by Chris Frantz
Terry Ork was Television’s manager and ran a little label called Ork Records. Television’s first 45, “Little Johnny Jewel,” was on Ork. He also released singles and EPs by Richard Hell, the Marbles, Alex Chilton, Chris Stamey, Mick Farren, Cheetah Chrome, and the Student Teachers. Terry was a sweet guy and he helped and guided Hilly with bookings. Seymour Stein once said to me, “I’d like to do business with Terry, but he’s always laughing. I can’t take the guy seriously if he’s always laughing.” His day job was running Cinemabilia, a West Village shop for film fans with books, magazines, and film memorabilia for sale. Richard Hell had worked there and I think maybe Tom Verlaine, too.
Danny Fields was a great character on the scene. Danny seemed to know everybody who was anybody. He had attended Harvard. While working at Elektra records, he signed the Stooges and the MC5. He hung with the Warhol crowd and was buddies with Lou Reed and Nico. His day job was managing editor of 16 magazine and he was one of the first people to write about Talking Heads in his talent-spotting column in the SoHo News.
18
LOU REED
In the early days of CBGB, Lou Reed was practically a regular. I had seen him at a couple of Patti Smith shows and a couple of Television shows. It was a thrill to see him there. He later told us, “I still notice things,” and he did. To his credit, he was one of the first and few stars to come to CBGB to check out the new bands. The first time I saw him there I jumped over a few tables and chairs to ask him for his autograph. The last time I’d asked somebody for an autograph was President Eisenhower when I was just a kid and my father took me to the dedication of Eisenhower Hall at Valley Forge Military Academy. Lou, who was wearing aviator shades in the darkened club at 2:00 A.M., signed the piece of paper and then turned on his heels and left.
So we were practically in awe when he appeared backstage at CBGB after one of our early shows. This was right after his Coney Island Baby album had been released in December 1975 and I was playing that record a lot in our loft on Chrystie Street. Lou invited us back to his place and gave us the address. We were amused that his apartment was located on the Upper East Side near Bloomingdale’s. We had not expected that. So we quickly packed up our gear, took it back to our loft, and then headed uptown. I think this was one of the few times we splurged on a taxi to get to his place as soon as possible.
His building had a doorman and potted plants in the lobby. The doorman told us that Lou was expecting us, so up in the elevator we went. We knocked on his door and were met for the first time by Rachel Humphreys, who was Lou’s transgender girlfriend. Rachel said nothing but waved us in. Except for a couch there was no furniture. Lou said, “This is Rachel. Have a seat.” Rachel looked like kind of a badass and was the first transgender person I knew. You could see that she was very protective of Lou, but I guess she decided that we were okay because she went into the bedroom and closed the door.
Tina, David, and I sat on Lou’s very ordinary 1960s modern couch and he sat on the floor. He was alternately sweet and acerbic. The first thing he said to us was, “It’s, like, cool you have a chick in the band. Wonder where you got that idea?” He then proceeded to critique our set that night and also those of other bands he’d seen recently, namely the Patti Smith Group and Television. He liked what we were doing, but fixated on a song called “Tentative Decisions” over all the others. He loved the words but felt the tempo was much too fast and that if it were played more slowly it would convey a deeper feeling. I’m sure he was right about that, and in future performances and recordings we did slow it down a little, although probably not as much as he would have liked, because at this point our audiences responded best to up-tempo numbers, not slow ones.
Lou Reed.
Lou got up and walked to the kitchen and fetched a quart of Häagen-Dazs ice cream from the refrigerator. He brought it back and sat down again, cross-legged on the bare hardwood floor, when he said out loud to himself, “I’m gonna need a spoon for this.” Tina volunteered to get him one, and when she opened the kitchen drawer realized that there was only one bent and blackened spoon in the place. With a slight grimace, she brought it over to Lou, who proceeded to eat the entire quart of ice cream right in front of us with that funky spoon. He didn’t offer us any ice cream or anything else. It must have been four o’clock in the morning. Lou seemed like he was just waking up.
In between bites, he told David that he should never go onstage in a short-sleeved shirt because his arms were too hairy. He should always wear long-sleeved shirts.
Lou Reed then told us that a band was like a fist. It could be very powerful, but that the record companies would always try to manipulate and massage one finger away from the others and break it off so that they would only have to deal with one individual and not the whole band. I thought it was interesting that he would be telling us this in light of his own history with the Velvet Underground, but we didn’t really know the whole story, so we kept quiet about it.
Lou talked and talked and we listened, sometimes in awe and sometimes in disbelief. At some point Lou got up and went to his bookcase, which had only one book in it, The Physicians’ Desk Reference. He began to tell us what his favorite drugs had been and which ones he was enjoying lately, kind of like when you look through the L.L. Bean catalog except with pills, pills, pills. He showed us the photos of his various favorites, the uppers and the downers, and warned us about the hazards of each one.
Then, after teaching us a thing or two about Dilaudid, Lou suggested we all get something to eat. We took the elevator downstairs and, as the sun was rising, walked across the street to the diner now called Eat Here Now on Lexington Avenue. Tina and David and I had the early riser’s special of bacon and eggs and hash browns, while Lou, our hero, ordered a huge stack of pancakes with maple syrup. Lou was a skinny guy, but what a sweet tooth he had!
After breakfast, we had to get some sleep. As we said our goodbyes, Lou insisted that we meet again. He wanted to discuss producing our first album and he wanted to introduce us to his manager. This was heady stuff for a band that had only played a few shows and were new to New York City. Of course, we told him yes, we’d be happy to see him again.
Lou’s manager, Jonny Podell, called us to come see him at his BMF Talent Agency office. Tina and David and I trekked up to Jonny’s office in midtown near where we had our day jobs. He was a renowned agent for Crosby, Stills and Nash and Alice Cooper. His cute-looking secretary told us to go right in. Jonny was on the phone talking a mile a minute and motioned for us to sit. We sat across the desk from him. The room was very dark. When the call was finished he took a little vial of cocaine out of his shirt pocket and snorted two hits up each nostril and then, as an afterthought, offered us a toot. We politely declined. Jonny went on and on about how great his client Lou Reed was and how much Lou loved Talking Heads and they wanted to make a deal. He presented us with a contract and told us to look it over. We said that we would.
At first we thought, Wow, Lou Reed is offering to work with us. Fantastic! Then we realized we needed a lawyer to look over the contract. There was one lawyer named Peter Parcher who had been in the news a lot lately. Peter had represented Keith Richards when Keith was busted with a quantity of heroin in Canada. Peter managed to get Keith off without jail time so he sounded good to us. I checked with my father, who said Parcher was well respected, so I gave him a call. The next day Tina, David, and I were uptown sitting in Peter Parcher’s office. He introduced his partner, Alan Shulman, and said that Alan would be the right guy to look over the proposed deal for us. I passed the contract to Alan, who recognized a big problem immediately. He said, “This is a standard production deal. I would never allow one of my clients to sign this. Lou Reed and Jonny Podell would pay for the making of the record, but then they would own it. They could then sell the record to the highest bidder, no matter what you want. If you had a hit, they would profit and you would get zilch.” I asked if there was any way to negotiate the offer and he said, “Look, Lou Reed’s repu
tation now is when he gets up in the morning, he doesn’t know whether to take the bus or the plane. If his heart was in the right place, he never would have offered you this shitty deal in the first place. This kind of deal is the reason that so many R&B artists may have had hit records but still don’t have a pot to piss in. I would walk away and wait for a real record deal with a real record company.” So we did walk away, feeling a little sad but relieved we hadn’t made a big mistake. We continued to visit Lou and still respected him and his work, but we would never again think of doing business with him.
19
THE ARTIST’S LUNCH WITH ANDY WARHOL
In May 1976, Lance Loud and painter Duncan Hannah brought Andy Warhol down to CBGB to see us perform. We loved Andy’s work. When Lance and the Mumps weren’t performing at CBGB, he was doing some writing for Andy Warhol’s Interview magazine. Lance pitched the idea for an interview with us to Andy and suggested he come to see us play. Andy agreed and as Lance had hoped, he liked us. Duncan says that Andy’s reaction was, “Oh, they’re so cute. Do you think they’d like to have lunch at the Factory tomorrow and do an interview?” Of course, we agreed. Andy Warhol was the most famous artist living or dead. At RISD we regarded him as a hero and we still did. It was determined that Lance would do the interview and Duncan, who was a painter but happened to own a camera, would take the photos.
We arrived at the Factory at lunchtime the following day. I guess I must have called in sick to my day job. We were greeted by the lovely and cheerful Catherine Guinness, who was acting as the receptionist. She buzzed us in. We knew that the wild old Silver Factory days were over since the terrible day in June 1968 when Andy had been shot by Valerie Solanas. Everything was different now. The new Factory resembled a real office complex with a view overlooking Union Square. There was a moose head on the wall and a huge stuffed black-and-white Great Dane called Cecil standing in the middle of the room. Lance and Duncan were already there and we mingled somewhat nervously until Andy emerged from his painting studio in the back, where he had been working on a series of pet portraits with his assistant, Ronnie Cutrone. Andy led us into the dining room, which was more like a boardroom with a large antique table and sideboard, from which we could serve ourselves from an endless supply of Absolut Vodka. Andy didn’t have any vodka but the rest of us did. At some point we were joined by the photographer Christopher Makos, who funnily enough was dressed in the same French striped sailor shirt and blazer as Tina. Andy liked that.
We sat down to have lunch. Andy served two types of lunches: the Artist’s lunch and the Patron’s lunch. We got the Artist’s lunch, which consisted of a very nice chicken salad sandwich and some potato chips in a little box. Most of the conversation around the table came from Lance, who had the gift of gab. It’s hard to remember what we talked about exactly but I remember that we did mention RISD and how everyone was hoping that Andy would visit there again like he had in the late sixties. Andy was very affable but quiet. We, like Duncan, were only just out of art school and here we were having lunch at the Factory with Andy Warhol! After everyone had finished their sandwiches, Andy piped up, “Don’t we have any cookies?” Christopher Makos got up and went to a back room and returned with a tray of assorted cookies, but in his haste one of his cowboy boots scooted out from under him and as he slipped and hit the floor, all the cookies went flying. Andy thought this was really funny.
After a few cookies it was time for Andy to get back to work, but before he did, he took me aside and said, “You should go easy on the vodka or you’re going to lose your figure.” Boy, was he right about that! Lance suggested we all take a photo with Andy and, using Duncan’s camera, shot a photo of us with Duncan and Andy.
Our interview started while Duncan took some great photos of us with a couple of Andy’s Chairman Mao paintings. Later, the art director of Interview, another RISD grad named Mark Balet, said to Duncan, “We can’t use these! They have to look like the Andrews Sisters shot by George Hurrell!” So we dutifully returned to the Factory for another photo shoot by Duncan even though we were much happier with his original shots, which captured our own esthetic much better.
Talking Heads with Andy Warhol and Duncan Hannah.
Later, Andy would even do a radio commercial for us, saying “Buy the new Talking Heads Record and tell them Warhol sent you,” and he continued to be a fan of our band, although he sometimes mistakenly referred to us as the Talking Horses. He was the most famous and quite possibly the greatest artist of our time, yet he always treated us like we were way more important than he was. He was there for many of our shows in New York, too, and I felt very fortunate to have spent some time in his Factory.
20
THE TALKING HEADS LOOK
One good thing about the Punk/New Wave/Post-Punk music scenes was you didn’t have to look like a rock star to be one. If I may say so, Talking Heads were pioneers in this arena. We didn’t try to look like the Beatles or the Stones or the Who. Come to think of it, we didn’t try to sound like them, either. We did try to look nice, though. I mean, we didn’t want to look like slobs the way some bands did, and we certainly didn’t have a uniform the way the Ramones and the Clash did. We could wear whatever we wanted to, like street clothes onstage and stage clothes on the street. For the longest time people called us preppy because I would often wear the clothes my mom had given me for Christmas, and she did like to buy at Brooks Brothers. Many times I would loan my shirts to David to wear onstage when he had a shortage of clean clothes. Those Lacoste polo shirts you used to see him in? Those were mine. Tina always had a great sense of style and she never failed to add some extra beauty to our group. Still, the idea behind the way we presented ourselves was really that anyone could do this if they put their mind to it. To a certain extent, we were trying to look like everymen. On the rare occasions when we had any extra money we were not about to go out and buy high-heeled platform boots and satin trousers. No, the image we wanted to convey was that of seriously thoughtful people. We were not afraid to appear straight.
Some of the first professional photos of us were taken by Jimmy DeSana. Tina and I both remember that he approached David at CBGB about taking some photos of us and we went up to his tiny theater-district apartment to take the shots for the picture sleeve of our first single, “Love Building on Fire.” Jimmy was a sweet guy, very clean cut and physically fit. We had heard he was into S&M but saw no evidence of that in his studio apartment. He got that we did not want a rock star image. We were looking for no image, something less predictable, and Jimmy captured that for us. We are almost smiling in the early photos; even David, with a ballpoint pen in his shirt pocket, looks happy. Later on, we stopped smiling, but these were more innocent times. Jimmy took a lot more publicity photos of us after Jerry Harrison joined the band; they were unlike any other band’s photos at the time. To me they really capture the time, 1975, the chemistry, and the soul of Talking Heads. They gave our image a new feeling.
At the Factory.
21
FINDING JERRY
We were all very fond of the Modern Lovers album that had finally been released by Berserkely Records in August 1976. It was actually a demo produced out in Los Angeles by John Cale during his stint at A&R for Warner Brothers. It sounded great to our ears, but during the recording session, lead singer Jonathan Richman began to have second thoughts about the loud, raw Velvet Underground sound he had aspired to. He decided he wanted to write sweet, quiet songs, and he left the band, John Cale and Warner Brothers in the lurch. Still, that Modern Lovers album became an art rock classic and we felt a musical and conceptual kinship with the band.
During a visit to Pittsburgh, one of my mother’s friends, Liz Shoyer, took me aside to tell me about her nephew, Ernie Brooks, who had attended Harvard and had a band in Boston. Liz’s husband, Ed, was a law partner of my father’s. She said I should get in touch with Ernie. I said that I would and what was the name of his band? Liz said, “They’re called the Modern Lovers.” I knew tha
t the band had broken up some time ago, but I didn’t mention it.
Back in New York, one evening Tina and I stopped into a cool downtown café called The Local. It was owned by Mickey Ruskin, who had owned Max’s Kansas City during its heyday. It was a small basement place and the burgers were great. The painter Julian Schnabel was manning the grill. We each ordered one with a glass of red wine and, as I gazed around the room, I recognized Ernie Brooks, bass player with the Modern Lovers and Liz Shoyer’s nephew. I recognized him by his big head of curly hair, as pictured on the back of the album cover. I walked across the room to introduce myself and Ernie was friendly and cool. After making a little Pittsburgh small talk, I asked Ernie what Jerry Harrison, the Modern Lovers keyboard player, was up to. Ernie said that Jerry had enrolled in graduate school at Harvard to get a degree in architecture. I told Ernie we were looking for a keyboard player to fill out our sound, and he gave me Jerry’s number and said I should give him a call. He told me that Jerry was also a good guitarist. This was good news.
When I called Jerry, he was very pleasant on the phone. I told him about our band Talking Heads, that we were a trio living in New York, had gone to RISD, loved the Modern Lovers, and were looking for a fourth member. I explained that we were very particular and he was the first person we had asked. He said he had only just enrolled in graduate school and that he’d had a really bad experience with the demise of the Modern Lovers. It had broken his heart. I said, “We do have a couple of offers from record companies on the table.” That got his attention. Jerry said, “I’d like to hear you play before this conversation goes any further.” I told him, okay, I would book a gig in Boston. I called up the Rathskeller, better known as “The Rat,” which was the CBGB of Boston, but they were all booked up for the month. Then Hilly gave me the name of a guy he knew in Cambridge who had a place called the Club. I called the guy and we got a gig for the coming weekend. Then I called Jerry and told him to save the date. I told him we were really doing this showcase just for him. It would be our first show in Boston, which was an important market to break into.