Ex-Meat Puppet Arrested
Five days after being shot in the stomach by a post office security
guard, ex- Meat Puppet Cris Kirkwood was arrested by federal
officials Tuesday morning as he was discharged from a Phoenix-area
hospital.
Kirkwood, 43, was arrested without incident and hit with a
single charge of assault with a deadly weapon with intent to do
bodily harm, according to Harriet Bernick, a spokesperson for the
U.S. attorney’s office. The felony charge carries a maximum of ten
years in prison.
The former bassist for the Phoenix psychedelic rock group was
shot once in the abdomen on Friday after he allegedly punched the
security guard and then grabbed the officer’s baton and hit him in
the head with it. The guard was attempting to remove Kirkwood
following a verbal altercation between the bassist and another
patron over a parking spot.
Kirkwood remained in federal custody Tuesday afternoon awaiting
an initial appearance in which he was to be informed of the
charges.
Kirkwood founded the influential Meat Puppets with his older
brother Curt in 1980. The group released a string of psychedelic
country punk albums that influenced bands such as Nirvana, who
covered three Meat Puppets songs on their 1994 Unplugged in New
York CD. But Kirkwood battled substance abuse through much of
his tenure in the band. In 1999, Curt reformed the band with a new
lineup that didn’t include his brother; shortly afterward, Cris was
jailed for possession of drug paraphernalia. The 1999 arrest
followed the heroin-related death of Cris Kirkwood’s wife, Michelle
Tardif.