Eldon Wayne Hoke, nicknamed El Duce, was an American musician best known as the drummer and lead singer of the shock rock band The Mentors, as well as other acts, including Chinas Comidas and The Screamers.
Hoke and the Mentors worked to gain attention through farcical demonstrations of political incorrectness. The band's guitarist, Eric Carlson, renamed himself "Sickie Wifebeater", and the group often appeared in public wearing black executioner hoods. During the 1985 U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation's hearings into the proliferation of "obscene" lyrics in popular music, the Rev. Jeff Ling recited the lyrics to the Mentors song, "Golden Shower" to musician Frank Zappa, who opposed the hearings. The lyrics, which included the line, "Bend up and smell my anal vapor/Your face is my toilet paper" prompted Zappa and others to denounce the hearings as a farce.
After the body of Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain was discovered in the greenhouse of Cobain's Lake Washington home on April 8, 1994, Hoke began making the claim that Cobain's wife, Courtney Love, had offered to pay Hoke to kill Cobain. Hoke promoted his story in such media outlets as TV's Jerry Springer Show, The National Enquirer weekly tabloid, and in Nick Broomfield's documentary film, Kurt & Courtney. In 1996, Hoke passed a lie detector test when claiming that Love had offered him $50,000 to kill Kurt Cobain. In his interview in the Kurt and Courtney film, recorded on April 11, 1997, El Duce again claimed that Love had offered him $50,000 to "whack" Kurt Cobain, and further claimed that he knew who did kill Cobain, but said he would "let the FBI catch him". According to the self-published book Truth Is Funnier Than Fiction by Mentors bass player Steve Broy, the whole story was concocted by Mentors associate Rev. Bud Green in order to sell to supermarket tabloids.
Other appearances
In addition to his musical career, Hoke also worked as an extra in television, movies, and music video productions. In 1998 "Backstage Sluts", directed by Matt Zane, was released — the movie wherein famous rockers recount their wildest sexual moments, while actual porn stars acted them out. The film contains penultimate interview with El Duce from 1997, in which he drunkenly declares his taste in the opposite sex: "I like nasty women. I like... homeless women."
Death
On April 19, 1997, one day after his final performance and talking to Brent Alden, and eight days after filming his interview with Nick Broomfield for the Kurt & Courtney documentary, Hoke was found dead on the railroad tracks in Riverside, California, "decapitated in the accident — he was hit full on by a freight train doing 60 MP/H", according to Steve Broy, the Mentors' bass player. Subsequent tests indicated a high blood alcohol content and thus Hoke's official cause of death was given by the coroner's office as "misadventure". Al Jourgensen wrote in his autobiography that El Duce was killed by the train when some fans on the other side of the railroad tracks called his name and, as he attempted to cross to meet them, his foot became stuck in the track. Due to the timing of his death 8 days after the Kurt and Courtney interview, people have speculated that his death was related to the statements he made that Courtney Love offered him $50,000 to "whack" Cobain, and that someone named "Allen" took the offer.
