Biography

Rozz Williams was born under the name Roger Painter in 1963 in Pomona, California into a strong Christian family with one sister and two brothers. In the early 1980's in Los Angeles Rozz, at the age of 16, formed a rock band of 4 members which was influenced by both West Coast punk, Bowie and T-Rex. This band would eventually be named Christian Death.

Rozz developed his own Gothic music and imagery, seperate from the UK gothic scene of bands like Sex Gang Children and Bauhaus. This was the American-West Coast Gothic. Rozz developed a vampiric image by wearing black dresses, heavy makeup, fishnets, silver jewelry and long dyed black hair. His music combined the morbidness of Edgar Alan Poe with the poetry of Baudeliere and presented the listener with the dark, macabre aspects of the human experience. In 1982 "Theatre of Pain" was released and features some of the classic Christian Death songs such as "Romeo's Distress" and "Spiritual Cramp". As an album it is a quintissential gem amongst the Gothic Music scene, yet the sound was very distinct--the street sound of Los Angeles vampire rock. In late 1982 the members of Christian Death went their own seperate ways. In 1983 a band called Pompeii 99, which featured a guitar player and vocalist named Valor, a keyboardist named Gitane Demone, and a drummer named David Glass, asked Rozz to join them on a European tour, and hence the bands merged under the name Christian Death. This union was a superb match with Rozz singing the vocals over the haunting more surreal sounds of the new band. "Catastrophe Ballet" and "Ashes" were created from this combination of talents, but in 1985 Rozz left to pursue his own path.

Rozz worked on some experimental music in a band called Premature Ejaculation. In the late 80's he joined with Eva O of the Superheroines and keyboardist Paris to form the experimental, slab-guitar band Shadow Project. In the early 1990's the label Cleopatra Records developed an interest in Rozz's cult status and used his name to help promote their label. It worked. Rozz reformed Christian Death, a rival to Valor's band of the same name, and would release several albums on the Cleopatra label. This later Christian Death combined the guitar sound and vocals of Evo O with Rozz's own stunning vocals and powerfully enriched voice for music that seemed to exude the effervescence of a modern Dante trapped between Heaven and Hell.

Rozz would produce numerous works during the 1990's, his most creative period--everything from spoken word albums to Daucus Karota, a more rock-based, less death-obsessed project, to a joint album with soloist Gitane Demone. In 1998, just after completing an acoustic Shadow Project album with Evo O, Rozz committed suicide at his West Hollywood apartment by self-hanging. Such a strange yet somewhat moridly expected turn of events for this creative and artistic genius who was so fascinated by the Macabre.

"I think, having been burned by religion, Rozz was searching for something to believe in; maybe some kind of sign or revelation. My impression is that he was weary enough not to expect anything, but, perhaps, a little open to the possibility that life could show him something truly wonderful. That touches me. The heart of the poet touches me. Whether it is great poetry or not is irrelevant. It's more about the thought and yearning behind the gesture. Maybe the soul itself." - Em