Screaming Lord Sutch
Another well-known unknown to me, David Sutch is in the history books for his political career as well as his music. He featured lo-fi horror show antics, involving making an entrance out of a coffin, alluring female audience members to the front of the stage with a handsome member of his band only so that he could drop maggots down their shirts, and bashing the head in of a monk with a rubber club.
The Guinness Book of Records lists him as standing for British Parliment more times than anyone. His party, the Official Monster Raving Looney Party, defeated the much more serious Social Democrats in 1990.
David Sutch would take his life in 1999. It’s sad. With the recent lo-fi revival going on, I think Lord Sutch and the Savages have aged well. Though, a supposed 1998 poll named his first album the worst of all time, but this is the British. They said Oasis wrote the best album of all time. They can’t be trusted.
He has two books out – one, an autobiography ‘Life as Sutch’ and a second, written about him by a close friend, ‘The Man Who was Screaming Lord Sutch’ by Graham Sharpe. You can find the latter on Amazon, but it’ll take a search to find his former. Wiki lists it as being ‘recalled’ but I got a copy. Good read, so far. More concerned with his politics than his horror business, but from reading it, David Sutch always had a political mind. He claims that he met Winston Churchill and the Prime Minister used his cigar to give the young David a scar on the what would become the boy’s voting hand.
Horror and politics being connected makes sense. Both are show business and usually involve romanticizing wicked people into thinking that they’re misguided. ‘I love the monster,’ et al.
Think of Sutch during this Halloween season. His song ‘Jack the Ripper,’ presumably his biggest hit, is a nice one but songs like ‘Dracula’s Daughter’ and ‘All Black and Hairy’ are good additions to this year’s soundtrack.
