou Minatti XIII! With a Stench brother back in the fold, Chrome have crafted a fiercely driven album that propels the listener forward through sonically twisted guitar noise and cascading synths for one of the most compelling recordings of the band’s storied career.

“Let’s create acid punk”

It’s really nice to have you. How are you doing during this pandemic?

Helios Creed: I’m doing fine. I miss doing shows and every time you think that maybe this “plandemic” is phasing out, it is another wave of it. So what can you do?

You were born in Long Beach, California, right?

Yeah I was born not far from where I’m these days in Glendale, California. I never knew that much about Long Beach. I only lived there till I was 6 and moved on.

You moved with your parents to Hawaii in about 1959, so you basically grew up there.

No, I was 14 when we moved to Hawaii and fell in love with the place. You might say I basically grew up there. And started being serious about being a guitar player. In Hawaii you need to be a surfer or a good guitar player to get laid, and I was a lousy surfer.

What are some of the early memories of being fascinated by music?

It was the guitar! I was fascinated with guitar. I was about four and my parents and I visited a friend of theirs. And they had a guitar hanging on the wall. I remember pointing and saying, “What’s that?”, and took it off the wall and put it in my hands. I remember loving everything about it; the way it looked and the sounds it created. I was in love, hehe.

When did you get your first guitar?

I was 12 when I got my first guitar. It was a Japanese guitar called Guyatone. Boy, I loved that guitar. All my best friends were in bands rolling in girls and I remember thinking, “That’s for me”. After a little over a week I was already better than all my friends. I would practice 12 hours a day.

You had a two years older brother. What kind of music was he listening to?

My brother Bobby was into the hippest music of the day. The Beatles, Steppenwolf, The Moody Blues, Blue Cheer, The Rolling Stones, The Doors, and so on… I think you get the idea?

When was the first time you dropped acid?

In 9th grade. It was called Orange Sunshine, and we used to drive around Honolulu and laugh at people. Until our heads were gone, we were just a face on a neck… and then that would make us laugh even harder, hehe. I forgot about that, wow! Then we’d go home. And I would play my guitar and it was the greatest time.

“I saw Black Sabbath on Orange Sunshine, and I wanted to sound like that”

You once mentioned that your guitar style was created while on an LSD trip listening to Black Sabbath.

Yeah, I loved Black Sabbath. I saw them on Orange Sunshine, and I wanted to sound like that. They scared me and that made it even better. So I started writing all these sick scary riffs, and got a lot of my tones from the first Grand Funk Railroad records. I was 18 year old and living on the island of Maui. I would pick shrooms myself right out of the cow’s fields. Mushrooms grew on the cow’s shit. I had some amazing times there. But I also wanted to make a sabbathy psychedelic-like band.

When did you move to San Francisco and how would you describe the post-psychedelic scene there?

I knew it wasn’t going to happen in Maui so I was thinking San Francisco is the place I should be. I saw it as the seat of psychedelia. I told what few friends I had there I wanted to go to S.F. to form a band. They would say why S.F.? You should go to L.A.! And I said I didn’t like L.A.. To me it wasn’t a psychedelic place. “But that’s where the music industry is at”. I said I didn’t care about that. I felt S.F. is where I have to be, because of the fact that S.F. to me was way more psychedelic than L.A. with acid and the hippy thing, and highly influenced by all that as an 18 year old kid so I went to Frisco. What I found there to me wasn’t cool at all. It was just a bunch of burnt out hippie types that wanted to play the blues. And not anything psychedelic at all. I was very disappointed and it was like that for a couple years. And I formed a psychedelic folk band called The O Zone, and we played bars and pubs till I burnt out on that. I had a violin player who was in a band with John Lambdin and said they made an album with this guy named Thomas Wisse [Damon Edge] and I said, “Wow I want to hear that record, what is it called?”. Gary Spain who was the bass player said it’s called ‘The Visitation’. And when it came out it seemed I was the only guy that liked it. It was semi-psychedelic. I asked who in the fuck did the production, it’s fucking great… psychedelic crazy. Just what I was looking for. I had to meet Damon. John Lambdin quit and Chrome needed a singer and guitar player. I said that’s me, I knew it?! I told Gary, “You guys need me, and I really meant it!!”. So I was to meet Tom Wisse. “Damon” was coming to my hotel room to meet me before the audition, so I heard a knock at the door and I knew it was him. I opened the door and there was this guy, a bit overweight, not too bad though. Had lone stringy hair and talked with a low voice. “You must be Helios”, he said. I replied, “And you must be Tom Damon”. We liked each other right away. John and Gary quit when Damon and I hit it off. Damon was really up on the rock mags and told me there’s a new rock wave called punk rock, and he bought the brand new Sex Pistols record and played it for me, and fucken blasted it. I loved it right away but I thought the guy couldn’t sing. “He’s not supposed to know how to sing”, Damon replied. I said, “Wow, cool let’s be punk rock”, and we made a whole punk rock record that was ‘TV as Eyes’ at first and then ‘Chromosome Damage’.

And we had a whole punk set. But punk was growing fast in popularity, and it seemed like all of a sudden every band in S.F. was punk. And I said to Damon we made this punk record that we loved, but if we were to put it out we wouldn’t even be noticed. It had to be different. So I had a brain storm the same time Damon did. “Let’s create acid punk and make it psychedelic”. Indeed it was a good idea and we released ‘Alien Soundtracks’. And soon as that record came out on our own label it took off like wild fire about two months after ‘Never Mind The Bollocks Here’s The Sex Pistols’ came out, and that my friend was the very beginning of acid punk!

Were you at the time aware of other European experimental groups like for instance Faust, Neu!?

Oh yeah I became a big Neu! and Faust fan around the time ‘Alien Soundtracks’ came out. Damon was an English baby adopted by an American couple, which made sense because he didn’t like the lameness of the USA and I had to agree with him. My favorite bands come from England and Germany.

What were the circumstances behind signing to Beggars Banquet Records for your fourth album, ‘Red Exposure’.

Damon thought it would be cooler if we were signed by an English label. That’s why we were on Beggars Banquet Records. Yeah all the “industrial” bands that were inspired by Chrome tended to be assholes, except my friends The Butthole Surfers. Jeff Pinkus and I made two solo records together…

This might be impossible to put in words, but what kind of person was Damon?

Actually, Damon turned me on to The Stooges. And I loved them right off the bat. Damon was very good to me. We made the perfect partnership. He would turn me on to his art music history, and I turned him onto my guitar playing. Together we made something that worked. We also were best friends. I miss him still to this day. There was nobody like Damon. We were instant brothers as well. I feel his weakness was girls. He couldn’t be happy with just one good girl. I thought he found that with Fabian but after a while he couldn’t stay loyal to anybody.

He said it was because he was adopted and it was cold the way he grew up. But in reality he had everything he needed to play around his wife. He also wasn’t a loyal music partner. He always thought because I sang and did guitar that I would take over the band, which was the farthest thing from my mind. That thought is what made him go to Europe and make a new Chrome without me. I was really pissed. I had a wife who was pregnant. I really couldn’t go gallivanting over Europe at the time. And it was that that made me do my solo band Helios Creed.

Nobody could take it from me. My solo band got much bigger than Chrome. But I still loved Chrome so after Damon died I went back to Chrome and did that plus my solo band. Well now I’ve put all my energy into Chrome and feel it’s time to do my solo work again. And that’s where I’m at today… going back to being solo. But that doesn’t mean I’m done with Chrome, and we have the latest Chrome album ‘Scaropy’ to prove it. So now I’m doing both. ‘Scaropy’ seems to be well liked. We needed that as a working band. Of course COVID got in the way of our plan, which destroyed many bands. I will not budge Chrome or my solo band, so if you’re a fan no worries we’re not going.

What were you listening to at the time of recording ‘Alien Soundtracks’? Were you familiar with The Residents?

I was a kid listening to the radio that my mom had on and couldn’t figure out why anybody would want to make music. There was this song on the radio, you know, “In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion sleeps tonight”, and sitting and wondering why anybody would want to make music. I thought music was rather boring in ’56-’57 and then Elvis Presley came with “You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog”, and it made me and my brother run around in circles in our underwear. It was fun! That was the first time I remember liking music. And that was around the same time I saw that guitar hanging on the wall. Then I started liking music quickly but it was a few years from then I got my first guitar I told you about. And the real reason I wanted to make music was because girls liked guys that made music and I was a horny kid and that was for me. And that was correct, after the success of my first Chrome record, girls were throwing themselves at me! But then later on I really did love making music. ‘Alien Soundtracks’, when we finished it, I was thinking, “Who’s going to like this, it’s kinda a shitty record”. So I was surprised it did so well.

“It’s was a modernist idea that just got filthy and dirty”

How did Damon get the name for the project?

Shortly after I met Damon we would discuss how chrome relates to the music. For me, … you see a chrome bumper in those days and look into it like a twisted mirror everything would be all twisted and cool looking, modern futuristic. Because that’s what Chrome was sorta telling us, Chrome metal statues with white walls, art deco-ish if you know what I mean like the cover of ‘Scaropy’ and the inner sleeve. If you catch my meaning… It was a modernist idea that just got filthy and dirty, like the ‘Scaropy’ pic.

Would you like to share some further words about your latest two albums on Cleopatra Records; ‘Techromancy’ and ‘Scaropy’?

Lou Minatti XIII thought of the name “Techromancy” and I thought of “Scaropy”. What it means is obscure and surreal, and I’m sure to him the meaning would be different. I don’t have him here to refer to but when he said “Techromancy”, I loved it right away. It’s three words making one word; Tech, Chrome, and Romance, so that was the perfect title I thought. And all the guys liked it. “Scaropy” is sorta from the word therapy. We were in the studio making it. And I said I gotta go to my Scaropy meeting, you know, fucking with the word therapy and said scaropy… making a joke and the band in unison said that would be a great album title, and I agreed and that’s how the name came about. To me that’s what the human race needs… it’s something to scare the shit out of them…

<a href="https://chromemusic.bandcamp.com/album/scaropy">SCAROPY by Chrome</a>

Can you tell us about the effects on the record?

What I liked to do is to put my guitar through rat fuzz, wah wah pedal then micro synth. Next was the Memory Man stereo chorus, two big Peavey amps…

Would it be possible for you to choose a few collaborations that still warm your heart?

Tommy Grenas [Tommy L. Cyborg] did Pressurehead and Farflung and of course Chrome. He’s one talented funny man. He made us laugh on tour a lot. I think I overdubbed one or two of his records, don’t remember which ones. Tommy was a big Damon fan so he took Damon’s place in the band. People would ask why are you doing Chrome without Damon? I would tell them, “People were taking the name Chrome for their bands”… hip hop whatever and Damon would rather have me do that than let people steal the name.

And there was Hilary “Stench” Hanes, Chrome’s original bass player that came back to Chrome just in time for ‘Scaropy’. And, man it was great to play with Hilary again. I really love his bass playing. Nobody else does it like Hilary!

And Aleph Omega is the perfect primal Chrome drummer. Aleph is solid as a rock. And he is the backbone of the Chrome band.

I also would like to mention Fabienne Shine. I invited her to sing on one of my solo albums, ‘Deep Blue Love Vacuum’. I love the song we made with her, and drummer Jean-Lou Kalinowski from her band Shakin’ Street. He said it’s one of his favourite songs from my solo albums. I think ‘3rd From The Sun’ was Fabian’s first work with Chrome if I’m not mistaken. Damon met Fabian at a Ramones show in Oakland… Oh yeah, nomad nomad is Damon Damon backwards. Fabian loved Damon a lot.

Helios Creed of Chrome at Grauzone Festival | Photo by Lysander Vogelzang

You also collaborated with legendary Nik Turner of Hawkwind…

Tommy got me hooked up with Nik Turner, one of my hero’s when I was 18 year old kid. Yes, I was stoked to play with Nik. At the time it was a dream come true. Tommy knows everybody and I mean everybody…

Klemen Breznikar

Helios Creed Official Website
Chrome Bandcamp
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