Five minutes into my first-ever meeting with the Dead Boys, and already I have an angle, a metaphorical hook for my story on the band: scars. The Dead Boys, Cleveland's own incisive contribution to the global village of the New Wave, are into scars. Not that their publicity hadn't promised me as much—Dead Boys fans have reportedly made a practice of etching their heroes' arms with cigarette burns, in punk salute—but when I'm suddenly confronted with the mass of scar tissue that passes as Stiv Bators' upper lip, dangling rather ominously over my Heineken, the surprising reality of the hype hits home.

We're dining at an atmospheric place just off Gramercy Park in lower Manhattan, and Sire Records publicist Janis Schacht has just introduced me to Dead Boys Central, to the songwriting, image-making nucleus of the band: vocalist Bators, lead guitarist Cheetah Chrome, and rhythm guitarist Jimmy Zero. Jimmy, sitting at the other end of the table, beneath a giant sailfish stuffed into a comic, frozen leap, picks up on the unspoken cue of Bators' scarred lip. "My father," Jimmy announced prophetically, "had a hernia operation in 1951. Whenever we'd go to the beach, he's show off this big scar on his gut."