by (epub)
“Aaah! What’s it doing there? Someone moved it? Who moved it?”
“You just put it there, Dee Dee.”
“Aaah! You see, it’s ’cause I take too many drugs. Why do I take so many drugs? I could take less! Why do I take so many?” He would give a long sigh and look at us with big googly eyes like a moron—always delighted to make me giggle. But behind this persona of a simple-minded oddball, Dee Dee was a true genius. He wrote practically all of their songs—words and music—all those classics that would define the genre, from “The Blitzkrieg Bop” to “53rd & 3rd.” He’d even written “Chinese Rocks,” the Heartbreakers’ anthem, which he’d given to them after the Ramones rejected it because of its subject matter: heroin, Dee Dee’s favorite drug.
Dee Dee liked me a lot. Especially, I think, because, like him, I grew up in Europe. He’d grown up in Germany, and it seemed to be an important and exclusive connection between the two of us. He liked to talk about it, “They can’t understand, Phelllipp. They grew up in Forest Hills. Why did they grow up in Forest Hills? Where’s my bass?!”
His girlfriend, Connie, was a nutjob. She was much taller than him and actually pretty dangerous. Their arguments were frequent and legendary. They had more than one boxing match on the sidewalk in front of CBGB. She was constantly confronting any girl she felt might be cruising Dee Dee, screaming, “Who you looking at, cunt?!”
It wasn’t out of the norm to see Connie pulling a knife, or a pair of scissors, or a broken beer bottle, and we certainly saw Dee Dee running for his life out of CBGB a few times. But they loved each other so much and were so romantic together—for an hour or two.
Joey and Johnny weren’t speaking to each other. Joey’s girlfriend, Linda, had dumped him for Johnny, which caused chaos within the band. Besides, Joey and Johnny could not have been more different, with Johnny being extremely right wing and Joey your typical ultra-cool liberal New York Jew. Everybody wondered if they were finally going to shake hands or come to blows. In the end, they simply refused to speak a word to each other for twelve years.
As for Dee Dee, he quit the band, although he continued to write their songs from home, becoming something of the Brian Wilson of the Ramones.
In those days, everyone sort of laughed at the Ramones. No one thought of them as much more than a joke, a Mickey Mouse band—a great but limited concept, that would probably be forgotten long before the other bands of the time.
Just like Roosevelt and Kennedy, Joey Ramone now has a New York street named after him. Joey Ramone Place is on the Bowery, between CBGB and Arturo Vega’s loft. There was an official ceremony with the Mayor of New York and everything.
Hahaha! He who laughs last. …
Nancy called me from London. She’d adopted a very pronounced Cockney accent.
“Hey, Philippe, it’s Naaoooncy,” she said all excited, as she started to tell me—speaking at a hundred miles an hour, with that incomprehensible fake accent—that she had finally found the boyfriend of her dreams: Sid Vicious.
“Sid who?” I said.
“Sid Fucking Vicious of the Sex Pistols!” she screamed. “I’m his girlfriend! I’m Sid Vicious’s girlfriend.”
It was nice to hear her so happy.
“Great, Nancy, the Sex Pistols. Wow! You see, life is great!”
So Nancy had caught a much bigger fish in London than Jerry Nolan. None other than Sid Vicious: El Sid, superstar of the day, the James Dean of Punk. The Sex Pistols were number one in England. The prettiest London punkettes would have given anything to be with him, but in the end, it was Nancy Spungen, our lame duck, who had won him over. Hahaha!
The Senders were playing at Max’s on August 16, 1977—the night of Elvis Presley’s death. Nobody gave a fuck, really, since he’d been “dead” since 1959. After his legendary records with Sun, he had served in the army in Germany, then came back and devolved into a fat and sweaty redneck performing in Las Vegas. But still, he was the King, and we played “I Feel So Bad” in his honor.
From August 18–20, we opened for the Heartbreakers at the Village Gate, a pretty big room on Bleecker Street. From behind my drums, I’d sing the Coasters’ “I’m a Hog for You” and two or three other songs. We were starting to get noticed. After playing about a dozen shows as the drummer, the rest of the band decided I’d make a better front man. So over the course of one day, I was fired as the drummer and rehired, and we hired a kid named Billy Rogers to fill in on drums.
We played that way for the first time at CBGB. It was frightening—I had never really planned on being a front man, and I wouldn’t be able to hide behind my drums anymore. But as it turned out, I immediately loved singing. I had an all right voice and I felt so much joy in putting it to use. I was in my element. Now I knew what I wanted to be … when I grew up.
The Senders were now a team of five, though we would have to go through a few drummers before finding the right one.
Speaking of drummers, I was hanging out at Blondie’s loft one night, when Clem Burke—their drummer—showed me a record he had brought back from England, where they’d just been on tour. It was Malpractice by Dr. Feelgood.
“The best band in England! They’re great!” he enthused.
Immediately, we launched into rhapsodies about Dr. Feelgood. “That record is fantastic! Do you know Down by the Jetty, their first one? I saw them in Paris back in ’74, and then my pal Octavio and I went to see them on Long Island. Not too many people know them here—now there’s at least three of us! At the Long Island gig, they were on the same bill as Papa John whatever his name is, the guy from Hot Tuna—a band with guys from Jefferson Airplane. An old black guy who plays violin for a bunch of hippies and Dr. Feelgood playing together. It was strange!”
“The Senders play ‘I Can Tell.’ Did you get that from this record?”
“Absolutely! It’s funny because we played it with Johnny Thunders, who changed it a little. We also changed it a little from Dr. Feelgood’s version, which is a bit different from the Pirates, which is itself different from Bo Diddley’s original!”
“By the time it reaches Japan it’ll be unrecognizable!”
“Dr. Feelgood came to play at the Palladium, opening for Gentle Giant—an even lamer hippie group than the other clowns from the Long Island gig — and they got booed off the stage. The Feelgoods actually got booed off the stage by the Gentle Giant fans, that night. I wasn’t there—we were playing at CBGB that night. As it turned out, Dr. Feelgood actually came to see us at CB’s. We were almost at the end of our show when Steve prodded me between songs, and asked, “Aren’t those the guys from Dr. Feelgood?”
Indeed, I spotted Lee Brilleaux and the others right away.
“This one goes out to Dr. Feelgood!” I announced before launching into “I Can Tell,” and to show them we were true fans, we followed with “Roxette,” one of their songs we would often play for fun during rehearsal. I saw Lee Brilleaux saying something to Big Figure, their drummer. As they’d just been thrown off the stage by Gentle Giant’s fans at the Palladium, he might have been saying something like: “I think we’ve finally found where the action is in this town. We should’ve played here!”
Afterward, he came backstage to introduce himself. I told him I would have loved to see them play at the Palladium and asked how it went.
“Um … all right,” he said, then changed the subject. “Would you like a drink?”
Shortly thereafter, they came back to play New York again—this time at CBGB.
Johnny called me from London, where he was once again on tour with the Heartbreakers. “Hey, Flipper, it’s Thunders, how ya doin’?”
“Hey, Johnny! What’s new? Where are you?”
“I’m in London recording an album with a bunch of fags! Hey, you know what? Wilko Johnson has a new band called The Senders!”
“Yeah, right … and Lee Brilleaux’s got one called the Heartbreakers, right?”
&n
bsp; “No, I’m not joking. I just read something in New Musical Express. He just left Dr. Feelgood and started a new band called The Senders, I swear. He stole your name! Go lynch him!”
Johnny wasn’t kidding, but he wasn’t exactly right either. Wilko’s new group was called the Solid Senders. … Not quite the same thing. There had been Roy Milton’s Solid Senders in the fifties, an extraordinary rhythm and blues band, so the name probably came from that. On the other hand, he did see us play at CBGB—but maybe he didn’t know our name. Or maybe he didn’t like our version of “Roxette” and this was his revenge! Maybe we had a subconscious influence on him. He’d probably been stoned when he saw us, and later—although he couldn’t remember where he’d heard it—the name Senders gave him a comforting feeling of well-being and serene joy. It’s a theory!
It was too bad, though; we’d picked that name thinking it didn’t mean much and no one would want to steal it. At first, we’d decided to call ourselves “Yakety Yak,” from a Coasters’ song, but before we even did our first show, we learned that was already taken. So, we figured a name like The Senders was a bit like the Ramones: most likely obscure enough that no one had thought of it. I came upon the name in the phone book; I was specifically looking for a band name, and the word “senders” caught my eye. There must have been about thirty Mr. Senders on that page. Joe Senders, Bob Senders. … Also, it was perfect, because the image was very rock ’n’ roll. And also, though it wasn’t much used much in the lingo of the seventies, “sender” often appeared in fifties rock ’n’ roll songs, like Little Richard’s “Slipping and Sliding.” And, of course, you had Elvis Presley’s “Return to Sender” and Sam Cooke’s “You Send Me.” A few people asked if we’d been inspired by William Burroughs’s book Naked Lunch, in which he talked about a small sect of men who could manipulate other people’s minds and called themselves “the senders.” But none of us had read Naked Lunch, and we had no idea.
My mother had also discovered that there had been a little French band in the early sixties with that same name. She’d seen an ad in a collector’s magazine that read, “Looking for Rare Vinyls, Very Interested in 45 by the Senders,” and she’d called the number. After some confusion, the potential buyer told my mother that the Senders cut their record in 1962—when I was eight!
So maybe I’d seen that record somewhere when I was a kid, and though I never knew why, that name gave me sort of a comforting feeling of well-being and serene joy!
Johnny called me a week later. He wasn’t in England anymore but at Kennedy Airport, and he wanted to give me a souvenir from London. It was a pair of shoes. I don’t know why he wanted to give me those shoes—maybe they didn’t fit him. I doubt that before leaving London he thought to himself, Oh, I think I’ll go buy Flipper some shoes! Still, it was very nice of him and those shoes were fucking great.
Two weeks later, he gave me a dog. He was on a roll! This was an adorable little black puppy he’d bought for Julie, but she didn’t actually want it. I didn’t know what to do with the puppy either, so I gave her to Bruce, who was thrilled. “Babe,” as Johnny had named her, became the most important thing in Bruce’s life. He would have lost his apartment, his car, and all his money before he let anything happen to Babe. She was sacred to him, and soon they were inseparable.
Once, Bruce drove our friend David to Los Angeles. He did NY to LA to NY round trip in only a week and, of course, he brought Babe with him for the ride. Trying to get to LA as quickly as possible, they decided they would never stop and would take turns driving so they could keep moving without losing any time. After driving for nearly twenty-four hours straight, Bruce figured it was his turn to rest a little. He said to David, “We’ve made great progress—we’re really close. If we don’t waste any time, we’ll be in LA tomorrow. Your turn to drive.”
They let Babe out to pee, and Bruce laid down on the backseat. David started the car and they hit the road. Three hours later, Bruce was comfortably snoring in the back and David was driving through the night listening to the radio. When Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” came on, he started to sing along, “I got you Babe, I’ve got you Babe … Babe … Babe?!?! SHIT! BABE!!!”
Babe wasn’t in the car. He’d driven off without her!
“My God, if Bruce wakes up, he’ll kill me!” David told himself as he spun the car around, speeding back to where they’d last stopped, and praying that Babe would still be there. When he pulled up, three hours later, Babe was sitting right there, exactly where he’d left her. He slammed on the brakes, opened the door, and she sprang into the car, jumping on Bruce and licking his face.
“Babe, darling, Babe, stop it, calm down,” he mumbled, waking up. He looked at his watch: “Fabulous! I slept six hours. We’re rolling, rolling, we’re gonna beat every record. Where are we?”
Bruce also had a pet monkey named Joseph. Joseph was a little squirrel monkey with a long tail and little round black eyes. He was the coolest. Bruce had bought him from a girl who’d kept him in a small cage since his birth, leaving him entirely crippled. At first, he couldn’t do anything. Bruce put a few tree branches in the corner of his living room, and little by little, Joseph started climbing on them out of instinct. But he fell down every time. It took a while, but eventually he was able to climb perfectly, only slower than an average monkey of his kind. Though it’s cruel to say, he became the perfect apartment monkey: wanting to play, but not too much; climbing, but at a slow pace. He would come hang out on your shoulder and check to see if you had a flea or two, then he’d slowly amble into the kitchen to get himself a banana.
During one of Bruce’s many parties on Elizabeth Street, Andy Warhol came by with his entourage. As soon as he saw Joseph, he had to have him.
“Whose monkey is this? Darling, whose monkey is this? Oh, it’s Bruce’s? Where is Bruce? Darling, where is Bruce?”
He was introduced to Bruce.
“Bruce, this monkey is fabulous. I want to buy him. How much can I offer you for the monkey, Bruce darling!”
“Thank you very much, but Joseph’s not for sale.”
“No, really, I must have him. Darling, three thousand dollars? Five thousand? A painting?”
Bruce turned down every offer, but Warhol would just keep starting up again every ten minutes. “Ten thousand dollars?”
Bruce was pulling his hair out, but he just couldn’t do it. He loved Joseph too much, and Andy Warhol never was able to buy him.
John Lurie and his little brother Evan were usual fixtures at the Elizabeth Street apartment. They would play endless games of Monopoly with Bruce, his girlfriend Mary, and Jim Jarmusch, while Babe and Joseph cuddled up and slept.
Mark Mahoney was often there too. He’d been a friend of David in Boston. Bruce lent him money to buy his first tattooing equipment. He would practice on oranges, and he offered free tattoos in exchange for the practice. Bruce got a couple that way.
Phil Marcade and Stiv Bators at CBGB’s, June 1978
MY GAL IS RED HOT
New York, May 1978
1978 STARTED OUT WELL FOR The Senders. The audiences at Max’s and CBGB loved us and things were starting to look up.
For Johnny Blitz, the Dead Boys drummer, however, things weren’t going so well. He’d gotten stabbed on 2nd Avenue after looking for trouble with four Puerto Rican hoods, who didn’t play around. He made the mistake of pulling a knife, which they ripped from his hands, and they stabbed him with it in his chest and throat. He barely made it out alive, and he left the hospital with more than 150 stitches. A perfect opportunity to celebrate! Hilly Kristal—who was now the Dead Boys’ manager—decided to throw a benefit concert like no other. He organized a four-night punk festival at CBGB, and The Senders were invited to play. Also performing, among others, would be: the Ramones, Blondie, Suicide, the Fleshtones, the Contortions, the Rudies, Helen Wheels, the Dictators, the Erasers, Corpse Grinders, Sick Fucks, Schrapnel, the Idols, the Criminals, and,
of course, the Dead Boys, who had recruited John Belushi and Jerry Nolan on drums for the occasion.
From May 4–7, 1978, CBGB was overwhelmed by a huge crowd, forcing the bands to enter through a back door, which was a first. CBGB had never been so packed. There were just as many people out on the sidewalk as there were inside, because it was absolutely impossible to move around in the bar. We had the good fortune of going onstage on Saturday night between the Dictators and Blondie—a prime spot. I don’t remember why we got to play at that time, since we weren’t as well known as most of the other bands on the bill. Was it at Debbie’s request? I can’t recall, but I do remember playing our R&B in front of a wall of shirtless punks, out of their minds and drenched in sweat, jumping up and down in front of the stage, climbing all over each other trying to get fresh air to breathe. The energy and electricity in the air was ineffable. It was so crowded that we thought the room would explode. It was fantastic. After Blondie, the Dead Boys wrapped up the benefit and were besieged onstage by a gang of drag queens, including Divine, star of John Waters’s films.
In June, we played at the Paradise Garage with Richard Hell and his new group, the Voidoids. The poster read: HELL IN PARADISE! Also on the bill were James Chance & the Contortions, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks, and the Stimulators. The Paradise Garage was a pretty big room on King Street, in the West Village, and normally functioned as a gay disco. It was completely packed—it was fabulous.
After the show, Debbie Harry took me aside to give me some advice.
“You should think about doing something on your own, Philippe. The band is great, but you’re really special, you know? You could go far. Don’t get stuck in the fifties retro trip. Think about the fact you could be very successful. Think of yourself first.”