After the Germs split up Darby did an unsuccessful tour with his Darby Crash Band, featuring Pat Smear on guitar, Bosco on bass and three different drummers. The first one was fired by Darby during the soundcheck at the first show and was replaced by Lucky Lehrer (Circle Jerks) for that night only. Pat was only filling in until they could find a guitarist, but they never did. On December 3 1980 the Germs reunited for one last farewell gig at the Starwood. A pretty good recording of the gig is available on several bootlegs. Darby spent a lot of the gig trying to explain what it had all been about. He also wasn't very happy about the influence he was having on his audience, with all the wannabe Darby clones. Maybe this was part of the reason for his suicide.		Clic on any poster to view Germs poster page!
''One day you will pray to me'' - Darby Crash, interviewed 1979 On December 7th 1980 Darby Crash killed himself. He and a girl had taken 400 dollars of rent money and bought 400 dollars worth of heroin. Darby shot up the girl and pinned a note on the wall that said: ''Here lies Darby Crash'' with an arrow pointing to his head, and spread himself out like a cross. He then took what he needed to die. When the girl woke up and found him dead she too tried to kill herself. She OD'd, but was found and taken to hospital. Suicide is always a failure and Darby's death was doubly so, as John Lennon was murdered the next day, something that kept the news of his suicide out of the press for almost a week. His last Jesus-theatrics turned out to be wasted too. Compared to Lennon being shot, Darby's OD suicide wasn't much of a martyr's death. Darby wanted to die for various reasons we can only guess, and heroin probably had a lot to do with it, too. He always talked about killing himself, or not being alive within a few years, etc, and the fact that he finally did it is just fuckin' sad and tragic, so let's not get too romantic about his death, 'cause dying ain't what made him great, ok?
At the time of Darby's death one of his best friends Regi Mentle was on the run for murder. He called a friend who told him what had happened and he went to the house and stayed there for the funeral. Because he was on the run, with a description as a Punk, he had grown a beard. Darby's friend Melissa told him the funeral was only for Punks and ''punks don't have beards'' and everybody sneaked out without him. The funeral was turned into something silly with girls hanging blue circles in the trees and stuff like that. Some punks spat on Darby's corpse as a final goodbye, funny in a stupid-punk-story sort of way, but hardly what Darby would have wanted. His mother finally had to have him reburied somewhere else because of all the visitors. There had been several attempts to dig him up.		Pat Smear continued to play in various bands (45 Grave, Adolescents, Holez, Nina Hagen Band, Nirvana and Foo Fighters) as well as doing solo stuff. Don Bolles went to Vox Pop, 45 Grave and Celebrity Skin. Lorna Doom stopped performing, but married one of the Blackhearts. The last 10 years there's been a lot of talk about a feature film based on Darby's life and a Hollywood studio have bought the rights to film his story. I don't think it can be done right by anyone. Check out these good Germs sites too: Suburbia, Circle One and Germs Manimal Page for more pics of The Germs.
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