Wendy O. Williams: The Shocking Final Act of a Shock Rock Provocateur

DISGRACELAND - Exactly Right and iHeartPodcasts

Wendy O. Williams, a pioneering shock rock icon known for her violent performances and provocative artistry, struggled with mental health after retiring from music. Her life ended tragically in 1998, symbolizing the cost

Key takeaways

• Pioneered extreme performance art in punk rock

Transcript preview

This is a production of Double Elvis. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information. Disgraysand is a production of Double Elvis. The story of Wendy Williams is shocking. She was a sex show Dominatrix turned rock and roll front woman who blew up Cadillacs on stage. She also smashed TV sets with a sledgehammer and cut guitars in half with a chainsaw and she did so with nothing but electrical tape or shaving cream covering her bare breasts. Her stage so violent and so sexual that she was banned from clubs and blacklisted by promoters. In one city, she was beaten so badly by local police that she suffered a broken nose in a concussion. Like our best rock and roll outlaws, Wendy O Williams was provocative to her core, as provocative as they come actually, although I'm not sure I can go as far as to say that she made great music. Did she, did she not? I don't know. But I do know that I do know. at the top of the show here that was not great music that was a preset loop from a melotron called Times Square titillation mk one I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to all my life by K. C. and Jojo and why would I play you that specific slice of jotacy adjacent cheese could I afford it because that was the number one song in America on April 6th 1998 and that That was the day that Wendy O Williams's life came to a tragic end in the woods of a small Connecticut town, worlds away from the urban mayhem that defined her career for so long. On this episode, exploding Cadillacs, sledgehammers, chainsaws, sex, violence, rock and roll, and Wendy O Williams. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is the Graceland. So, age Wendy Orlene Williams knew that her life would be an uphill battle because the life that she wanted to live was by definition a resistance. She felt no obligation to be polite or to placate, nor did she desire to be pacified as a mindless consumer. Her life was a life of revolt. But Webster, New York, the town outside Rochester where she grew up, was built to quell up the body and spirit. A non-conformist like Wendy had the odds stacked against her from the jump and the battle that she would fight for her entire life began where many battles begin at home. Mitch Ryder's voice screamed through the turntables lone speaker loud and distorted her. It was as inspiring and life-affirming as the rest of the house was dull. And before you could say, by Fo Fo Fo Fum, this small bedroom in sleepy upstate New York have been transformed into a gritty street scene. Mitch Rider's Detroit wheels were turning fast and loose, kicking up dirt, coughing up smoke, splattering the canvas of post-war America with lust for life. And 16-year-old Wendy O Williams was throwing herself around the room, singing along into a hairbrush. She may have been physically here in her family home. she was somewhere else. A place where you weren't told what to think or what to do or what to buy. A place where you weren't defined by your automobile or your television set or even by the clothes you wore. The only problem was that place was temporary, at least for now. The devil with a blue dress 45 was only halfway done when the door to her bedroom suddenly flung open. Big rumbling footsteps announced the arrival of wind. his father. He stormed across the room to the turntable and he tore the needle from the record. He ripped the record off the platter and with his hands firmly gripping the 45 on either side he snapped it in half. Imagine that. Imagine you're just chilling in your bedroom back in the 90s or whenever early 2000s and you're staring up at your cranberries, poster on the wall or playing Liz Faires exile and Guyville on your stereo, whatever it is. Maybe had a depeche mode poster, maybe had a depeche mode poster, maybe you're listening to 9-inch Nails' downward spiral at high volume, whatever it was. Imagine that your dad or your mom breaks down your door, tears the poster off your wall, rips the CD from your CD player, forbids you from listening to your music in their house, forbids you from doing the kinds of things a teenager is supposed to do, which is, in a word, to rebel. Wendy O Williams may not have equated listening to Mitch Ryder in the mid-19-19-19-19-19. with rebellion and she simply may have just like the raw sounds of the rock and roll song more than the dulcetones of another Mitch, Mitch Miller or whoever the hell her parents were into. Regardless, it was an early indicator that Wendy O Williams was different, just like another incident a year prior when she was arrested in town for sunbathing in the nude. The goal of the arresting officer, like her father's goal, had been to shame her to put her in a box just like everyone else. but it didn't work. The shame, the arrests, the broken record, even the prescription drugs that her parents tried to get her to take, nothing could silence Wendy's opposing force. Because there was no other choice. That was a reality that Wendy now made crystal clear. I'd rather be dead than be zombified in the world you're living in. This is what Wendy allegedly told her parents right before she left home. At just 16. She was a runaway, a no-man. determined never to look back. She hits a ride out west, landing in Colorado and then south to Florida. She traveled abroad to Europe, finding work as a bartender and a dancer. She bounced around like this for years, and in her downtime she combed the pages of Timothy Leary's the psychedelic experience as well as books on tantric yoga and any and all transmissions from the fringes of so-called normals. society. But life as a non-conformist had its struggles. For one, it didn't pay enough. So Wendy stole. She used counterfeit money. And when she was caught, arrested, given a slap on the wrist and released, the authority sent her packing back home to the United States. Just another child lost looking for people like her. The freaks out there willfully violating cultural taboos, the artists and eccentric. and truly transgressive types. In 1976 at 27 years old, Wendy Williams landed in New York City when Times Square was about as authentic and transgressive as it got. Boston had the combat zone and New York City had Times Square. A spot for drugs, sex, and all other manner of illicit activity too shocking and to prey for polite society. Here was ground zero. for prostitutes and pimp's. Here were peep shows, derelict and dealers and here was where Wendy O'Williams met the man who would change her life forever. Captain Kink. In the bowels of a run-down burlesque hall, where the neon lights guide the way to the throbbing sights and sounds of urban titillation. It's Captain Kink's sex fantasy theatre. Watch as Captain Kink and his troop of fearless performers save the day by making your deepest, most hardcore fantasies come to life. There, running down Broadway, ducking inside a crumbling theatre with sticky floors and even stickier seats. It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Captain Kink! I shit you not. Captain Kink was the dude's name. Captain Kink was the gnome des Smut of Rod Swenson, a Yale graduate, who told the that they could stick their masters of fine arts degree up their tight disapproving ass, and then went and put his education to use on the mean streets of 1970s Times Square. It was Rod, aka Captain Kink, who had the last laugh, however, and by 1976 he was laughing all the way to the bank. Captain Kink's sex fantasy theatre, a live show in which performers staged absurd comic vignettes that included scenes of live sex, It became a local sensation. In the run down theater that Rod rented, it seated 150 and soon he was selling out all 150 seats. Five shows a day, seven days a week. It's a lot of kink. Now, true to his productions name, Rod did all this by exploiting other people's fantasies and their kinks. When it comes to kinks, it, you know, it takes all kinds. Some people like to be humiliated, some people like to be humiliated, some like to be humiliated, some like to do the humiliating, some like pain, some like feet, some like simple pleasures like butter in their ass and lollipops in their mouth, I don't know man. And there's also grown men who like to pretend that they're babies. I'm serious. Seth who works here at Double Elvis used to own a retail store that sold among other things baby stuff, long story. They told me once about these dudes who would call and get a female employee and ask, do you have cloth diapers? And when the female employee replied yes, they did, the man would ask for details like, what materials like, what materials are they made liquid do the diapers hold? And what about diaper creams? Can you describe how you would apply those? So I'm not kidding. Seth told all of this to me. Anyways, I'm digressing big time here. Anyhow, just to finish this story, after being told by the employee how to apply said creams and how much liquid a diaper could hold and even more detailed instructions on cleaning soiled diapers, I know gross, and after having done all this while simultaneously giving the false impression that they were a huge phone order in the neighborhood of $2,000 or $3,000, the dude with the kink about shit in their pants or whatever would suddenly get off of his kink and then the call would just abruptly