WASHINGTON — Ask the man whose red hair and sneer made him one of the most identifiable musicians in the early days of punk rock what his name is, and his answer is qualified: “Cheetah Chrome, mostly, but according to Facebook it’s Eugene Richard O’Connor.”
The 60-year old guitarist from Cleveland was a founding member of the snarlingly funny, lewd, and deafening Dead Boys, who rose to notoriety in 1977 with their debut album, “Young, Loud and Snotty.”
Now Chrome is the latest performer to come up against what some call Facebook’s “real name police.”
Cheetah Chrome has been a Facebook member since 2004, but got a nasty surprise in June of this year.
“They had blocked my account, and said I couldn’t get back on Facebook because my name didn’t meet certain criteria,” Chrome tells WTOP.
According to Facebook’s policy, “The name you should use should be your authentic identity; as your friends call you in real life and as our acceptable identification forms would show.”
And there’s the rub.
While he signs official documents with his given name — Eugene Richard O’Connor — Chrome’s friends and fans have referred to him as Cheetah for four decades.
“It’s almost a sure sign you don’t know me very well, if you walk up and call me ‘Gene,’ because I don’t like it,”says Chrome.
Back in June, Chrome sent a copy of his driver’s license to Facebook to reactivate his account using the unpunk name his parents gave him (both his father and grandfather were named Eugene) “figuring I could sort it out pretty easily, later on.”
Not so.
Now, Chrome says he’s caught in an infuriating back and forth email exchange with Facebook, trying to explain his dilemma, and offering other ways to prove he is who he says he is.
“They keep asking me for a driver’s license, or two forms of ID with my birth date and the name ‘Cheetah Chrome’ on it,” he says. “I don’t have that — I’m never going to have that.”
Chrome says his nickname goes back to high school cross-country team.
“I would take off with the pack, stop and have a cigarette, wait for them to come back, and I’d run back in with them,” says Chrome. “They jokingly were calling me ‘Cheetah,’ and I liked it, so we kept it.”
The man whose writing credits include “Sonic Reducer,” says Facebook recently auto-generated a Cheetah Chrome professional page, including photos, because of the amount of search requests for his name.
“Their own system knows that I’m the same person, yet they won’t acknowledge it,” he says.
A group of over a thousands fans has started a Facebook Public Group called “Give Cheetah Chrome back his name.”
Chrome isn’t the first public figure to come up against Facebook’s real-name policy, and the popular social network says it plans to make it easier for people whose everyday names don’t match the ones on their birth certificate.
Last month, Facebook VP of Growth Alex Schultz, in an open letter published in Buzzfeed, said “we want to make it easier for people to confirm their name if necessary.”
Schultz also said Facebook users who flag others under the policy will have to provide more information about why they are reporting someone else.
The changes are expected to be rolled out in December.
Schultz did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Chrome’s case.
Some have suggested that Chrome legally change his name — an idea he rejects.
“I’m third generation Irish. The last high king of Ireland was an O’Connor, and I’m very proud of it,” he says. “I don’t want to change it, but I shouldn’t have to change it — it’s been 40 years I’ve been using this name.”
“If you Google ‘Eugene Richard O’Connor,’ ‘Cheetah Chrome’ pops up,” he says. “That should be enough, right there.”
Chrome says only a few people call him by his given name, including some family members, and the daughter of Hilly Kristal, the late owner of New York punk club CBGB and Dead Boys manager.
Dave Thomas, who played with Chrome in protopunk group Rockets from the Tombs (in the early 1970s), and went on to form Pere Ubu “sometimes calls me Gene when he’s mad, when Rockets are playing.”
Rockets from the Tombs bassist Craig Bell says when he first auditioned in 1974 “I knew his name was Gene O’Connor, but by that time he was already nicknamed Cheetah and that is what everyone would call him.”
Rockets from the Tombs have played reunion shows over the years (including next month, Dec. 7, at D.C.’s Rock & Roll Hotel) although Chrome appears sporadically at live shows.
Chrome says he’s frustrated by Facebook’s seeming inflexiblity to allow him, and others performers, to use names they are famous for, and says he’s considering closing his Facebook account.
Friend and bandmate Bell hopes the matter will be resolved, and Chrome remains on Facebook.
“Cheetah doesn’t deserve to be treated this way by their bureaucracy,” says Bell. “He has been Cheetah Chrome to me for over 40 years.”
Watch Cheetah Chrome and the Dead Boys at CBGB, in 1977:
