Punk Rock Blitzkrieg

by Marky Ramone

  Marion and I would hole up in the master bedroom. Fortunately, Marion was about the same size as the lady of the house, so when we went out to a club or restaurant she had a large walk-in closet’s worth of designer outfits to choose from. One night Marion tried out a sable fur coat, and when we walked into CBGB, Hilly pulled me aside and said he wasn’t thrilled to see rich girls like that slumming it at his club. He was dead serious. But the biggest problem with house-sitting was transportation. It was difficult to choose which car to test-drive: the Bentley or the Rolls-Royce.

  The backyard was a private landscaped communal area the size of a city block in a city where Fortune 500 companies had to share blocks. When we took our party out back, the well-off neighbors never seemed to mind. They took a liking to Wayne and the rest of us, but especially to Marion and Jodie. They were a pair of cute, sassy Brooklyn girls, and the neighborhood royalty couldn’t seem to get enough of them.

  For a well-off couple the owners were very cool, especially as parents. When they were home, Wayne came over sometimes to play with the three kids, who were eight, ten, and twelve. Wayne was a natural, telling them stories, playing board games, and horsing around. The kids loved Uncle Wayne.

  Band rehearsals were almost always a good time. It was hard keeping a straight face when Wayne came in and read us whatever new lyrics he had come up with. One of my favorites was Wayne’s torch song, “Man Enough to Be a Woman,” which had a psychedelic sixties garage-rock feel.

  MainMan paid for studio time so we could record a six-song demo, which consisted of “Man Enough,” “Wonder Woman,” “Queen Age Baby,” “Midnight Pal,” a cover of the Stones song “Tell Me,” and “Max’s Kansas City.” “Max’s Kansas City” sounded like an alternate version of the Velvet Underground’s “Sweet Jane,” but the verses introduced many of the regulars at the club by name: the New York Dolls, Patti Smith, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Blondie, and Dee Dee Ramone. It was a Who’s Who of Max’s.

  Stage shows were even more fun than rehearsals. Wayne wore a massive blonde wig that looked like it was stolen from Dusty Springfield. He would take a couple dozen condoms, blow them up, pin them all over his hair, and tie them all over his outfit. When we did “Toilet Love,” he looked menacing waving around a plunger. MainMan seemed happy with the demo and was actively shopping it. A&R people came down to the shows, hung out with us afterward, and told us they loved what we were doing. We thought a record deal was right around the corner. But there were no offers from the record companies.

  The apparent reason was Wayne’s outrageous cross-dressing combined with the risqué subject matter of the songs. My father came down to one of the shows. Even as a very liberal guy, he thought I was crazy associating myself with Wayne. He said there was no future in the mainstream for a transvestite singer. But David Bowie was already sexually ambiguous, and the next logical step seemed to be Wayne County.

  So I went to plan B. I gave a copy of the demo along with a band photo to my old friends Richie Wise and Kenny Kerner, who by this time had gone platinum with Gladys Knight and the Pips and just completed their second KISS album. I thought I would have two sets of sympathetic ears, not to mention sympathetic eyes. KISS’s makeup was now well established and over the top. It wasn’t exactly feminine, but it was outrageous by any standard. Kenny’s ears were into Wayne County. He liked the music. As for his eyes, not so much. In his opinion, the masses were ready for Gene, Paul, Peter, and Ace, but not Wayne. That could take many years.

  MainMan had its own plan B. They shot two different promo photos of the band—one with Wayne dressed as a man, the other as a woman. The more liberated showcases would get the cross-dressing Wayne shot. That worked for Mother’s on Twenty-Third Street and KISS’s old stomping ground, Coventry, on Queens Boulevard. The blue-collar clubs would get the straight Wayne shot. When the band actually showed up, both types of clubs got the cross-dressing Wayne, and eventually that became a problem.

  We were booked at a club in Newark, New Jersey, that got the straight Wayne shot. The night of the show, Wayne looked ravishing in a corset and black fishnet stockings. As I looked around the room from behind my drum kit, I felt very far from the hip New York scene I was used to.

  The guys who ran the club were Old World. They were in their late thirties and older, with a cigar here, a gold tooth there, an eye patch over there. They seemed like they fit in more with my dad’s longshoremen’s union than a rock club. In fact, they looked like the guys who ran the union. They watched the front door, the back door, the room, and everyone coming in and out of it like hawks. Every few minutes one of these guys would emerge from the back room, and then someone else would return. It became obvious that this was a Mob-run club.

  But the kids who packed the place that night were New Jersey glammers. They wore glitter, blush, tight pants, and a little eye makeup. They weren’t exactly Bowie knockoffs. They were knockoffs of Bowie knockoffs. They weren’t ready for Wayne County, but they were glad as hell to see him take the stage. He was the real thing. As we launched into “Toilet Love,” they pushed up to get a closer look at the he-she covered in condoms. They danced, swinging their arms and bobbing their heads, and they hardly ever took their eyes off Wayne.

  The powers that be were not happy. You could imagine how they got into this situation. They were running a business. They usually hired local rock-and-roll bands, which worked out okay and wasn’t all that far from the doo-wop of their day, especially when they took into account the cash coming in at the door and the bar. But they thought they could do even better by venturing out and getting a more modern act—even a glam act if they had to—from across the Hudson River. The publicity shot looked passable. But what they got was a freak show. A disgrace.

  The fourth song we played was “Man Enough,” and the old guard had had enough. A huge bouncer who looked like he had a day job as a bookie’s debt collector walked over to our manager, Peter Crowley, and told him something that made his eyes widen and his nostrils flare. As “Man Enough” ended, Peter turned and walked up onstage.

  “That’s it. They want us out of here. Now. Let’s break everything down and get out.”

  I figured that was that. What were we going to do but cooperate? The roadies started to break down my drum set. Wayne said something nasty, but the microphone was cut, and I was relieved. Then I saw Peter walk back over to the bouncer, who was now with a couple of the club managers. I caught a glimpse of an argument, and almost that fast, they had Peter on the floor and were punching and kicking him.

  We hustled to get out of there, with roadies working double time and wiseguy types surrounding us to make sure we didn’t straggle. In the parking lot out back, Wayne took off his wig and bitched, and I saw Peter walk out the door with his hand over his eye.

  The story of Wayne County and our manager almost getting whacked in Jersey made its way back to the city and created a buzz. Shortly after, we got a recurring gig at 82 Club on East Fourth Street, just off Second Avenue in the Village. The club had been around for forty years and for much of that time was a legendary drag cabaret. But very recently, 82 had reinvented itself as a gay disco bar with live bands. The place was run by two butch lesbians and a bouncer named Jimmy, who looked like Chuck Berry as a disco queen. Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys fit right in. When you threw in the roast beef and turkey sandwiches they served on Sundays, free to the band, it was our home away from Max’s.

  The neighborhood was not great. On the corner was a bodega with a cashier inside a Plexiglas booth. The Plexiglas was about an inch thick and bulletproof unless the assailant happened to have an AK-47. Customers purchasing Slim Jims, plantains, and Miller beer passed money and received change through a movable tray that allowed no human contact. To get to 82 Club you had to open a battered steel door and walk down a rickety staircase to the basement. The coatroom and kitchen were to the right, the dance floor and tables behind a curtain to the left.

  One night as Marion and I were getting ready to lea
ve, I went to the coatroom to get my jacket and ran into my friend, photographer Bob Gruen, who was just coming in. Bob had been documenting the nightlife at CBGB, Max’s, and the emerging music scene in Lower Manhattan. He had also been working with John Lennon, photographing him and Yoko Ono throughout the city. I thought of asking Bob if he had seen Lennon lately, but as soon as the thought hit, there he was.

  John Lennon stumbled out of the coatroom. He was wearing sunglasses, a long blue coat, and a newsboy cap similar to the one he wore in the movie A Hard Day’s Night. For some reason, he looked taller in person. Not for long, though. Lennon stumbled, and Bob grabbed him under the shoulder. Lennon had tripped over himself. He said something resembling thanks to Bob, but that and whatever came right after were heavily slurred.

  John Lennon, who urged us to give peace a chance and asked us to imagine a better world, was too drunk to stand on his own two feet. I was a little disappointed to see a boyhood idol of mine staggering around out of control, but at the same time, I tried to understand the constant pressure of being who he was. Bob held up John Lennon with two hands and guided him over to a seat.

  A few weeks later Marion and I were at 82 Club on an off night for the band, just hanging out sitting in the main room having a couple of drinks. The sound system was blasting “Rock the Boat” by Hues Corporation when a few of the customers burst out from the other side of the curtain and ran in different directions. It was hard to hear anything over the music, but within a few minutes a story made its way back to us. A guy with a gun was chasing another guy across Fourth Street, and the guy being chased ran randomly into 82 Club and down the stairs. He was gunned down at the bottom of the staircase. We never heard the shots.

  A minute or two later the music was cut as police and paramedics swarmed through the curtain. One of the officers announced that the doors would be sealed until everyone in the building gave a statement. It took three hours until they got to me and Marion, and our statement was the simple truth: we saw and heard nothing. They took our names and addresses and let us go. On the F train platform at sunrise, commuters were just starting to slink into Manhattan.

  One evening a few weeks later, Marion walked into her parents’ apartment in Brooklyn and found her father waiting with a letter in hand from one of the detectives at the Ninth Precinct in Manhattan. It was a standard interview follow-up letter from the police asking if there was any new information regarding the murder. The letter mentioned 82 Club.

  It wasn’t easy for Marion to tell what upset her father more—that his daughter was considered a witness to a murder or that she was in a sleazy drag bar. Marion explained that 82, like so many clubs downtown and elsewhere, had reinvented itself, and while it wasn’t exactly the Harvard Club, lots of middle-class white kids from Brooklyn and Queens went there all the time to run into former Beatles.

  There was a third item that Marion couldn’t explain away so easily: the fact that she was going out with an older guy who played in a band fronted by a tranny and who took her to dive bars. Other than to tell her father that Marc was a good guy, there wasn’t much of an answer for that one.

  When our bass player Eugene Geary left the Backstreet Boys, I got my old friend Kenny Aaronson to fill in for a few gigs, including one at 82 Club. Kenny liked what Wayne was doing and loved the scene. But it was understood that Kenny was just keeping the seat warm. He was in demand for both live situations and studio work for well-known acts and was basically just passing through.

  Wayne County at this point wasn’t a very stable situation. There were rumors going around that MainMan kept Wayne on their roster only so Bowie could cop ideas and styles from him. Personally, I thought that was bullshit. After Ziggy Stardust, Bowie had his own good thing going on. Even if for some reason David Bowie was starved for ideas, he wouldn’t have to hire someone and have them at arm’s length to steal from them. There were new ideas, trends, and fashion for the taking on display every night in clubs up and down Manhattan. But the fact remained that we weren’t getting any bites from the record companies, and MainMan was taking less and less of an interest in the band.

  When we played CBGB in March 1976, it was almost an act of defiance. Still no record contract, more neglect from MainMan, but we packed the place anyway. Dee Dee and Joey from the Ramones were there. Their band was getting tighter by the month. David Johansen and Johnny Thunders were there, though the Dolls were as good as broken up. Bob Gruen was there with his camera. The atmosphere was charged.

  You could spot CBGB by the large white awning with red letters along the Bowery. The room was narrow and very long, with the stage at the back. When we got up to play, we were surrounded on three sides. Wayne was dressed a little differently tonight from his usual stage persona. There was no corset or fishnet stockings. The wig was black instead of blonde. His shirt was the usual white, but the tie and pants were white, too. This was the more masculine but still outrageous Wayne. It was also the more hyper Wayne. The guys in the band all knew that he had taken some speed before getting onstage.

  A couple of songs into our set, Richard Manitoba pushed his way to the front of the stage. Richard was the vocalist for the band the Dictators. He began shouting at Wayne and taunting him. Wayne was used to getting heckled. His persona was meant to be provocative. But this went on for a few songs and seemed to be getting to Wayne. With the volume of the music and the crowd, it was hard to hear what Richard was saying, but I heard a few scathing words here and there. Every once in a while I caught a glimpse of Wayne’s face. He was agitated and pissed off. He called Richard a “stupid fucking asshole” a few times, but that just seemed to get Richard and the crowd even more riled.

  Richard finally stepped onto the stage, which was only about a foot high. Wayne was in the middle of “Toilet Love” and snapped. He slammed the heavy steel microphone stand down on Richard’s shoulder. Wayne then jumped on Richard, who was writhing in pain and clutching his shoulder. They rolled around onstage, with Wayne getting in some good punches and furiously kicking the overweight singer all over his body. They fell off the stage and onto the beer-soaked floor of CB’s as the crowd parted like the Red Sea.

  The place was going wild. I stood up and grabbed a cymbal stand, prepared for whatever might come next. Wayne’s wig was off and so were the gloves. Blood sprayed all around as Wayne and Richard wrestled. It took only about fifteen seconds for Hilly and his friend Merv to push their way to the stage area and grab Richard. By this point, blood was pouring out of the side of his head.

  When Wayne got back onstage, his white shirt was covered in Richard’s blood. Wayne looked at the audience and asked them if they wanted to quit or if they still wanted some rock and roll. “Rock and roll!” they screamed. “Rock and roll! Go Wayne!” Fittingly, we launched into “Wash Me in the Blood of Rock and Roll” and finished the set. Afterward, someone told me a couple of his bandmates took Richard to St. Vincent’s Hospital.

  Richard had a broken collarbone. He claimed the only reason he stepped onto the stage was to make his way to the hallway, which led to the bathroom. He filed assault charges against Wayne, and there was a warrant out for his arrest. Normally one of the easiest people on the planet to spot, Wayne started keeping a low profile, but he was arrested a few days later wearing a fake mustache. Even though he was not in drag, the police put him in a special cell with a cross-dresser to protect him from some of the homophobes who were locked up that night.

  People in the scene took either Wayne’s side or Richard’s side. But more people seemed to be on Wayne’s side. Danny Fields, the Ramones’ manager, spoke to the press on Wayne’s behalf. Debbie Harry and Dee Dee Ramone helped organize a benefit at CBGB for Wayne’s legal defense fund. Eventually the case was thrown out of court. For a while, the Dictators were banned from CBGB, Max’s, and some other clubs.

  Wayne County and the Backstreet Boys were still welcome, but Wayne took off for London, making the brawl at CB’s my last gig with the band. As good as we were, none of us
believed the band was going to gain acceptance outside of hip New York City, at least not in the States. In London, Leee managed Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers. Wayne and Leee put together a new band called Wayne County and the Electric Chairs. Greg Van Cook and Elliot Michaels both played guitar in the band and were both friends of mine from Brooklyn.

  It was a small world, and the world of rock and roll was even smaller. At the same time, the larger world was beginning to catch on to the punk sounds and sensibilities of New York and London. And I was looking to catch on again somewhere.

  6

  HELL’S KITCHEN

  In April 1976, I started hanging around Cynthia Whitney, who was known as “Roxy.” Roxy lived a life of luxury and sleaze. She was a sharp-witted trust fund baby from a Chicago family. Roxy came to New York to be in the middle of the rock scene—one that seemed to be evolving constantly. The check from her trust fund came in the mail every month like clockwork, and that was about the closest she got to being normal. Since she had no need for a real job, she was free to look for excitement, and she usually found it. She would work on and off as a topless dancer in the seedy clubs around Times Square. Just walking down the street showing off a tight dress with a plunging neckline was a performance for her. Roxy was an exhibitionist.

  Roxy’s old money paid for a nice apartment in SoHo on Thompson Street just south of Houston Street. It was a first-floor miniloft in a renovated five-story walk-up building. The apartment was only about twelve feet wide, but it ran the length of the right side of the building and had everything we needed.