10 Best Rock Duos Of All Time
3. Suicide
Suicide were a band designed to take you by surprise. On the one hand, there’s that name - as stark and confrontational as a title can get. But then, there were tunes like “Dream Baby Dream”, a beautiful, twinkling lullaby of a song. And just as you thought these two New York weirdos were alright after all, they’d hit you with “Frankie Teardrop” a sprawling epic of poverty, murder, and lots of shrieking.
The combo of vocalist Alan Vega and instrumentalist Martin Rev were hardly prolific, but their output, particularly the first two seminal records, inspired artists as diverse as R.E.M, Aphex Twin, and superfan Bruce Springsteen (whose Nebraska album takes many cues from the duo’s character sketches and embracing of darkness).
Their music, and their live shows, could be blissed out and heavy on vibes, or terrifying and confrontational. They could produce love songs like “Cheree” and bizarre anthems like “Ghost Rider” on the same album, the latter inspired by the Marvel hero but sounding truly villainous.
Vega and Rev had stellar solo careers of their own and reconvened Suicide a few times. The results were always interesting, but those first couple of years were unsurpassable, by them or most other bands.