X ruled early LA punk. This photographer followed them up close and personal
Michael Hyatt has a new book of X photos and an upcoming exhibition in Venice.
Michael Hyatt was photographing the new L.A. punk scene tearing up Hollywood when he got an offer few would refuse.
It came shortly after the band X released their seminal 1980 debut, Los Angeles. Singer Exene Cervenka and bassist John Doe had liked a photo Hyatt had taken of the Plugz.
“They asked me if I would photograph X,” Hyatt said.
For the first half of the ‘80s, Hyatt photographed X wherever he could. On their first national tour where he also drove the jury-rigged tour van. At the Whisky just months after the unexpected death of Exene’s sister. On a downtown L.A. rooftop, days after the band’s big Greek Theatre show.
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Exene.
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Michael Hyatt
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Michael Hyatt
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“I never pose people. I find a location, a backdrop and just let them be human beings,” Hyatt said. “People reach a point where they forget the camera — that’s when the good photographs happen.”
Hyatt’s works are compiled in a new book, X: On the Road & At the Crossroads, 1980-2024, with an accompanying exhibition opening at Beyond Baroque on Sept. 5 — where Cervenka will join Hyatt for a reading.
Exene Cervenka and John Doe in the Louisiana countryside in 1980.
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Michael Hyatt
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Michael Hyatt
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A band built on chance encounters
X’s story reads like a constellation of happenstances hurtling toward inevitability. In 1976, Doe and guitarist Billy Zoom answered each other’s ads in the Recycler. That same year at a Beyond Baroque poetry night, Doe met Cervenka and saw punk lyrics in her writing. Ray Manzarek of the Doors, after seeing X live, offered that very night to produce their debut album in 1979.
A year later, Los Angeles helped cement L.A. punk, with a sound and sensibility markedly different from contemporaries the Germs and Black Flag.
A release party marked by tragedy
For the album’s release party, Hyatt said, X played two back-to-back shows in April at the Whisky a Go Go. Before they went on stage, Cervenka was told that her sister had been en route to the show when she was hit and killed by a drunk driver.
Three months later, Hyatt took this portrait of the band after another show at the Whisky.
X at the backstage area of Whisky a Go Go in July 1980, three months after the sudden death of Exene’s sister.
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Michael Hyatt
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Michael Hyatt
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“I placed Exene against that plywood panel,” Hyatt remembered. “My goal, maybe on an unconscious level, was to capture the emotion related to the tragedy that happened three months prior.”
The iconic rooftop shot
A photo of X taken two days after their 1981 Greek Theatre show.
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Michael Hyatt
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In August 1981, X played in front of a crowd of 5,000 at the Greek Theatre.
“ They had reached the height of their powers,” Hyatt said.
He wanted to capture that zeitgeist. So two days later, he met the group at the rooftop of their rehearsal studio, which Hyatt scoped out at a practice session prior to the big Greek show.
“I went up and I thought, ‘Wow, this is a fantastic spot,’” he said. “Got a little bit of the skyline off in the distance of downtown L.A., but you’ve got the Roosevelt Hotel right there too.”
After three rolls of film, Hyatt said one shot clearly stood out.
Four decades later, still at the front row
At X’s Houston show in 2024, Hyatt photographed a married couple that went on a first date to see the band in 1980.
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Michael Hyatt
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Michael Hyatt
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In 2024, X went on tour for their final album, Smoke & Fiction. One stop was Houston, Texas.
They’d played in Houston on their national tour in 1980, at a long-defunct punk venue called the Island.
In the crowd at the Island in 1980 was a young couple on their first date. A couple years later, Hyatt said, they got married.
“And there they were, 44 years later, right up front cheering on X — who they saw on their very first date,” Hyatt said.
Still together, wearing matching X shirts.
X: On the Road & At the Crossroads, 1980-2024
Photo exhibit and book launch. Exhibit runs Sept. 5 – Oct. 17 at Beyond Baroque, 681 Venice Blvd., Venice
Reading: Saturday, Sept. 5, at 2 p.m. Featuring Michael Hyatt; Exene Cervenka; L.A. music journalist Chris Morris, who wrote the book’s foreword; and poets Iris Berry, S.A. Griffin, Brendan Constantine and mike m. mollet.
Reception & book signing: 3 to 5 p.m.
Free and open to the public; reservations recommended.