by (epub)
Everybody did it, but no one said, “Three years from now we’ll all be dead.” Unfortunately, this was going to be true for Nancy and her future boyfriend, Sid, but also, later on, for many of our friends: Johnny, Jerry, Mark, Ritchie, Leon, Tony, Billy, Alice, and so many others. And those who didn’t die from overdosing died from AIDS: Cookie, Genaro, Michael, Chris, Kevin, Alan, Cathy, Patty … sadly, the list is endless. So many fantastic people, all so innocent, all dead so young … for nothing. What a shame.
I got fired from my job at the painting store for showing up late and hungover one time too many. I met another French kid at the Chelsea—Octavio—a very cool guy, and we started hanging out.
Bruce and David found a great ground-floor apartment on Elizabeth Street in the East Village, right around the corner from the Bowery and CBGB. This was another club where all the bands from Max’s and Mother’s were starting to play and it was across the street from the loft where Nan Goldin would soon be living.
The room at CBGB was long, narrow, and downright disgusting. It reeked of piss, beer, and dog shit, which wasn’t surprising since the owner, Hilly Kristal, let his two skinny Afghan dogs shit everywhere. …
The “stage” was nothing more than a piece of plywood held up by four piles of phone books, and you had to walk across it to get to the bathroom, which was right behind the stage. Outside wasn’t much better, as CBGB was right next to a homeless shelter—“The Palace Hotel.” There were always at least one or two drunken bums passed out on the sidewalk. At first, CBGB was solely a Hell’s Angels hangout, featuring only country and Western bands. The club’s very name, CBGB and OMFUG, stood for “Country, Blue Grass, Blues and Other Music For Uplifting Gormandizers.” Hilly Kristal, a large bearded man who looked like a lumberjack, was a cool guy. He’d been a Hell’s Angel and an opera singer! He must have hesitated when some of these weirdos—like the four nuts from Ohni’s party—started coming around asking if they could play at his club. … But when he saw the number of kids these bands were already attracting, all willing to cough up a few bucks at the door, it probably got him thinking. CBGB became a punk club out of necessity, and the Hell’s Angels stuck around.
The first time I went there was to see Mink DeVille. I remember as I was standing in front of the club a bum approached me, asking for some change. “Sorry, but I’m broke,” I said.
“Oh, really? Well, why don’t you get a job, you bum!” he snapped back.
Ha-ha! My first New York bum!
I immediately loved all of Mink DeVille’s songs, like “Mixed Up, Shook Up Girl,” “Spanish Stroll,” “Cadillac Walk,” and especially the beautiful “Venus of Avenue D”: There she goes, there she goes, in her high-heeled shoes and her silk stockings, and her dress is so … tight, it’s all right. I was introduced to their singer Willy DeVille, and we hit if off right away. He had incredible class, and his girlfriend, Toots, was hilarious. She had a completely retro, early sixties style, with her black hair teased way up in a beehive, fishnet stockings, and a patent leather raincoat with the belt cinched tight and the collar up like Ronnie Spector of the Ronettes. They were both very outwardly romantic. Willy would step down off the stage and get on his knees in front of her to sing his saddest love songs. The rest of the band was also very cool: Reuben, Manfred, and Uptown Louie. They played soul and R&B as good as it can be played. They could have been Booker T. and the M.G.’s. They had the sound. You couldn’t get less punk than Mink DeVille, but like all the other more-or-less retro bands of Max’s and CBGB’s—Robert Gordon, the Cramps, the A-Bones, the Zantees, The Fleshtones, The Bloodless Pharaohs, or Buzz & the Flyers—they all were thrown in the same bag. Willy must have hated that, and probably couldn’t stand bands like the Dead Boys, Sick Fucks, or the Stimulators. One night he actually climbed onstage at CBGB announcing, “Hi, we’re Mink DeVille, the only band here that doesn’t have a song called ‘I Feel Lonely and Sadistic!’”
Benton, Ohni’s friend, had a loft on the Bowery, which he used as an artist’s studio. He was right across the street from Nan’s and therefore around the corner from CBGB, and right near Arturo Vega’s loft, where the Ramones had just moved in. It was also two stories above Blondie’s place—the band I had seen at Mother’s a few days earlier, with their cute singer, Debbie.
One day, as I was going up to see Benton, I ran into her on the stairs. She smiled at me and said, “Hey, weren’t you at Mother’s the other night?” She had so much charm and was so cool, and I instantly fell in love with her, on the stairs at her doorstep. She invited me in and introduced me to the other members of the band—most of them lived there. Chris, her boyfriend and the band’s guitar player (oh well!), was also very cool. He was just lighting a joint when the drummer, Clem Burke, came in and said, “Did you see the dead guy downstairs? There’s a dead bum right in front of the building!” Debbie told him there were always bums lying in front of the building; sure they were dead drunk but they weren’t actually dead!
“Oh, yeah, this one is really dead. He’s covered with snow and frozen solid like a piece of wood. I touched him with my foot,” Clem said. One after another, they all went out to see and came back saying, “Wow, he is really dead!” Then they threw themselves back in front of the TV without giving the guy a second thought. I saw him too, when I left the building completely in love. …
Johnny wasn’t with Sable Starr anymore. He was now with a tall pretty blond named Julie. They’d just had a kid and a second one was on the way. They lived on Horatio Street in a cool but very small basement apartment.
I was visiting one evening, when Johnny went to the bathroom to shoot up. Somehow, he made the mistake of thinking that the sink was a chair, so he sat on it. The whole thing broke down under his weight. As he fell to the floor, he was violently sprayed with scalding hot water, which burned his shoulder and his back. There was water everywhere and Johnny had bright red patches peeling off his back. To top it off, he lost all the dope he was cooking up. Lovely evening!
Three months after my arrival in New York, I was still at the Chelsea Hotel and I still didn’t have a new job. So I was thrilled when Johnny asked me to work as a roadie for the Heartbreakers, and, even better, he invited me to move into their rehearsal space—a loft on Grand Street near Chinatown. It was great, because their equipment was permanently set up there and I could spend hours playing the drums.
My father had been a drummer when he was young, and when I was thirteen, he bought me an old drum kit at a Paris flea market and taught me how to play.
For me, everything had really begun when I was eleven, during my sister Caroline’s thirteenth birthday party in our living room. One of her friends had brought over a 45 by the Animals. It was “See See Rider” and it grabbed me like nothing had before. I knew “No Milk Today” by Herman’s Hermits and French records like “Piccolo, Saxo et Compagnie” but this was entirely different. This was … savage.
Then, somebody put on another record: “Aftermath” or more precisely “Goin’ Home,” and that was a total revelation. If “See See Rider” had seemed savage “Goin’ Home” was the jungle itself. Hypnotic, staying on the same note endlessly, punctuated by little screams and moans, it was the Voodoo mass, the sacrifice of the sacred cow, the ritual of fire. I couldn’t understand a word of English, but I was sure they were talking about sex. It seemed taboo, X-rated. For eleven minutes and thirty-five seconds, the sound of the harmonica and of the Vibro electric guitar grabbed me by the balls. Who was that? I had to know more.
I will never forget when I first saw the album’s back cover. The Rolling Stones! Wow, look at those guys! Extremely long hair, tight pants, Clarks, defiant poses, Brian Jones sitting in front, grimacing, a cigarette in his hand, and a glass of wine at his feet. Holy cow! They were cooler than cool and seemed to be … dangerous!
After “Goin’ Home” somebody put on “Lady Jane,” a slow number, and one of my sister’s girlfriends asked me to dance. She was muc
h older than me—at least fourteen—and had huge tits. Pressed against her, I immediately got a hard-on. Shit! I thought she might realize and slap me in the face, so I pulled myself away from her for a second to “readjust,” hoping it would be less obvious that way. She gave me a strange look. She must have wondered what the hell I was doing.
“Umm … my lighter was a little crooked in my pocket!” I improvised, before pressing myself right up against her again, very pleased with my presence of mind to have so quickly come up with such a perfect excuse that, to top it off, aged me a bit. Perfect. …
“Lady Jane” unfortunately reached the end, and she took out a pack of cigarettes from her pocket, stuck one between her lips, and said, “Can I have a light?”
“…”
After that night, I never listened to a single word at school. I was too busy drawing imaginary Stones record sleeves or electric guitars or drum kits on the corners of the pages of all my schoolbooks. Being French, I actually thought that “Aftermath” meant “after mathematics.”
From the moment my dad bought me those drums, I threw myself completely into practicing, spending my weekends working at it. By the age of fifteen, I’d formed my first band with friends from school: Revolution Nine. We played “The Letter” by the Box Tops, “Baby Come Back” by the Equals, and other hits of the day.
So I had a little experience with the music industry. I’d played twice in public in Paris, and, during a summer vacation, had won second prize at an amateur night singing contest at the Casino des Sports of Les Sables d’Olonne in 1967, playing drums and singing “Gloria” by Them. Some career!
So it was great to start drumming again ten years later. I would put on records, the stereo plugged into the huge Heartbreakers PA, and play all day long on the legendary big pink New York Dolls kit, the one featured on the cover of Too Much, Too Soon.
One day, as I was coming out of the loft, I came face to face with Octavio, my French friend from the Chelsea Hotel. “Octavio! What are you doing here? You coming to see the Heartbreakers?”
“Phil! The Heartbreakers? No, I just moved in. I’m staying with a friend.”
He had just moved into the loft next to mine! We’d kind of lost touch for a while, so this was a completely wonderful coincidence. Since Octavio played guitar, we often jammed together in the Heartbreakers’ loft.
If I’m not mistaken, it was in that loft that the Heartbreakers were photographed by Roberta Bayley. They were wearing white shirts with blood dripping from their hearts, as if they’d been shot. That picture became their legendary poster. The “blood” was actually chocolate syrup.
That loft was great. There was only an oven, a shower, a bed, a TV, and the Heartbreakers, who passed by every now and then to play “Blank Generation” or “Chinese Rocks.”
One night I was watching TV when Johnny, Jerry, and Walter walked in and sat on my bed—the only place to sit—to have a talk. Johnny was pretty agitated. He started with, “When Richard gets here, I’m gonna tell him that from now on I sing all the songs and he plays bass and that’s that. I’m not in his fucking band. I pick the songs and I sing them. He can play his bass and shut the fuck up.”
Richard Hell arrived at the loft soon after, and before anyone could say a word, he announced, “Listen, everybody. From now on I want to write and sing all the songs. It was the original idea. Johnny, you should sing a song or two every now and then, but you’re the guitar player and I’m the singer!”
Talk about an awkward moment. …
The Heartbreakers hired Billy Rath to replace Richard on bass. Unlike Richard, Billy hardly said a word and definitely didn’t want to sing. Billy was quite nice but also quite … quiet. It was impossible to have a conversation with him because he never said anything. As their roadie, I went with them on a trip to Boston. The band demanded to get back to New York the same night so they could immediately spend their pay on dope. As they were sleeping in the van, Billy, who was driving, finally spoke to me: “I’m out of speed and I haven’t slept in two days. Talk to me or I’m sure to fall asleep.”
Unfortunately, he didn’t say another word after that. Since I didn’t have a driver’s license to take over for him, I found myself stuck having to give a five-hour-long monologue along the lines of, “So … you like playing bass? Umm … you play well … Ummmm … yes … so … ummmm … good show tonight. … Ummm … it’s nice around here. … Ummmm … you don’t like to play bass? … Ummm …” Once in a while I would ask him “Are you sleeping right now?” to which he would only reply “Umm-umm.”
Walter Lure, their guitar player, was the complete opposite. Very well read and educated, his favorite topic was history. It was always fascinating to chat with him. He could tell you the exact dates of every one of Napoleon’s battles. Shame he wasn’t driving that night. Walter was also an excellent guitarist, a little bit in the style of Mick Taylor. As it so happens, Walter is the one who played the few existing guitar solos on the Ramones albums.
Meanwhile, Babette—a French girl I knew from Amsterdam—had come to New York and moved in with me.
We went to Provincetown together, where the whole gang was going back to spend the month of August. Then the Heartbreakers got kicked out of their loft in September, and Babette and I lost our home. So I found us a little apartment on 7th Avenue in Chelsea, and as soon as we could, we moved in.
It was around that time that Wayne County, the hilarious drag-queen singer of the Electric Chairs, broke Handsome Dick Manitoba’s neck. Handsome Dick was in the Dictators, a pretty macho band from the Bronx. It happened at CBGB during an Electric Chairs show. He’d been standing right in front of the stage, yelling, “Queer! Queer!” until Wayne County, wearing a white dress and growing increasingly annoyed, finally yelled back, “You wanna come up on stage and fight like a man?” Handsome Dick didn’t hesitate, and started forward, and Wayne County instantly hit him with the mic stand. He was rushed to the hospital. A mic stand is very heavy, and Wayne County had just missed Handsome Dick’s head by a couple of inches, breaking his collarbone instead.
Handsome Dick sued. A benefit show was organized at the Manhattan Center—a big room on 34th Street—to help Wayne County pay for a lawyer. Johnny Thunders was invited to play. He got together a band just for the occasion, featuring Walter Lure on guitar, Octavio on bass, and me on drums. That night was to be my big New York stage debut.
Octavio and I often talked about starting a band together, but he managed to fuck up his knee pretty badly while playing basketball with Johnny on Horatio Street one night. After spending a whole summer with his leg in a cast, complications arose, and he had to go back to France.
Mother’s on 23rd Street closed down shortly thereafter, leaving only the memories of the very beginnings of all those bands. Die young, stay pretty. …
I cut my hair real short in the bathroom one night. I thought it looked great, real Steve McQueen. … Later that week, I went to Max’s with Bruce and Jerry Nolan. The bar on the first floor was as crowded as the subway at rush hour, and Jerry accidently brushed against a glass someone had left on the edge of a chair. It knocked over and spilled. This guy dressed in a tacky baby-blue suit—probably a Studio 54 reject, a Mafioso, or a coke dealer—grabbed Jerry by his collar and spit into his face, “Hey! That was my whiskey, asshole!” I’m sure that if the man had been polite about it, Jerry would have offered him a new drink right away—after all, he got drinks for free at Max’s. But since the creep took the belligerent approach, Jerry decided to clock him in the face with one forceful punch, quickly followed by another, then a third, then a fourth. Left, right, left, right, bam, bam, bam! like a machine gun, until the guy fell to the floor, more or less knocked out.
Jerry was just turning back to us, giving us a little smile, as if to say that was that, when the other guy, still on all fours on the floor, grabbed the broken glass and violently drove it into Jerry’s balls. I saw Jerry’s expression morph
ing into something completely different, and it became immediately clear to me that something was very wrong. Jerry was starting to fall forward when Bruce grabbed him by the shoulders and sat him down on a chair. There was an impressive dark-red spot rapidly getting bigger on the crotch of Jerry’s velvet pants, and when I looked lower, I saw that it was pouring onto his feet. Blood was literally squirting onto his boots—it was unbelievable. I had never seen anyone bleed like that. Bruce took him by the arms and I got his feet, and we carried him out of Max’s as quickly as we could, pushing everybody out of our way and spilling several more glasses. There was no time to wait for an ambulance. We laid him down in the back of a cab parked out front and screamed to the driver, “Bellevue Hospital!!” Bruce jumped in the front seat, and the cab took off like a bat out of hell.
I stood on the curb in the rain, watching them disappear down the street, when I slowly looked around and saw all the blood on the sidewalk. There was so much of it in the entrance to Max’s that the staff was already washing it away with buckets of water. The whole sidewalk in front of the club was red. When I tried to light a cigarette, I realized my hands were also covered in blood.
The news had spread to the second floor, but it had been badly distorted on the way up, because people were stumbling out onto the sidewalk, freaking out, and demanding, “Somebody killed Johnny?” “Oh, my God! Where did all that blood come from?” “Who shot Johnny?” In all the confusion, I noticed the asshole who did it casually leaving Max’s as if nothing had happened, trying to take off discreetly, without getting noticed. He probably thought he’d get arrested or maybe lynched by Jerry’s fans. I strode up to him and blocked his exit, pinning him against the wall.