by Chris Frantz
When the time came for Talking Heads to go onstage, David, Jerry, and Tina needed to tune their guitars. There was only one strobe tuner for both bands to share and Tina went to look for it. Johnny Ramone was sitting at a table with the tuner in front of him and when Tina asked for it, instead of giving it to her, he said in a loud whine, “Somebody bring me my guitar!” There was no response and the dressing rooms were not very large so Tina, who was not afraid of Johnny, suggested, “Why don’t you go get it yourself?” Tommy Ramone came over to Tina and whispered, “It’s dangerous to talk to him. I fear for your safety.” One of the crew must have had a talk with Johnny after that because we got the tuner moments before we went onstage and everybody was able to tune up. Neither Tina nor I were afraid of Johnny. The other Ramones were cool, but he was not. He was a classic bully.
When we hit the stage there was a lukewarm welcome for us. We were somewhat known, but only by reputation—no one had actually heard our music before. The place was packed. We kicked off our set with “Love Building on Fire,” which really got the kids going. Many in the audience were younger than us, and they were there to party and have a good time. A few of them were doing this new thing called the pogo, which consisted of hopping up and down as high as possible in time to the music. We had never seen anyone pogo before. Certainly no one had done it at CBGB. One young kid, standing right in front of the stage with his back to the band, was wearing a raincoat with a very prominent Nazi swastika armband. He was blatantly disrespecting us and the people around him. We just ignored him, which is usually the best way to treat somebody like that, but about halfway through our set I lost my cool. In between songs I got down from the drum riser—something I had never done before and haven’t done since—walked over to the kid who still had his back to us, slapped him on the head, and pointed to the exit. The kid was taken aback and looked scared. Tina and the rest of the band looked at me, like, whoa. I went back to the drums and we continued with the show. By the end of our rather short set we really had the crowd going. We got our first encore of the tour. This was a very good sign for us because, more often than not, support bands are not shown much love by the audience. But when the Ramones came on, there was punk pandemonium. The Swiss are known for their reserve, but the Ramones brought out the wildness in them. With a full house and a full PA system, the Ramones were an unstoppable blitzkrieg of sound. In their Perfecto leather jackets, with their passion and their sheer volume, they really were magnificent.
That night after our show, Frank Gallagher invited Tina and me up to his room for some strawberries and cream. Really, that’s what we had; Frank had ordered from room service. We had only met each other that afternoon but Frank said, “I want to join the family.” Being a Scot, he loved that David had been born in Dumbarton, not far from where Frank grew up. But, even more than that, he loved our music and our demeanor, which was very different from the many other bands he had worked with. I think he immediately recognized that we represented something new and unusual, and he wanted to be part of it.
Early the next morning we boarded the bus that would carry us from show to show. This was not a tour bus with bunks and bars and stereos and TV sets. It was a tourist bus from England with thirty seats and an aisle down the middle, the type that carried tourist groups around the continent. The driver was a young man named Paul and it was his first time out of the UK, but that was cool. For most of us it was our first trip to Europe, too. Paul was actually a mechanic and he had stored an entire spare motor in one of the baggage bays under the bus in case of emergency.
We were on our way to Marseilles in the south of France, a distance of about five hundred miles. Johnny Ramone claimed the front seat next to the driver. Tommy sat in the seat behind him. Joey sat behind Tommy and Dee Dee sat behind him. This was the Ramones’ seating arrangement for the rest of the tour, and Johnny was not pleased if anyone decided to move for any reason, such as to see a castle or quaint village as we passed by. The rest of us sat wherever we pleased and evidently drove Johnny crazy with our conversation about art and historical events. The first day on the bus, Tommy privately asked us to please not upset Johnny with our conversations. It seemed Johnny did not have much tolerance for other people’s interests, particularly Tina’s and Jerry’s. Even as the rest of us were amazed by the vistas from the winding road through the Alps that day, he maintained that this trip was grim.
No matter. Everyone else was having a good time and shared a great sense of anticipation for the upcoming gigs. Because of the strict rules about how long a bus driver can stay behind the wheel without sleeping, we stopped to spend the night in Grenoble. Tina realized that we were not too far from where her Aunt Mayette lived, and she called her from our hotel. She wanted to let her cousin Yves, a marine biologist who lived near Marseilles, know that we would be playing there the following night. Jet lag was hitting us pretty hard at that point, so we went to bed earlier than usual that night. Tina and I slept well despite the lumpy and sagging mattress we shared. Even a cheap French hotel seemed very romantic to us.
Waking for an early departure the next morning, I crossed the street from the hotel to buy cigarettes at a Bar Tabac. I was surprised to find businessmen in coats and ties smoking and enjoying a glass or two of wine before work at 8:30 A.M, but I remember that they all looked healthy and slender enough.
Back on board the bus that morning, even Johnny was in a good mood and looking forward to the show that night. As we drove south to Marseilles, the landscape changed to more of a desert scene with sandy ground and rocky cliffs. Arturo Vega, who’d been the “Mexican” in the sharkskin suit I’d met my first time at CBGB in 1974, turned to me and said, “You know Chris, this reminds me of my home in Chihuahua. I feel like I’m at home.”
In Marseilles, Tina and I were thrilled that our hotel was right on the Old Port, with fishing boats tied up directly in front. It was like a Brigitte Bardot movie. The skies were sunny and it was very warm; we were relaxed. As we checked into the hotel, the lady at the front desk was clearly skeptical of the Ramones and expressed this to Mickey Stewart, who easily managed to sweet-talk her, persuading her that they were really very nice boys from New York City.
Tina and I went up to our room to freshen up. Not long after that there was a knock on our door. It was Dee Dee. We invited him in and he started talking about how he would like to get a tattoo in the shape of the old-fashioned hotel room key. I don’t think he had any tattoos yet; those would come later. Then he cut to the chase: “Are you going to be using your Carbona?” Phonogram, the company that distributed Sire records in Europe at that time, had provided each band member with a little travel kit of things we might need on the road. There was a sewing kit, a toothbrush, aspirin, Fernet-Branca herbal liqueur, maps, and, among other things, a small bottle of the spot remover known as Carbona. Tina and I were not even sure what Carbona was so we said, “Sure, Dee Dee. You can have it.” Later on, when the Ramones recorded a song called “Carbona, Not Glue,” we realized what was up. If you inhaled Carbona fumes, you would get a brain-damaging high.
Before sound check, we were treated to an excellent afternoon dinner of bouillabaisse, the spicy fish stew of Provence, by our promoters, Jenny Bier and Hervé Mueller. Both of them looked impossibly thin and chic in skin-tight jeans, tailored western shirts, and cowboy boots. Jenny was a young British woman, supercool and living in Paris, and Hervé was a leading rock writer and critic for Rock & Folk magazine. He was friends with Jim Morrison and was one of the last people to see Jim alive. We liked them immediately. They had been contacted about promoting our concerts, first by Phonogram, and then by Ed Bicknell from NEMS, because the usual promoters in France had passed on anything punk. In our early days, this was usually the case. Jenny and Hervé were real go-getters and managed to get decent-sized crowds at our shows by saying we were denizens of CBGB and New York. We may not have been popular yet, but to those in the know, we were a very chic new band.
After lunch we walke
d over to the club where we would perform that night. It was close to our hotel and located in the oldest part of Marseilles. As we entered the club, I remember thinking that the ceilings were very low and it would be difficult to even see the band. Lots of music clubs had the same problem. The Ramones crew was setting up for their sound check. These were always fun to watch because their sound check was almost as great as their live show, plus the band would stop and argue with one another about things. I don’t know if they realized how hilarious this could be to onlookers. This time, after playing one song and launching into the second number, everything went quiet. The power had gone out. Monte threw his hands in the air while Frank and Ian scrambled to find out what the problem was. Somehow they got the power back on and the band resumed playing, but after a few more chords, silence. This happened several more times until, finally, Mickey Stewart told us that not only had the power failed in the club, but in that whole quarter of Marseilles. It was clear that this show was not going to go on. He advised us to get the hell out of there before things got ugly. It was a weird feeling to come all the way to Marseilles from New York by way of Zurich and not be able to play the show due to circumstances beyond our control, but so be it. As we left through the front door, we could see that the line went around the block. At the front of the line was Tina’s cousin, Yves, and his wife. Tina expressed our regrets and off we slunk, back to the comfort of our hotel, just in time to watch the sunset over the Vieux Port.
Danny Fields arrived from New York to see that the show had been canceled, so Tina and I decided to join him and Dee Dee for a walk around Marseilles after dark. To us this was the land of The French Connection, the movie about the French heroin trade starring Gene Hackman, and we were on guard, but there was really no need for it. Hardly a soul was walking the streets, and the area around our hotel had a few bars where workingmen were drinking, but it wasn’t really a nightlife scene. We wandered around, window shopping and looking for some type of action, but it seemed like Marseilles was dead that night. We all went back to the hotel, had a glass or two of rosé, and called it a night.
The following morning we were on the bus early for the long ride back to Geneva. If the routing on this tour seemed a little crazy, it was. This is often the case with rock and roll tours. This time we did not take the scenic route, but instead hauled ass up the super highways. When we arrived in Geneva, Mickey Stewart said that since we would be sleeping in a men’s hostel, Tina should cover up and pretend to be a boy. The guy who checked us in was none the wiser and it was actually a very nice hotel. Joey Ramone’s brother Mitch, now known as Mickey Leigh, had arrived from New York. He was a very sweet guy who had the thankless task of being Johnny Ramone’s guitar tech. The show was held in an elegant old venue called the Salle du Faubourg. The walls and ceiling were made of beautifully carved wood paneling and the acoustics were marvelous. There was even a small balcony. We rocked the joint. Talking Heads was the perfect opening act for the Ramones. If there had been any doubt, this performance sealed it. Musically we were tight, snappy, just off-kilter and unusual enough that the audience was pleasantly challenged to figure us out. Not everyone in the Ramones audience loved us, but enough of them did to make this an exciting combination. We got the crowd grooving and then the Ramones came out and completely slayed them. There was true pandemonium in the house. Really, it was amazing, a quantum leap from our nights on the Bowery.
That night, Tina’s uncle Luco came up on the train from Paris to see our show. Anyone who knew Luco considered him one of most cultured men alive; he moved in high social circles. He absolutely loved both bands and was visibly proud of Tina. He gave her a box of Swiss chocolates, saying, with a wink, it was the only thing the Swiss were really good at, before sharing a bottle of wine with us in the dressing room. He apologized that he would be out of town when we played Paris. Then Luco had a conversation with Dee Dee about how he shaved his head along with his face every morning. Dee Dee said that maybe he should try that.
Our next show was at La Cigale in Lyon, so it wasn’t too arduous a journey, and the views from the bus were gorgeous. When the distances were not too great, Mickey Stewart, unbeknownst to Johnny Ramone, directed the driver to take the scenic route and the winding back roads. The mountains from Geneva to Lyon were a real trip. I spent most of the time just staring out the window while others napped or read books and magazines as Johnny grumbled audibly from the front of the bus.
Arriving at La Cigale in Lyon, we were pleasantly surprised to be greeted by a gang of young fans. It turned out that most of them were in bands themselves, with names like Marie et Les Garcons, Starshooter, and Essence. Our reputation preceded us. They were already fans of the Ramones and Talking Heads. The gig was great. Most of the audience loved us and we got an encore. We played “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel.” Then the Ramones came on and the whole room blasted off. No one there had ever seen anything like the Ramones or Talking Heads, and the entire room was infected with a contagious musical fever.
After the show, the members of Marie et Les Garcons invited us back to their apartment for a party. We made friends with them easily even though Tina was the only one in our band who spoke French. There was a good feeling of camaraderie and much beer and wine was consumed. It was a wonderful party but we decided to call it a night because the next morning we were driving to Paris. Marie et Les Garcons promised they would be coming to Paris to see us play there.
The next day we rolled into Paris in the afternoon. As we drove through town, we were all mesmerized by the sheer beauty and opulence of the city. The architecture, the monuments and bridges across the Seine, the smoky cafés—all were even better in real life than they were in the movies. We were all happy except for Johnny Ramone, who was mad that everybody spoke French and, yes, the place was so grim. As we drove down the Boulevard Saint Germain past Café de Flore and Les Deux Magots and turned right onto Boulevard Saint Michel, Johnny spied a McDonald’s and let out a whoop. Finally, a restaurant that appealed to him! He wanted to stop the bus right then, but Mickey Stewart explained that we were only a few blocks from our hotel and he could walk back there after we got checked in. Turning onto the very narrow Rue Racine, we came to Hotel Racine, where we would be spending the night. The hotel was on the corner of Place de l’Odeon across from the Odéon-Théâtre de l’Europe and one short block from the fabulous Jardin du Luxembourg. It was a relic from another era, and perfect for our first night in Paris. Tina loved it, too, with its narrow staircases, ancient plumbing and fixtures, and squeaky beds and floors. The little lady who checked us in asked if we would like to have breakfast in our room the next morning. We said yes, we would have café au lait and croissants.
It was April in Paris and we had the day off, so Tina, David, Jerry, and I decided we would explore while the Ramones went to McDonald’s. Tina and I enjoyed Jerry and David’s company. St. Germain was a bustling area filled with students, bookstores, record shops, boutiques, and cafés. The weather was chilly and damp as it usually is in late April, but we didn’t mind. This was the life for us, and to think the music we made had brought us here was fantastic. Now we were walking the same streets and alleyways as the beat poets, the great jazz cats, the Existentialists, the Surrealists, and Ernest Hemingway. With Tina by my side walking the streets of Paris, I knew I was leading a charmed life. We stopped at a Tabac to buy some Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes. Except for Jerry, we were all smokers and the French cigarettes had a really strong kick to them. They smelled like cigars and they made me feel dizzy.
We didn’t have much money to spend. Seymour Stein had given each of us a per diem of five US dollars and admonished us to “please don’t tell the Ramones.” You can imagine that five bucks didn’t go far. I had some savings, but not much. None of us had credit cards yet. We had to be very frugal.