by (epub)
“Wow, thanks, Debbie! That’s really nice of you. Do you really think so? But if I dumped the band I would have to find another one. I wouldn’t want to play alone with an acoustic guitar. I’d probably find myself rehiring the band the next day!”
She laughed.
“You could actually make it. You don’t realize …”
I’d just come off the stage; I was soaked and my ears were ringing. With the noise of all the people backstage and the racket the Voidoids were making onstage, I was having a harder and harder time understanding what she was saying, and she, therefore, was coming closer and closer to me and, when she was no more than an inch from my nose, I completely lost myself in her eyes. I didn’t have any idea what she was talking about anymore; my heart was beating a hundred miles an hour, and I couldn’t hear a thing—not even the crowd or the Voidoids. I was hearing violins and little birds, and had a strong desire to kiss her, but I held myself back. Then, in a blink of an eye, I came back to earth—all the sound returned, and I noticed she was looking at me, a little confused, as if she’d finished speaking and was waiting for an answer.
“Ummm … what?” I fumbled, mortified.
Toward the end of the evening, Richard Hell, James Chance, Steve, and I went to see the owner about getting paid.
“Come in, come in, close the door,” this sordid character told us from behind his desk. Then he told us, “There was a problem, guys. Someone took off with all the money. Probably one of our employees. … I am furious and we’re going to find out who did it. This has never happened before and I am so sorry.”
There was a short silence, then Richard said, “You’re joking, right?”
“No, no, it’s true! All the money from the door was in a box that got stolen, everything! There’s really nothing I can do, I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just pay us what you owe us and cut the crap. I’ve got other things to do, okay?”
“I’m really sorry, guys.”
That’s when James Chance started to lose it. “Do you think we’re just gonna say ‘Oh, okay!’ and leave? Give us our money, man. We don’t give a fuck about your story!” He was screaming.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t give a damn that you’re sorry! Where’s my money, asshole?”
Steve elbowed me while looking discreetly behind us, and I noticed five huge bouncers had just walked into the room. They arranged themselves against the wall, arms crossed.
“Once more, I can’t tell you how sorry I am. We’re gonna see what we can do. Maybe someone will contact you later in the week.”
I couldn’t believe it, but the five big goofballs were actually getting closer and closer until they had us surrounded. One of them tapped me on the shoulder, growling, “I think it’s time to go, okay? This way, please.”
Someone told me that James Chance threw a trash can through the club’s front window later that night. Right on, James!
Billy Rogers left The Senders abruptly when he won three hundred dollars in the lottery. He was replaced by a moron named Georgie. Georgie drove us to Boston when we took our first trip to play the Rat, a famous club. We got pulled over by the cops on a highway in New Jersey. The cop was polite and just told us that our bags were blocking the rearview window. As soon as we moved them, we could be on our way.
Immediately, Georgie demanded, “Show me your badge,” and he took down the cop’s number on a piece of paper. “My father is a lawyer. Do you want to know what happened to the last cop who tried to bug me?”
We couldn’t believe he was doing this. There were three illegal aliens in the car and most of us were carrying pot. The cop had just told us we could go without any trouble. Georgie was out of his mind. We all sat still, silently gaping, when, of course, the cop replied, “Oh, really? All of you, get out of the car and show me your IDs.”
He took our names and got back in his car. We were instructed to wait by the car. He was taking his time, and we were starting to get antsy, wondering what was going to happen. Suddenly two other cop cars arrived out of nowhere, and they all jumped on our guitarist Jorge, handcuffing him and throwing him into one of the cop cars.
Flabbergasted, we asked what was going on, and one of the cops said, “Your friend Jorge here is wanted in California.”
Why?
MURDER!
How was that possible? Jorge had killed someone in California?
We had to call up the club in Boston to let them know we wouldn’t be able to make it.
“Why?” they asked.
“Murder!!!”
It took a whole night before Jorge was finally cleared—the cops had got the wrong guy. But by then they’d also figured out that he didn’t have a visa and wanted to deport him back to Mexico.
He was able to get out of it, but this whole incident had been such a drag that, fed up, he decided to quit the band. Eventually he went back to Mexico anyway.
What a blow! We had lost our main guitar player.
We fired Georgie immediately. And then, discouraged, Reedy decided to quit, too.
So, there was no one left but Steve and me. Things weren’t looking too good for The Senders.
I got a job as a messenger in Midtown.
Meanwhile, Johnny Thunders got into an argument with the Heartbreakers and decided to do something else for a while. He called me from England and, learning of our situation, offered to join us for a handful of shows before we found a permanent guitarist. With that, he invited a young French guitar player named Henri Paul to join the party and soon they both arrived in New York. We recruited Ty Stix on drums. We did two or three rehearsals together at Steve’s and were surprised when Johnny insisted on learning our songs rather than just playing the sorts of covers everyone would know, which would have been much easier for him. It was really cool of him to give us a hand in that way. With the publicity he was going to get us, finding a permanent guitar player would be easy. We booked three shows at Max’s for August 3–5, then a fourth at Hurrah’s. The ad read: The Senders with Johnny Thunders.
Those gigs at Max’s were the coolest. The room was jam-packed, and with Johnny in the band, all the hippest girls in town now loved us all up!! Suddenly we were the band to see. By the fourth show at Hurrah’s, it was total mayhem. In the middle of a crowd of over-excited degenerates, two girls started punching each other. One of them hit the other in the face with her stiletto heel, getting blood everywhere. The joint was jumping!
Our temporary lineup had a fabulous sound. It’s a shame we didn’t get to play longer with that group. After those shows with Johnny, The Senders became famous at Max’s. Soon we found an extraordinary guitar player: Wild Bill Thompson. With his incredible power—already legendary on his native Long Island—he brought to the band his great bluesy sound and an ultra-cool presence, which accentuated The Senders’ character even more.
On drums, we hired Tony Machine, who had replaced Jerry Nolan in the New York Dolls, before they’d finally broken up for good. With him and Wild Bill Thompson, the band reached a new level. It was thrilling to play with such strong musicians, though it didn’t take me long to realize they were even crazier than Steve and I were.
Johnny made up with the Heartbreakers and Henri Paul had to go back to France.
I got fired from my messenger job.
About a week later, this girl Cathy—who I’d spoken with once or twice but didn’t know well—came up to me at Max’s and asked, “Is it true you’re looking for an apartment? I’m leaving for Europe for a month or two, but I have three cats at home. If you’d like, you can stay at my place in exchange for taking care of them.”
“Great!” I said, hoping her cats weren’t like Nancy’s junkie cat. But I didn’t take her offer too seriously—she looked a bit nuts, and besides, she disappeared without giving me any more details. I figured she’d probably found someone she knew better to take care of them.
But then, passing by Max’s a few days later, one of the waitresses came up to me and said, “Philippe, Cathy left you her keys and went to London.”
“When?”
“The day before yesterday.”
Shit, the cats! “Okay, I’ll go there right away. Where does she live?”
“You don’t have her address?” She was surprised.
It seemed nobody knew where this girl lived. I had her keys but not her address, and there were three cats rotting in her apartment. I got on the phone. I had to make a lot of phone calls and it took another full day before I got an answer, but I finally managed to find someone who knew where Cathy lived. And so in the end, I spent three months on 59th Street and 3rd Avenue in this beautiful little apartment. The cats had survived their ordeal, but unlike Nancy’s cat, they held a grudge for quite some time.
After having squatted in Steve’s loft for almost six months, I was happy to discover this new part of town. It was the exact opposite of Avenue D. It was luxurious, calm, and safe. I was two blocks from Bloomingdale’s. It was a half-hour walk back from Max’s, but I loved making that walk late at night. You went through Midtown, the business district, with all its towering skyscrapers. I especially loved passing in front of the Chrysler Building—the most beautiful building in New York—and Grand Central Terminal, right across the street. Walking through Manhattan at night was often the best time to think up lyrics. A few Senders songs were written along those streets.
Cathy’s place was great. It was a very cozy, very well-furnished one bedroom with a washing machine, a great stereo, and in the kitchen, about a hundred cans of Whiskers left for the cats. They were everywhere, that and dozens of cans of V8, the vegetable juice, with which she must have been dieting. I drank them all in a week. I was low on funds, and it was that or cat food!
All I had to do now was find a new girlfriend. I decided to go cruising. Arriving at Max’s I immediately noticed a cute girl with black hair in a Cleopatra cut sitting alone at the bar. I decided to overcome my shyness and offer her a drink. I asked what her name was. “My name is W,” she answered me, sounding annoyed. “W, W! It’s like a double U. Like a double-you, W! Every word that starts with a W is like a double of you! All right? Doubles of you! Like ‘wig’—it starts with a W and it’s like a double of you, A-DOU-BLE-OF-YOU!!” She got a real scary look in her eyes and she tore off her wig, exposing a shaved skull. I ran to the other side of the bar. Mommy!
I started getting drunk. Johnny turned me on to a line of dope in the bathroom. Coming back into the bar, I noticed another girl who wasn’t bad either. Maybe this one had real hair. I went to talk to her. I thought she must have been into me, because she started caressing my hand, but I was now completely fucked up. The whole room was spinning, and I didn’t feel well … at all. I decided to step out for some fresh air. The girl came with me and we sat on the hood of a car in front of the club. Sweat was running down my face, and not even the cool fall breeze could ease the terrible nausea that heroin and alcohol can cause. If I had stayed still, it probably would have passed. But my brand-new girlfriend couldn’t wait and made the huge mistake of trying to kiss me. When she suddenly started to French kiss me, I exploded, throwing up my whole dinner into her mouth. It was so embarrassing! She didn’t take it well at all and left, showering me with insults. I, on the other hand, felt better now, but that was enough cruising for one night. I went home, walking in zigzags to 59th Street, ready to crash with three cats that hated my guts.
Eventually, Cathy came back from England with a British boyfriend, and I went back to Steve’s, once again looking for a new pad.
I mentioned that to Willy DeVille, who immediately asked me to move in with him and Toots. It seemed like a perfect idea at first, but when I actually went to see the apartment I was shocked to find that they were both completely broke and deeply hooked. They had a German Shepherd that barked constantly, but there wasn’t much else in that gloomy, messy apartment where a heavy junkie atmosphere reigned. Even though Willy was my musical idol, I decided not to move in with him. Not least because a really cool girl I knew, Maria, offered to sublet me her little flat on 17th Street, a hundred feet from Max’s, for next to nothing while she went to Hollywood to launch a movie career. Maria’s apartment was even better than Cathy’s, and best of all, I could go to Max’s in a T-shirt in January. Or in my pajamas. Or barefoot!
I was right around the corner from Max’s, and the back of the club was directly across the street from where I lived: with the window open, I could hear the bands playing. When The Senders were playing at Max’s, we used the apartment as our dressing room, as we could hear when the other band was done. It also made it much easier to invite a girl to my place, and soon, an adorable girl named Veronica moved in with me. We spent a few happy months together, but I fucked everything up and she left—although I don’t remember exactly how. And then Maria came back from California and once again I was sent back to Steve’s.
Then I went out with a really pretty girl named Debbie, but somehow I fucked that up, too. She later dated Paul Simonon of the Clash.
I slept around a bit here and there, but couldn’t find a “keeper.” One would think that since I sang in a known band at Max’s, finding a girlfriend would be easy. The problem was that they were all more or less insane or else too fucking annoying.
Finally, I came across Risé, a great girl who I saw practically every night at Max’s and to whom, as usual, I said hello.
“Yes, hello, hello, all right!” she answered me, sounding defiant. “How long do you plan on saying hello without doing anything else? If you don’t take me home tonight, to hell with your hellos!”
So I married her.
We got married at city hall, both of us in white jeans, her with her wild-child face and her big blond curls, Bruce as our witness, David Armstrong as our photographer, and no one else. I adored her, Risé. She was so tough. She was my “Venus of Avenue D.”
She was a tough cookie from Pitt Street. She’d been one of the only white kids in her class at school. You didn’t step on her toes. She was a true New Yorker.
The night of our wedding, Bruce improvised a party at his place on Elizabeth Street, and although we’d only invited a handful of friends at the last minute, over a hundred people showed up. They were in the apartment and on the sidewalk out front—most of them with no idea who they were there for or why. Glen Buxton, Alice Cooper’s guitarist, must have known for sure, though, because he brought me a present he’d made himself: a little piece of cardboard he’d colored green, with “Here is your green card!” written on it. You can see that magnificent piece of art sticking out of my shirt pocket in that great picture Nan Goldin took of Risé and me at the party. It was later published in Nan’s first book, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency.
Risé and I lived on 6th Street at the corner of 2nd Avenue, in a funky little place with roaches everywhere. But we didn’t care. We were happy.
With a loan from her dad, she opened a store on 7th Avenue at the corner of 10th Street. She called it Rebop, and here we sold fifties-style rock ’n’ roll clothes: jeans, Cuban heels, pointy shoes, creepers, and retro paraphernalia like buttons and stickers. Risé used to work at the Late Show, a vintage clothing store on St. Mark’s Place, and through her connections, she was able to get all kinds of used stuff for next to nothing, especially in Brooklyn. Motorcycle jackets by the pound, sharkskin suits in all colors, bowling shirts, pin ties, and black mohair coats. For the ladies: pedal pushers, those super-tight pants that stopped right below the knees, and sweaters, fishnet stockings, stiletto heels. …
We worked there every day with the help of our two employees, Billy Pidgeon and Michael-Gene, the guitar player for Buzz & the Flyers. This was the best rockabilly band of the moment, and Michael-Gene was probably the only guitar player in New York that could play as well as the incredible Cliff Gallup, from Gene Vincent’s Blue Caps. He was that good.
Everyone was starting to get their clothing at Rebop, and for a while there, business was booming.
We would arrive every morning around eleven, tidy up a bit, and do a little vacuuming before opening up. One day, our vacuum cleaner broke down, and I had to take it to the repair shop. A few days later, as I was walking down 23rd Street to go pick it up, I passed in front of the Chelsea Hotel, and I ran right into Nancy Spungen. She had just gotten back from England.
“Philippe! How are you? I have to introduce you to Sid, he’s right behind me. Sid! Come meet Philippe, my friend I told you about.”
Sid Vicious casually strolled out of the Chelsea with his dog collar and his leather jacket. The perfect British punk rocker!
“Sid, this is Philippe,” she said with her fake British accent. He gave me a little nod, hardly looking up, and looking like he really couldn’t care less.
“That’s so great! What are you doing here?” she asked me, all bubbly.
“Oh, nothing …” I said. “I’m on my way to pick up something. …”
At this, Sid suddenly became much more attentive.
“Oh, really? What you picking up?” he asked discreetly.
“Um … a vacuum cleaner,” I mumbled, feeling pretty dumb.
“Oh yeah? A vacuum cleaner? What’s that?” he asked, now very interested. I then realized that he thought it was New York slang for dope! Hahaha! A vacuum cleaner!
I started to explain: “A vacuum cleaner, you know … for cleaning the carpet. You plug it in the wall … it goes eeeeeeehhhhhhh!”
He looked at me like I was completely out of my mind. It was fucking great. There I was, actually trying to explain to Sid Vicious what a vacuum cleaner was!
Hahaha!
Steve, Johnny, and I were photographed in a restaurant for the fashion page of the Village Voice, the number-one weekly New York paper at the time. The photographer then took out a pad and pen and asked us where we’d bought our clothes. Even though it wasn’t exactly true, Johnny surprised me by having the presence of mind to answer, “Rebop. Pants, shirt, Rebop. Even my socks!”