Remain in Love

by Chris Frantz

  Brian was excited by Jamaican dub mixes and showed us his copy of Dr. Alimantado’s Best Dressed Chicken in Town, which I also had in my record collection. We both loved Lee Perry. He also had high praise for Fela Kuti’s work and I explained that we loved him, too, and that I had bought his and other African records at a multicultural store in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during our RISD days.

  It was a very calm and happy afternoon with great mutual admiration all around. I was pleased to see David feeling about as comfortable as David could be in Brian’s presence. It was also good to see that Jerry, who had not really been a fan of Eno’s music, was beginning to appreciate Brian’s point of view.

  After a few very fine cups of tea and a couple of hours of great conversation, I excused myself to go check on Tina back at the hotel. David and Jerry stayed at Eno’s place, where evidently the discussion turned to one of David’s favorite topics, cybernetics. Jerry thinks David never really understood it, but it made him feel smart to talk about it. In 1948, Norbert Wiener defined cybernetics as “the scientific study of control and communication in the animal and the machine.” Whatever happened, there is no doubt that our meeting that day with Brian set the stage for some great, groundbreaking work together in the future.

  Just before we had left New York City to go on the tour, I’d been walking across Fifty-seventh Street when I saw my friend and painting teacher Richard Merkin. He had heard about Talking Heads and asked me how it was going. I told him we were about to go play in Europe and the UK. He said that he would write a letter of introduction to his good friend, the great British Pop artist Peter Blake. Peter was well-known for designing and creating the cover of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s album. In fact, he’d been well- known and highly respected before that—it was why the Beatles chose him. One of the many feathers in Merkin’s cap was that he is one of the characters on that album cover. He gave me Blake’s number in England and told me to call him, so when we got to London I did.

  Peter Blake answered and asked, “Can you meet me for lunch today at Mr. Chow’s, and do you mind if I bring a friend?” We had the day off so I said we would love to and, of course, do bring a friend.

  I gathered everyone together and we took a cab over to Mr. Chow. I do love those London cabs where the whole band could sit in the back. Peter Blake was waiting patiently, dressed like a country gentleman in a three-piece tweed suit and sporting a neatly groomed Van Dyke goatee. He smiled broadly, invited us to sit down, and said how pleased he had been to hear about us from Richard Merkin. After ordering for the whole table he talked a little about art, but then quickly turned the conversation to the London music scene. He asked us if we had heard of Kilburn and the High Roads. I replied that I had heard a little about them from a sweet guy I’d met at CBGB called Humphrey Ocean. Peter smiled and said, “Here he comes now!” Sure enough, Humphrey Ocean, tall and lanky, came striding over to our table with a tiny guy who walked with a cane and a pronounced limp. They both sat down with us and Peter said, “You already know Humphrey and this is our friend Ian Dury.” Ian was dressed like a gypsy or a tinker, a real ragamuffin. He had pierced ears with dangling cross earrings and an oily, curly Gene Vincent–style hairdo. He said, “’Allo Tawlkin ’Eds.” I later learned that his Cockney accent was a complete put-on, but he certainly fooled us. Ian was not the only British musician to adopt a working-class accent to disguise a more posh background. Joe Strummer, amusing us with Cockney rhyming slang, springs to mind. Both Ian and Humphrey had been in Kilburn and the High Roads, a group of pub rockers who were now considered to be important predecessors of British punk. Ian had been an art student taught by Peter. Humphrey had been an art student taught by Ian. All were painters and music lovers, our kind of people. As the meal wound down, I invited them all to our upcoming show at the Roundhouse. Peter said that he was living in Bristol and rarely came to London anymore. But it just so happened we’d be playing in Bristol so I said I’d put him on the guest list. Peter picked up the tab for all of us. What a kind and generous man.

  29

  DEEPER INTO THE UK

  The Ramones landed in the UK from their Scandanavian gigs. Dee Dee especially loved the show in Finland. When I asked him why that show in particular, he said, “Because it’s right next to Russia!”

  Frank Gallagher went out to Heathrow Airport with Tommy and Johnny Ramone to pick up their girlfriends, Claudia, Robin, and Roxy, who were arriving from New York. Roxy had brought Johnny a new black leather Perfecto jacket because his had been stolen from the stage while the Ramones were performing at the Effenaar Club in Eindhoven, Holland. The Perfecto jacket was a very important part of the Ramones’ look, so you would think that Johnny would be grateful, but no. To Frank’s horror, while still inside Heathrow, Johnny began slapping Roxy, yelling and hitting her around the head. This would explain why Tommy’s girlfriend, Claudia, looked shell-shocked when she arrived at our hotel and Tina said, “Hi! Welcome to London!” Roxy never said a word to anyone about this or anything else. I suppose she was forbidden to speak to anyone. Dee Dee told me she came from a wealthy family and her last name was Whitney, but we never found out if she was one of the Whitneys. Somehow, I think not.

  Our first show of this leg was in Liverpool at a basement club called Eric’s. It was in the alley next door to the historic Cavern Club, where the Beatles had rocked and rolled. In their wisdom, the city fathers had allowed the Cavern Club to be destroyed and replaced with a parking garage. Eric’s had exactly the same floor plan and architecture as the original Cavern Club: a long, narrow staircase leading down to a cellar with vaulted ceilings of brick and stone, a tiny stage, and no windows or ventilation. If it hadn’t had the Beatles myth attached to it, it would have been a pure hellhole, but like CBGB, the kids loved it. By the time we climbed onstage the air was smoky and thick and the stone walls were dripping with condensation. Our crew had set up a fan to cool us down but it was just blowing hot air across the stage. Tina, who had a bad cold and fever, felt alternately like she was tripping or dying. My hands were so slippery and wet I was having trouble hanging onto my drumsticks after playing the first song. David was fucking up his parts, forgetting his words and skipping entire verses, but no one in the audience seemed to notice or care. To my right, Jerry, who was normally cool and calm, was streaming sweat and turning bright pink. We were all gasping for air. The kids in the audience were going nuts from the first song—I mean, they were really going wild and not just a little bit. There was no barrier between the kids and the tiny, low stage; they were right in our faces. I can’t remember a single girl in the crowd of young men, although evidently the NME sent enfant terrible Julie Burchill to review the show. She adored the Ramones in every way but dismissed Talking Heads as sounding like we’d been locked up in a closet with our Sam & Dave records for too long. Ha! That’s still one of my favorite descriptions of our band and not too far from the truth, despite Julie’s mean-spirited intentions.

  We got two encores and ran upstairs and outside for some fresh air. Our soaking-wet hot bodies emanated clouds of steam. The good news was Tina’s fever had broken. She was feeling good again!

  We could have slept late the next morning, but the maids in our Liverpool hotel ignored our DO NOT DISTURB sign and knocked loudly on the door until we got up. Tina and I decided not to fight it and went downstairs for breakfast. The dining room, with lace curtains and white tablecloths, was really like a scene from A Hard Day’s Night with proper British businessmen in suits drinking tea and looking askance at us. No matter, the full English breakfast with eggs and bacon and fried tomato with toast, jam, and coffee was just what we needed. We felt good and ready for more action.

  We would get plenty of more action. It was a lovely day and Tina and I had a serious case of spring fever. The next stop on the tour was Leeds Polytechnic University, where we would play in the same refectory where the Who had recorded their classic album Live at Leeds. The room was packed with punk students wearing shades, ripped
T-shirts, and badges while guzzling pints of lager in, thank God, plastic cups. It was a large room, and there was plenty of space to pose and pogo. The crew set our gear up on ten large modular wooden boxes that formed the stage. By just walking onto the stage, we got a huge reaction. I wouldn’t really call it an ovation. It was more like an eruption. This audience was primed! As always, we played our show with all the passion and humor we could muster. David was really milking his nutty onstage idiosyncrasies, playing off the audience’s reactions, and the kids loved it. How could such a nerd be so much fun? It was great to see more young women in the audience, too, and Tina’s presence on bass guitar was not lost on them. This audience was so enthusiastic we got three encores! If I repeat myself with the encore thing, this is because the number of encores you get is real evidence of how you’re doing and evidently we were doing something right.

  The wild welcome that we received from this crowd, however, paled next to the reaction the Ramones received. When they hit the stage to the strains of Ennio Morricone’s theme for The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, plugged into their Marshall amplifier stacks with a scream of feedback, planted their feet wide apart and Joey intoned, “You’re a loudmouth, baby! You better shut it up!” the entire audience surged forward with such force that the modular stage was pushed back twelve feet or so until it hit the back wall! The Ramones wobbled a bit, but Tommy didn’t miss a beat as their famous backdrop waved back and forth. Lesser bands may have been freaked out by this, but not our Ramones. Dee Dee looked so defiant that Jerry dubbed him “The Noble Savage” and I had to agree, although I’m pretty sure Dee Dee was not without sin.

  Following the show, as Tina was boarding the bus, Johnny Ramone grabbed her by the collar of her jacket and dragged her back down the steps. She turned around and he said, “Oh, I thought you were Roxy!” No apology. He was angry because he thought Roxy was getting on the bus before him. Everyone around the bus, including many fans, were witnesses but Tina just said, “Watch where you’re going, man!” He didn’t bother Tina after that but wherever we went we’d hear Johnny shouting, “Roxy! Roxy!” at his girlfriend. Finally, Linda Stein told him to quit hitting and yelling at his girlfriend in public or he was going to wind up in jail. Linda, a former elementary school teacher, knew exactly how to talk to a disobedient child and Johnny got the message, at least for the time being. Johnny’s abusive behavior was something we and Linda did our best put an end to, but this was a very deep-seated problem. Tina and I spoke to the band, but the other Ramones seemed unable to do or say anything about it. They looked the other way and Tommy in particular asked us to please not confront him about it. It seems that the entire band was bullied by Johnny. They were unwilling to speak out about it.

  The next day, Saturday, May 21, we arrived in Glasgow, Scotland. It was a bright sunny day, a rare occurrence in Scotland, according to Frank Gallagher, one of our resident Scots. David and Frank had both been born not far from Glasgow and our collective mood was very high. After checking into the Ivanhoe Hotel, we took a long walk around the city where many young people who looked a lot like David were out promenading and window shopping while eating from brown paper bags of fish and chips. Tina observed that the boys were cuter than the girls. Glasgow was a tough town, but on this day, with the fair weather, people were happy to be alive.

  Incredible as it seemed to us, the Ramones and Talking Heads were performing at the University of Strathclyde on the same night Television and Blondie were playing at the Glasgow Apollo. This felt like a bad booking practice, but so hungry were the Scots for the music of these new American bands that both shows were completely sold out. If we thought the crowd reaction in Liverpool and Leeds was something wild, nothing had prepared us for the sheer, savage ferocity of the Scots. The Celts really know how to give it up and turn it loose, and boy did they ever. Thank goodness they loved us or I probably wouldn’t be here to tell this tale. Clem Burke from Blondie and Fred Smith from Television came by to check out our set and were impressed with the addition of Jerry to our band. They, too, were in awe of the crowd reaction, especially when the Ramones made their entrance.

  After our shows, a group of us New Yorkers hit the pubs. The beer was good and so was the Scotch. It seemed like a dream for all of us to be transported from the Bowery to the city of Glasgow on the same night. Frank Gallagher asked me if I knew the difference between summer and winter in Scotland. He said, “In summer the rain is warmer.” This was a good thing because it had started to rain, and when we got back to our hotel we were locked out. After much ringing of the bell and pounding on the door, the night man eventually arrived to let us in. He scolded us for staying out too late, but then he smiled and said, “Look. I’ve saved you some sandwiches.” I loved his little egg salad sandwiches cut into triangles with the crust trimmed off. They were a sign of civilization.

  In Manchester at the Electric Circus, the kids wore black plastic “bin bags”—what we in the USA call garbage bags—over their clothing like ponchos, and we wondered if this was a new punk fashion statement. We found out soon enough that the bin bags were protection from a disturbing new trend in the UK known as “gobbing.” Gobbing was the act of spitting high into the air with the goal of landing the gob somewhere on the band onstage. In the bizarro world of punk rock, gobbing was considered a sign of approval. It was something new and ultra punk. The more a band was loved, the more they were gobbed upon. We got our fair share of gob, but when the Ramones hit the stage there was a veritable blizzard of gob. I felt badly for the band, but even more so for the crew who had to wipe the drums, guitars, and other gear down after the show. Besides being just plain gross, the gobbing was a real health hazard. Joe Strummer from the Clash got hepatitis from being gobbed. After the show we talked about how punk had become a kind of ugly club and wondered how much uglier things could possibly become. The Punk movement was really picking up steam.

  At the Outlook Club in Doncaster, all we got was polite applause, and Tina noted even more misogyny than usual directed at her from the mostly young male audience. After the show one young fan told me about a new band he liked called XTC. I said I’d keep an eye out for them.

  En route to Birmingham for the twentieth show of the tour, Mickey Stewart suggested we stop in the countryside near Nottingham for lunch at the oldest inn in England, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, established in 1189. They served great steaks and all sorts of ales. We spent all of our combined per diems and then some. Afterward, at Tina’s request, we did a quick tour of Nottingham Castle. Dee Dee loved castles, and who doesn’t? It was fun for everyone, even Johnny, to get off the bus and soak up the historical vibes and get a little fresh air.

  After another crazy, wild show at Barbarella’s in Birmingham, where we had to climb a high metal ladder to get to and from our dressing room, we all got on the bus again and drove straight to London. We had a better hotel this time, the Kingsley on Bloomsbury Way. I remember taking a long hot bath with Tina, and then doing our laundry in the same bathwater. As I was shaving, I looked in the mirror and for some reason had a vision of how I would look forty years down the road. A little jowly perhaps, but not too scary, thank goodness. It could have been worse.

  We had the next day off and we decided to take a bit of a busman’s holiday and ride down to Sussex University in Brighton to catch the Clash’s White Riot Tour. The support acts were the Jam and the Slits. We just managed to catch the tail end of the Slits’ set. They were wildness personified onstage. From where I stood at the back of the hall, I couldn’t understand a word they were singing but I’m pretty sure I was receiving their message. Tina and I really enjoyed their defiance and playfulness.

  The Jam was up next. They were the most technically proficient band of the night by far and they looked sharp, too. Everything about them screamed Mod. They wore sharkskin suits with white shirts, skinny ties, and two-tone dress shoes. At this point, I was still wearing Levi’s and Lacoste. Though they were only a trio, they had a big sound very reminiscent
of the Who or the Small Faces in their early days. They had been playing together for about five years but their first album, In the City, had just been released three days before. They were already getting solid radio airplay and were clearly a big draw on this tour. Evidently, they were kicked off the tour later when Paul Weller’s manager dad asked for more money.

  After a short break, the Clash hit the stage with a huge, high-contrast banner of an image from the 1976 Notting Hill riots flying behind them. Their first album, The Clash, was only a month old and so extremely raw and politically charged that their US label, Columbia, refused to even release it. Gnarly as it was, I dug their fiery sound. The songs “White Riot” and “I’m So Bored with the USA” were both invigorating and hilarious to me. “Police and Thieves” was one of my favorite reggae tunes and the Clash rocked it really well. The university audience in Brighton was well charged and completely receptive to the type of rebellion the Clash instigated. Also, I couldn’t help but notice they had a great drummer in Topper Headon. He was the one who was driving this train with no frills, just some good hard rocking.

  Just before the Clash finished their set, Mickey Stewart took us back to the dressing room so that we, but especially the Ramones, wouldn’t get mobbed by fans.