100 Greatest Songs of the 80’s #95 The Gun Club – She’s Like Heroin To Me

Released : 1981

When the head of the LA chapter of the Blondie fan club (Jeffrey Lee Pierce) first met his opposite number for The Cramps (“Kid” Congo Powers) the pair were starting a relationship that would lead to the The Gun Club redrawing the fault lines of rock n’ roll. Pierce, a former writer for renowned punk fanzine Slash and student of the blues, taught Powers how to play slide and swampy, primal guitar; the band’s debut Fire Of Love remains one of the most influential yet under appreciated American albums of the decade.

She’s Like Heroin To Me is their quixotic formula of Southern Gothic, early rock n’ roll, punk and blues in excelsis, a song which looked bad taste in the eye in it’s title and swang it’s hips viscerally, danger and deceit at every turn.

Virtually ignored at home, The Gun Club’s moderate success in Europe was cut short by Pierce’s untimely death in 1996. His music would go on to be integral to that of The White Stripes, who arrived at a much righter time and place for it to be globally understood.