Darby Crash

Darby Crash
Darby Crash in April 1980.
Background information
Birth name	Jan Paul Beahm
Also known as	Bobby Pyn
Born	(1958-09-26)September 26, 1958 Los Angeles, California, United States
Died	December 7, 1980(1980-12-07) (aged 22) Hollywood, California, United States
Genres	Punk rock, hardcore punk
Occupation(s)	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Vocals
Years active	1977-1980
Associated acts	Germs Darby Crash Band

Darby Crash (formerly Bobby Pyn; born Jan Paul Beahm; September 26, 1958 – December 7, 1980) was an Americanpunk rock vocalist and songwriter who, along with long-time friend Pat Smear (born Georg Ruthenberg), co-founded the punk rock band the Germs. He committed suicide by way of an intentionalheroin overdose. In the years since his suicide at the age of 22, the Germs have attained legendary status among punk rock fans and musicians alike, as well as from the wider alternative rock and underground music community in general. Crash has come to be revered as a unique and talented songwriter; his myriad literary, musical and philosophical influences, which varied from Friedrich Nietzsche and David Bowie to Charles Manson and Adolf Hitler, resulted in lyrics that were unusually wordy and impressionistic in the realm of punk rock at the time, immediately setting Crash and his band apart from most other Los Angeles punk groups that sprang up in the late 1970s.

Born in Baldwin Hills Hospital, Los Angeles County at 11 PM, Beahm had a troubled childhood. He grew up in Culver City and later, West Los Angeles. When he was 11 years old, his eldest half-brother Bobby Lucas died of a heroin overdose at the age of 27, thought to have been murdered by a disgruntled drug dealer who intentionally sold him an unusually potent batch of the drug. He grew up believing that his biological father was a man named Harold "Hal" Beahm, who had left the family early on in his life. When he was a teenager, one of his elder half-sisters, Faith Jr., revealed in an argument that his biological father was actually a Swedish sailor named William Björklund. Beahm lived with his mother Faith Reynolds-Baker for much of his life, but their relationship was tumultuous. The accounts given of her in Brendan Mullen and Don Bolles' 2002 book Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times and Short Life of Darby Crash and the Germs portray her as having a mental illness, which caused her to behave erratically and be verbally abusive toward her son. Faith's third husband, Bob Baker, died suddenly of a heart attack at 39 in 1972; they had married in 1964 when a very young Beahm introduced the idea of them marrying after they began dating. She never married Beahm's biological father, and not long after Bob Baker's death, Beahm learned that his biological father, whom he never met, was also deceased. Bob Baker was a Korean War veteran. Hal Beahm was Faith, Jr.'s biological father.