Singer, songwriter and poet Gary Heffern, who was inducted into the San Diego Music Hall of Fame on Friday along with his 1980s punk bandmates the Penetrators, was found dead on Sunday at his home in Rovaniemi, Finland, by his niece. He was 72.
A cause of death has not yet been announced. Heffern had been in failing health in recent years, with medical issues including complications from Type 2 diabetes.
As frontman for the Penetrators in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Heffern was at the forefront of San Diego’s nascent punk-rock scene. At the Hall of Fame ceremony on Friday, longtime San Diego DJ Jim McInnes inducted the band with a short speech. “They became the top dogs in San Diego around 1980 or ’81,” McInnes recalled. “They were so hot, they were able to sell out Golden Hall,” the former 3,000-capacity venue at the downtown Civic Center.
Heffern was born Veli-Matti Tervaniemi on Aug. 21, 1954, in Finland. He came to the United States as a toddler with his older sister Helena when the two were adopted from a Finnish orphanage by a San Diego family in the mid-1950s. In a 30-minute documentary available on YouTube called “Sweet Kisses From Mommy: The Gary Heffern Story,” Heffern vividly described enduring physical abuse from his adoptive parents when he was young.
His legacy and influence on the San Diego punk community was deep and profound, despite his move to Seattle in the mid-1980s. That’s where I met Gary. His 1990 solo album “Bald Tires in the Rain” opened with a song called “Letter to San Diego,” which was seemingly about a lost love; “I hope he treats you like a woman, and I hope you treat him the best you can,” he sings in the opening verse.
But I always felt the song was at least partly for San Diego’s music community, too. When I talked with Gary about why he’d moved to Seattle, I got the impression he’d left some skeletons behind. So when he sang, “I hope you know I miss you, and why we couldn’t get along I’ll never understand,” it felt like a message for those who remained dear to him in San Diego.
Gary and I got to know each other well when he was recording his 1995 album “Painful Days.” The album closes with a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Passing Through” that features several guest vocalists, including one curiously credited as Wes C. Addle whose real name is Eddie Vedder. Gary loved telling the story about how a mutual friend had introduced them. Vedder wasn’t sure who Heffern was until Gary mentioned that he’d been the singer for the Penetrators. Vedder’s face lit up: “You guys played at my high school!”
There was no doubt that Heffern left his mark on San Diego. The Penetrators last performed with Gary in August 2011, when the band reunited for a show at the Casbah during the same week they received the Country Dick Montana Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2011 San Diego Music Awards.
Longtime locals are better suited to tell stories of the Penetrators’ heyday, so I’ll focus the rest of this on Gary’s post-San Diego life.
After “Bald Tires in the Rain,” he released “Askew” in 1993, then toured Europe in 1996 to support “Painful Days.” Late-1990s recording sessions with producer Michael Shuler eventually surfaced on Heffern’s 2008 album “Consolation.” The 2011 album “Gary Heffern & Beautiful People” was a collaboration with Finnish musicians. In 2014, Heffern self-published a book of his songs and poems titled “Unholy Dreams.”
Around the time of a Penetrators reunion show at the Casbah in November 2005, Heffern’s life took a major turn. His siblings in Finland contacted him out of the blue, wanting to reconnect with their long-lost baby brother. Gary flew over to visit and ended up deciding to stay permanently after he was granted Finnish citizenship as a native-born son.
My wife and I visited Gary in Rovaniemi, a town that straddles the Artic circle, in February 2007. He took us to the Ranua Zoo, to an ice hotel in the coastal town of Kemi, and to the northernmost McDonald’s in the world. We spent hours alongside the frozen river behind his house seeking a glimpse of the northern lights.
A vocal critic of George W. Bush when he moved to Finland, Heffern took some pride in his expat status, but he also missed friends in the States dearly. He flew back to San Diego a few times, most recently for a 2019 performance at the Casbah that was filmed by Grossmont College professor Raul Sandelin and released as “Gary Heffern’s Last Waltz.” He had hoped to return this month for the Hall of Fame induction, but health issues kept him from making the trip.
As fate would have it, Heffern’s first album in more than a decade is due out this Friday. It’s a collaboration with Norwegian musician Ed Pettersen called “Midnight Sons.” The record includes a song written by Hawaii’s Lauren Elle Broido called “Goodbye” that feels very much like Gary’s adieu to the world. He actually recorded it 13 years ago, but a video he made last month that’s now posted to YouTube is a poignant farewell.
About halfway through the “Sweet Kisses From Mommy” documentary, Heffern talks about how he’d like to be remembered. “What I ultimately try to do in life is leave something behind,” he said. “You know, ‘This is what Gary stood for; this is what he was about.’ I think that’s the most important thing to leave behind. I want to leave my mark.”
He sure did.
