Darby Crash

Although he only appeared on a few singles, one full-length album, and one movie documentary during his short life, Germs' frontman Darby Crash certainly left his mark on the punk rock world. Few rock "singers" (the term is used loosely in Crash's case) pushed themselves to such dangerous and fearless extremes as Crash did at just about ever show he performed. Born Jan Paul Breahm on September 26, 1959, he endured a troubled childhood: his older brother died from a heroin overdose while Jan was still a child and he tried to find his real father (who his mother never married) when he was a teenager, only to discover that he had died too. Breahm found a kindred spirit in another outcast in school, George Albert Ruthenberg, who he met through a mutual drug dealer and shared the same appreciation for troublemaking and distaste for authority figures. While Breahm's musical tastes at the time revolved around '50s-era rock & roll (due to his older sister's influence), Ruthenberg eventually turned him onto the glam rock sounds that ruled L.A.'s Sunset Strip in the early- to mid-'70s - David Bowie, Alice Cooper, Queen, the Stooges, and New York Dolls.

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