Wendy
Orlean Williams (May 28, 1949 - April 6, 1998) was an American singer,
songwriter and actress. Born in Webster, New York, she came to
prominence as the lead singer of the punk rock band Plasmatics. Her
stage theatrics included partial nudity, blowing up equipment, and
chain-sawing guitars.
In 1976, Williams arrived in New York City, where she saw an ad in the Show Business magazine that lay open on the Port Authority Bus Terminal station floor. It was a casting call for radical artist and Yale University graduate Rod Swenson's experimental "Captain Kink's Theatre." She replied to the ad and began performing in live sex shows. She later appeared in Gail Palmer's adult film, Candy Goes to Hollywood (1979), credited as Wendy Williams. By 1977, Swenson became Williams' manager and recruited her to join his newly formed punk rock band, Plasmatics. They made their debut in July 1978 at the Manhattan music club CBGB. The band was a controversial group known for wild live shows that broke countless taboos. These included chainsawing guitars, blowing up speaker cabinets, sledgehammering television sets, and blowing up automobiles live on stage.
The Plasmatics' career spanned five studio albums and multiple EPs. Aside from Wendy and manager Rod Swenson, guitarist Wes Beech was the only other permanent member of the group.The Plasmatics toured the world, although a concert in London was cancelled by the promoters due to safety reasons, causing the press to dub the band "anarchists." During the shooting of an appearance on SCTV in 1981, studio heads decided they would not air Williams' performance unless she changed out of a costume that revealed her nipples. Williams refused. The show's make-up artists found a compromise and painted her breasts black. The band broke up in 1983.
Williams recorded a duet of the country hit "Stand by Your Man" with Lemmy of Motörhead in 1982. In 1984, she released the W.O.W. album, produced by Gene Simmons of Kiss. Kiss members Paul Stanley, Ace Frehley, Eric Carr, and Vinnie Vincent also perform on the album. Gene Simmons plays bass but is credited as Reginald Van Helsing. In 1985 Williams starred in The Rocky Horror Show at the Westport Playhouse in St. Louis. In 1986, she starred in Tom DeSimone's indie-film Reform School Girls. In 1988, Wendy put out another solo album, this time a "thrash rap" album called Deffest! and Baddest! under the name "Ultrafly and the Hometown Girls." The Plasmatics got back together in 1887 for a couple of years.
In 1991, Williams moved to Storrs, Connecticut, where she worked as an animal rehabilitator and at a food co-op in Willimantic. Williams died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on April 6, 1998, when she was 48.
