by Richard Boch
Burroughs sat at a desk: gray metal, scratch-and-dent, office furniture salvage. The only thing missing was the typewriter. I remember his voice sounded proper but strange, like an old radio broadcast. He was wearing a three-piece suit, very considered and nearly impeccable. The PA hissed but Burroughs kept reading. I picked up my beer, moved closer and took a ride on the Nova Express.
The Burroughs reading by now seems long past but that strange voice still speaks. I’m outside working and the street’s getting busy when a Fuck you gets lobbed in the direction of the door. Club regulars Hal and Roxanne ask “What was that?” as they step inside. I either say “Nothing” or say nothing and the remarkable parade continues.
I open the chain for painter and underground film star Duncan Hannah accompanied by Contortions model and The Correct Sadist author Terence Sellers. He’s cool and calm on the surface and offers a quiet hello; she’s chilly, offers nothing.
It’s another few rounds of nothing until Spandex-clad porn star Sharon Mitchell arrives. Decades away from a second calling as Doctor Mitchell, the Wanda Whips Wall Street and Load Warrior actress shimmies her way thru the door with a wide-open smile and a deep throaty hello.
Art world fixture Christophe de Menil is already inside drinking and tipping heavily or maybe the other way around. She got out of a limo a half-hour ago calling “Mark, Mark!” as in Benecke, the Studio 54 doorman. Either her driver took a wrong turn or she thinks we all look alike.
By now the crowd is filling the sidewalk but I’m in no hurry to open the chain. We’re just getting started. There’s no end in sight.
“I’m a Friend of Steve”
When I first began working the door, 77 White was already becoming the only game in town. Studio 54 had a running start but by the spring of 1979, the Mudd Club was ascending. The seventies were winding down and Disco was becoming more of a cliché, a punch line or point of reference at best. Still, if you couldn’t get into Mudd, you could always grab a cab and head back uptown.
Deciding who or what, yes or no; I still couldn’t believe I was working the Mudd Club door. As for the crowd in front of me, you relate to some and deal with others. Starting with the basics, like How many? or Hold on, was simple enough. Telling someone It’s going to be a few minutes gave people hope without getting them upset. Sorry, I can’t right now only made things worse, and a bullhorn-like delivery of The club is now closed had little or no effect. Don’t look them in the eye and don’t engage, keep moving and don’t turn your back, cut your losses and head inside—that’s what Fridays and Saturdays were like. The rest of the week was a close second: some people pushed too hard, dropped names, offered business cards. Lots of people tried using the “I’m a friend of Steve” routine, which usually meant they weren’t. Others mentioned names I’d never heard and a few even told me, “I’m a friend of Richard’s.” I smiled and told them, “Richard’s off tonight.”
The crowd outside, good kids, bad kids, 1980, by Nick Taylor.
In the end no one really cared about anything once they got inside. People who didn’t get in went somewhere else, went home or threw something at me. Some stopped me on the street and wanted to know why I wouldn’t let them in. Sometimes I ignored them and other times I told them I was sorry. Occasionally I told them to fuck off; once I went home and fucked one of them. That person came in the next time he showed up—but he paid five dollars.
I learned people are just people. Nothing is personal and a bad attitude is worth very little. It took a while but I learned.
Freaks and Beauties
New Yorkers, suburban kids and escapees from Middle America along with West Coast immigrants and a contingent of Europeans: those were the new faces showing up every night. Freaks and beauties, often one and the same, all wanted to get thru the door. I did my best to pass gentle judgment, occasionally wondering if I’d let myself in were the situation reversed. Sometimes I might have, other times, maybe not.
Mudd Club portrait series, Punks of New York by William Coupon.
Joey Arias, 1979
Some club regulars were difficult but a lot of them were easy; most I was happy to see. Self-proclaimed Queen of the Mudd, Tina L’Hotsky was a full-figured blonde in a cocktail dress. She was a feminist of sorts, a creative force in the spirit of White Street. Writer, actress and Mudd denizen Vicki Pedersen referred to her as a “great conceptualizer.” A bigger-than-life Barbie doll (she once cooked a Barbie in a frying pan for her 1977 short film Barbie), Tina had Steve’s ear. She was a star somewhere in the middle of the Mudd Club constellation, and the Crazy Spanish Girls, Cha Cha, and Joan Crawford Mother’s Day parties wouldn’t have happened without her. I liked Tina, and she always stopped to say hello before heading to the bar. Not everyone was that easy.
Colette, 1979.
Unsure if saying hello is part of the conversation, I only hear the question, “Who are you?” I try not to appear frightened and do my best to say, “I’m Richard; I just started working here.” She rolls her eyes, takes another drag on her cigarette and starts telling me how things work.
Leisa Stroud was one of the first people I met the first night I worked the door. Short bleached hair and a tight party dress, a pair of heels and a pocketbook, Leisa wasn’t shy about standing outside and making sure I knew the people I was supposed to know. She kept tabs on who was inside and always let me know who was important—to her.
Leisa Stroud and pocketbook in a booth on the second floor, 1979, by Alan Kleinberg.
Tina L’Hotsky, 1980. Hidden Identities series by Marcus Leatherdale.
I’d watch Leisa work the room and it seemed she had Steve wrapped around her finger. Actor, artist and Lounge Lizard John Lurie even called her a fucking tornado—he meant it in a good way. In 1979, John was Leisa’s boyfriend but he knew that everyone from Brian Eno to Larry Rivers to David Byrne was crazy about her.
Leisa was there from the beginning and deserves some credit for helping to turn the Mudd Club into the indelible madhouse it became. I deserve some credit for letting attitude and beauty pass for charm.
Portrait photographer William Coupon was well versed in beauties and freaks. He saw it at Studio 54, where he shot some “classy black and whites” on the sly. Truman Capote even suggested Coupon put together a photo book about Studio, visions far removed from In Cold Blood’s “high plains of western Kansas.” That idea ended quickly when 54 owner Steve Rubell got wind of it.
The Mudd Club was next and the photographer was ready. Coupon’s first paid assignment: photograph the new place on White Street for Interview magazine. Three months later in February ’79, he told Steve Mass he wanted to take more pictures and Steve was agreeable. He set himself up on the second floor of Mudd and over the next several weeks shot portraits of various Mudd Club regulars. He photographed Talking Head David Byrne dressed in pajamas and Walter Steding with violin in hand. Images of Joey Arias, Klaus Nomi, Tina L’Hotsky and Marcia Resnick were serious but playful and equally stylish. Coupon calls the Mudd portraits his “first in a long series of subcultures.” Future stars, ghosts and survivors, their photos soon hung on the wall opposite the first-floor bar.
Don’t Leave Yet
Back outside I stood at the chain and thought, Oh no, not this one. By the next night I was thinking, I love this one.
Abbijane was a fashion designer, a Mudd Club regular and a lover of Rock ’n’ Roll. She came on strong, greeting me with a loud sustained Hi and a dose of genuine in-your-face enthusiasm. Her early fashion shows, staged at locations like the Forty-second Street Horn & Hardart Automat, were not-to-be-missed events. There was never any question of Abbijane coming in; the only question, when could I come in and dance?
I remembered Abbijane as one of the girls who screamed and jumped up and down in front of the stage at CBGB’s for the band Milk ’n’ Cookies. Hard to forget based on decibels alone, now she was screaming Hold this! and tossing her jacket at DJ David Azarch. The toss and scream became a mating ritual. Abbijane
and David fell in love.
Abbi and I became friends at the Mudd Club and our friendship lasted thirty years. She was the first to wag her finger disapprovingly when I started spinning out of control. She told it, or more accurately, screamed it to me straight, “Stop what you’re doing, I’ve seen it destroy too many people I care about.” I didn’t listen and we kept on dancing.
Klaus Nomi is looking at you, 1979, by Alan Kleinberg.
The last time I saw Abbijane I said “Good night” and gave her a kiss. She said “I can’t believe you’re leaving, don’t leave yet.”
Nomi, Nobody and Night School
It’s difficult to remember if it was the same night I met Abbi, but the moment remains unforgettable. Regardless of who or what was passing thru the door it was hard not to stop and stare.
Operatic vocalist and performer Klaus Nomi crossed the street wearing a shiny, cropped jacket with a satin collar, looking like a cross between an intergalactic bellhop and a toy soldier. His hair was blue-black with a high widow’s peak and twisted into a small point on top of his head. His skin was pale, his lips pursed and painted blackish red. He carried himself with a jittery grace and an understated sense of politesse (a funny little word I’ve heard Mick Jagger use). No one looked, sang or did anything like Nomi.
He soon wound up sardined in the center of a crowd that was backed up onto the street. I can still hear Joey Kelly yelling, “Klaus, get in here!” as he opened and closed the chain. It seemed one minute Klaus was in the crowd, the next he was in the door and the moment in between disappeared. I looked around wondering if anyone else noticed but Joey was already busy and the disappearing moment came and went. Then I turned around and that weird blond-haired guy with horn-rimmed glasses was headed for the door.
Bob Williamson was the polar opposite of Klaus Nomi. A blend of middle-age prep school nerd and way too many Heinekens, he was the Lauren Hutton pseudo Svengali and the only guy who wore Topsiders to the Mudd Club. Bob was the person Steve Mass was listening to ramble on and on the night of my ten-second interview; he was at the club nearly every night—still talking when the sun came up. Even I listened to him drone about everything from the art scene and Public Image Ltd.’s Metal Box to the fuckable waitresses at One University Place. He was Zelig—here, there and everywhere. With a good hustle and a good eye he fooled anyone who took him seriously. Years later, people figured out he was nobody.
Bob stopped as I opened the chain. He asked how I was doing but I’m not sure I responded. That’s when Francine arrived, squeezed my hand and said, “Hi doll.” I smiled and said ouch.
Francine Hunter opened Jungle Red Studios on Desbrosses Street in 1977. The Mudd Club opened a year later six blocks away. She had her eye on White Street from the beginning.
Shortly after I started working at Mudd, Francine brought Night School to 77 White. It was an Invitation Only event, meaning only the people we let in, got in. For the high price of six dollars a person, Francine gave the crowd a “fashion performance to teach you a lesson.” The ensemble cast featured Cookie Mueller, future Mudd employee Gennaro Palermo, photographer Nan Goldin and a host of desperate nightlife denizens hungry for fame. An over-the-top, under-the-radar smash, the show was a comedic take on the world of fetish, leather bars, bondage and discipline. Whether or not you dabbled in that world, got taken down a notch, and learned from the experience, you still needed Night School. I had, I did, but I needed more.
A few months earlier, Francine’s character, Mrs. Frontporch, came to life on the Mudd Club stage in a Honey Walters production called Sleazy Living, a loving tribute to old-school burlesque. With no better setting than the ready-for-anything world of White Street, Night School and Sleazy were beloved by the regulars, amused the curious, and sent more than a few running for the bar. When Sleazy’s giant vagina began dancing to Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff,” the line was drawn and crossed, and the Mudd Club was on its way to becoming the Farthest Off of the Off-Off Broadway world.
Whether it was the crowd buying drinks or a vaginormous spectacle, Steve Mass liked what he saw and purchased Francine’s mailing list for two hundred fifty dollars. The Mudd Club was already the new watering hole-in-the-wall for the “Downtown 500” and by late spring-early summer 1979 there was simply nothing like it.
I try and keep up with Francine Hunter when she talks about New York in the late ’70s but it’s hard to get in a single word. When the subject turns to Mudd she’s clear on one thing—“It was a love story.” When she squeezes my hand we can still feel it.
Class of ’79
White Street was a last stand of do it yourself and let it happen nightlife. It was a comfort zone filled with what were fast becoming familiar faces, seemingly like minds and the pursuit of creative endeavor. There was a sense of community and camaraderie—a connection based solely on being there—a connection that remains to this day. That’s how it was for me, and it seemed the same for Lisa Rosen and her brother, Danny.
A fashion icon without even trying, Lisa often arrived with stylist and photographer Sophie VDT. Eighteen years old, born in New York Hospital and proud of it, Lisa helped define everything that was possible, beautiful and insane about the Mudd Club Class of ’79.
Danny Rosen was only sixteen but played the field like he was seventeen and a half. He hung out with Ken Compton and Boris Policeband, was jazz-cool and he owned it. He briefly appeared in the early Lounge Lizards lineup and made a little noise with Basquiat’s band Gray. Like his sister, Danny was an accidental icon and carried a thrift shop suit with an easy swagger and bespoke style. Lisa’s smile was mile-wide while Danny worked a grin or a scowl with bad-boy charm. Both were hard to resist—Mudd Club heart and soul.
Hal Ludacer was another one of the kids. Seventeen when the club opened, he was hard to miss and one of the prettiest people in the room. He grew up on Long Island and lived on South Street with his brothers Randy and Kenneth. I spotted him and Randy at the bar a few months before I started working at the club, and I tried not to stare. They both had on white T-shirts and Hal wore dress trousers, a look made famous by Brando and Belmondo twenty-five years earlier: beauty rechanneling beauty and it still worked.
The Offenders poster, Super 8mm and misfit Mudd Club movie stars, 1980, courtesy Lisa Genet.
The brothers had a band called Ludacer and I’d seen them play at Max’s. They went on after a screening of Scott and Beth B’s film The Offenders that featured a host of misfit Mudd Club movie stars. The band looked and sounded high school-era garage and when they finished I headed for White Street. The film didn’t seem much more than a bunch of kids and one or two adults in trench coats making a movie and acting like kids. Despite what it was or wasn’t, I had respect for the work as well as the effort. I had the chance to say it then but instead I just watched. Today The Offenders marks the time and vice versa; it points a direction forward and brings back memories, most of them good.
I called Hal recently and he told me Mudd was just “a continuation of high school” but quickly realized “it was more like junior high, the formative years.” I told him based on our behavior alone it often was. He remembers the “amazing convergence and a special time” on White Street. I remember the connection everyone shared—along with the drugs and the drinking and the sex. Then I thought about actual high school, Class of ’71, and started laughing.
The Most Interesting People
Those school days gone, five years passed. I got to the city in 1976 and I never thought about leaving. James Nares left London in 1974, landed in New York and felt the same way. He was twenty-one and remembers, “The moment I arrived I knew I was home.” He looked around thinking that “the streets were like Rauschenberg paintings,” the urban combine of surface, ruin and discard becoming something else, something beautiful. By 1978, walking from White Street to Murray, I saw those Rauschenberg paintings too. I couldn’t wait to put some paper on the wall and start working.
There was a sense of great comfort in
that rubble and chaos. James made his way downtown, found a place on Jay Street not far from 77 White and wound up living in the little bridge that connected two buildings several stories above the ground. I was south on Murray, and Diego was busy with Steve and Anya just a few blocks north. The neighborhood crowd included Richard Serra, photographer Allan Tannenbaum, Donnie Christensen, actor Lindzee Smith and artist Jo Shane. Boris Policeband was living nearby in a basement apartment, heating up his nightly can of spaghetti and watching a half-dozen television sets simultaneously. Painter, filmmaker and future Academy Award winner Katherine “Kathy” Bigelow was a few blocks east living in the same building as the Ludacers. Almost everyone could be found hanging at Magoo’s or Barnabas Rex, the local art bar dives. Showing up for a drink was the only means of communication other than telegraph, mail or a corded phone.
James started making films, mini-movies and the almost feature-length Rome ’78, a sword-and-sandal epic with a Lower East Side vibe. He did a performance piece at The Kitchen, an alternative space in SoHo. Steve Mass was there, saw the work and was anxious to do something with his ambulance service dollars. He told James he was opening a new place on White Street and was interested in sponsoring some projects. When the “new place” opened, James fit right in.
James Nares always thought, “Mudd was the place with the most interesting people, the place where it was happening.” He met Lisa Rosen there the same night he met Edwige, the Parisian Punk icon. Lisa spotted James from across the room and wanted to know more. Knowing more turned into love and marriage.
The scene below Canal Street now centered on White: another new constellation, another spin on the Walter Steding Theory.
James Nares and Diego Cortez, 1978, by Bobby Grossman.