Crash and Burn

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Mullen: He used to do these mind games. He'd say to a girl, "That's a cool necklace. Give it to me." Then he'd throw it away. Mostly I remember him whining, "Gimme a beeeer." "Gimme two dol-laahs." "Gimme a ride to the Whiiiisky." That was him.

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Ghaffari: He really hoped to be a rock star of some sort. In the long term, it's not what I would see him doing. I see him as a philosophy professor or something. He was incredibly well-read. He loved Nietzsche. He read Hesse. He also read Hitler. For fun he read a sociological study on the effects of chance-taking. He never wasted a moment. Back in 1975, when he was heavily into Bowie, the song "Five Years" on the "Ziggy Stardust" album intrigued him. He talked a lot about killing himself. He'd say, "I'm not going to be here in six months anyway." Then he'd make some hysterical joke.

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Cervenka: We were supposed to play with them that night. The audience was the Orange County hard-core fans. We had to cancel, because we would have gotten killed. Me in a dress? Forget it. I said the scene had been ruined and we should all commit mass suicide. We used to all say stuff like that all the time.

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Bolles: At the last Germs show the magic was back. I thought, "Maybe we'll get back together." Darby would say, "Well, I'm not going to be around." He said that so much that you didn't think he would. But then someone called and said, "Oh, Darby's dead." There had been four or five scares before; the call was just anticlimactic. I went to his funeral. His mohawk was down. Which is good, it kinda looked stupid.

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Ghaffari: The morning of the night he killed himself, I went over and I woke him up. He made a big deal about hugging me, saying, "Good to see you." The next day I got a call from our friend Malissa. She was crying and said, "He did it." The site of his death was this girl's mother's pool house--the girl who accepted Darby's suicide pact. Either he didn't want to be alone when he died, or else he needed help paying for the $400 worth of heroin. I don't think he had any intention of letting the person with him die. She woke up and found him. There was a note. He didn't die in the shape of a cross, if anybody tells you that. Malissa was there and she would have told me. He was just dead. I helped his mom figure out what he should be buried in and who should come to the funeral. I don't think she ever went to see them play, but she was supportive of him. He had a couple sisters, nice, normal. I had my parents drive me to Malissa's house. That's where I was when I heard about John Lennon being shot.