by (epub)
It was so touching to see that old guy overcome with joy as he relived his first love. “She was so beautiful,” he told us, his big blue eyes shining with tears. “It was the spring of 1896 and I was seventeen.” He was extraordinary, and his stories and old photos were so completely fascinating that we went to his place every two or three days to share our pot and listen to more of his adventures. Nothing in the world could have made him happier, he said every time.
“But nothing could make us happier, Conny. Light this one, and tell us what it was like to see electric light for the first time!” We would laugh and he would go off again for hours at a time.
The last time we saw Conny Old Man, the doctor had just come by. Conny was afraid he was going to be taken into a hospice soon, and he didn’t want to go. We lit up a joint to distract him and stayed a little later than usual that night. We laughed, we cried; we loved him so much. When we came back a few days later, he was gone. Workers were painting his empty apartment. He was already dead when we finally located him at hospice, just a week later.
Meanwhile, our apartment on St. Botolph Street was improving. The living room, in tropical jungle style, was now completely filled with huge potted plants that we had “borrowed” from the front of three or four Boston hotels. This was another of Bruce’s genius ideas; he’d just been fired from the hotel where he’d been working as a bellboy.
“Nobody’s keeping an eye on plants that are too big and heavy to lift.” He convinced us pretty easily, and so three of us had gone around town, barely able to carry our plunder to our van. It was even worse when we got back to our building because we lived on the fourth floor. …
Our apartment was great but the building itself was always disgusting. One time, Bruce came home yelling, “Fucking hell! Somebody took a shit in the hallway!”
“It must have been a dog,” I told him.
“No, it was definitely a person!”
“How can you tell?”
“Dogs don’t use paper!” he said.
Bruce and I decided to become blood brothers. We went up on our roof at sunset to perform this whole sacred ceremony. Pressing a large knife against the palm of my hand, I started to chicken out and asked Bruce if maybe we could get something a little smaller—like a razor blade or something. But even those were still too scary. … In the end, we each punctured a small hole in our thumb with a tack and even that was no piece of cake. …
We were not the only crazy ones in Boston. Most of our friends were a little “out there” too, like Peter who was dealing coke while preparing to become a priest in a monastery, or Brian who had, among other things, lived in India, studied at Harvard, fought in Vietnam, knew the Beatles personally, was a direct descendant of George Washington, and only spoke in lies. At the beginning of our acquaintance, we always fell for his bullshit, but once we began to cotton on, we started asking for dates. We amused ourselves by cornering him in his lies.
“But weren’t you studying the pyramids in Egypt at the time?” we would ask completely casually, as he mired himself in a little deeper.
There was also Brent, a big depressed queen, who was so lonely that he would call us up every other day to ask if he could come clean our place, and in exchange he could hang out with us a bit. It was pathetic, but at least the apartment was really clean.
In 1974, the big gay liberation hadn’t happened yet, in which homosexuals and heterosexuals were separated into two camps. Although this would soon change, at the time, everyone was still lumped in the same bag—gays, artists, bohemians, beatniks, drag queens, rockers, hippies, musicians, leftists, druggies, Hells Angels, and whatnot. We were all united by the label “rejects of society,” and we were all part of the same marginalized group hated by every other “respectable citizen.” We were “different.” We were “freaks.”
Once again finding myself without a visa, I had to go back to France to renew it. Besides, I was really starting to miss my family, and I was eager to spend some time with them.
So I took a plane to Paris. Here I reconnected with a few old friends, like Francoise and Bruno, who took me to the Olympia Theatre to see a British band called Dr. Feelgood.
That was a true revelation. Short hair, tight black suits, thin wrinkled ties. Dr. Feelgood played sped-up old American rhythm and blues. They were fantastic. In one show, they blew away every other group of the time. No half-hour drum solos there. Just rock—sharp and bluesy, like the Stones in ’64 but even more stripped-down and intense. They’d removed everything that was long and boring—something rock ’n’ roll in general was starting to badly need. The genre was up to here with Yes and Emerson, Lake & Palmer and King Crimson and all those other clowns with their three-act rock operas recounting the story of an elf living on a green planet in the shape of a mushroom or some other bullshit. The Feelgoods were just in time to save rock ’n’ roll, and they were doing so with impressive energy. Not only were they absolutely brilliant, but to top it off they were funny too. What a slap in the face!
They came from Canvey Island, where they ruled over a whole bunch of bands in the same style, such as Eddie & the Hot Rods and others. They called it “Pub Rock,” and they were opening the door for a whole generation of punk rockers.
Nan Goldin sent me a cassette on which she had recorded herself saying: “Philippe, come back to Boston. We all miss you so much. I’ll marry you if it’ll help you obtain a visa, and if you’d rather, we wouldn’t even have to consummate the marriage … if you know what I mean. Ha ha ha!”
I went back to Boston without any problems. I met up with Bruce and the whole gang. They were all set to move the scene to New York, where things seemed to be starting to happen.
Ohni and Benton, our friends from Provincetown had a huge loft in Soho, where they sold antiques that they brought back from Nepal every two or three months; they were doing very well for themselves. They had money and knew everybody. They were native New Yorkers, and as they adored me and Bruce, they decided to throw us a big party. Its only purpose was to initiate us into the New York underground scene and to introduce us to everybody. The invitations called it “A party to welcome Philippe and Bruce to NYC.”
We’d been their favorites from Boston for quite some time, and they probably figured our arrival in New York was as good an excuse as any to throw a bash.
What an honor! The whole New York underground was there—people like Robert Mapplethorpe and Donyale Luna, the towering black model and ex-girlfriend of Brian Jones. She kissed me on the forehead and told me in French, “You remind me a little of Brian.” There must have been about a hundred people in this sumptuous loft filled with Nepalese art, and as I was there to meet all these intimidating legends, I decided to drink a little to loosen up.
I was on my second glass of punch, which was in a big crystal bowl on the bar, when Ohni walked up to me and said, “You like the electric punch?”
At that very moment, the entire loft exploded into pink and green bubbles. Shit! There was acid in the punch and I was tripping! Talk about being sociable. I stayed hidden in a dark corner, checking my watch every half hour to find that in actuality only a few minutes had passed. …
So I was tripping on acid, trying to avoid everybody Bruce and I were specifically there to meet, when around one in the morning, four skinny little guys—or rather, three skinny little guys and one tall one—walked in. They all wore Beatles ’65 haircuts and matching black leather jackets, white sneakers, and ultra-tight jeans. They started setting up their equipment, a drum kit and two amps, in front of the loft’s huge window.
Cool! It was a band! And they had such a great look. The guests gathered around, so I did too.
They were called the Ramones.
They started to play. They were both fabulous and hilarious. Each song was exactly the same as the one before and always started with the bass player yelling, “One, two, three, four!” Every number, delivered extremely fast, with r
oots in rock and bubble gum, was shorter than two minutes, stripped of all guitar solos, played full blast, and the only lyrics their respective titles repeated over and over: “I don’t wanna walk around with you, I don’t wanna walk around with you,” etc. Their music was even more stripped down than Dr. Feelgood’s. What a great band! Especially in the middle of all those artsy fartsy and beautiful people with their long hair and silver boots. These guys were the next wave for sure, the most anti-hippie band I had ever seen, the future of American rock ’n’ roll.
A few years later, having befriended Dee Dee Ramone, I told him that story, and he said, “Yeah, but you know, that party at Ohni’s was our very first show, even before our first club gig. We didn’t know how to play.”
Fortunately for them—and us—they never learned! AFTER A LAST DELIRIOUS SUMMER IN Provincetown, we moved from St. Botolph Street to New York.
Nan, Cookie, Sharon, and many others were headed there too. I had no idea what I was going to do once I got there, but that didn’t matter to me at all!
And so in September 1975, I moved into the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street.
Phil and Nan Goldin, Boston, 1974
Phil, Walter Lure, Octavio, and Julie and Johnny Thunders, 1976
VENUS OF AVENUE D
New York, September 1975
THE CHELSEA HOTEL WAS THE MOST legendary of the bohemian hotels in New York, boasting such notable former residents as: William Burroughs, Henry Miller, Tennessee Williams, Sarah Bernhardt, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Gregory Corso, Diego Rivera, Edith Piaf, Dennis Hopper, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and all the Warhol gang, like Edie Sedgwick, Ultra Violet, and Viva—star of the film Chelsea Girls in 1969. And also none other than Dylan Thomas, plus that Bob guy who stole his name. …
And a few years after our stay, Nancy Spungen would die at the Chelsea.
The Chelsea was really pretty cheap for what we got. My room was old and kind of funky, but it was also large, with high ceilings and two windows facing 23rd Street, five stories below. The hotel hallway was lined with paintings and other artifacts left by the famous artists who had once lived there. It gave off this vibe that incredible things had happened within those walls. I really loved the huge white stone staircase and the atmosphere of the corridors. It was quite … magical.
I found a job right away, working part-time in a store that sold reproductions of famous paintings. It was on 7th Avenue. I hardly knew the neighborhood, so on my very first night, I decided to take a little stroll and have a look around.
I didn’t have to go far before I heard what sounded like Bob Marley’s “Small Axe” coming from a bar across 23rd Street. The bar was called Mother’s.
I went to check it out and was surprised to discover that the band playing “Small Axe” so beautifully was a bunch of white guys. When they started to play “These Arms of Mine” by Otis Redding, my mouth dropped open. They were really good and they looked very cool. I took a seat at the front of the stage to listen; it wasn’t hard, because there were only about ten people in the room. The singer sounded a bit like a cross between Ben E. King and Van Morrison. He played a leopard-skin-covered Fender Stratocaster. I asked the waiter for the band’s name, and he consulted a paper. “Tonight it’s … Mink DeVille,” he said.
Mink DeVille—my new favorite band—had just ended their third song, an original number this time, called “Venus of Avenue D,” when I heard somebody shout behind me, “Hey, Flipper! What the fuck you doing here?”
It was Johnny Thunders! He had just come in with Jerry Nolan, the drummer. Apparently, I’d stumbled into just the right place. They joined me, and we ordered beers. Johnny told me how they had both left the New York Dolls to start a new band with Richard Hell, the bass player from Television. They were calling themselves the Heartbreakers and were scheduled to play at this bar in a few days. It was really cool to see those two again, especially since we now felt like old friends.
Bruce, David, and a few other friends were also at the Chelsea and just starting to look for apartments.
A few days later, we went to Max’s Kansas City on Park Avenue South for the first time. Formerly the hangout of the Andy Warhol crowd, it had recently been invaded by a whole bunch of small local bands, all more or less direct descendants of the Velvet Underground. These were musicians like Television, Patti Smith, and others. Some people were starting to call these bands “punk rock,” but none of them were in quite the same style as any of the others and no one really knew who was punk, but in general it meant, “Not too pro,” “Not too good and proud of it,” or something like that.
At Max’s, there was a bar on the ground floor and a second floor where the bands played. Everything was painted black. The second floor also had another bar with a few pinball machines and tables pushed against the windows overlooking Park Avenue. On the other side, there were long tables and the stage was all the way in the back. The first performance we saw at Max’s was Neon Leon, a tall black kid with a pink wig; he copied the Dolls a little but wasn’t particularly good.
After the show, Bruce and I walked up Park Avenue South to 23rd Street, then over to 7th Avenue, where we ran into Johnny and Jerry outside Mother’s. They were going to Avenue D to buy some heroin. It was three in the morning, and it was starting to rain. We decided to go with them, for the fun of it. We drove to Avenue D in the pouring rain. Everything was completely destroyed, a total war zone. Johnny stopped in front of the ruins of an abandoned building. Jerry quickly ran over to it while we waited in the car. He came back a few minutes later and gave us a little smile, which we took as good news, when these two guys came out of the building next door and went up to him.
“What’s he doing?” Johnny hissed, looking at Jerry and the two Puerto Rican guys chatting in the rain. Jerry turned slightly, and immediately we saw that one of them had a gun to his head. They were mugging him, taking the bags of heroin he had just bought. I thought maybe they were going to kill him, then us—the witnesses. But then, out of the blue, a third guy appeared. Shirtless and very skinny, he limped toward them with a crutch under his arm and started yelling in Spanish, “Do you wanna fuck around with Magnum’s customers?” The two other guys instantly shoved everything back into Jerry’s hands, and he ran for the car. That little weakling with the bad leg must have been some sort of security guard for the heroin dealers—who were very powerful in the neighborhood—and the two losers must have known they wouldn’t live long if they got caught mugging a dealer’s regulars as soon as they made the transaction.
The next evening, I went back to Mothers’ where the Fast, very much inspired by the Who, were wrapping up their show. Another band with a really cute girl got onstage. They were called Blondie, and they weren’t quite together, fucking up a bit every now and then. But their singer, Debbie Harry, was gorgeous and their songs, which were kind of pop, were good. Again, the room was practically empty. The next day, on the other hand, when I went to see the Heartbreakers, it was completely packed. This was Johnny and Jerry’s new band with Richard Hell on bass. Still, it was strange to see Johnny there. It was just last year that I’d seen him playing in Boston in front of thousands of people. But still, they were fantastic: “Born to Lose,” “You Gotta Lose,” “Blank Generation,” “Pirate Love” … so many brilliant songs.
After the show, a girl approached me; she wasn’t much of a looker but she was pretty funny. She jokingly made off with the scarf I was wearing—one of those long Indian scarves from Benares, like Keith Richards always sported. After a little while, I decided to go ask for it back.
“My name is Nancy,” she said. “I live around the corner. Want to come over? I got a little bit of … you know, if you’re in the mood.”
Nancy Spungen was a “dancer” in Times Square, which meant she was a stripper, or maybe even occasionally pulled tricks. She talked like a damn truck driver, with a “fucking” between pretty much every word: “Fucking p
eople fucking giving me fucking shit for fucking nothing. …” She lived on 23rd Street between 8th and 9th Avenues. She had a little basement apartment with two small windows high on the wall, right under the ceiling, peering out at the sidewalk.
As soon as we walked in, she took out one of those little cellophane bags that were starting to become familiar to me. “I only have half a bag left,” she said, taking out a syringe. “It wouldn’t be enough to feel anything if we snort it. We should shoot it,” she said. She got a spoon from the sink and wiped it. Then she added, “I don’t really know how to do it. I only did it once. Can you do it for me?”
It didn’t look too hard. You searched for a vein, and you could see blood come up as soon as you found it. I’d watched Johnny do it. After having filled the syringe with heroin, she passed it to me, and deciding to give it a try, I stuck the needle in her arm, noticing that she had way more than just one track mark. As for me, I still didn’t want to shoot it. It looked painful. I snorted the rest of the bag, which ended up being plenty for me, because I found myself in her bed, fucked up out of my brain. I was so stoned I couldn’t tell you if we had sex or not.
Heroin was the drug of choice in New York in the winter of ’75. Looking back, it’s hard to believe how naïve we all were. We didn’t realize the danger we were putting ourselves in, nor how many friends we were soon going to lose because of it. It was the drug of the intellectuals, the artists, the cool, and the hip. Somebody could have at least warned us of the fact: that you won’t be able to stop and that you will die. End of story.