Viletones The Official Site

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STEVEN LECKIE, BORN SEP. 19, 1957, PASSED AWAY JUNE 12, 2025 IN TORONTO

Please visit Steven Leckie's personal Facebook page

WWW.FACEBOOK.COM/StevenLeckieViletone

"What can you do when the medium of first-generation punk requires not a stage but a tight wire because the true craft of punk demanded not a persona but a life?
A life to even sacrifice on the altar of life and death, an attempt to bear witness to the purity of a spectacle that in history would be understood by perhaps the Aztec as a human sacrifice or maybe general custom.
Misunderstanding or doubting, that is only proof that those who through their mediocrity stand on the sidelines not only of punk rock, especially Viletones, but any art ahead of it's own time.
The words of Rimbaud not only told but warned over 100 years ago this spectacle would come, and I, far more than most first-generation punk artists, embraced and heeded that future vision. A vision that manifests in high art reality. That punk art is the bastard son of no one. Of no other movement. An orphan. But an Artful Dodger orphan.And the death count in punk is much higher than those Dickens himself could have foreseen, for there is no Fagin to pay off but something much greater. Immortality itself, though an Aztec spectacle of sacrifice, who's virtues have been eroded through time."

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A foreword to the book by Don Pyle: Trouble In The Camera Club.

"Strange.Well built young men, some of them have exploited your worlds. Equipped with frightening voices, and several dangerous talents, they are sent into town to take it from behind, tricked out in disgusting luxury. Paradise of Violence, of grimace & madness. One day in the future, these poets will exhist."
- Arthur Rimbaud, in a letter to his mentor, Parade (1872)

"1977 - Now is the time of the assassin.
I will give you a gang, one you wished a gang really looked like, where Cinema was our language, Violence our currency....History ours to steal! Otherwise knows as PUNK ROCK.
PUNK is timeless. Time, and society, didn't see it coming. Rimbaud did...over 100 years ago. And then, it hit the seers who put it on the stage in Toronto, London, New York. And to think, there are still bands, three full decades after the first and only assault that mattered, calling themselves PUNK, but they can never be - they are only Elvis impersonators...for cynicism only hardens with time.
Not all the true visionaries were musicians, in the beginning, most of it could not have been done without the first PUNK promoters, Gary Topp and Gary Cormier - true heroes. Another who sensed it in the air from the very start is the artist who took some of these pictures, - Don Pyle, who at the age of 14 started on his journey of documenting real first - generation PUNK. I'm proud to be among his collection. "

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The time is nigh for the for the return of Steven Leckie and Viletones, re-appearing like conquering heros of a Sergio Leone epic. The Viletones are back to up the anti...no one will be spared. You can't fake the real thing, and Viletones are the genuine article. It should be noted that in a 1981 'Villiage Voice' peice, the notorious Lester Bangs deemed the 'Tones the "best punk band of all time." Their history speaks for itself. Citing such influences as Gene Vincent, Marc Bolan, Alice Copper, Iggy and The Stooges, MC5, eThe Viletones formed in 1977, and have been on the cover of twenty four magazines, and have played from L.A. to New York, and the UK, with Leckie constantly re-inventing the project. They quickly developed the reputation and finesse that would find them internationally considered one of the handful of important bands to emerge from the heyday of punk: a movement Leckie knows everything about and cares for not at all. Steven Leckie's personal story is a gargantuan tale on it's own. Some notable moments include: a lone excursion through the Sahara desert, the spawning of his art gallery/clothing shop "Fleurs Du Mal" with a stylistic merger of 1970's punk and late 19th century Symbolism, and a meeting with legendary punk impressario Malcolm McLaren. He has lived in Lisbon, Paris and London, been in jail, and is a very serious student of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. He's been called the Lee Marvin of punk and is life reads like a Genet script. He is no ordinary rock and roll entertainer. Musical validity loses strength when there is no longer a societal need for it, and if ever there was a need for The Viletones, NOW is that time. Culturally speaking, we need The Viletones, and once again we have them. Steven Leckie and Co. have returned to save the day...or die trying. A hero's work is never done....GOING IN FOR THE KILL.
(C) Terry Charles

STEVEN LECKIE (C) 2025 Copyright: Viletones Official, Steven Leckie/Fleurs Du Mal