Anyway, Nik invented the Fakes as the antidote to the darkness and oddness of the Demonics—the Fakes were a side band designed to play power pop and have fun. They came right at the moment when the nihilism of the punk scene had run its course and people were hungry for some simple rock pop, some harmonies, with a danceable beat as long as the band looked New and Cool. People could dance to the Fakes, and they became much more popular than the unclassifiable Demonics. Nik did it as a kind of lark. He did it as a kind of calculation.
ADA
But Nik’s pop songs were always the best thing he did. The other projects don’t age as well, don’t you think?
ME
He doesn’t feel that way. But he loved making fun pop songs and was very good at it.
ADA
What happened with the Fakes? With that sound, why didn’t they make it?
ME
Well. They almost did.
ADA
What do you mean? I never knew that.
ME
I shouldn’t have brought it up. It is a long sore story.
ADA
How come I never heard about it before? What happened?
ME
I don’t even know what happened. You’ll have to ask Nik. But he won’t talk about it.
ADA
Well, can you tell me everything you do know?
ME
I can’t. I would be guessing. You will just have to ask him.
ADA
You two never talked about it?
ME
We never did.
ADA
I don’t believe it.
ME
It seemed almost rude, somehow. Like it violated the rules between us. We don’t talk out everything. We keep a lot in the air between us. Why is this so important?
ADA
It’s not, I just feel like it would explain a lot.
ME
I don’t think it would explain much about Nik. At all. I think you are missing the point about Nik. Making it with his fake band? I don’t think it was important. But you could make it seem that way if you wanted to.
Ada said nothing. She glared at me.
ME
I’m sorry.
ADA
Cut.
That was the end of my interview. I guess it didn’t go so well. She took her two-person crew and went over to Nik’s to do his interview. Wait until she tried to push him into her narrative suppositions, her easy causations, her inciting incidents, and her cinematic reductions. Her “editing later.” Try it out on Uncle Nik.
I never get mad at Ada, so this feeling was new for me. I was mad, I could feel it. I resented her wanting to know everything. And to order it somehow. The truth is, although I never asked Nik about it, I also used to wonder what really had happened.
I had first glimpsed the way things were going when I watched him play at the Fakes’ first three gigs. By the second gig, all the little girls had come out. The underage girls from the Valley. It was like the word went out into the little-girl underground. The front of the stage was a sea of pogoing chicklets in miniskirts and golden perms. They wore lots of eyeliner and they gave their love to the boys on the stage. By the third gig, the Fakes were a hit, a sensation, albeit on an extremely local level. I’m not sure exactly how that happened. Had the Fakes been touted by a mention on KROQ? I don’t remember the details. And Nik would never talk about it, no matter how drunk he was. I could, I guess, go back through the Chronicles, but of course that would not be an accurate rendering of history. Or, another way to put it, it would be an accurate rendering of how Nik viewed it, history put through the Nik-o-lyzer. In any case, as I recall it, this was the moment one of the pestilent pop impresarios appeared in Nik’s life. Lee “Lux” Smith had long lurked at the periphery of the various Los Angeles scenes. I have sort of tracked him over the years. He always turned up in the margins, he always had his icky fingers in an anthology or a documentary. His mother was a famous actress—he worked out of her enormous Laurel Canyon mansion. He had the odor of privilege about him; he drove a pristine white 1966 Mustang convertible.
Lux started out as a songwriter. He penned a couple of hit singles for a sixties novelty group, the Ginger Jangles (yes, they had red hair). After that, Lee had attached to various marginal acts. One was a young whisper-voiced girl who was trying to do the Emmylou Harris/Gram Parsons southern angel stuff. She had long native-straight black hair and she sang her country pop without pedal steel guitar or anything too offensively country. She had some minor success and then quickly disappeared. Then there was Lee Lux’s other protégé, an uncomfortably handsome singer from Canada who bleated out didactic political songs with acoustic accompaniment. Lux remade him as some kind of glitzed-out superstar and quickly got a record deal. Lux saw to it that they spent a lot of money, and the singer’s first album had these huge, lush production numbers. He was hyped beyond belief, shoved on billboards, and seemed to be opening for everyone. But the hype didn’t hit the right note for his still-earnest presentation. Or maybe he was too pretty or the timing was bad. His one and only record sank without a trace. You can still buy it on eBay for a chunk of money, perhaps if you are a collector of obscurities. Or a collector of artifacts of people who sell out for exactly nothing in return. But that sounds like a terrible, mean thing to collect.
One wonders, or at least I wonder, what happened to these people? Not the one-hit wonders but the no-hit wonders? Those actual people who became roadkill as the Lee Lux types move on. I can easily imagine the unreturned phone calls. The years when a second chance still feels within reach. But then what? I wonder, of course, because Nik is sort of one of them. Someone, somewhere, no doubt wonders what became of roadkill Nik. But it really pains me to think of him in this category. I shudder to think of him as a footnote in the documentary yet to be made about Lee Lux Smith. Which is one of the reasons why I thought Ada’s idea for her movie wasn’t so bad, despite my noncompliance. I really didn’t want the smug opportunists, the people who dine off other people’s lives, to tell all the stories.
After Lee Lux failed with the singer-songwriter, he let it be known he was looking for a new act.
The Fakes were not the ideal candidates for Lux. But he wanted to find a way into the new new thing. And one thing I have to concede: Lux did recognize how good Nik was and how timely the Fakes were. I remember being backstage and seeing him appear. He must have been in his mid-thirties then—he just looked old to me. He wore a sport coat over a T-shirt. He pushed the sleeves of the coat up his arms a little, which must have been his concession to the moment—he was, after all, all about concessions to the moment. But he still looked out of place with his uncommitted haircut that was short in the front and long in the back, and his iron, handsome jaw, and his way of smiling that felt moneyed and important. I watched him throw a friendly arm around Nik and whisper to him. Already he colluded, naturally he was on Nik’s side. He knew things, he could grow and spin his indispensability in the course of a conversation. Nik waved me over. I remember exactly how it went down.
“Dee Dee, this is Lee Lux.” Nik called me Dee Dee back then. Denise was only for serious moments and my mother. I held out my hand and gave him a cheeky sarcastic wink. At twenty-one I had somehow developed the manner of a drag queen. This was my version of punk attitude. He kissed my hand and I curtsied.
“Now, why isn’t this creature in the band? You can stand behind a keyboard, can’t you, darlin’?” Lee said. God, he really was a shameless sleazeball. He was so corny, it was almost fabulous, you know? Almost, but not at all, actually. Up close I could see he had a mouthful of gleaming straight teeth. From his mother, I couldn’t help thinking. That is the thing about these sorts of people. They are quite charming, and shallow as it sounds, everyone likes some shiny teeth. (One other truly subversive thing about the Sex Pistols and the British punks: bad teeth. Bad smells, bad teeth, bad skin—this was the real stuff of rebellion. It didn’t last long as an aesthetic.
But wasn’t it amazing for a moment?)
Nik and I went to Hamburger Hamlet on Sunset Boulevard with Lee Lux. The rest of the band was cordially not invited. That was the first sign, I think, that this guy was bad news. But we also already knew he was bad news. Everyone knew it—so you had your guard up. But Lux used that notoriety and made it work to his advantage.
He said, “You know me. Everyone knows me. I am the king opportunist. I am the ruthless man-eating star maker. Either get with me or get out of my way because I’m not nice.”
We all laughed.
He said, “You can be nice. I can be the cutthroat. I have no qualms, none whatsoever, about doing what needs to be done. I am a shark, I am a piranha.”
Nik chain-smoked. He didn’t say anything at all, but he listened. I sipped a Coke. Lux bit into a hamburger. He said, “Tell me what you see for yourself. Where would you like to be in two years?” He pushed his french fries away from his burger and ignored them. Nik leaned his face wearily into his hand and looked around the restaurant. He said nothing, then started laughing. “Seriously,” said Lux.
Nik shrugged. He said, “Look, you know, the Fakes are just for fun. I have much better stuff than the Fakes.” Lux nodded. He had finished every bite of his burger. I watched him very carefully—I ate nothing in those days. I wanted to be skeletal. But I was fascinated watching other humans eat.
Lux said, “The music is fine. I really like the music the way it is. The music is perfect. But maybe you don’t need that cynical name …”
Nik laughed again. “Too cynical?” he said. “What name would you suggest?”
Lux gave up and finally popped two french fries in his mouth. “I don’t know. Maybe the Real? Or the True?”
Nik shook his head. “Nope.”
Lux shoved a few more french fries in his face. “Look, maybe not, but with the Real, say, you can be ironic to the new wave kids and sincere to the rest of the kids. You can have it both ways. If you want to be successful, you have to get things to work in many, many ways to many, many people.” Nik didn’t say anything, but I could tell he was considering it. We left that meeting, and I felt sure Nik wouldn’t bother with Lux. And he never changed the name of the band, it was true. But it didn’t go away. Lee Lux hovered around. He arranged opportunities for the Fakes without Nik asking for them. He was growing his indispensable qualities. Maybe Nik’s ambivalence was a form of consent. Maybe there was a more formal agreement between them. I don’t really know. But I do know Lux stuck around, fixated on the Fakes for a while. And he had a finger or two in the record deal that was offered to Nik in the summer of 1979.
Okay, the funny thing is I don’t really know what went wrong. I wasn’t lying to Ada. I mean, Nik never explained it to me or anyone. More or less, a record deal with an actual major label, Sire, which was Blondie’s label, was in the offing. Then there was another label. And it all blew up. It was all on the verge, but another LA band, maybe the Dickies, their record had come out on a real label and it was a flop. Maybe that was part of it. But I also think—well, I know—that when it became clear he was not going with Lux, Lux helped blow things up. Lux was setting it up, and when Nik told Lux to fuck off, Lux may have sabotaged it. Then Nik was too tainted to get an independent label interested. So what Lux said was true—get with him or else. After that happened, Nik changed his life. Ada was right to an extent. That time, ’79–’80, was a kind of turning point.
He broke up the Fakes. He broke up the Demonics. He stopped going out. I didn’t see him for months. I was still living at home—I had just had Ada, and Mom was helping me. Nik had moved into his own apartment over the garage in Topanga Canyon. I didn’t hear from him. I called a couple of times and spoke with him. I just thought he was depressed. He was going through that stage when you realize your youthful dreams are not panning out. I was going through my own version of that, reconciling myself to my new responsibilities. That was all normal. And, yeah, I thought Nik would get over it.
Then one day I get a call. Nik wants me to come over to hear his new record. Which is news to me, that he has one. But he had been recording this solo record. He did it all by himself with his four-track. It is a great record, introspective and with these very simple, understated, overdubbed harmonies. When I sat in his apartment and heard it, I was so moved. Then he said, “Do you want to read the reviews?”
I said, “Uh, yeah, sure.” He pulled out the Chronicles. The precursor to the Chronicles had begun years before. It was simply a scrapbook of Nik’s real life. His music life, which was his whole life. He pasted in flyers from gigs, photos, capsule mentions in the paper, that sort of thing. He put in pages announcing the records and detailed the track listings. He had been making his own records for years. But this was the first time Nik put a fake review in his Chronicles.
LA WEEKLY, August 1, 1981
Nik Worth Goes Solo
by Stiv Stereo
Nik Worth’s brilliant post-punk band, the Fakes, made a huge splash this year with their debut album, Here Come Your Fakes. Nik Worth, their laconic lead singer, has come out with a self-produced solo album on the heels of that success, entitled Meet Me at the Movies. This album, made entirely by Worth in his home studio, is a completely different affair. Where the power pop effervescence of a single like “Gold Girls” on Here Come Your Fakes made it irresistible on the dance floor, Worth is after a darker, more experimental effect in this solo effort. He initiates acoustic fragments of songs, minor and even elegiac, and then segues into other, more complex songs like “Take Me Back” and “Sweep Song.” Toward the end of the record there is even a music-only reprise of the lovely “Sweep Song” titled “Singalong Sweep Song.” The sort-of song cycle seems to waiver from quiet to intense, and then builds to what can only be described as an old-fashioned power ballad, “(I’ll Wait) All of My Life.” This song is an instant classic, the kind of song no one writes anymore. It features a slow build, a quiet intro on the in verse, and then a commanding rising riff, and at last a restrained but undeniable guitar solo, bringing the power home. Will the Fakes fans dig this throwback to the slower days of pop? With a great cover shot of a decidedly brooding Worth and a lyric sheet that steers well clear of the sentimental, I think they will. A–
I did not yet realize how elaborate this new phase would get. He recorded more music, and then he wrote in the Chronicles about the music. Sometimes they were good reviews. Sometimes they were pans. From this point on, his real life and his life as recorded in the Chronicles diverged.
After filming, I spent the afternoon at my mother’s. It was blessedly uneventful. As I was leaving, she told me that Nik had been to see her. Funny he went to see her without mentioning it to me.
I got into my car. I couldn’t wait to get home, get in my bathrobe, eat my dinner, watch something stupid on TV. It was good that he was stepping up without my arranging it. Usually I would have to push him to see her. He avoided it except on birthdays and holidays. He would say it was difficult for him to see her “like this.” Especially, somehow, for him. I know how he justified it: he thought his seeing Mom like this cost him more than it cost me. “You are better at taking care of people than I am, let’s face it,” he said. As if it were some kind of compliment. I muttered as I drove. Yeah, he is so fucking sensitive, and I am so strong. Nothing is difficult for me, right? The really irritating part, of course, was that my mother adored Nik. She wouldn’t complain about his not visiting, because even in her diminished state she was protecting him. She loved me, truly, and let me look after her, but she adored Nik, and still looked out for him. I glanced in the rearview and caught a glimpse of something most unbecoming. I bared my teeth at myself and actually said, “Grrrr.” It didn’t make how I felt any more becoming. But it melted my self-pity into self-loathing, which was better somehow.
I got home exhausted and starving. I made a salad. I tore off a heel of bread and balanced it on the edge of the plate. I poured a glass of wine. It was dark and quiet. I clicked
on the television to see what was happening in the real world.
BREAKING EVENT #5
All they showed was the one photo. The man standing on the box. That picture was it. It had the weird KKK silhouette of the pointy hat and the cloak. It had the imitation-of-Christ pose. Then you noticed the wires coming from the hands, the bare feet. I watched in a daze while vaguely hearing what the people were saying—they said the word shocking, they struggled to find a tone that worked. This time it was easy to ignore the stream of news that ran across the bottom of the screen. I ended up at my computer, at a magazine’s website. Eleven images had been posted.
At first, all I could see were the bodies against the cement and the plastic. Then the people in the bright blue rubber gloves and the khaki uniforms. I felt an animal fear, a queasy medical-experiment fear as familiar objects became dislocated and warped.
I looked at these naked bodies. With the plastic hoods, they all looked alike: ordinary human bodies, fragile at the knees and ankles and wrists. Their dusty bare feet struggled to hold their poses. The skin was pale under the Powershot—or maybe the Sureshot—flash. Their genitals were pixelated out by the magazine’s editors. But the faces of the soldiers were clearly visible. They looked young. They looked casual and slightly bored. The corridors and cells were cement painted a high-gloss industrial beige or yellow. The flash bounced off the walls and made them glisten. The floor looked wet from seeped-in moisture. The naked men lay or were laid on it. What was I supposed to do with these images?
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