Bruce Joyner

Under Appreciated

BRUCE JOYNER
 
 
The founder of the Unknowns, Bruce Joyner had trouble of a different kind.  Not long after starting the Stroke Band to show his fellow classmates at Valdosta State how Georgians do punk rock, Joyner was involved in an awful auto accident that broke both arms and both legs and crushed his chest.  He was confined to a wheelchair for a time but willed himself to walk again; and his love of music was intact.  Bruce Joyner began hearing about the growing punk rock scene in Los Angelesthe Dils, X, the Blastersthe Weirdos and the Zeros are bands that he cites – and he quickly put together a band called the Unknowns
 
Peter Ivers, the host of the eccentric Los Angeles punk rock showcase New Wave Theatre would often interview the bands after their performances in a most bothersome way, often closing with the question, “What is the meaning of life?”  I remember Unknowns frontman Bruce Joyner giving a short rant in response to one of his questions about how “the world would be a helluva lot better place if people only worried about theirselves and not so much about other people”.  
 
Bruce Joyner connected with keyboardist Ray Manzarek (formerly of the Doors) and helped out on the recording sessions for the X album Under the Big Black Sun.  Joyner left the Unknowns in 1983; when he began recording the full-length album Swimming with Friends with his new band the Plantations in 1986, both Ray Manzarek and X guitarist John Doe lent a hand.
  
The Unknowns played a gig once with Tom Petty and rock legend Del Shannon; and Bruce Joyner became good friends with Shannon as a result.  Joyner recalls that Shannon was scheduled to play on one of his records the week after he killed himself.  I think of Del Shannon as being one of the Prozac suicide casualties:  someone who committed suicide out of the blue that seemed somehow connected to his taking that once ubiquitous drug (1960’s radical Abbie Hoffman was another).
 
The suicide of his friend prompted Bruce Joyner to return to the South; he also lived in France for a while.  He is still active in music and has started several more bands over the years; I picked up a great album last year called Way Down South (1983) by Bruce Joyner and the Plantations in his inimitable style – his first album after leaving the Unknowns.
 
The entire recorded output of the Unknowns was released on a Marilyn Records CD in 1994 called Bruce Joyner and the Unknowns (though I was able to order it much more recently).  Bruce Joyner’s own reminiscence of the band in the liner notes begins:  “The Unknowns were underrated, and our place among our peers seems to have been forgotten.”  Hopefully I have done my part to put an end to that.  
  
(June 2011)
 
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Last edited: March 22, 2021