Remain in Love

by Chris Frantz

  The Ramones were doing their sound check and, with the booming acoustics of the Paradiso, they sounded like a horde of bikers on choppers at full throttle, but with melodies. Somehow over all the crazy commotion, Joey always hit the notes and it was almost always a happy sound. You wanted to punch the air with your fist at every chord change. At least I did.

  The Paradiso was definitely hot by the time we hit the stage and our band was in terrific form. We were surprised to see that many people down in the front knew the words to our songs and were singing along, particularly on “Psycho Killer.” They chanted along as if we were at a soccer match. From behind the drums I could see the balconies were heaving in time to the music. The excitement level was energizing to the point that we played harder and harder. David and Jerry and Tina all broke strings on their guitars. It’s not easy to break a string on a bass guitar, but Tina did it. We were learning what it took to put on an exciting show and the Dutch reciprocated with keen appreciation. We only had time for one encore and then the Ramones came on to take everything up to an even crazier level. They were not just loud, they were sublime. Downstairs in the dressing room we could see the floorboards above our heads throbbing in an unsettling way, but all was cool. The Blitzkreig Bop was in full effect. After the show, when we were all still soaked with sweat, Dee Dee motioned me over to the dressing room toilet and closed the door behind us. Someone had given him a little cocaine and he offered to share it with me. He put his index finger to his lips to say not to tell anyone. It was only a tiny amount but it was really good. Then Dee Dee said that one day we’d get together and do a whole gram. We laughed and joined the party in the dressing room where the Heineken was flowing and some very tall and gorgeous Dutch girls were all over the Ramones. We were introduced for the first time to Hans DeVente, a giant of a man who called himself our biggest fan. He was with Fer Abrahams, who had been playing our single on Dutch radio. Both of these guys became lifelong friends, but particularly Hans, who worked for Sony product development and would show up at our gigs around the world. He had access to the very best in portable recording devices and has a huge archive of our live performances that he recorded with our permission.

  After the show we went back to Hotel Wiechmann to change before going to a club the girls in the dressing room had invited us to. In the lobby, Tina and I met up with Dee Dee and Willy DeVille and his girlfriend, Toots. Willy was on tour with his band Mink DeVille and it was good to see him, although I don’t think he ever understood or cared for Talking Heads. Toots was a real tough cookie and super jealous of any girl who even looked at Willy. In her black bouffant hairdo, black mascara, pencil-thin black leather skirt, and black stiletto heels, she resembled one of the Ronettes or maybe one of the Shangri-Las. She had been known to use a knife and some people were afraid of her, but she seemed to like Tina and me and we were cool with her.

  As we walked to the club, it became clear that Willy and Toots were very loaded, but it was a beautiful Friday night in May and Amsterdam was heavenly. We laughed together while exchanging touring stories with Willy. Then Toots tripped on the cobblestones and pitched forward, poking her chest on an iron bollard used to keep cars from driving up on the sidewalks. She rolled off the bollard and landed hard on her side. It was a terrible fall and we feared the worst, but as Willy helped her up she just brushed herself off and said not to worry, she was fine. Toots felt no pain. Not yet, anyway, but the next day we heard she had several broken ribs and some internal injuries, too.

  The club was cool. David and Jerry were already there. Jerry was hitting it off with the ladies and David was dancing by himself. The DJ was spinning punk and reggae and Tina and I had fun dancing on the tiny, packed dance floor until some very tall Dutch girl accidentally stomped on Tina’s foot. At five feet four inches tall, Tina said she felt like a dwarf in Holland. There was no sign of Dee Dee, Willy, or Toots. At the time I wondered where they had gone, but now I know they had probably copped something they liked and gone to get high.

  The next day, the hotel provided a fine Dutch breakfast of ham and eggs, cheese and yogurt with fresh fruit and pancakes. It was fun to have breakfast with Dr. Feelgood, who were cheerful and had enormous appetites. I sat across the table from the singer Lee Brilleaux, a fine lad, and the drummer, who was known as The Big Figure. They were pub rockers reacting against much of the seventies music the way we and the Ramones were, but they had been doing it longer. We had seen them perform at the Bottom Line in New York City when the great guitarist Wilko Johnson was in the band and the Ramones had been their support act. They were influential to the British punks and they never failed to rock the house.

  Now we were on the bus to Eindhoven to play a club called Effenaar. Johnny Ramone was in a bad mood again. Who knows why? Danny Fields turned to us and said, “The Princess and the Pea,” which put everything Johnny ever said into perspective. Hans and Fer were at the sound check and interviewed Talking Heads for a radio show called Supporting Act, which is what we were. It was a great show and not too much of an anticlimax after the Paradiso. We got a hard-earned encore.

  The following morning, May 8, was my twenty-sixth birthday and the bus took us to northern Holland to the town of Groningen. In 1977, there was not much happening in Groningen. Our hotel was a Dutch Seaman’s Hostel for men only so we had to sneak Tina in as a boy again. She did make a very cute boy. The hotel was completely Spartan with bathrooms and showers in the hall. The color scheme was ship’s gray on gray. After a little nap we headed over to the Huize Maas club to play the gig. The club was not very interesting; it seemed like the music was secondary to the drinking. The people running the place were not interested in us at all and the dressing room for both bands was the size of a broom closet. Then something wonderful happened. Just before Talking Heads was about to play, a huge gang of Dutch Hell’s Angels roared up to the front of the club. They were out for a Sunday ride and thought they would check out these New York bands that were playing. They completely outnumbered the other customers and the thing is, they were really nice people. They were wearing the Angels’ colors but they seemed like well-mannered, educated guys and not a thing like their American brothers. As we climbed onstage to play, they came to the front of the tiny stage and actually paid attention. They were fascinated by our weirdness and cheered us on after every song.

  Of course, the Angels loved the Ramones, too. Maybe even more. And after the show, they invited us to join them at another bar nearby. Since it was my birthday and there was nothing else going on, Tina and I said yes and Dee Dee came along, too. One Angel in particular took us under his wing and rolled a big hash-and-tobacco spliff for me. We shared it with pleasure, had a couple of Grolsch beers, and were in the middle of a political discussion when, suddenly, the police walked in. They ignored Tina and Dee Dee and me but very calmly asked all the Angels to go outside. Our Angel friend said that we should get out of there right away and we did. Looking back as we quickly walked away, we saw the cops lining the Angels up against the outside wall of the bar and frisking them. That was the end of my birthday party.

  The bus rolled back to Amsterdam the next morning to the Hotel Wiechmann for a much-needed night off after playing seven in a row. We walked over to the Leidesplein with David and Jerry where we met our biggest fan Hans (who was wearing a badge that said I MAY BE FAT BUT I’M NOT STUPID) for a dinner of spaghetti bolognese. Then we walked around the corner to the famous Melkweg, which was second only to the Paradiso in terms of music and partying. It was a Monday night, so there was no live music, but people were stoned on all kinds of things, primarily acid. The air was thick with hash and tobacco smoke and the DJ was banging. He had no idea we were there but played our single “Love Building on Fire.” People danced. How sweet it felt.

  After more great shows in Rotterdam and Utrecht, we turned our sights to the UK. As the bus rolled onto the ferry from the Hook of Holland to Harwich, I felt like our tour of the capitals of Europe had been a complete success and I w
as sorry to leave. Now we were heading to London, which was going to be really wild. We would be playing the Roundhouse on the Queen’s Jubilee Weekend and every punk musician in London would be there. We had a particularly rough crossing of the North Sea, with many seasick passengers vomiting overboard and all around us. We finally arrived in the port of Harwich and as the bus rolled off the ferry onto UK soil, Mickey Stewart turned on the bus radio to play some music and what we heard the announcer say was, “This is the BBC. Now, from the city of New York in the United States of America, these are the Ramones with their latest single, ‘Sheena Is a Punk Rocker’!” The feeling on the bus was euphoric. We were part of a new vanguard arriving in England right on time and ready to take it to the stage and make history.

  28

  TALKING HEADS IN LONDON

  From the ferry landing we reached London in high spirits, if still a bit queasy from crossing in a Force 8 gale. The Ramones had flown up to do a few dates in Scandinavia without us so we were on our own for a few days. We stayed in a no-name hotel in an unmemorable part of town. When I stood up from a brief lie-down on the bed, Tina burst out laughing. The back side of my black jeans was completely covered with bright orange lint from our cheap, bright orange bedspread. With some difficulty I managed to get it all off with a piece of gaffer’s tape before we went out on the town. Mickey Stewart took us to a well-known music club called Dingwalls to see Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. They were old school, wore pirate suits and eyepatches and were not really our cup of tea, but they’d had a number one single in the UK in 1960 with “Shakin’ All Over,” and it was fun to hear some pre-Beatles British rock and roll.

  The next day, Friday the 13th of May, we played a Talking Heads showcase, the first of two nights, at a club called the Rock Garden in Covent Garden. This was the first sunny day we’d had since Marseilles and Tina and I enjoyed walking around. The club was a tiny honeycomb of dark rooms and the show was sold out. It’s always a good idea to play a smaller place that you know will sell out, rather than a larger room that may not, especially for your debut in a cultural capital like London.

  We rocked the joint and played two encores. London’s music press was out in force and the reviews that followed were glowing. In those days the UK had three main weekly music papers: Melody Maker, New Musical Express, and Sounds. There were also some cool punk ’zines like Sniffin’ Glue. The weekly papers had to come up with news scoops to sell magazines every week and Talking Heads was right up their alley. So were the Ramones. Together on tour we were big news.

  The next day Tina and I decided to visit Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood’s shop on King’s Road. SEX was a tiny boutique selling crazy tartan and leopard-skin bondage trousers and uber-gay Tom of Finland T-shirts. There was no way we were going to wear any of it, but two doors down, Tina, who felt the cold, bought a black jacket made of quilted paper.

  As we strolled down King’s Road we expected to see some punks and, sure enough, a small group of punk kids passed by with their Doc Martens, spiky hair, and drunken stagger. If you read the papers, you would think the punks were everywhere in England causing madness and mayhem, but we figured that it was actually the same small group of kids that showed up at all punk events over and over again. The media loved them and they loved the media. It was fun for these kids to horrify their stodgy British parents and scandalize the government, and it was a hoot for us to observe.

  Linda Stein, who co-managed the Ramones with Danny Fields, had just flown in from New York and took us out to dinner that night before the show. She loved our band and was excited to show us off while the Ramones were away and Johnny wasn’t looking. When we got to the Rock Garden it was completely sold out again. We slowly made our way through the packed house to the cramped backstage area and began to get tuned up to play, when Linda came rushing in to tell us ecstatically that John Cale and Brian Eno were in the audience. She said she would bring them back to meet us after the show. We already knew John, famous for his work with the Velvet Underground, pretty well because he’d been living in New York and hanging out at CBGB while producing the Patti Smith Group’s debut album, Horses. David had been invited to sit in with him as a guitarist along with Lou Reed and Patti at one of John’s shows at the Lower Manhattan Ocean Club. John was a pretty wild guy in a Welsh poet sort of way and we liked him a lot. His productions of the Stooges, Nico, and his own solo work were impeccable. Of course, he had also produced the Modern Lovers demos that were later released on Berserkley Records after Jonathan left the band, so Jerry was particularly well acquainted with John. It would be good to see him after the show. As for Brian Eno, I had all of his albums and we were big fans. We felt a kinship to what he was doing in his early solo work with songs like “Baby’s on Fire” and “I’ll Come Running (To Tie Your Shoe).” He had also released a live album with Cale, Nico, and Kevin Ayers titled June 1, 1974. John and Brian were considered to be leaders of the rock avant-garde, a position that we respected and aspired to. But now it was time for us to rock.

  The show was wonderful despite the cramped little stage and the sweaty, smoky, dripping-hot atmosphere. We were used to these conditions from our shows at CBGB.

  This was our set list:

  “Love Building on Fire”

  “Uh-oh, Love Comes to Town”

  “Don’t Worry About the Government”

  “Who Is It?”

  “Take Me to the River”

  “Tentative Decisions”

  “The Book I Read”

  “New Feeling”

  “A Clean Break (Let’s Work)”

  “I’m Not in Love”

  “Psycho Killer”

  ENCORE

  “No Compassion”

  “Thank You for Sending Me an Angel”

  In keeping with the old showbiz rule, “Always leave them wanting more,” we did just that and left the stage. I knew we had made a strong, mostly good impression on all who were there and, most importantly, on Cale and Eno.

  Linda quickly brought them backstage along with producer Chris Thomas, who had just produced the Sex Pistols’ album after working with the Beatles and Roxy Music, among many others. We shook hands all around and I heard John tell Brian, “They’re mine, you bugger!” I asked Linda to get Brian’s phone number. I should have known that she already had.

  After the show we were taken to the Speakeasy Club. “The Speak” had been an important musician and record business hangout, but we had the feeling it was well past its prime. John Cale was there with his manager, Jane Friedman, who was also Patti Smith’s. John was a hard drinker back then and was feeling no pain. Jane was dispensing drink money to him, but not wholeheartedly. Chris Thomas was still with them and had a quiet chat with David. Who knows what they talked about? Thomas had passed on producing Talking Heads’ first album, which we had yet to finish recording. He had been our first choice mostly due to his work with Roxy Music, but it wasn’t to be. Tina found the ambience at the Speakeasy depressingly awful so we said good night and we split back to our no-name hotel.

  The next day was a Sunday and Tina and I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum. It had been several years since either of us had made a painting but we still thought like painters. We spent hours taking in as much of the collection spanning five thousand years of art and design as we could. The Japanese collection was particularly gorgeous. A kindly security guard, a grandfatherly man, asked us if we were enjoying London. “Oh, yes,” we said. He asked us if we would be sticking around for the Queen’s Jubilee weekend and we told him yes, we would be playing two concerts at the Roundhouse that weekend. “What type of music do you play?” he asked. I told him we played dance music and he said, “Oh, I love to dance!” and winked at Tina.

  Even though many restaurants in London were closed on Mondays, Linda was able to set up a lunch with Talking Heads and Brian Eno at my request. I thought it was a good idea to meet with him while the Rock Garden show was still fresh in his mind. The four Talking Heads
, Brian, and Linda Stein met at a pub called the Hungry Horse. I would say that the lunch couldn’t have gone any better. We didn’t talk business but we did find Brian to be very likable and interesting. He had the bearing of a Jesuit priest, but I had heard of his reputation with the ladies so I knew he was far from one. He was soft spoken and courtly, and it was clear to me that he was also keen to make a good impression. We all had a good laugh, especially Tina and Linda, when he explained to us what an item on the menu called Spotted Dick was. Brian was very complimentary of our sound, which he later described as “The rhythm section is like a ship or a train—very forceful and certain of where it’s going. On top of that you have this hesitant, doubting quality that dizzily asks, ‘Where are we going?’ That makes for a sense of genuine disorientation, unlike the surface insanity of the more commonplace, expressionist punk bands.” Brian invited to us his flat for tea the following day and of course we accepted with pleasure.

  That night we went with John Cale and Jane Friedman to see Kevin Ayers perform at The Rainbow. It was a very old-fashioned, laid-back, and romantic show with a tropical island stage set in keeping with the theme of his latest album, Yes, We Have No Mañanas. At the party afterward, John introduced us to Kevin, who was totally charming and puffing on a big Cuban cigar. Years later, Kevin would be our houseguest in Connecticut for a couple of days and cooked us the most delicious fish dinner. Tina and I had produced some demos for his daughter Galen that he liked and we talked about the possibility of doing some work together, but sadly, he passed away at his home in the south of France before we ever got together again.

  When we woke up on Tuesday, Tina felt she was coming down with a cold and needed to rest, so David, Jerry, and I took a cab over to Eno’s flat in Maida Vale not far from the historic Abbey Road Studios. It was a quiet, rainy day. Brian was welcoming and I was impressed by how unpretentious and anti–rock star his surroundings were. He was wearing an Adidas tracksuit. Gone were the feather boas and makeup of his stage persona. Over cups of tea we talked about many things including how, as a recording artist, you don’t have to have hit records to stay in business as long as you keep your expenses down. We also talked about using the tape recorder as simply another musical instrument and how not bothering to read equipment manuals could allow interesting, unexpected musical events to happen. That was fine with me. I’ve never read a manual in my life.