by Steve Miller
The Voice Box and First in Line
Billy Goodson (scenester): In the midseventies I went with a friend to this place in Detroit, Frank Gagen’s. I had no idea this place existed. It was great, with the drag queens and the mime syncing and all the coke and the pot and everything all over the place and everybody dressing up in glam. One guy looked like Marc Bolan from T. Rex. It was called Frank Gagen’s, but a guy named Bookie owned it. He was a real bookie, and he had this voice thing where he had to put a little microphone up to his neck to talk. Everyone was going there, sort of underground. Queen came in there after a show, and Freddie picked some kid up and bought him a Maserati.
Vince Bannon: Bookie had his vocal cords cut, but he would talk, although with difficulty, with no voice box. Most of the time he talked, like, in this almost, like, this really, kind of like, slurred whisper. He was in his late sixties.
David Keeps: Vince went in and found Bookie sitting on a bar stool with the trach thing, the cancer mic. Bookie would sort of quack like a duck—that’s what it sounded like. The only person that could really understand him was Vince.
Stirling Silver: I used to go to Bookie’s when it was called Frank Gagen’s. It was a gay bar, and I went there for the express purpose of meeting so-called fag hags. There were girls that were beautiful and wanted to dress up but were sick of men hitting on them. They wanted to be around good-looking, well-dressed men that complimented them and had no agenda. I met so many beautiful women there. I went there a lot with Andy Peabody, who was later the singer for Coldcock. We went to Gagen’s all the time. He looked a lot like me: was very gayish looking, good hair—he was a hairdresser. One night we walked in and to our immediate left was Freddie Mercury and the Queen band.
Billy Goodson: My aunt used to go to Frank Gagen’s when it was a restaurant in the twenties or thirties. I tended bar there for a few months in the eighties or so. It used to be drag shows before it was punk rock. There was an oval circle of booths, and you could walk around and on each table see a pile of coke or smack or anything you wanted. This was during the drag scene in the seventies.
Hiawatha Bailey: Bookie’s had been this gay bar I went to where we could dress like the New York Dolls and there were all these six-foot drag queens. It was one of the rare places you could go in Detroit dressed like that and not get your ass kicked. It was just a pick-up joint. Bookie freaked me out with that thing on his neck. Next thing you know, Scott Campbell and Vince Bannon were hanging out with these rich old homos so they could put bands in there.
Michelle Southers, aka Bambi (scenester): It was a gay bar during the day; it always stayed that way. He was actually a bookie—that’s how he got his name. I was at Bookie’s for the bands at night when I could, but the gay guys adopted me during the day when I could be there. The first modeling I did was for a hair magazine called Flair. My hairdresser was Danny Smith; he was a Sassoon-trained guy. This was 1978. I was dancing with a fake ID, I was a sixteen-year-old making $3,000 to $10,000 a week. I had whatever money gives you.
Scott Campbell: I met Vince Bannon at a party. He said he was rhythm guitarist for Bowie on the Diamond Dogs tour, who turned out to be Stacey Hayden. He said he had a band and didn’t. He basically lied about everything, but I liked him anyway. He was the one who had scouted out Bookie’s when people like Alice Cooper hung out there. They had an after-party for Alice in ’75 for the Welcome to My Nightmare tour at Bookie’s. Everyone knew it as Frank Gagen’s. You go down to Frank Gagen’s da da da, you don’t want to pay to get in, da da da da, beautiful cruiser, at Frank Gagen’s. Even though it was a gay bar, it already had people from the rock world hanging out at it.
Vince Bannon: I went in there with Scott Campbell from the Sillies and Andy Peabody and just said, “Hey listen, we’re going to try and do shows in here.” He’d lost a lot of his business because a better gay bar had opened next door called Menjo’s. He was at a point where he didn’t really care about the business, but it would be great if he made some money.
Kirsten Rogoff (Algebra Mothers, Sillies, bassist): You had Bookie’s and then Menjo’s on the other side, so I mean a person really, if they were so inclined, had the best of all three worlds there. You had Menjo’s, you had another place, the Glory Hole, and then in the middle you had Bookie’s, where everything in between went on. So if you’re bisexual and you wanted to buy sex, you had that; if you’re trisexual and you want to try something new, you could try that.
Rick Metcalf: I was studying to be a lawyer and started liking other music like Blue Oyster Cult and Hawkwind. I read about them in Creem, like I read about a lot of music. The first time I had seen that magazine was when it was a tabloid, and I saw it at this biker house in Birmingham near Southfield. It was amazing. The writing was really cool and had some leftist politics and some at the time I didn’t get—half the reason I read the Fifth Estate was the comics. I was like, “What the fuck are you arguing about?” But the comics were really funny. In May ’78 we went to the Hash Bash, this annual stoner event in Ann Arbor. They had it at the U of M gymnasium and first had a jam band playing, and all these stoner types; we probably looked like late-seventies stoners, but we had some bikers with us too. We got kicked out of the show for trying to resell tickets that we found in the trash. Then we found a flyer for this sex bash, at some kind of hooker bar that was within walking distance from the Hash Bash. It was such a contrast to these hippies bragging about the best Thai weed and people depantsing each other to slouching all cooler-than-you with a feather boa. The Sillies were playing at the hooker event, so it was even better. I’d never seen stuff like that. And they had flyers for another Sillies show at Bookie’s. I called Bookie’s the weekend of the show and I asked, “Is this a bar?” “Do you sell beer?” Really stupid questions.
Tesco Vee (Meatmen, Blight, vocalist, editor, Touch and Go magazine): I was the little suburban kid at Bookie’s, and I would be, like, going in the bathroom to take a piss, and there’d be, like, a bunch of, you know, like, sluts in the boys room. I was like, “Oh my God! What’s going on? These girls are in the men’s room!” Mom warned me about gay guys, but she didn’t warn me about girls in the men’s room. What do I do now? I just hid my penis and peed.
Dave Feeny (Hysteric Narcotics, the Orange Roughies, keyboards, guitar, founder, Tempermill studio): Bookie’s was like that PSA, “Your brain on drugs,” come to life. For a suburban kid—we were from Livonia—it was like an amusement park.
Gerald Shohan: When Bookie’s started, it was basically Vince and Andy Peabody talking Bookie into letting this kind of thing happen to his club. They talked him into doing Wednesdays or Tuesdays. Then it got into another day. Then it was bringing in money and people. Finally we got the weekend nights. Sunday was still left for the drag shows. So Sunday morning we would, a lot of times, we—being Coldcock, this band we had with Vince and Andy and me and Bob Mulrooney—were rehearsing there in the basement, and the drag show would go on at night. We’d stick around for the drag shows.
David Keeps: Vince and Scott had the whole relationship with Bookie. Vince booked Bookie’s. It couldn’t have been a more fantastic venue for punk rock. It was like a grown-up supper club let loose. It had a black-and-white tile floor and these fake leather booths. Bookie’s was special. Bookie’s was, like, basically being allowed to go in this place—you know, like, parents would have the living room that none of the kids were allowed to be in? It was like having access to that and rigging it up. It was really key to keeping things alive in the city during that period.
Tex Newman: Bookie’s had these great old lights that had, like, eight different colors. It was like a ballroom with these ornate ceilings that formed an arch, a dome, antebellum, and these huge booths that were handmade and were just great to sit in. It had the room upstairs with the secret door, and the basement was a real basement, and the kitchen was down there when everyone first started playing there. There was a big sign over the bar that said something like, “Help those that can’t
do anything about what they are.” It was a transvestite bar, gaudy but really cool. It made you feel like you are in something. The fact that it was also a gay bar, and many people hadn’t been to that kind of thing, gave it an element of voyeurism. But really, it was the bands that pulled everyone in at Bookie’s, because without that there was no excuse to go.
Chris Panackia: The only people that could stand punk rock music were the gays, and Bookie’s was a drag bar, so they accepted them as “Look at them; they’re different. They’re expressing themselves.” Bookie’s became the place that you could play. Bookie’s had its clique, and there were a lot of bands that weren’t in that clique. Such as Cinecyde. The Mutants really weren’t. Bookie’s bands were the 27, which is what the Ramrods became, Coldcock, the Sillies, the Algebra Mothers, RUR. Vince Bannon and Scott Campbell had this Bookie’s because it was handed to them basically. You know, “Okay, let’s do this punk rock music. We got a place.” To get a straight bar to allow these bands that drew flies to play at a Friday and Saturday night was nearly impossible. What bar owner is going to say, “Oh yeah, you guys can play your originals, wreck the place, and have no people?” Perfect for a bar owner. Loves that, right? There really wasn’t another venue.
Mike Skill: Bookie’s would have us play one night on a weekend and then Destroy All Monsters the next. There were a lot of really good bands playing by then. Things had moved out of the kind of show bars, those places with three sets a night.
Bob Mulrooney: There would always be a bigger variety of people when the Romantics would play anywhere.
Tesco Vee: You went to see the Romantics because all the hot girls would go.
Scott Campbell: First Romantics show at Bookie’s was early ’78. The Romantics didn’t draw anything. They were signed at Diversified Management Agency, and they were working a lot, but they didn’t draw until early ’79. Then they got backing at WWWW for their single, “Tell It to Carrie.” Rich Cole had been a roadie for the Mutants, and I knew Jimmy Marinos ’cause I’d run into him over at the music store at Eastland. They wanted me to produce their first single, but I didn’t like what they were doing.
Mike Skill: My main impetus was getting in the studio and recording music—that’s what I wanted to do, and be a songwriter. I wrote, “What I Like About You” on a summer afternoon. My dad had a quarter acre in Fraser, real nice out there at the time. I just had an acoustic guitar and one day jumped on the picnic table and wrote it. I had to go to rehearsal that night. I had no car, and I was always late getting to practice. But that day I borrowed my mom’s car and I got there early, and it was just me and the drummer. I said, “I got this thing,” and we played it.
Chris Panackia: The Romantics eventually would play three nights at Bookie’s and sell out every night. They played the Silverbird on a Monday night and didn’t announce the show until just before doors. This was right when “Tell It to Carrie” was starting to hit and people were just waiting for them to explode. When they announced it on the radio, 6 Mile and Telegraph became a parking lot. There were probably a thousand people outside there that couldn’t get in.
Bill Kozy (Speedball, guitarist): I was real young, and my pals from Warren Avenue took me to the Silverbird when the Romantics did a surprise show. Beers were 25 cents. It was this rowdy rock crowd, but things were different than that. The Romantics’ fans looked like late-seventies rock people.
Cathy Gisi: The Romantics played at this little tavern in Hamtramck in this residential neighborhood with wartime-era houses and families. The Romantics were gonna play this corner bar. The cops were called four times because the neighbors couldn’t stand the noise, and they kept shutting them down. They’d wait ten minutes and start all over again. Finally the cops came back and shut the power down on the bar itself. So the drummer ended up doing a fifteen-minute drum solo until finally the cops took his drumsticks and broke them.
Mike Skill: We started creating our own look, our own vibe. Being into rock music, we liked dressing up more. The natural progression was to do the leather because, well, the Dolls used it. It was much softer. It breathed better than vinyl. We made it more like sixties, and theirs was more like Rolling Stones.
Irene DeCook (makeup artist, leather fashion designer): I was doing stuff for gay S&M people in Detroit. I was making leather clothes, leather chaps. I started out with fabric when I was sixteen when I was designing and modeling. I only knew how to make women’s clothes. Then when I was eighteen or nineteen, my instructor said, “Why don’t you put your clothes into one of our fashion shows?” which was a drag show. So I got into the gay community making drag clothes. Then got into the gay leather scene. The Romantics had this idea for red leather, and the owner of a leather company who I was friendly with called me and said, “I got this little band in here. I’m asking your permission to give them your number” and gave them my number. I had never heard of them. The Romantics were a big thing in the city—lots of hype and their managers were sure they were going to be huge.
Mike Skill: Our suits were wearing out. We had vinyl, but it was too hot and we couldn’t afford leather at first. Then we were about to get signed, and we happened to meet Irene DeCook. So we got together with her.
Irene DeCook: Their managers, Joel Zuckerman and Arnie Tencer, called me, and they’re like, “I want you to meet these guys. It’s the Romantics, and we’ll give you an album cover.” They’re acting like big shots. I’m not impressed. They thought I’d be, “Wow! It’s the Romantics!” So I went to meet them, and it was in their rehearsal hall in Gratiot, and they were all, you know, the four guys sitting cross-legged on the floor, had been rehearsing all day. They didn’t look like rock stars. They just looked like little kids. They were a few years older than me. And we met and I said, “Yeah, we’ll do it.” Before this they didn’t have any money for leather, but they had finally gotten this record deal, and they’d gotten an advance and got to get some real clothes. And before then they were wearing pants that were made of table cloth material because that’s what they had the money for. It was fake vinyl, and it gave them all rashes. They were just so excited they would get some leather. They’d seen some of my work. But the main thing was that they had to be so tight that they had to lay down to put them on. So I’d have to fly out and do fittings and take in their clothes for the four years that we did this, regularly. Then as they got money, they got more and more and more.
Mike Skill: We went for fittings. She’d come over to the studio or rehearsal hall, and she’d do a fitting. Then for the final fitting you’d go to her house, and if you needed anymore, you’d go again. She would get them tighter and tighter and tighter. At her apartment there were kinds of collars and stuff on the wall and in her room and stuff too, because you’d change in her room.
Irene DeCook: The Romantics did an interview on WWWW, and Jimmy talked about me wearing all leather clothes and spiked-heel boots, and how strange my apartment was with whips and chains and weird sexual devices hanging on the walls.
Mike Skill: She was a character, and it added to the whole allure of the Romantics. She was part of the whole thing.
Irene DeCook: But the main thing was that they wanted these fucking pants so tight they had to lay down to put them on. So I made the pants; we fitted them, and they go off to Florida to do the album. I sent them down the pants, and they called me and said, “Well, we can’t put them on!” It’s like, “You gotta lay down.” And they laid down and they put on those fucking pants. That was the first time, but I was flown out to many different places. As they got money they got two or three made of everything, and leather does stretch. You have to take it in every so often so that it fits right. Jimmy would have to have four of everything, with him sitting down and sweating like a maniac. And I actually have a gold album from the fourth album. At the time my daughter was five, and Rich’s pants looked about the size of hers. They were just tiny, tiny little boys. I mean everybody was super-skinny. The waists were like 26. That first album hit, and they e
nded up going to Australia and Japan before I could make them a wardrobe, and they ended up having to wear one pair of leather pants for sixty dates. They were soaking wet. They would take them off and turn them inside out and they would sort of dry, if they could. And that’s all they had. Then they’d put them on and wear them the next night. They’d still be damp from the night before. When they came back they were like beef jerky. Pubic hair–encrusted beef jerky.
Mike Skill: When things started happening we were already thinking, like, “Man, get a record deal, get a record deal, get a record deal.” We just kept pounding it and meeting all the people we could. Our managers—even though they were inadequate as far as business, they didn’t know business, they were learning it as they went—they would really keep us financed. “You guys go rehearse; you guys go write songs. We’ll take care of all the other stuff.” The only problem with it is the managers were our friends, and we ended up firing them because they were hiding money from us. It turned out to be a sour, sour thing, unfortunately. What they did is they tried to keep us from getting—this is not my words—but to keep us from getting spoiled, they would dole out checks.
John Kordosh: I didn’t know Arnie and Joel until they were managing the Romantics, and then, of course, we ran into them a lot. I thought they were slimeballs. We were concerned for the Romantics’ sake. Then they got signed through CBS, and it looked pretty good for them. It wasn’t until much later that I realized they were really getting ripped off on their own songs, which is a pretty damn old story.
Tom Morwatts: The Romantics had a couple of really knucklehead managers that were always pulling some shit. I told Wally the first time I met those guys, “Look, I’d be real careful with these guys. I personally wouldn’t work with ’em.” I got such a bad vibe from them, but who knows? They may have gotten nowhere without those guys.