Cole was the son of actor Dennis Cole by his first wife, Sally Bergeron. Cole also worked as a roadie for the bandHole, filming the group's 1991 tour performances, and appeared in several films including Raymond Pettibon's The Book of Manson, where he also has a cinematography credit.
Death
Cole and Henry Rollins were assaulted by armed robbers in December 1991 outside their shared Venice Beach, California home at 809 Brooks Avenue in the Oakwood district. They had attended a Hole concert at the Whisky a Go Go and were returning home after having stopped at an all-night grocery store. Two armed men, described as black and in their 20s, approached them demanding money. Angry that Rollins and Cole had only $50 between them, the gunmen ordered the two men to go inside their house for more cash. Rollins entered at gunpoint. However, Cole was killed outside after being shot in the face at close range while Rollins escaped out the back door and alerted the police. The murder remains unsolved. In an interview in 1992 with The Los Angeles Times, Rollins revealed he kept a plastic container full of soil soaked with Cole's blood. Rollins said, "I dug up all the earth where his head fell – he was shot in the face – and I've got all the dirt here, and so Joe Cole's in the house. I say good morning to him every day. I got his phone, too, so I got a direct line to him. So that feels good." He is remembered in the Sonic Youth songs "JC" and "100%" on their album Dirty. A book of Cole's collected writings, primarily tour journals, was published posthumously by Rollins's publishing company and titled Planet Joe. It describes his time touring in the 1980s, in particular with Black Flag. Rollins included Cole's story in his spoken word performances. Cole also appeared in Raves – God's Movie, Volume 1 starring Joe Cole. According to Rolling Stone, after Cole's death, hundreds of hours of interviews Cole had taped with "flamboyant street characters" in Venice Beach were edited into an hour of "primo footage" that the magazine described as "an unflinching look at the American dream gone amok".
