Dick Urine is a pseudonym closely tied to independent label owner and producer Peter Yarmouth. The name, which Yarmouth has always disliked, was created by the notorious punk artist GG Allin.
The first appearance of "Dick Urine" was on early self-released cassettes featuring live recordings that Allin sold in Boston-area stores and promoted through ads in magazines such as Trouser Press and Maximum RocknRoll. These cassettes typically included soundboard or audience recordings, and Allin, wanting a producer's name on the cassette inserts, announced to Yarmouth that he would make him famous, coining the name "Dick Urine" for the producer credit. This fictional credit may have also served to shift any criticism of the recordings' quality away from Allin himself. The two first met in 1980, where they discussed Yarmouth financing Allin's releases, eventually leading to the establishment of Black And Blue Records. Initially crediting Yarmouth as Urine on the releases before their formal agreement set the foundation for their business relationship. While Allin was primarily responsible for the actual recording of his albums, Yarmouth's role was more akin to that of an executive producer, regardless of the name listed in the album credits. This collaboration propelled GG Allin from relative obscurity in New Hampshire to his status as an underground icon, bolstered by Yarmouth's marketing efforts in various publications including Flipside, Maximum Rock N Roll, Option, RIP, and many local music fanzines, along with Allin’s extensive touring across the United States.
As Allin frequently claimed he would make Yarmouth rich, the latter never left his day job, which continued to fund the label, which remains operational today.
In an interesting twist, when the first Black & Blue vinyl release, "Live Fast Die Fast," was set to come out, Yarmouth proposed that Black And Blue Records be marketed as a Swedish label, with him managing its American office in Smithfield, Rhode Island. He believed that a label from Rhode Island or New Hampshire would lack credibility, so the label on the 7" EP cleverly listed Black & Blue as being based in Stockholm, Sweden. While this marketing strategy had little impact on the label's credibility, it would prove useful later.
As Allin's classic album E.M.F. was released, Yarmouth began to gain public recognition as Dick Urine. Feeling the need to distance himself from the pseudonym, he requested that his production credits be listed under his real name. They concocted a backstory to provide Dick Urine with a legacy: the character's real name would be Richard Yorun, a budding sound engineer who became involved with Allin after witnessing an early Jabbers show in 1980, which Yarmouth had indeed attended. According to the story, Allin had affectionately given Yorun the "Dick Urine" moniker.
Yarmouth recorded an album independently, collaborating with friends and having Allin write the liner notes to support a fabricated death narrative. The resulting album, The Lost Dick Urine Tapes, was credited to Richard Yorun and initially claimed that Allin played drums on it. This was a plausible assertion since Allin did contribute to the Jabbers’ recordings, but the drum tracks in question were actually produced by a drum machine. Consequently, subsequent promotions for the album began to assert that Allin had either played or programmed the drum machine, which, while misleading, received Allin's consent.
The duo began to inform those who inquired about meeting or working with Dick Urine that he had "died" in a motorcycle accident in Sweden, where he was supposedly buried—a story that only Swedes could verify.
For many years, Yarmouth denied being Dick Urine to anyone who asked but became more candid about the truth while promoting The Cedar Street Sluts. The reality inadvertently surfaced during an interview with Providence's NICE PAPER, where Yarmouth was repeatedly questioned about his identity as Dick Urine. Although he requested that the information be kept confidential, the interview revealed the truth without explicitly stating it. It was only after Allin's death that Yarmouth publicly acknowledged his connection to the pseudonym, marveling at the extent to which people had believed the ruse.
