On A Way of Life, Suicide demonstrated an undimmed desire for provocation

Original release date: June 1988
Label: 22/Wax Trax!

Since their first shows in New York in the early 1970s, Alan Vega and Martin Rev’s performances as Suicide were equated with provocation and innovation in equal measure. Melding Vega’s raw street poetry with Rev’s electronic experiments, Suicide were reputedly the first band to bill themselves as punk, inspired by a then-abstraction of countercultural writer and contemporary, Lester Bangs. Often coaxing their audience into a riotous – even violent – state, their reputation was formidable even before the release of their seminal self-titled debut album in 1977.

A decade later, and a growing legion of artists including Soft Cell, Wire and Magazine had widely cited them as an inspiration. But while their legend slowly matured, the collaboration had become an intermittent concern for Vega and Rev, both prolific writers in their own right. They couldn’t, however, resist an invitation to Paris in 1987, where they were welcomed with a once unthinkable, cult-like reverence. Not that the duo had lost their taste for affront. Vega had previously earned notoriety wielding a sawn-off bike chain on stage. On this occasion, all it took to turn the crowd was to cover Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the USA. “Hey, it’s our version of it, don’t worry!” Vega asserted defiantly, amid audible gasps of horror and pockets of boos. “I’ll fuck it up!”

The previously unreleased ode to The Boss, a compliment later returned when Springsteen himself covered their much-loved Dream Baby Dream, features on a new ressiue of A Way of Life, Suicide’s resurgent third album. Released shortly after Vega and Rev’s late 80s victory lap around Europe, but seven years since their last record, the album reunited the duo with their original producer Ric Ocasek, who subtly expanded the reach of Suicide’s sound from its radically DIY roots without ever sacrificing their caustic instincts.

“In ‘77, we were just surviving on love and art, love of art, and love in general,” Rev reveals over the phone. “So, by ‘88? The life part hadn’t changed that much, but we had music on record, we were a known entity. We weren’t necessarily having a great return on that, but that was never an essential thing, otherwise we would never have done it.”

While far removed from the high-definition pop that had conquered American radio in that time, Surrender nonetheless registers as the band’s loveliest moment, unexpectedly casting Vega as a sincere crooner; Frankie Valli by way of the East Village. Jukebox Baby 96 finesses the texture of Rev’s sprung, barroom rock gone awry, while Dominic Christ is a dusty cousin of the notorious Frankie Teardrop from the band’s debut – another beautifully observed and empathetic character study of the city’s shattered outsiders, albeit mercifully less abrasive.

Not that Suicide had mellowed. The threat and subsequent horror of the Vietnam War that simmered beneath their early compositions might have seemed distant in the rearview mirror, but North America had since been economically strengthened yet further divided by a decade of Ronald Reagan’s increasingly extreme free-market politics. Reconvening creatively after seven years apart, Rev’s musical instincts clicked with Vega’s political stream-of-consciousness writing as naturally as before.

“Like the first album, it’s a live record, really,” stresses Rev. “We went in to set up and then Ric [Ocasek] was two hours late, so we started to rehearse and write. The engineers were taking the levels, but we didn’t know that they were recording everything. When Ric finally came in, ready to work, he said to the engineers, ‘Have they done anything?’ And they said, ‘Yeah, the whole record!’ I was pleased about that.”

Thirty-five years later, as counterculture swims then often sinks into the algorithm, Vega and Rev’s audacious but thoughtful approach remains seductive. LCD Soundsystem and Aphex Twin, among others, have continued their veneration across generations. Vega passed away in 2016, yet the band were intermittently performing live into their 70s. Does Rev ever consider an alternate timeline, one in which Suicide loom as large as Springsteen?

“When I first heard the sound come through in our earlier gigs, I thought, ‘That could be in a stadium!’” he remembers. “But we landed in culture in a different place. In many ways, a better place, in the sense that the long-term appreciation or reflection on us, is maybe having done something that’s significant. But really, I was always going to do the same thing if we were considered underground, cult or the biggest band in the world.”