by (epub)
The train finally pulled into the station, and a mass of people spilled out, like ants when you step on their nest. The guy got off, too, and disappeared in the crowd. Thank God! I told myself, making sure to avoid him. Still a bit shaken, I lit myself a cigarette as soon as I passed the turnstile. I couldn’t believe it, but when I got to the bottom of the stairs, the movement of the crowd forced me right behind the guy. Luckily, he didn’t see me. He was carrying one of those attaché cases that are open on top, and there were a few papers sticking out. I couldn’t help myself. As we reached the top of the stairs, I dropped my lit cigarette into his case and watched him go strolling on down the avenue. He was probably laughing to himself all the while. Soon I saw a little cloud of smoke coming out of his bag. Satisfied, I decided to be on my way before he caught on, and I headed for my sound check at the Rocker Room.
In May, Johnny called to tell me he had put together a new band, this time with Wayne Kramer from MC5.
“Wow, that’s great!” I told him, knowing right away that this was going to be something spectacular.
“We’re gonna start recording a few demos, but we need a drummer. Do you want to join in?”
“I wouldn’t want to dump The Senders, but we have nothing else booked this week, so sure. Where are you?”
“We’re in Ann Arbor, next to Detroit.”
“Ann Arbor? I’ve been there—it’s far. How do you want me to get to Ann Arbor?”
“We’re buying you a plane ticket right now. We’ve got this guy taking care of everything, he’s our … manager. I’m gonna call him. Can you come tonight? We’ll pick you up at the airport. That guy has a house for me, and I can put you up. You’ll see, it’s great! I’m here with Julie and the kids.”
So that evening I took a plane to Ann Arbor, and Johnny and Wayne Kramer picked me up at the airport. I immediately felt that Wayne was a righteous dude—very funny and with a positive energy that was contagious.
“What are you gonna call the band?” I asked him in the car.
“Gang War!” he said with a big smile, studying my reaction.
My reaction was mostly that I was thrilled to meet him. I had been a fan of MC5 for a long time—and was particularly in awe of him and Fred “Sonic” Smith. They were so cool—the American Stones, the Detroit hoods. Manufacturing Center 5, Motor City 5, or even Marijuana Cigarette 5. They were the first group to have released a hit record in which they yelled out “Motherfuckers” and that was in 1969! MC5 had helped build the foundation of punk rock, as did their little brothers from Detroit: Iggy & the Stooges.
Johnny’s house in Ann Arbor wasn’t bad at all. It was big and didn’t have the junkie atmosphere I’d expected. It was clean and filled with kids’ toys and baby chairs. Julie was always very nice to me, and she and Johnny seemed quite happy at the time. We got to work that very evening, and we kept recording for three days straight. On the way to the studio, we picked up Wayne’s friend Ron Cooke, a local bass player. Their manager had rented the studio; all he’d been able to find was this little room where they recorded ads and jingles. They’d never done rock ’n’ roll before. When we arrived, the owner—a very straight-laced guy—panicked at the sight of us. He nervously asked that everyone show ID!
“You’ve got to be joking,” the manager replied. “These happen to be very famous musicians: Wayne Kramer of MC5 from Detroit, and over there is Johnny Thunders from the New York Dolls.”
He looked at Johnny and said, “Don’t try any bullshit with me. My son was a fan of the New York Dolls. I’ll get him, and we’ll see about this!” He yelled out, “Billy! Come down for a minute, would you?” Their house was directly above the studio, and his son—a fat kid in Bermuda shorts—came out munching on a sandwich.
“This one,” the father said, pointing at Johnny. “Is he in the New York Dolls?” The son came closer to take a better look, then exclaimed, in absolute shock, “Dad, that’s Johnny Thunders! Their guitarist!” From then on, the atmosphere improved significantly. The owner called for his wife, and she came out with an Instamatic to take photos of themselves with Johnny. Hahaha! Such a Disneyland, Mickey Mouse-type picture to hang in the living room!
This fucking guy was always asking me questions about what was going on, like: “Why is he going to the toilet so much?” or “What’s wrong with him?” Every ten minutes, he would say to me, with a desperate look in his eyes, “But he’s singing completely flat—he can’t sing!” to which I would always reassure him, “Ah, no, he sounds great!”
We recorded “MIA,” one of Johnny’s new songs. The other tunes were “I’d Much Rather Be with the Boys” by the Stones, “I’m Gonna Be a Wheel” by Fats Domino, and two other Johnny originals “Who Do VooDoo” and “Just Because I’m White (How Come You Treat Me Like a Nigger)” with it’s sure-to-be-a-hit title. There was, of course, no rehearsal, but that wasn’t really a problem. Wayne and his pal were pros, and by now I was used to this kind of thing with Johnny. He’d just look at you and say, “Just play Bo Diddley” or “Just play ta-ta-boom, tata-boom, okay? One, two, three, four. …”
This project was brand new for both Wayne and Johnny, and you could feel their excitement. Sparks were flying—they were both on fire. It was magical.
I was sitting there at the drums, banging away, just thinking, Pinch me!
Johnny came back to the studio wearing the same ripped-up T-shirt every night. It must have been his new favorite shirt. The last day, the owner handed me a perfectly ironed and folded white T-shirt and said, “I understand that times have been hard, but it truly saddens me to see that this musician who was once so successful has nothing left to put on his back than this torn-up rag. Can you please give him this from me so he doesn’t have to feel ashamed anymore?”
To this day I remain friends with Wayne, who really is a great guy. Getting to play with him was always a total joy. He once filled in for Wild Bill at the Peppermint Lounge, where The Senders were opening for the Cramps. They were recording their legendary “The Smell of Female” that night.
I loved Gang War, and I was certainly tempted to take them up on their offer to be their full-time drummer, but I couldn’t leave my beloved Senders. I also told myself that with Johnny on board, that band might not last very long. What a strange idea. …
So I went back to New York to continue my life as a Sender, but I was overjoyed to have had the chance to participate in those sessions in Ann Arbor.
The Senders were starting to have drummer problems, too, actually. Tony was an absolutely fantastic drummer, but he drank way too much and it was discouraging. Finally, we were scheduled to play at CBGB one night, and when we were called onstage, there was no Tony! After a long and embarrassing wait and a lot of complaining from the club, he called on the phone, lit up like a Christmas tree. When I asked him where he was, he said he had no idea but that it would be wiser for him to stay there. So, I filled in for him on drums, but we were more than a little hurt. We sacked him, replacing him with Marc Bourset, who had played in the Victims, a band we really liked. Tony went on to join the Criminals, the New York Dolls’ Sylvain Sylvain’s new band, then ended up spending years with David Johansen during his Buster Poindexter period.
Marc Bourset, aka M. T. Heart, aka Little Moe Trucks, aka the Human Drumming Circus, was exactly that: Keith Moon American style, endless wells of energy, extremely funny but also dangerous. He raced stock cars on Sundays at Islip Speedway’s Demolition Derby, where he totaled old cars for kicks. That was his hobby. Musically, Marc was into the exact same things as we were, and he knew a lot about old rhythm and blues. He also had a true passion for old B-movies. He could recite the entirety of Psych-Out or any of the others. He knew them all by heart. He was perfect for The Senders, and we knew it right away. He played drums full tilt and lived life the same way. In the end, he was going to be ten times more trouble than Tony ever was, drinking and drugging more than the rest of the band put together, bu
t we didn’t know that yet at the start of the summer of 1979.
All we knew was that we were hired to play for three weeks in Los Angeles, at the Troubadour, the Starwood, Club 88, and all around.
We stayed at the Tropicana, the famous motel where Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and later Tom Waits and Rickie Lee Jones, had all spent a good amount of time. We had a small apartment on the ground floor by the parking lot—our Hollywood Royal Suite. There was only one room, and it was filled with our equipment—amps and drum cases everywhere.
I loved the so-very-Californian early fifties splendor of the Tropicana, with its crappy pool, palm trees, and its cheap, decadent atmosphere. I thought for sure Jayne Mansfield would pop out from somewhere at any minute—headless!
As soon as we got to LA, however, our troubles began. The agent who had booked our shows—a very nice young woman—came to meet us at the Tropicana, arriving at the wheel of a luxury sports car. Marc was already seriously drunk, and he immediately jumped into the car and took off. We were trying to calm her down, assuring her that he was only joking and that he would bring it back right away, when he finally reappeared, then sped past us without stopping, blasting down Sunset Boulevard at over a hundred miles an hour. The girl turned green. He came around a second time, then a third, back and forth, faster and faster each time. She was starting to talk about calling the cops, so we tried to distract her with questions like, “Is the place we’re playing tonight nice?” and “So, were you born here?” Finally, Marc seemed to realize that we were getting bored of his joyride, and he returned the car to the parking lot, got out, and said to the girl, “Nice ride, I’ll take it!” before turning to me and adding, “What’s the matter? You didn’t sleep good?!”
I knew right away that Marc was going to get along with Bruce!
A few days after we arrived, there was a pool party at the Tropicana to celebrate the recent marriage between Nick Lowe and Carlene Carter, Johnny Cash’s stepdaughter. We didn’t know them and weren’t invited, but we went anyway, near the end, as people were leaving. They left so much food behind—huge trays of fruit, crawfish, seafood, and cold cuts of all kinds. So we brought it all back to our royal suite! We weren’t able to finish it all, and it rotted and stunk up our little apartment in no time—and also attracted an impressive army of ants.
We played three nights in a row at the Starwood with Levi & the Rockats, an excellent rockabilly band. The place was packed with pretty little California girls—all blond and tan—staring up at us, mouths open. We were as pale as could be and sickly looking, with our dirty black suits and our greasy DAs. But they loved us all! Levi Dexter, the singer, had come from England with two or three other British Teds. They went straight to Norfolk, Virginia—birthplace of Gene Vincent—intending to find a few other young rockabilly enthusiasts to join their group. Instead, they’d been surprised to find only fans of Lynyrd Skynyrd—none of whom gave a flying fuck about what they considered to be their grandparents’ music! Haha! Right place, wrong decade! But they were able to find what they wanted in New York, and were now under the wing of Leee Black Childers, the Heartbreakers’ ex-manager and one of the former bosses of Mainman, David Bowie’s management company. Leee was one of my favorite characters at Max’s—a very funny and wonderful guy. He came up with the idea of a promo for those LA shows, photographs in which The Senders and the Rockats posed as two rival gangs at the Griffith Observatory in Hollywood Hills. It was the site of the famous scene in Rebel Without a Cause, where James Dean gets in a knife fight with Dennis Hopper and his gang. Leee rented a house not far from the Tropicana, where he put up Levi and the whole band. We spent most of our afternoons over there with them, or with the Go-Go’s, who were also really cool and lived right nearby. In addition to that, like good little tourists, we went sightseeing—for instance, we went to see the house where Sharon Tate was murdered and the ranch where Charles Manson lived with his girlfriends.
Hanging out at the hotel was a bit of a drag, especially because Moe’s girlfriend insisted on calling every ten minutes. She was very suspicious of what we were doing in there, claiming to hear girls’ voices in the background and endlessly accusing Moe of lying. He called New York one morning to tell her that everything was going fine, then a few hours later, someone knocked on the door. It was her! Apparently, she had jumped on the first plane to “surprise” him and catch him red-handed. She made a ridiculous entrance, absolutely furious, demanding to know, “Where is she?!” only to find him eating a sandwich in the kitchen. She did a quick but meticulous search of the apartment, before giving him a kiss, adding, “Surprise!”
We played at the Hong Kong Café with a local punk band called the Heaters. There was this one guy in front of the stage who kept spraying beer on Steve. Finally, when Steve was totally soaked, he handed me his bass, jumped off the stage, and chased the poor horrified guy out of the club. Then cool as a cucumber, he climbed back onstage and lit a cigarette, to our peals of laughter.
Backstage a little later, the guy politely approached Bill. “I play in the Heaters, the other band,” he said. “I am truly sorry about pissing off your bass player. I hope he’s not still mad.” All the while, he was checking left and right, worried Steve might be nearby. When Bill told him not to worry, he got a bit more cocky, adding, “That guy didn’t have to lose his cool like that! Here in LA, spraying beer on someone is an expression of punk friendship. That guy has no sense of humor.”
Immediately, Bill snapped back, “No, you’re the one with no sense of humor, asshole! In New York, it’s an expression of friendship to chase a guy and beat him up!”
The following night at the Troubadour was fantastic. After the show, we met one of the musicians from Paul Revere & the Raiders, and he invited us to record a few songs at his studio on Venice Beach. We did so, and before the final mix, Michelle Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas came by to play tambourine for one of our songs. Unfortunately, we weren’t there and we never got to meet her, but there is a recording of The Senders that features her!
During our three weeks in LA, we played constantly, and also did a taping of a TV show. One afternoon, we played at a millionaire’s party for a film production company. The party was in a lavish garden, and there were magicians and acrobats, and a Mariachi band in sombreros and ponchos strolled among the guests—all of whom were wearing tuxedos and elegant gowns. Also on the bill was the Know, a new band with Gary Valentine—who had just left Blondie.
Just before we went onstage, we were told that the guests were hoping to see some examples of that punk movement they’d been hearing so much about. I was still drunk from the night before, so I didn’t hesitate to make them happy. I told the band to play as loud as we could, and swearing more rudely between each song, I sprayed beer on all the guests, gesturing like I was jerking off, while Marc threw half of his drum kit. The audience was completely outraged, so I told the band to pump up the volume even more. It was hilarious. One old lady even fainted right in front of the stage. Other bands had young women in miniskirts fainting at their shows; we had old ladies in evening gowns! Still, it’s better than nothing. So, for one sunny afternoon in Hollywood, at the request of the public—who in this case were a bunch of old farts in suits—we were a tad more punk than usual.
That same evening, we played at another club—though I forget the name. I do remember it was pretty far from the hotel. We had two cars at our disposal—not counting our agent’s sports car—and after the show, while I was at the bar flirting with a blond who looked like Veronica Lake, everyone assumed I’d gotten into the other car and they all drove off without me. When I finally came out of the club and realized I had no ride, I ran back inside to ask that girl to give me a lift. But she was gone too. There was no one left. I waited around, hoping someone would realize I wasn’t there and come back for me, but to be honest, I had my doubts. … To top it all off, it was five in the morning and I didn’t have a dime on me. The hotel was on the same st
reet as the club—Sunset Boulevard—and it was a straight drive, but too far to walk. After sitting there for a while, I eventually decided to try hitchhiking. I was picked up almost immediately by two large Black guys in a Ford Mustang. As I got in the car, I started to thank them, when one guy cut me off to ask the other, “Do you smell something funny?” I started sniffing around to see what they were talking about when the other one answered, “Yeah, you’re right, it stinks like whitey in here. It smells like a little stinking white shit!”