The following is an excerpt from the book No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving, No Spikes: An Oral History of the Legendary City Gardens by Amy Yates Wuelfing and Steven DiLodovico. All photos by Ken Salerno.

Bob Gorman (GWAR historian): I remember seeing GWAR before I was actually in GWAR. They played with the Mentors in Richmond, and it was a show that got booked at the last second. I think they kind of flew by the seat of their pants, and they would show up or maybe not show up. They didn't care. I remember Heathen Scum. He was such a great guitar player. I was always amazed at how actually good he was. Unfortunately I wasn't there for all the debauchery… the peeing on the school bus and all that. 

Dave Brockie(GWAR): [Mentors vocalist] El Duce used to have a guitar player—Sneaky Sperm Shooter—who he delighted in torturing. He would take this medicine ball he had and hock a big loogie on it, and then he would smack the guy's face with it. One day, when we were in this parking lot getting some sauce for El Duce, we saw him come out of the liquor store with liquor in his hand. He chugged half the bottle, then he whipped his dick out and peed all over the medicine ball, and then came back to the bus with it.  We knew exactly what he wanted to do: he wanted to put his piss in Sneaky's face.  We weren't going to let him do that.  When he came running onto the bus with the medicine ball, we all jumped on him, knocked him down, and tried to get him off the bus. The medicine ball is floating up in the air while El Duce is trying to hold on to it and smack it in people's faces when, suddenly, Mike Bonner—who was one of our GWAR slaves—stuck his hand up in the air. Out of nowhere a switchblade appears.  He stabs the fucking medicine ball and it exploded, and piss goes everywhere. I mean everywhere. Everyone was coated in a fine spray of El Duce's piss. When we finally all got back up, El Duce was completely unconscious, snoring away.  He was the greatest. 

I know how he really died: it was a stupid drunken accident. It's such a load of horseshit that people think that he had anything to do with Kurt Cobain's death or anything else. I got the true story… He was going back to his place from the fucking supermarket with his beer and was crossing the railroad tracks. He dropped his bottle of beer, stopped to get it, saw that he didn't have enough time to get out of the way of the train, sieg heil-ed the train, and then was disintegrated.

Bob Gorman: He was living out on the west coast for a short amount of time, too. I remember the first time we played the Hollywood Palladium, he was living in a cardboard box.

Dave Brockie: Yeah, we pulled up and we were like, "Hmmm. Wonder where El Duce is?" We didn't have anywhere to stay, so we pulled in behind our friend's practice space on Hollywood Boulevard. We looked out the window of the bus at this big pile of cardboard boxes, and El Duce came crawling out of one.

Bob Gorman: It almost seemed like a gag, like a set up. We didn't believe it, but it was true… It was where he was staying. We were hanging out at the dressing room at the Palladium after the show, and it was right after we first blew up, so there were all these famous people there [Metallica’s] James Hetfield and The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Ice T. And El Duce was back there screaming. Someone had put down a beer and there were cigarette butts in it, and El Duce was looking around for anything to drink. I was like, "No no no! Don't drink that one!” He looked at it, saw the cigarette butts, and was real casual. Like, "Ah, there's still plenty in here," and he chugged it down.

Dave Brockie: He was the fucking greatest, man.

Bob Gorman: Playing with Murphy's Law was always fun, too.

Dave Brockie: At this point they were putting us with some of the wilder bands, so it didn't really matter that we were getting shit all over the place. Murphy's Law are still really good friends of ours. Jimmy Gestapo is a good buddy. We see him every now and then in New York. He's more into running his tattoo parlor, but Murphy's Law is still playing shows. That show was the only time we ever had a problem there. There were tons of New York skinheads at that show, and they really didn't know what to make of GWAR. They were not really into us squirting shit on them. So at one point they all pulled back from the stage, formed the “wall of death,” and charged. We were totally ready for them, and we fucking hosed them with a fucking barrage of spew! They all crashed into the stage and milled around in a confused blob while we hosed them blind. I think at that point, through osmosis, they realized this was actually fun, you know? We never had a problem with any punk or skinhead or gang element. Anyone who has a problem with GWAR realizes pretty quickly it's like getting angry about The Simpsons...