Original subtitles

-One, two! -Ichi, ni, san, shi!

[♪ "Masterplan" by Plasmatics playing]

♪ Masterplan ♪

[narrator] This is Wendy O. Williams

and her band the Plasmatics...

[explosions booming]

...the destructo kingpins of rock and roll.

♪ Masterplan, masterplan, masterplan ♪

[narrator] The Plasmatics have incorporated staged violence

and overt sexuality for a two-fisted impact

that has very little to do with music.

♪ But you blew it all away ♪

♪ Masterplan ♪

[Rod Swenson] Wendy got pushed back from the time

that she stepped out on stage.

She was a provocateur.

She is called the High Priestess of Metal.

The roughest, toughest woman in rock and roll.

The queen of shock rock.

[announcer] Wendy O. Williams.

There weren't too many women fronting metal bands at the time.

-Are you angry? What are you angry about? -[sputtering]

Why heavy metal?

[Wendy O. Williams] It was the ultimate "fuck you" to society.

It's a way to kick sand in the face of the status quo.

You know, anything that was status quo was like anti-Wendy.

She hated the commercialism and the conformity of everything.

[chuckles]

The whole message was the right of self-expression

and to fight authority.

[explosion booms]

She was an activist, you know what I mean?

But she took everything to the stage, you know?

Wendy had a bullseye on her.

I can imagine if you're uptight

and you don't think women should have agency at all,

I could see how that would be a threat.

Prepare to be outraged.

[Phil Donahue] Police said, dear Wendy, you simulated a sex act

and made obscene motions during your performance.

[newscaster] Wendy O. Williams has been arrested again.

Police grabbed her right after a concert with the Plasmatics.

[Wendy] What right do police have

to try and censor rock and roll?

[newscaster] Milwaukee Police arrested lead singer Wendy O. Williams

that triggered a fight amongst Wendy

and a number of Milwaukee police officers.

[Jim Kramer] She was put up as an example of what they were against.

They thought I was an incarnate of the devil,

and they attacked me and beat me unconscious.

[Rod] It's a control thing.

It challenged their whole ethic.

[Mikko Macchione] Here is a woman that threatens them.

"I'm gonna lash out against her in the only way

that I have power over her, and that's with violence and strength."

This issue here in Milwaukee is a very serious issue

of civil rights and First Amendment rights.

She was not afraid. She was just pissed.

She always used to say, "What we do is we draw a line in the sand,

and then we step over that line."

[Rod] There's a war here.

Wendy was motivated to fight back.

That's how she was.

[Wendy] There's so many guises of fascism

that needs to be undermined and exposed.

[explosion booms]

[♪ heavy metal music playing]

[helicopter whirring]

[audience cheering and applauding]

[♪ punk rock music playing]

[Wendy] Ever since I was little, I've always liked to smash things.

I don't like conformity.

I hate people telling me what to do.

So-called normal behavior patterns make me so bored!

I could throw up.

[chainsaw revving]

-[♪ heavy metal music playing] -[audience cheering and applauding]

[Wendy] The Plasmatics give me a chance

to get this violence out of me

and express it to other people.

[♪ heavy metal music continues]

[explosions booming]

[♪ calm music playing]

[Rod] My name is Rod Swenson.

For nearly a half century, since Wendy O. Williams and I met,

became lovers, and then significant others.

I've chosen to remain off camera for this interview

for the same reason I tried to remain off camera

and behind the scenes during the 10-years' run

of the Plasmatics.

This is Wendy's story.

She was the Plasmatics, and she is the star.

-Fuck yeah, America! -Ichi, ni, san, shi!

♪ Butcher baby, dressed up in red ♪

♪ Butcher baby, messed in your head ♪

♪ Butcher baby, go out at night ♪

♪ Butcher baby, turn out the light ♪

♪ Oh, yeah ♪

[TC Tolliver] The Plasmatics was just a wild shock rock group.

Some people might look at it as a, a freak show or something.

I love that kind of stuff.

[♪ punk rock music playing]

["Pyro" Pete Cappadocia] You'd heard rumors about the Plasmatics.

It was holy fuck.

It-- It was-- It was a tornado in a bottle.

[Jim] There was nothing at all like a Plasmatic show.

They were really doing things nobody ever saw before.

If you can imagine the sound coming from a chainsaw

cutting into a guitar with the strings live,

that's what it was about.

[chainsaw revving]

A lot of "fuck you" energy.

♪ Oh, yeah, love ♪

It's easy to go with the flow.

It's easy to go with the formula.

It's difficult to do what you feel,

but it's necessary if you want to achieve satisfaction

on any level.

[Rod] What she was about from day one,

it was to go out on stage and to provoke the establishment.

[explosion booms]

Wendy used to say, "We're gagging on apple pie."

And that was pretty much at the center

of who Wendy was when I met her.

[♪ calm music playing]

It was 1976 when Wendy arrived into New York.

Times Square was the place you could go to

to see things that were beyond the edge,

kind of like the center for the taboo.

So it was a good place for me to set up a theater

under the name of Captain Kink,

and I am producing radical experimental theater,

and it had a strong sexual content.

I was doing a casting call for performers.

Wendy came through the door.

She was carrying a four-foot-high plastic Buddha,

and a suitcase, which she dumped onto the floor.

Among the things that fell out were Timothy Leary's book

on-- on psychedelics, the tantric way to yoga,

and we looked at each other, and it was just clear

that there was this explosive chemistry.

Wendy came on as a performer, reducing of sexual taboos.

That's the part of the boundaries we were pushing at that time,

and she was astounding.

We were both inherently rebellious.

Our main connection was being in a world that made no sense.

A world of mass-produced things, sexism.

[announcer] When there's no man around...

[♪ triumphant music playing]

...Goodyear should be.

[Rod] Racism.

We felt as though things were out of control,

and people were not aware of it.

Wendy's home life was very repressive.

She describes the situation where she was up in her room

lip-syncing with a hairbrush

to Mitch Ryder's, Devil with a Blue Dress On,

dancing wildly.

♪ Devil with the blue dress on ♪

♪ Hey, sing it now ♪

♪ Devil with the blue dress... ♪

[Rod] Her father pushes open the door and broke the record in half.

[record shattering]

They didn't want noise. They didn't want her excitement.

They didn't want her exuberance around.

They tried to medicate her.

They were continually trying to put her back in a box.

"If you won't do what we tell you, you're out."

[♪ soft, melancholy music playing]

What she said at that point is telling,

and it is something that is worth remembering about her.

She yells back, "I'd rather be dead

than be zombified in the world that you are living in."

So she left home with nothing, you know,

looking for some thing that was different than that.

[♪ rock music playing]

If you wanted to do something relevant,

rock and roll was the art of the time.

[Wes Beech] Back in the late '70s,

there was an energy in New York unlike anywhere else,

and I always, uh, kind of compare it to Paris in the '20s.

It was such a exciting time to be alive.

The music was so vibrant, was so different.

The New York punk scene was really cool.

CBGBs, Max's Kansas City, and a few other clubs around Manhattan.

You see bands like the Ramones.

♪ I don't wanna walk around with you ♪

♪ I don't wanna walk around with you ♪

♪ So why you wanna walk around with me? ♪

The Dead Boys. I mean, these guys just exuded energy.

♪ ...wanna crawl ♪

♪ Down in flames ♪

♪ Down in flames ♪

[Rod] I saw CBGBs as another potential laboratory,

the next place to fight back in some way.

I put the Plasmatics together

for and around Wendy O. Williams as a vehicle,

and she came alive in it.

[♪ punk rock music playing]

♪ Baby, baby, oh, yeah ♪

♪ Butcher baby, oh, no ♪

♪ Baby, baby, oh, yeah ♪

♪ Butcher baby, oh, no ♪

[Jim] The band had a buzz on 'em,

and it-- there was a lot more women in the audience

than you might expect.

They saw the strength in Wendy

and what she was putting out there as a woman,

which they hadn't seen before.

They heard about it. They went and saw it.

They had to see it again.

They had to tell their friends about it.

They just blew people away.

All the way to the entryway of CBGBs was just packed with people.

I had to push my way into the dressing room,

and I'm pushing people aside, going,

"Hey, I'm in the band. I'm in the band."

[Rod] You know, by 1979,

we were playing four nights in a row,

two shows a night, and selling it out.

There were lines around the block to get in,

and so that's when I started looking for other venues.

If you could draw a crowd, you could command the stage.

Rod was the man behind the curtain.

You know, in the old Wizard of Oz,

pay no attention to the man behind the curtain,

that-- that was Rod.

[Jim] Rod worked in the shadows, sure of everything he wanted to do.

He was an absolute total control freak,

not just of the shows,

but some of the effects were very, very important to him.

-[audience cheering] -[gunshots]

None of the pyro was pyro for the sake of pyro,

and it was tearing down everything

and-- and showing art could be dangerous.

Art could be loud, that there's beauty in destruction,

actually a lot deeper than I had thought. [chuckles]

[gunshots]

[people shouting]

[Rod] Part of our idea here was to have the audience feel

that things were way out of control,

because that's the way we felt out in the world.

So, we created this environment

to bring the audience into the performance.

They were like a single unit, Rod and Wendy.

They were totally a team. They had their vision.

Just destroying the materialistic bullshit

that people felt was so important back then.

[audience cheering]

[Rod] In those days, people worshiped the television

in the same way now that they worship the iPhone.

So, the only way you could get people concerned,

the only way you could start a revolution,

is to take away their TVs.

[♪ rock music playing]

[Wendy] You work all of your life to buy a car, to buy a color TV,

to buy a stereo, to buy a radio,

and you love these things once you get them,

but you hate them

because you had to work so hard to get them.

[Jim] Wendy was right in your face.

You want a nice, sweet little girl to know her place

and do what she's supposed to do and look sexy.

And then you have someone like Wendy who stands up and says,

"I'm a little bit more than that."

[♪ punk rock music playing]

[Wendy vocalizing]

[audience cheering and applauding]

["Pyro" Pete] There were two Wendy Os.

She was just the nicest fuckin' person,

like-- and vegan.

She didn't drink liquor, she didn't do drugs.

She was straight edge before straight edge was a thing.

And then there was the... [growling] "rawr,"

I've-got-a-message-to-get-out to-the-world, Wendy.

[♪ punk rock music playing]

[Rod] We were a people's band.

We could tour across the country

with these huge production bills

with what we were getting in ticket sales,

but we weren't making money either.

You're giving us this money, but here's what we're doing with it.

We're not buying ourselves a Cadillac.

We took all the money and put it back into the band.

We put it into the show. We did this all for the fans.

-[hammer thudding] -[crowd cheering]

[fan screaming]

[Jim] All independent, all doing it themselves.

No record label. Labels were scared shitless of 'em.

The audiences were into fighting the establishment,

the record labels were the establishment.

[Wes] But Stiff Records, since they were such

a over-the-top innovative label,

they signed us to a record deal.

You know, it's just what they needed, right when they needed it.

[Wes] Stiff Records, uh, set up a show for us

at the prestigious Hammersmith Odeon in England.

[Rod] It was a heavily hyped show, we were a heavily hyped act.

And this is already news to the British press.

We were arriving at Heathrow,

and there was already a throng of reporters there

with lots of cameras flashing.

Wendy exited the plane dressed as a nurse, and she said,

"I've come to give the British culture an enema,"

which was fairly wild, you know.

[Wes] It was a sold-out show.

We were gonna blow up a, uh, car on stage like we had done

at numerous shows in America without incident.

[Rod] The, uh, Greater London Council sent around

some octogenarians who kind of walked around the car,

taking notes.

They were having reservations about this,

and they went and huddled

and then came back with a decision, under the pretense

that they couldn't have the car explosion,

they were going to ban the show.

We learned later that they believed Wendy would whip

the audience into an anarchist frenzy.

The Greater London Council was trying to suppress

the punk rock ethic that was so prevalent

early on in the '70s.

They didn't want it to rear its ugly head.

[Rod] That was our underestimation

of how strong the pushback was,

you know, when you challenge certain types of things.

They find Wendy threatening.

She had to be bold,

and she had to be out there and she had to push it.

That's who she was.

Where are the priorities in this country right now?

Um, cleaning up the inner cities certainly isn't one of them.

Um, more nuclear arms seems to be a priority.

I mean, this is what the government wants,

yet the people don't want it in the national elections.

It did shake up a lot of people.

Once we started playing in the heartland of America,

we found out how threatened people were.

[Wendy] We're brought up feeling that we live

in the freest country in the world,

but the more you step over the line,

the more you go to seek out the truth, the harder it is.

[♪ tense music playing]

[Rod] I was interested in art, not with a capital A,

but in reaching people with ideas.

So for me, mass media, real people media,

that is our culture, that is our art.

[Jim] Rod and Wendy were extremely media savvy.

They would absolutely manipulate it as best they could

to push the vision forward.

[Wendy] Hey, America, turn off your TV set!

Ichi, ni, san, shi!

♪ Butcher baby, dressed up in red ♪

♪ Butcher baby, messed in your head ♪

The first time, uh, we were on TV was on the show Fridays.

-♪ Oh, yeah ♪ -[Jim] That put them

in everybody's living room across America.

You know, nobody expected that, but it-- it happened.

[explosions booming]

[Rod] We were now across the country.

We were not just in urban hip areas like New York or LA.

So that was kind of startling to people.

[Jim] And following that, the notoriety of what they did

began to strike fear into these repressive people

in the hinterlands.

[Wes] We had been touring through the Midwest.

You could see the discomfort with, uh, the locals.

We'd be walking down the street,

they would yell and cat-call at us.

We'd walk into a fast food place,

and it would just be silent.

You'd see people coming peeking out from behind the kitchen.

We just figured that's just part of the game.

If we're gonna do shows like this, that's gonna happen.

[Mikko] When they were coming to Milwaukee,

I wrote for the paper, and I wrote music stories.

I hate Fleetwood Mac, and I hate America.

I mean, not just the country, but the band.

So, I became a punk rocker.

I thought, "This is great.

The Plasmatics are coming to this little shit hole."

So, naturally I had to be there.

The conservative people, of which there are many in Milwaukee,

you know, to them, it was like this stripper

was coming to town to sing punk rock.

So, it combined their two biggest fears,

which is basically challenging music and, you know,

this woman that was okay with her sexuality.

[♪ tense music playing]

Everybody in town was, like, bracing for it

in a sense of, like, "Oh,

"what horrible thing is this evil band gonna do?

We gotta defend our children."

[chuckles] You know, it was this whole pearl-clutching going on.

And you could feel it. I mean, you could totally feel it.

["Pyro" Pete] There was many versions of the show,

depending on what we could get away with.

To me, Milwaukee was another show with rules.

Like some municipalities were like, "Eh, look,

you can get away with all your other crap, but you can't use the shotgun."

Rod and Wendy, they would acquiesce. They would say, "Okay, what can we do?

"Let's agree on how far we can push it in Milwaukee.

We're being super scrutinized."

They wouldn't just buy the-- the tape on the nipples.

They said, "No, you have to cover up more than that."

So, shaving cream.

We gotta be on our A-game and, you know,

make sure everything's as legit as we can make it.

[♪ tense music playing]

[Mikko] Walking into the club, it was like any other show,

but then there'd be a guy over here with a pot belly

and a plastic cup of water.

And then there's another one over there.

When you saw all these people out there

that looked like they were your dad's friends

that played golf, you're like,

"What the fuck are all these cops doing here," you know?

[♪ tense music continues]

They actually thought they were undercover.

That was what was the cutest part about it.

[Wes] I wasn't aware of any police presence in the club.

The crowd looked like every other crowd that we played in front of.

We were just doing our thing. Wendy was performing.

It was not anything different than we had done

anywhere else across the country.

["Pyro" Pete] I'm from New York, you know when you get that,

"Hmm, something-- something's not right here," you know?

There were already police in the back,

and things are getting tense.

[Rod] Right after the show ended,

they said they were arresting Wendy on an obscenity charge.

"We're just gonna take her downtown.

You can follow us and we'll book her, and that'll be it."

And I actually couldn't believe it. It was our first arrest.

Because I was covering the show as a writer

as well as just going as a fan,

I grabbed my friend and we ran out the front

and around the back, and we passed the big cop wagon there,

and then they start bringing out the band members.

[♪ tense music playing]

So, then the first one to come out is the bass player,

escorted down the stairs by a cop or two.

He wasn't resisting, but, you know,

being a Black guy in Milwaukee is a really bad idea

probably to this day.

They actually dragged him,

they didn't, like, bring him up to the van.

They dragged him out behind the van to our right,

and now he's down in the snow.

[♪ tense music continues]

You could hear the billy clubs hitting his head...

which is a disgusting sound when you realize

it's an actual person getting hit like that.

And then that's when Wendy came out.

[Rod] By her account,

there was a gauntlet, really, of police lined up,

at the very end of which was a paddy wagon...

and they kind of walked her down this gauntlet

while she was, uh, being taunted by police.

She stepped up into the paddy wagon.

Her account is that hands were all over her,

and she turned around to essentially defend herself.

And she goes to slap 'em.

Then that's when the barracuda went crazy.

[♪ dramatic, tense music playing]

[Rod] One of our roadies comes racing now into this office

and says, "They're beating Wendy up."

My kind of heart jumped in my mouth.

As I raced down the hall

there was a policeman guarding the exit

and said, "Sorry, you can't go out here."

I didn't stop, I kicked the door open.

[♪ dramatic, tense music continues]

What I saw on the ground was, you know, completely sickening.

Her face is down on the ground,

she's being kicked in the face, she's being beaten.

[Mikko] Manager came out like a-- like a linebacker.

"What the fuck are you doing?" He's like that.

And then of course, three cops grab him and he's in the snow,

and they're whacking him, you know, with the nightsticks on his head.

["Pyro" Pete] I ran out the back door,

and I see they took Wendy to the ground.

It's like, what the fuck? Boom.

Guy grabs me, puts me in a headlock. I'm on the ground.

I'm trying to see what's going on and she's kicking and screaming.

[Rod] They dragged me off behind a car,

and I was, uh, beaten into unconsciousness.

I had no idea when they would stop.

I did not know how or what or when

or if I was gonna wake up, honestly.

[Rod] We were both taken to the local jail.

At the end of the day, she had her nose broken,

multiple black eyes, a concussion, among other things.

The next time we saw each other was in the morning

when they came to get us for an arraignment.

[♪ dramatic music playing]

["Pyro" Pete] Simulated masturbation was the sin of the day.

Sometimes she would stroke the sledgehammer.

That's what got her in trouble in Milwaukee.

[Mikko] Meanwhile, right across the street from the show

was a famous strip club,

and the cops hung out in there all the time.

So, like, what, are they gonna close the strip club now?

You know, if Wendy goes down?

[Rod] This hypocrisy of, basically thugs, was, in a way,

what we'd been talking about all along.

The lawyer told us, "You need to get out of town now.

"They are after you. I got you out on bail.

You don't come back until the trial."

But Wendy and I were both charged with felonies,

striking a police officer.

So, at that point, things got existentially serious.

That's the scary thing, is that this was against her.

Like, she had gotten beat up,

and now the city was gonna prosecute her

for doing something wrong.

[♪ tense music playing]

When the paper came out, it listed who her lawyer was gonna be,

and I called that office, like, that morning

and I said, "Anything you want.

"I was there. I saw the whole thing.

"Here's my name, here's my number.

You know, I'll do anything you want to help defend them."

[♪ lively music playing]

[Rod] We were national news.

There's now the response from the media

where she's given a voice.

Here to sing A Pig is a Pig

are the Plasmatics,

-and Wendy Williams, coming up. -[cheering and applause]

[Rod] The song Pig is a Pig, was a very hard, tough response

to that arrest.

It's dedicated to a special kind of person

who's hiding under rocks and in closets wherever you go,

hiding behind the guise of respectability.

Some people might say getting arrested and all this stuff

is-- is not good for the band.

We didn't want it to happen,

but we knew how to take advantage of it.

The sicky sadist who hides behind his police badge

to commit crimes of violence against other people.

I've heard of the Plasmatics, and I knew it was a wild group.

You know what I mean?

-♪ A pig is a pig and that's that ♪ -[audience cheering]

Ichi, ni, san, shi!

[♪ punk rock music playing]

[TC] It was the music that got me, you know?

It was just so powerful and strong and fast.

But it was, it was serious.

You know what I mean? It was for real. It wasn't no joke.

♪ Stupid, mean and ugly ♪

♪ Down in the dirt where you go ♪

♪ Lower than you you can't go ♪

[TC] People didn't know how to perceive Wendy.

They just looked at her like, uh, some kind of wild freak.

But she had a message.

[Tom Snyder] There are many people who are really scared

by what you do.

Why shouldn't they be scared by this?

People are scared.

I mean, like the people in Milwaukee, they were scared.

I mean, this vice squad was very scared of what we were doing

and that I was stepping over the line

of what it was expected for how a woman to act.

You know, other than being barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen.

[Rod] Women in culture

were generally expected to be smiling,

some type of eye candy.

One of the things that the Milwaukee police found so threatening

is that she was angry.

Unlike what the public thought,

it wasn't a sexual drive.

The reason she's up there is not to titillate.

She sang about social injustice and violence,

at the same time, not covering up her femininity.

She was very, very comfortable with her sexuality.

That scares a lot of men.

They don't know how to handle that.

Five of them held me down

while six other of them beat me repeatedly

till I thought I would never stand up again,

until I thought I was dead in Milwaukee.

This is a brutality issue. This is a First Amendment issue.

This is a civil rights issue,

and this is very definitely women's rights.

[Wes] After the whole Milwaukee incident,

she was still wanting to perform.

That was her focus.

["Pyro" Pete] You know, like I say, you gotta get back on the horse.

The show was a bulldozer. It was moving, it was going.

It was not gonna stop.

But she was under the microscope.

Wendy had a bullseye on her.

[Wes] The Milwaukee Police Department called ahead to Cleveland

to warn them of this woman.

"You have to arrest her. How can this be going on?"

[♪ tense music playing]

[reporter] The vice squad out in Cleveland say

she gave a concert wearing a lot of shaving cream

and not much else.

[Jim] The police in Cleveland decided they were gonna arrest her

for pandering or some stupid charge.

I don't know. You figure it out.

You know, it doesn't make any sense to me.

It was just the whole trumped-up, uh, nonsense.

Charges were thrown out.

[reporter] After her acquittal,

Ms. Williams said this was never an obscenity trial,

but rather a trial of the First Amendment.

We were wondering, well, is this gonna be the norm now?

It changed things.

Are you scared at all about, um, what's happening to you

with-- with the courts and the legal hassles?

-I mean, does it ever get you nervous? -Oh, it's terrifying. It's terrifying.

But it's high time people realize

that women do have minds of their own

and that a female body is not dirty.

[Rod] She was charged with the obscenity charge,

but it was the felonies that they wanted to get us on.

It could lead to serious jail time.

The media attention put a light on Milwaukee

and the Milwaukee, fairly corrupt, police department.

They thought if they put me on trial,

that the media would lose interest.

The DA said that if he couldn't convict Rod,

he was gonna drop the charges against Wendy.

But we were all worried that the DA was gonna pull out the stops

and do God knows what, legal or illegal,

to help convict them.

I'd never had to be a witness before.

You know, I remember the lawyer telling me,

"It has to be the truth. Don't embellish it."

You realize, oh, that's right, because there's gonna be 10 cops

telling their version of the story.

You know, so it's-- it was scary as fuck.

[Mikko] Prosecution asked me if I felt

that the performance was sexual in any way,

and I said, "No, not really."

And that's when I talked about how

I watched the cops beat up the band.

[Rod] There was a number of eyewitnesses,

people who were courageous enough to come forward.

This went on for nine days.

[♪ tense music playing]

[Wes] The Milwaukee Police Department's point of view

was that Rod and Wendy assaulted an officer.

That was the bottom line.

Thank God there was a photographer there,

because the cops were lying out their ass.

[♪ tense rock music playing]

Once they showed the pictures, everyone went... [gasps]

It was like, whoa, a group of burly police

on a 110 pound woman.

How do you say, "Oh, well, we were worried

for our health and safety"?

[Rod] Our lawyer would ask questions like,

"Did you see Ms. Williams getting hit in the head

or kicked in the face?"

And the police officer would reply, "I don't recall."

And they'd say, "But police officer so-and-so,

you were just two feet from this, were you not?"

"Yes." "And you don't recall?"

"No, I don't recall."

Wendy, with her testimony, helped to turn the tide as well.

As Wendy said it,

"What's happening in here is what's obscene."

-[gavel thuds] -They got acquitted.

There was a big, big celebration.

They got slam-dunked. They had no case whatsoever.

[Rod] Not guilty. I-- I was through the roof.

I-- I couldn't believe it.

It just-- It was so screwed up.

[♪ tense rock music continues]

But at this point, there was heat on Wendy.

Local promoters were told,

"Do not book this act in this town."

She felt obviously extremely disappointed.

The authorities were always looking for an excuse

to kind of suppress Wendy and the message.

We were always looking over our shoulders,

wondering if Wendy would be arrested.

She was... [sighs]

mentally just...

I... I-I don't want to say broken, but mad.

[Rod] After Milwaukee,

we had difficulty as far as being able to book a tour

that could pay for itself across the country.

So, it got tougher for Wendy.

She was only comfortable when she was out there

and with a platform

warning you about things that are dangerous,

she thought, to human health and happiness.

But there's all kinds of major breakthroughs that happened.

That's when the music turned.

[♪ "The Damned" by Plasmatics playing]

♪ Black visions from the satellite sky ♪

[Rod] We went from punk into heavy metal

to do an expression that it's bigger than before.

♪ Fat jackals howl at the moon ♪

[TC] I saw an ad that says,

"We're looking for a hard-hitting double bass drummer."

With that title, it had my name on it.

I had no idea it was a Plasmatics.

And that's when Wendy was, you know,

changing the course actually, turned out to be heavy metal.

♪ But the sun, it don't rise ♪

[Rod] We liked that sound.

That's where the kind of epic feeling was in music.

But we kept our toughness, our hardness

continuing our warning about what's coming.

Wake up.

♪ Nailed to a cross ♪

[reporter] Now, women are beginning to make it

into that last bastion of male music, heavy metal.

There were no real women in heavy metal at that time.

She was metal. She was, you know, hardcore.

[TC] Wendy, she's tough.

Any other male singer out here, nobody can't touch her.

[Rod] People of certain types of heavy metal

hated a woman being there.

Excuse me, but F you, we are breaking territory here.

♪ Prisoners of the damned ♪

♪ Find another land ♪

[Rod] It was quite distinct.

Heavy metal at that time was not political.

Punks and so-called heavy metal, they hated each other.

So there was always this kind of conflict.

When it got to KISS, there was considerably more conflict.

♪ A world without heroes ♪

♪ Is like a world without sun... ♪

[Rod] KISS had lost their edge to the heavy metal people.

They have always been kind of brilliant strategists.

So they thought having Wendy and the Plasmatics on the bill

as a special guest would bring back that edge.

[TC] That is one great memory.

You're playing on the biggest stage in the world.

You're playing with the biggest band in the world.

[Rod] KISS was giving us access to their audience.

They played all these big halls in certain parts of the country

where we could probably never have gone on our own.

But our fans hated KISS.

Too bad, we were people that if we're given an opportunity

to reach more people with her message, her power, then we're gonna do it.

Gene Simmons came to us

and said he wanted to produce the next album.

Musically, it's not exactly us.

So, it was kind of the "KISS sound."

The intent of that album was really to, you know,

really feature her vocals.

-♪ It's my life ♪ -♪ It's my life ♪

♪ And I do what I wanna ♪

♪ Do what I wanna, do what I like ♪

♪ It's my life ♪

[Rod] She got a Grammy nomination for that album.

I saw somebody write, "It was the best KISS album of 1982." [chuckles]

Kerrang! magazine, which at the time was kind of like the heavy metal bible,

touted it as "album of the year."

♪ My New Year's resolution ♪

♪ Is always the same ♪

♪ Gonna do what I like, gonna do what I want... ♪

[Wes] She did her own stunts.

The video for It's My Life, the most spectacular stunt

is the car-to-airplane transition.

[Rod] Done without a safety harness.

Very, very dangerous thing.

She is called the High Priestess of Metal,

the Evel Knievel of Rock, Joan Crawford in a torpedo bra.

Will you please help me welcome Miss Wendy O. Williams!

[audience cheering and applauding]

[Rod] She was kind of catapulted into legendary status

because she grew ratings.

You went skydiving naked.

I... That's something I always wanted to do.

What if you didn't land in the field

where they was waiting with a blanket for you?

What if you landed, you know, like in Chicago?

-[Wendy chuckles] -[audience laughing]

[Rod] She was an extreme person in a very authentic way,

and it's that way that allows her to be all the way in

and all the way out.

All I know is just how to do everything that I've got

into everything that I do.

And aggression goes with it.

That's what heavy metal is all about, eh?

She was an activist, you know what I mean?

But she took everything to the stage, you know?

Wendy was way ahead of her time,

20 years ahead of her time, if you ask me.

I've got a brand new album right now,

it's called Maggots: The Record.

It's the ninth anniversary Plasmatic album.

[host] This isn't after dinner music.

Maggots, that was kind of a conceptual album,

and about how, you know, what they doing with the climate.

She was talking about climate change way back in the day, man.

You know, how people were raping the Earth

and burning down the-- the Amazon and doing this and doing that.

We are, um, cutting down the forests,

uh, for more McDonald's hamburgers.

We are, um, burning fossil fuels,

and this is rising the temperature of the whole planet.

This was the '80s and people talking about this stuff now.

People just couldn't grab on to what was going on at the time.

Yeah, well, because of this, they predict in, uh, 30 years

the flooding of all the major cities.

[host] How does that all tie into your diet?

[TC] People don't listen.

They just want to put you in a little hole,

you're this or you're that, you know,

and you're just a product.

You know what I mean? Next.

Well, she didn't show anything like that around us.

She was very positive. You know what I mean?

She stood up for, uh, what her ideas were.

It was almost like being a true soldier, man.

[Rod] You always hope that you can be a tipping point.

It's not just that you'll warn people,

but you'll show enough people that you might turn it around.

But things are slow to change.

Basically, we were in a situation where with each tour,

there was shows being banned.

Other places where there was lawsuits that were filed.

And I'd like to show just a sampling.

[Rod] Senate hearings held

to keep teenage people from getting records.

[speaker] Porn rock.

[Rod] And so this continual marginalization

was closing in on us,

'cause you couldn't carry the overhead

to do the show the way that we felt we wanted it to be done,

and we had made an agreement a long time earlier.

We said, if we get to that point, then we will stop.

[Rod] After the Plasmatics essentially had ended,

feeling so disempowered as she did without a platform,

and the way she saw the world was going,

to participate in it, being complacent,

it made her feel almost sick.

She was not interested in going halfway.

It just wasn't in her to do it.

And to know that she had been in that kind of pain...

that was the hard part.

[reporter] Twenty years ago, Wendy O. Williams

and the Plasmatics were a hot punk rock band

that toured the world.

Times were great then.

But on Monday, Williams took her life.

Her manager found her in the woods near his home in Storrs.

[reporter 2] Plasmatics singer Wendy O. Williams is dead.

She died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at her Connecticut home.

[Rod] It was completely shocking to me.

Obviously, it was impossibly upsetting.

I can see how somebody at some stage of their life

clearly might want to say, "I've had enough."

But when somebody does it at the age of 48,

when they've accomplished so much,

it's harder to get closure on it.

When I got that devastating news, man,

i-it just blew my mind.

Even if I think about it now, you know,

it kind of give me chills a little bit.

I didn't see that coming. That's what shocked me.

That's what surprised me, like what?

You know, why would she do that?

But, uh, people have their reasons for doing what they do,

and I'm not going to sit and question you-- uh, things that you do.

[newscaster] The Plasmatics became a sensation in the early '80s.

Williams was nominated for a Grammy in 1985.

Wendy O. Williams, dead at 48.

And-- And to this day, it-- it's really an upsetting thing for me.

I knew there was a void there in her life.

She wasn't performing any longer,

wasn't on stage, wasn't singing.

That may have been one of the things

that made her not have an attachment

to the rest of the world.

I tell you, in this world, there's, um, so much

that just doesn't make any sense to me at all.

I mean, you know, like my music

and being able to just, um, uh, let myself go

is, um, one of the few breaths of sanity to me

in an insane world.

I-I don't want to remember a sad Wendy.

I want to remember...

I want to remember Wendy, just the monster that she was.

She was really the forerunner of, like, women

just-- just getting out there and just mixing it up with the men,

like toe-to-toe with the men.

Like, for her to be able to do a song with Lemmy

and just toe-to-toe with Lemmy.

♪ You're jailbait, I just can't wait ♪

["Pyro" Pete] She's an enigma, man.

[Jim] She should be remembered as somebody

who stood up for what she believed,

pushed back on what she hated,

and did it with pleasure and relish.

[Wes] You know, talking to women after shows,

they would always say, "Wow," you know,

"I'm doing this because of Wendy.

Wendy really pushed me to do this."

Whether it's anti-nuclear marches in Manhattan,

campaigning tirelessly for Jesse Jackson

on his presidential campaign,

fighting for freedom of expression.

Wendy was a strong role model.

[Mikko] I tried to surround my daughters with women

with strong voices, you know,

and Wendy, she was a voice of empowerment, you know,

a very cool voice, by the way.

[audience cheering and applauding]

[♪ "Pedal to the Metal" by Wendy O. Williams playing]

[Rod] Wendy's performance, her career, and the message

is still extremely powerful today.

[♪ singing "Pedal to the Metal"]

♪ Wow ♪

[TC] Right now, I-- I think she's turning in her grave, man.

Can't believe what's ha-- I can't even believe what's happening.

I-- I think about that a lot too, sometimes,

I say, "Damn, I wonder if Wendy was here, what would she think about this?"

I can't imagine what the songs we'd come up with.

I miss her every day.

Wendy, I love you.

[growls]

[Jim] If she was around today, she'd probably be going to work

taking care of business on a Cybertruck right now.

[explosion booms]

[♪ somber music playing]

["Pyro" Pete] To me, Milwaukee was vindication.

She did what she thought was right,

and she just kept that up right until the end.

You know, the world these days could really use Wendy O. Williams.

Is what you're doing, in your mind, really for the music,

or do you really believe in everything that you do back there?

I am an anarchist, you know,

like where I believe in total freedom for the individual.

But I don't mean that liberty is something

that gives somebody

-the right to hurt other people. -[Tom Snyder] No.

[♪ solemn music playing]

[Rod] And I think she found that place where she could feel authentic.

And that's a place, a rare place, that I don't think

many people actually ever get to.

For Wendy, that place was in the Plasmatics.

So, in that case, she lived a remarkably full life.

[♪ music fades out]