Chrome - Biography
Guitarist Helios Creed has called Chrome’s music “acid punk,” as good a term as any for the band’s dark, sci-fi psychedelia, though the processed vocals, programmed drums, synth noises and distorted guitars on Chrome’s early 80s records seem to come from some place in the neighborhood of the industrial genre. Damon Edge and Gary Spain formed Chrome in San Francisco in 1976 as a recording project; Chrome did not play a single live show during the first five years of its existence, and the original band played out only twice before breaking up. John Lambdin and Mike Low joined that year, and Chrome self-released its first album The Visitation (1976 Siren), after which Low left.
Ultra-heavy psychedelic guitarist Helios Creed, who had been playing with Gary Spain, took Low’s place on Alien Soundtracks (1977 Siren), and Creed and Edge swiftly became the creative nucleus of the group. Lambdin left before Half Machine Lip Moves (1979 Siren), and Edge and Creed recorded the 12-inch Read Only Memory (1979 Siren), like most of their subsquent work together as Chrome, as a duo. Chrome appeared as one of four bands on a Bay Area underground compilation assembled by the Residents’ label, Subterranean Modern (1979 Ralph). Edge told Michael Goldberg, who interviewed all four bands for a November 1979 NME feature, that Chrome did not play live because “We don’t think they’re ready for us yet.”
Chrome’s next album, Red Exposure (1980 Beggars Banquet), credits a third member, “John L. Cyborg,” a pseudonym for engineer Oliver DiCicco. Brothers John and Hilary Stench, formerly of Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, are the hired rhythm section on Blood on the Moon (1981 Don’t Fall Off The Mountain), also engineered by DiCicco. Chrome played its first live show ever in Italy in July 1981, and the following month, the classic lineup played its second and final show at San Francisco’s Mabuhay Gardens. The Stench brothers returned for 3rd from the Sun (1982 Siren), the last album of the Edge/Creed period. The great San Francisco underground label that was home to Flipper released the six-LP retrospective set Chrome Box (1982 Subterranean), comprising the albums Alien Soundtracks, Half Machine Lip Moves, and Blood on the Moon as well as the non-LP-tracks compilation No Humans Allowed and two discs of previously unreleased material, The Chronicles I and II.
Edge met Fabienne Shine, the singer of Shakin’ Street, at a 1979 Ramones show in Oakland and they married the following year. The couple moved to France around 1984, effectively ending the Edge/Chrome partnership. In France, Shine helped Edge assemble a new Chrome with drummer Patrick Imbert, bassist Renaud Thorez and keyboardist Olivier Caudron, who played together in the French band Logo. Into The Eyes of the Zombie King (Dossier 1984) was the first of numerous 80s albums by Edge’s Chrome, and Edge began a simultaneous solo career with Alliance (1985 New Rose). According to the bio at Chrome’s website, at this point Creed lived in a “modified school bus” parked by Golden Gate Park—but, unlike Edge, who suffered from agoraphobia, among other mental health problems, as well as debilitating addictions, Creed toured and built up a devoted following as a solo artist in the United States and beyond. The first of Creed’s many solo albums was X-Rated Fairy Tales (1985 Subterranean).
Edge and Shine moved to Southern California in the late 80s; it is not clear when they separated. Damon Edge died of heart failure in his Redondo Beach apartment in the summer of 1995. Creed revived Chrome the following year with a new band on the Third Seed from the Bud 10-inch (1996 Man’s Ruin). The new Chrome album Retro Transmission (1997 Cleopatra), featuring the return of the Stench brothers, followed. Creed’s Chrome started touring in 1998, and released the new album Ghost Machine (2002 Dossier), which Creed has said will be the last Chrome LP. Creed and band played with 80s Damon Edge recordings on Chrome’s Angel of the Clouds (2002 Dossier), likely to be the final Edge/Creed collaboration. Chrome continues to perform, and Creed continues to record and perform as a solo artist. Fabienne Shine sings on his most recent solo album Deep Blue Love Vacuum (2006 Noiseville), initially conceived as a Chrome album.