Wendy Orlean Williams (May 28, 1949 – April 6, 1998), better known as Wendy O. Williams, was the lead singer for the punk band the Plasmatics, whose stage theatrics included blowing-up equipment, near nudity and chain-sawing guitars.
Dubbed "The Queen of Shock Rock," Williams was widely considered the most controversial and radical female singer of her day. She often sported a trademark Mohawk haircut.
Williams was nominated in 1985 for a Grammy in the Best Female Rock Vocal category during the height of her band's popularity.
Biography
Williams was born in Webster, New York. She dropped out of high school in the ninth grade. At the age of sixteen she hitch-hiked her way to Colorado where she earned money selling crocheted string bikinis. She headed for Florida and then to Europe, where she worked as a stripper. By 1978, she was regularly performing in live sex shows, and soon began appearing in pornographic films, among them 1979's Candy Goes to Hollywood, famous for its "ping pong ball scene". Around that time, would-be Svengali Rod Swenson, also known as Captain Kink, recruited her to front his punk concept band, the Plasmatics. With their debut in New York City clubs in 1978, Williams quickly developed a reputation for obscenity and unruliness.
In Milwaukee, police arrested her in 1981 for simulating sex on stage. Charged with battery to an officer and obscene conduct, she was later cleared.
Later that same year in Cleveland, Williams was acquitted of an obscenity charge for simulating sex on stage wearing only shaving cream. Then, in November, an Illinois judge sentenced her to one year supervision and fined her $35 for roughing up a freelance photographer who had attempted to take her picture as she jogged along the Chicago lakefront.
Meanwhile, the Plasmatics toured the world, once getting banned in London, where the press dubbed them "anarchists."
During shooting of an appearance on NBC's SCTV comedy program in 1981, studio heads said they would not air Williams unless she changed out of a stage costume that revealed her nipples. Williams refused. The show's make-up artists found a compromise and painted her breasts black.
In 1984 she released the "W.O.W." album, produced by Gene Simmons of KISS, whom she also dated for a time.
The Plasmatics last tour was in 1988. In 1991, Williams moved to Storrs, Connecticut, where she lived with her long-time companion and former manager, Rod Swenson, and worked as an animal rehabilitator.
Williams died at age 48 in 1998, in a wooded area near her home, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. While some argued she committed suicide rather than compromise her art, Swenson reportedly described her as "despondent" at the time of her death.
"I don't believe that people should take their own lives without deep and thoughtful reflection over a considerable period of time," she is said to have written in a suicide note. "I do believe strongly, however, that the right to do so is one of the most fundamental rights that anyone in a free society should have. For me much of the world makes no sense, but my feelings about what I am doing ring loud and clear to an inner ear and a place where there is no self, only calm."
"The empty place she leaves in the world with her passing," said at her memorial service, "will never be replaced."
Discography
With the Plasmatics
- Butcher Baby/Fast Food Service (Live)/Concrete Shoes (Live) (7" single, 1978)
- Meet The Plasmatics (12" EP, 1979)
- Dream Lover/Corruption/Want You Baby (7" single, 1979)
- Butcher Baby/Tight Black Pants (Live) (7" single, 1980)
- Butcher Baby EP (12" EP, 1980)
- Monkey Suit/Squirm (Live) (7" single, 1980)
- New Hope For The Wretched (LP, 1980)
- Beyond The Valley Of 1984 (LP, 1981)
- Metal Priestess (12" EP, 1981)
- Coup D'Etat (LP, 1982)
- Maggots: The Record (LP, 1987)
- Coup De Grace (LP, 2000)
- Put Your Love In Me: Love Songs For The Apocalypse (LP, 2002)
- Final Days: Anthems For The Apocalypse (LP, 2002)
Solo
- Wendy And Lemmy (7" single, 1982)
- W.O.W. (LP, 1984)
- It's My Life/Priestess (7" single, 1984)
- Fuck 'N' Roll (Live) (Cassette EP, 1985)
- Kommander Of Kaos (LP, 1986)
- Deffest And Baddest (with Ultrafly And The Hometown Girls) (LP, 1987)
- Fuck You!!! And Loving It: A Retrospective (LP, 1988)