I'll pay tribute to Frankie Venom's music, but that's all

A tribute will be held in honour of late Teenage Head frontman Frankie Venom tonight (Nov. 14), with his former bandmates welcoming a number of guest vocalists to the stage to sing songs from the group's catalogue.

I was a big Teenage Head fan in my youth, and their Teenage Head With Marky Ramone album received a vote from me for this year's Polaris Music Prize, so I was disappointed to hear the news of his untimely death when I returned home from my vacation last month.

But as much as I liked the band, Venom had his demons and certainly wasn't my favourite person.

The first time I saw Teenage Head was when they played my high school in Stratford, Ont. in the early '80s. Venom told the teenage girls in the audience that they were all sluts that should suck his cock. While that may have been punk, it didn't go over well, and the school administrators forced the band to shut things down early.

Edge 102 Toronto announcer Dave Bookman and I were talking at the Horseshoe Tavern about 10 years ago when Venom walked up to us and launched into Bookie, hurling vile anti-Semitic slurs at him and labelling me a "fuckin' Jew lover" for conversing with my friend. I called a bouncer over and had him removed from the club.

I had a few conversations last year with someone with inside knowledge of the situation who told me that he was a poor husband who often treated his wife and other family members badly.

Venom battled addictions, but that's still no excuse for the kind of behaviour described above. While I'm sure he also did a lot of good things for people, these images I have of him will always put a dark cloud over his legacy.

Conversely, Dave "Rave" Desroches replaced Venom as Teenage Head's frontman for a while in the '80s. He's truly one of the nice guys among musicians, and years ago offered to put me up in his New York City apartment even though we had only met a couple of times.

The passing of anyone at such a relatively young age, as Venom did at 51, is sad. But he left some great music behind him that will live on forever. That's what I'll prefer to remember.