As the blitzing tempo and mosh pit violence of hardcore swept the US in the early-80s, San Francisco punks Flipper – whose frontman, Bruce Loose, died this weekend of a heart attack – assumed a provocative stance, choosing sarcastic nihilism over dumb machismo and swapping high-velocity thrash for menacing, slow-as-sludge post-punk jams. In an era of 7in singles packed with 30-second screeds, Flipper would draw their tunes out to 20-or-more minutes of grind, fielding spiteful comparisons to hated hippies the Grateful Dead as bassist and founder Will Shatter warned audiences, “the more you heckle us, the longer this song gets”.
But the true “culprit for any pissing off of audiences”, as drummer Steve DePace told Scene Point Blank in 2022, was Loose. Born Bruce Calderwood, in the late 70s Loose cashed in a life insurance policy his mother bought for him and spent the money on a bass guitar and amplifier. He soon joined an embryonic version of Flipper in 1979, assuming the nom-du-punk “Bruce Lose” (which he later switched for “Bruce Loose”, because he wanted to be “less negative”) and sharing bass and vocal duties with Shatter. The pair laid down heavy, industrial bass lines, while guitarist Tim Falconi, a Vietnam vet Loose later alleged had PTSD, fired off abrasive, trebly guitar lines.
There was, no question, a darkness to Flipper; Loose told the San Francisco Bay Guardian in 2005: “We saw a society that was going to hell, and we were either going to drag it all the way to hell, or drag it up out of hell.” But there was also a complexity to their lyrics beyond the rote misanthropy of their contemporaries. Ever, the black-hearted opening track to their 1982 debut Album – Generic Flipper, concluded with Loose ranting “Ever wish the human race didn’t exist? / And then realise you’re one, too?” while Life found Shatter reflecting, “I too have sung death’s praise / But I’m not going to sing that song any more … Life is the only thing worth living for.”
In concert, Flipper often fielded a pulverising version of nursery rhyme The Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly, while their signature anthem, Sex Bomb – later covered by REM – was a grimy, joyful car crash of 50s rock’n’roll and punk, welding shredding saxophones and screaming theremin to eight minutes of rutting noise-rock and a repeated deranged refrain of “She’s a sex bomb my baby yeah!” On tour, the band would welcome local sax-players on stage to jam along with it; anarchy regularly ensued.
A commendable second album, Gone Fishin’, followed in 1984, but the group split after Shatter died of a heroin overdose in 1987, only to re-form in 1990 after Rick Rubin signed them to his Def American label. The self-produced American Grafishy surfaced in 1993 by which time Flipper were being championed as an influence by groups such as Melvins, Jane’s Addiction and Nirvana, whose Kurt Cobain wore a homemade Flipper T-shirt on Saturday Night Live and in the video for Come as You Are. But Flipper never quite got to cash-in on the grunge moment: Loose was seriously injured in 1994 after rolling his truck off a country road and breaking his back.
There would be occasional reunions in the years that followed, most notably in the noughties, when Nirvana’s Krist Novoselic joined for their appearance at 2006’s Thurston Moore-curated All Tomorrows Parties: Nightmare B4 Christmas. It led to an unexpected fourth Flipper studio album, 2009’s Love. “Krist started rehearsing with us and just popped out an ad-libbed bass line, and we all went along with it, and we clicked,” Loose said. “We all realised we didn’t have to just be sitting back and doing the same old stuff, becoming a punk-rock revue type of band.”
Loose would exit Flipper soon after, however. “I told [the other members] after the 2009 tour, I’m done,” he told Suburban Rebels, citing his many health issues, including his ongoing lower-back pain. Loose later said he had been “voted out” of the group by the other members, who hired Jesus Lizard frontman David Yow to take his place for shows between 2015 and 2022, while punk-rock lifer Mike Watt sang and played bass on their most recent tours.
Loose, meanwhile, continued to battle his serious health issues, which he ascribed to “35 years of punk life. We ain’t got no health coverage, no retirement plan.” It was a lifestyle that had given his 66 years considerable meaning, however. As he confessed to the San Francisco Bay Guardian two decades ago, “For me, it was pertinent to be on the edge. Otherwise, I didn’t feel alive enough. It was a challenge to see how long you could live on the edge without dying.”
