Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon

by Des Barres, Pamela

  At a gig in Detroit Johnny came across an old hero, Wayne Kramer from the MC5, and they decided to start a band together, calling it Gang War. Johnny’s family soon followed and for eight months tried to set up housekeeping in Dexter, Michigan. “One time I was comin’ into Detroit Airport,” Johnny told a journalist, “right? … and I had these red leather trousers on, and they make you look real big … they make your balls look real big … and … uh … the cops are lookin’ at me real weird … and we get picked up by a Rolls-Royce and we get about three miles down the highway when five cop cars pull us over, and say to me, ‘What’s that stashed down your trousers?’ … and I say … ‘Well, what do you think it is? … and this is goin’ on for twenty minutes, so in the end I hadda wind up whippin’ it out in the middle of the highway.”

  Gang War was another short-lived project that lasted one tour, and the Thunders party landed back in Manhattan, where Johnny soon found himself the topic of a nightlife documentary produced by Christopher Giercke (who also became Johnny’s manager). The camera shadowed Johnny into seedy, danger-driven areas on his constant search for a fix, which had become his reason for waking up every day. The Trouser Press Rock Predictions for 1981 insisted that Johnny Thunders was “legally dead” (though still playing in a band) next to a cartoon of the guitarist surrounded by drug paraphernalia, holding a syringe, with several more hanging out of his arm. Audiences didn’t expect Johnny to show up at all, and when he did, they hoped for the worst and usually got it. If he forgot all the words or didn’t bother to plug in, they cheered. For a while Patti Palladin performed with Johnny People always asked her if he had died. She said, “He’s got a lot to live up to, y’know, he always will. The Dolls were so fucking brilliant, it must create a constant pressure—plus the obsession with his death plays such a major role in his career now, it seems his success is gauged by it. I suppose the value of his catalog would soar.” Fed up with the junk life, Julie took the kids and disappeared, and Johnny never saw his wife or sons again. It tore him apart. Little Dino was only three months old.

  Johnny Thunders—a defiant mask of decadence. (MARCIA RESNICK)

  When Johnny took yet another new band to Sweden, rampant headlines followed him all over the country. The mania started when he arrived (very late) for a television show so blasted he literally couldn’t stand up. The show didn’t air but the newspapers had a ball: BURNT OUT, WASTED—A DRUGGED HUMAN WRECK—“He looks terribly wasted as he walks over to his guitar. He sat shivering in a black dressing gown. No photos are allowed. When we are about to leave, he mentions tonight’s show in Sundsville. ‘I can’t do it. I can’t do it,’ says Johnny.” And no wonder. The show in question was for an “anti-heroin cause.” Within minutes after taking the stage, Johnny hurtled headlong into the audience and was promptly arrested. During another TV appearance, Johnny was surprisingly forthcoming when asked why he started taking drugs: “Like a lot of kids start because they’re bored and lonely, y‘know? It makes them feel like they’re alive, I guess. I would never turn anyone on to drugs. It’s a hard thing to handle and once you get into it, it’s really hard to get out of.” At the end of the interview he asked people to “have a heart, y’know I’m still a human being.” Somehow he made it to London, where he stayed with a friend, Tony James. “He stayed here for two weeks, but it seemed like three years. Things kind of fall apart all around Johnny … . It was like the chaos in that scene from E. T, when he’s pissed. It’s just extraterrestrial Thunders.” One night Johnny was joined by ex-Doll Sylvain Sylvain, who told the N.M.E. that there was “a certain charisma about a guy that everybody thinks is about to drop dead.” As usual, Johnny was stopped at Heathrow Airport on his way back home and was arrested when they found his works and heroin supply. He spent a few days in prison and was fined fifty pounds.

  A flurry of Thunders’s material was released early in 1982—old demos, bootlegs, and a cool single on the New Rose label, “In Cold Blood.” After another tour of Europe with his band, Cosa Nostra, Johnny wound up in Paris, filming another low-budget epic entitled Personality Crisis about a guy addicted to heroin. It was never completed. Johnny recorded an acoustic song, “Hurt Me,” for New Rose, which came out in late 1983. And despite all the flagrant bad press in Sweden (or because of it), Johnny made it to number twenty-two on the Swedish charts. He also fell in love with a Swedish girl, Susanne, who started traveling with him. He even cut down his drug intake. Then, one more time, Johnny re-formed the Heartbreakers and played to a sold-out crowd at London’s Lyceum after drinking eight double vodkas when his dealer didn’t show up. “Hey,” he yelled to his howling fans, “any of you kids in the audience old enough to get a hard-on yet?” Johnny played ninety-five concerts in 1984, from Russia to Japan, but was still after that elusive big record deal. Chris Geircke remained Johnny’s manager and the two had become close friends. He still had the hope that he might be able to teach Johnny “leadership, standards, and certain rules.” When Johnny’s biographer, Nina Antonio, asked Chris if Johnny was “very ill” when he met him, he responded, “Well … a while back I took Johnny to corrida … a bullfight, you know … and it sickened him so much he almost passed out. Every thrust from the matador’s sword was more wounding, more terrible to the animal. It was in great pain, but it would not fall. Does that answer your question?” He hoped Johnny might finally lose the “junk-sick rock star” label. “I mean three years ago, out of twenty-four hours, he would sleep twenty-two … . All that has changed now. His level of methadone is down now to fifteen milligrams … . It’s all up to Johnny … .”

  In 1985, during an interview for Nina Antonio’s book, Johnny admitted to her that heroin addiction had wreaked havoc with his life. “I was very young when I started using heroin, young an’ innocent and I thought I knew it all, right? But I didn’t know it all and I wouldn’t have conformed to it even if I did … . I had nobody to warn me off … to tell me I wasn’t right … . I loved taking drugs, right? I thought I was havin’ a real good time, takin’ drugs and playin’ rock and roll … but I wasn’t … . It’s easy to start, right? It’s when you come to stop you find you got problems. Like, I’ve been on all sorts of methadone programs an’ it’s, well, it’s horrible. You find that you get to kinda depend on drugs in certain situations, an’ it’s much harder having to deal with them straight; but really drugs just cocoon you … cut you off from the real world … alienate you from the entire fuckin’ world; but the problems are still around, y’know? After the drugs you always still got the same problems.”

  The drugs, the illness, and the problems followed Johnny to Paris and then back to London, where he and his band struggled through some new demos at Tin Pan Alley studios. On hand were Mike Monroe from Hanoi Rocks and the Dead Boys’ Stiv Bators. “Johnny Thunders is very important,” Stiv said. “People should respect that. I mean, I never told him because he’s big-headed enough, but a lot of time when you just seem to be spending your whole life slogging around bars and cheap dives, you need an inspiration … you need a dream or an image, and Johnny gave it … . It was just his general attitude … . Nobody else was like him … . I guess the last time I saw Johnny was in a bar in New York. He was attacking the drummer out of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers because they’d stolen his name. Johnny Thunders is a rare breed. A very rare breed.”

  There was another American jaunt, a successful trip to Japan, then Johnny wanted to clean up (one more time, again) so he could present himself to Susanne’s parents as the model man. But on the long trip to Stockholm, Johnny ingested too many Valiums and the meeting at the airport was a predictable mess. After only one night with the Sundqvists, Susanne angrily bid him adieu. Soon Johnny was ruining friends’ apartments all over New York, Paris, and London before hooking up with a fellow he called “Chief” who became his newest manager. The gigs started up again, and another solo album, Que Sera Sera, was recorded before Johnny flew to Stockholm to attempt a reconciliation with Susanne. While he was there, his hand got fractu
red in a car door, and the American tour had to be postponed.

  Johnny convinced Susanne to take him back and, for a time, seemed content living with her in Stockholm. He did another well-received tour of Europe, got together with Jerry Nolan for another record, Trouble Traveler, and once again took Japan by storm. More live bootlegs were released. There were more sessions with various motley musicians. Everybody wanted to work with Johnny, even though he didn’t show up sometimes, stole clothes and jewelry, not to mention drugs, and raked people through the rock-and-roll coals. It was expected. It was almost cool. Susanne got pregnant, and in 1988 their daughter, Jamie, was born. She stuck by Johnny till the end. The story remained the same. Junk was always a problem. It’s amazing he made it as long as he did.

  His sister, Marion, tells me Johnny tried several times to clean up. “Yeah, he went away about six months before he died. His biggest problem was this: At the beginning it was his own father, and then the breakup when his wife left him, taking the children and him never seeing them again. That had a lot to do with his continuing drug problem. Julie was pregnant by another man when Johnny met her; he stayed with her and took care of her son, and they had Vito and Dino after that. When she left, he never saw or heard from them again. He had no idea where she was; he even had a private investigator looking for her. He never knew if they were dead or alive.” Dino is now sixteen years old. I remark that it seems very unfair to Johnny’s sons that they were deprived of their father. “Oh, it’s left a tremendous strain on them,” she agrees. “They found out he had died from the TV And the only reason they knew about me was that Julie called and asked if they were in Johnny’s will.” She laughs bitterly. “Of course, there was no will.”

  In April 1991, following a tour of Germany, Johnny fulfilled his longtime dream, checking into a motel in New Orleans, hoping to finally hook up with “a bunch of old black musicians” and start a band. He arrived with a cluster of colorful new suits and his pockets full of deutsche marks. The next morning he was dead. “He had always talked about New Orleans, it was just a place he wanted to go. He was very happy to be in New Orleans the night I spoke to him,” Marion asserts. “He was so happy to see the street musicians.” I ask Marion what Johnny’s state of mind was that night. “My son Danny was going to meet him there, and he kept calling Danny, telling him what to get. ‘Make sure you get the truck, bring everything down.’ That’s all he wanted to do, he wanted to leave. He felt that getting out of New York would help his drug problem.”

  “When the police called,” Marion continues, “they just more or less said, ‘The junkie OD’d, and that’s it. They didn’t even rope off the area. We have the feeling that somebody slipped him something. I heard several stories that there was some bad acid going around, and that’s one thing Johnny would never do, ever! He would mostly take any drug, but never hallucinogens. I don’t know if you could say there’s anything like a smart junkie, but Johnny didn’t live all those years not being smart. He knew what to do, and what to do it with. The way he was found, the way the room was, it was a mess. His suits were missing, the money, his passport, all his stage makeup, everything. Nothing was recovered.”

  When I ask Marion about the coroner’s report, I am stunned by what she has to say. “Johnny had leukemia,” she admits sadly. “He never knew it. A lot of leukemia, from what I understand from my physician, can be similar to withdrawals from drugs, and I guess Johnny just took it all for granted.” How far along was the leukemia? I want to know. “It was pretty extensive. According to my physician, he only had six weeks to live.” Was the leukemia listed as his cause of death? “They didn’t put down a cause,” she marvels. “What they said was that he had leukemia, and there were traces of methadone. No alcohol either. Nothing adds up. He had just flown, and John did not fly without drinking on the plane, because he hated flying.” Marion then tells me that she’s trying to find someone to redo the toxicology report but is running into a lot of dead ends. Finally I ask Marion how Johnny was found. “On the floor, alone.”

  Nick Kent, who called Johnny “a fearless little motherfucker” who was “never boring,” saw him a few weeks before his death. “Jesus Christ, I could hardly stand to look at John. You know in a bullfight how when the decisive dagger has been plunged into the neck of the bull and basically it’s all over for the poor creature and it goes limp and cross-eyed before sinking into the sawdust? Well, that’s how Thunders looked … being ushered in: limp and cross-eyed from all the torments he’d been visiting upon himself in the pursuit of maintaining his righteous rock-and-roll identity. A few weeks later he died in New Orleans in a lonely hotel room with only some bad cocaine [and] some prescription methadone … . Que sera sera.”

  In a Village Voice article, Jerry Nolan wrote about losing his friend: “I have a rough time getting through the days. I get real lonely, and I miss Johnny terribly. I don’t like the idea of living without him … . He never had a father. I was like a father to him, a brother to him. It’s just not fair. Everywhere I look I see Johnny’s clones. Poison, Mötley Crüe, I could name a hundred bands that had a Johnny Thunders clone in them.” A few weeks later Jerry told the Village Voice about bumping into Keith Richards, walking down Broadway: “He gave me the typical limp handshake and says, ‘Look, Jerry, I’m sorry. I know what it’s like. I don’t know what to say. I wish I had a poetic answer. But I will say one thing. Somehow, I don’t know, but somehow, hang in there. Stick to it. Don’t give up.’ Keith really picked up my spirits.”

  A year later Jerry Nolan died of a drug-related stroke.

  STEVIE RAY VAUGHAN

  The Sky Is Crying

  In an era when MTV had image-conscious rock and rollers decked out in Duran Duran doll clothes, Stevie Ray Vaughan climbed to the top armed only with his beloved guitar. Nobody could say he was good-looking, but he had magic in his big bony fingers, and his Texas boy’s heart was crammed full of the blues.

  He was just a little guy the local Oak Cliff kids called “Tomato Nose,” but when he secretly plugged in his brother’s guitar, shy Stevie Vaughan became king of the closet. The scrawny kid with the itty-bitty teeth knew his handsome older brother, Jimmie, would pound him when he found him wrapped around his precious guitar, hiding out in his closet, but it was more than worth it.

  Jimmie Vaughan had been a child prodigy, and the family thought young Stevie was copycatting, but it was soon apparent that he, too, had the musical gift. When he was ten years old, mother Martha and daddy Jim bought their youngest son a Masonite toy guitar from Sears. “After he started playing,” said Martha, “he just never quit.” By listening to his brother’s influences, young Stevie was already imitating Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, and Bobby “Blue” Bland, but his main hero was his brother, Jimmie. Instead of trading baseball cards or shooting hoops, Stevie hunkered down with Albert King records, determined to copy the master note for blistering note.

  Jimmie’s first band, the Swinging Pendulums, got gigs all over Dallas, and sometimes twelve-year-old Stevie got to sit in and jam, fortified by a few secret swigs of his daddy’s beer. Though Big Jim had a killer of a temper and a penchant for boozing, for a while he allowed his sons to play their music and maybe get a chance at the big time. But when Jimmie went on to join a successful Texas rock band, the Chessmen, and started staggering home bombed at four in the morning, the Vaughans vowed to keep their youngest away from the music business. Fat chance. After Stevie had flipped burgers at the local Dairy Queen for a while, making seventy cents an hour, he realized all he wanted to do was play guitar. His parents would just have to understand.

  By the time Stevie entered high school, his band had already played several local gigs. He had a black singer, which irked Big Jim no end. The first time Stevie’s dad met Christian Plicque, he had asked him to shine his shoes, but nothing would deter Stevie from his music. When the Chessmen opened for a new mind-boggling guitarist, Jimi Hendrix, Stevie was front and center, gobbling it up, mixing the bold new sound into his
burgeoning bowl of blues.

  The Chessmen fell apart due to heavy drug and alcohol action, but it wasn’t long before Jimmie put Texas Storm together and asked Stevie to play bass until they could round up a permanent member. Finally Stevie felt like his brother’s equal, albeit a temporary equal, and as soon as a bass player was found, Stevie joined another band, Liberation, with singer Christian Plicque. At fifteen Stevie Vaughan was playing seedy, sleazy cellars every night, driving hundreds of miles, making almost no money, missing school, messing around with girls, and doing a whole lot of speed. He tried to hide the high life from his folks, but it showed in his face. After the 1971 Christmas holidays, Stevie really pissed off his parents by announcing he wasn’t going to finish his senior year at high school. Instead, he and his newly named group, Blackbird, were hitting the high road to Austin, where all the groovy people were pursuing their passions. The little redhead with the John Lennon glasses wielding a guitar would fit right in. Big brother Jimmie was already there—how could it not be the coolest place on earth?

  After hanging out in San Francisco with Janis Joplin and taking way too many amphetamines, Jimmie had rediscovered his blues mojo during a Muddy Waters gig and took it to Austin, where he was ripping up the club scene. When Stevie wasn’t playing with his own band, he was always in the audience, hooting for his brother. If Jimmie’s playing could soothe a savage beast, Stevie’s could create one.

  After a disappointing whirlwind trip to Los Angeles with a well-connected musician, Marc Benno, who promised Stevie stardom, the nineteen-year-old was back in Austin, stealing steaks from Safeway for his dinner. Not even twenty, Stevie felt like a washed-up nobody until he found a beat-up 1959 Stratocaster at an Austin instrument store, Heart of Texas Music. “I love this old thing,” he told the owner. “This feels like what I’ve been looking for all these years.” He traded a newer Strat for the funky older one, telling the store owner that it was the only guitar he had ever played that said what he wanted it to say.