Just Some Psycho Babble

When writing my book, sometimes I have to flush out your feelings before I can actually write the story. Lushley from NY Waste called me demanding another piece so I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone and prime myself for writing the Stiletto part of the book so here we go.

I am going to be quite honest with you. When I started singing, it was in search of a way to discover a lifestyle that would afford me the freedom of expression and lifestyle that I sought. And being a hold over from the Warhol days and fixture of Max’s Kansas City unbeknownst to me I was in a very unique position to embark on an endeavor such as this. I wasn’t some kid hanging out in my mothers basement banging on a guitar, aspiring to be a rock star. By the time I decided to start the Stilettos, thousands and thousands of young people in New York knew who I was, and the reason for that was because of my history with Eric, Holly Woodlawn, the New York Dolls and the Warhol scene in general. For example, in 1973 right before I started the band Eric came to me and asked if I would let him have his birthday party at my loft. The date was only seven days away. Two thousand people showed up. Sal Mineo was on my roof jammed up against an air-vent, people swarming him. The party spilled out of the loft into the hallways, down the fire escape, out into the street, in the alley and all behind the building. It was rather terrifying, but the police never tried to break it up.. I stopped the thing at three am and people kept coming until the sun rose. Holly and I had to clean up the entire building and surprisingly the trash wasn’t so bad…just a layer of bottles, cigarettes, roaches, small crumpled pieces of aluminum foil, little glycogen bags and condoms ( some used, some not.) Someone showed up at the party at the very beginning with a shopping bag filled with condoms as a gift for Eric. The next day I got hell from the landlady because all the hallway bathrooms that service the commercial businesses on the other floors had been broken into. So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to expect that once I would announce a performance of my vocal trio The Stilettos, wherever we played a crowd would show up. And the proof of that was the first few gigs the Stilettos did. We had no transportation, so we moved the PA system and equipment that Jayne County shared with us down the stairs in the elevator and rolled it into the ancient tavern that was next door. The place was called the Boburn Tavern, a lousy name for a rock club. But nothing mattered. We drew a packed house each time. The lighting was so bad that Holly Woodlawn and her sidekick Estelle Bahuda took turns standing on the bar in front of a clamp light holding colored gels up in front of it to "give the show a little color" as she so lovingly offered to help. I even have a photo documenting this supportive gesture. As a matter of fact at the very first Stiletto performance, while I switched gears from the rock trio thing and went into a torch song solo called "Rouge" the red gel in Holly’s hand went up in flames! I mean there I am crooning away and I’m watching Holly trying not to give up on the thing as the flame licked the ceiling. She looked like a demented version of the fucking Statue of Liberty! So the Boburn Tavern gave us a good start. The second show had a line of people outside waiting to get in and David and Angie Bowie drove up in a limo to see us. The audience was slightly star studded; the Dolls all came to one show or another, famous photographers like Frank Kolloguey and Bill King, Jayne County and Cherry Vanilla, writers from the Interview Magazine staff. We even got an excellent review from Variety Magazine when we played a show at a club called Coventry, because a band with a draw was welcomed . I think that night we played with Kiss and Dorian Zero. Now I have no idea how much hands-on control Bowie had over his production company at the time. And it never even occurred to me that the company’s name Mainman Productions was very familiar. Two years prior, when I lived with Sylvain Sylvain ( guitarist for The Dolls,) Eric was pissed when my son Branch called him Daddy, so Syl was dubbed Main Man Syl and it became a hook to Syl’s name. Many in the NY Dolls family referred to him as Main Man Syl. But here is what happened. The director of the underground play I was in, "Femme Fatale" with Jackie Curtis, Jayne County and Patti Smith, was now working for Mainman Production. He came to us and said "Let me direct the band and Mainman will put you on tour opening for Mick Ronson." I knew shit about how the music industry worked. There was no mention of a record to support on that tour. Nor was there any mention of money. But Ingrassia ( the director) had put me on stage back in 1970 and I thought it would be a good idea. The other two female singers in the band Debbie Harry and Rosy Ross thought the same, so we put ourselves in his hands. He used method acting techniques and it was very helpful in improving Debbie and Rosy’s stage presence. In the beginning it was helpful, but then he got too confident. He started insisting that I let the other girls choose their own songs. I was the only one with any original songs at that time, and the repertoire was really incongruous. Rosy was choosing old blues songs by BB King and Debbie was turning the damned show into a disco copy band. He wouldn’t let us play out, and we never did perform the Ingrassia directed version of the band. Not only that, but rehearsals were in my house with Jayne’s equipment. That meant the Electric Chairs rehearsals took place a few times a week. I had to pay the rent and run the studio. There wasn’t any money. So one time I asked Ingrassia for money to get some food for my son and he told me to get a job! I should never have let the band out of my control. So I quit my own band, lost the loft and moved to the West Village. Nice job Mainman. I also warned them not to use my name if they decided to go on without me. I didn’t think they would be able to pull it off anyway with the sucky music they were playing. I was right. A few months later, Eric landed a loft and was helping out, so I put an ad in the Village Voice to audition people for a new version of the Stilettos. I had written more songs and was ready to try again. A half hour before audition time, Debbie Harry and Chris Stein showed up. They knew I was on the right track, that being original was the way to go. They wanted back into the Stilettos and I agreed. Terry Ork was a writer for Interview Magazine and had become the manager of a band called Television. They were playing at a bar on the Bowery and he invited me to come down to see them. He wanted the Stilettos to do some dates down there with them. The place was called CBGB’s. So I went to see them. The place was dead; maybe ten or twelve people in the audience. To my surprise Patti Smith was on stage with Lenny Kaye. He was hitting chords and twisting his guitar strings to Patti’s epic poetry. By the time Television went on there were about twenty people, not including the Bowery Bums at the bar. Hilly only let in the one’s he deemed "okay." But my focus was on the stage. I knew Patti Smith and I respected what ever she did as an artist. The band Television was fucking great, especially the bass player Richard Hell. He was the prototype punk. The other guys were visually a little soft around the edges. But the music was something that belonged in front of a crowd, a crowd the Stilettos could help to draw there. The rest is common punk history. But the point I wanted to make in this article has a much longer story than I am willing to sit here and explain. In the next issue I’ll tell you how I essentially ended up being a pariah in the punk scene. Imagine that! But it’s true. I was so out of the loop once the record companies descended and the scene cow-towed to them. Other than real musicians like Lenny Kaye or Moose Bowles (Lou Reed Band) or new ones to the scene who didn’t know my political position in the whole thing that gravitated to The Stilettos. Or it was guys like Cheetah Chrome (Dead Boys) who prided himself on the image of being a pariah in society in general who valued me as an artist. On the business end, I got tired of the subjective egotistical judgments that came from club owners, placing their bets on shallow entertainers who were jumping on the bandwagon. When I left New York City and went to work in a concert venue in Sag Harbor, there were times when I would wonder if I could change my life; like maybe meet a builder or landscaper and melt into anonymity. I even made a deliberate effort to do that. But it never worked. No matter where I am it seems that the action always gravitates to me. I mean what are the chances that a legendary songwriter like Paul Simon would walk up to you at a rodeo and strike up a friendship. Only in my life would something like that happen. And it did. I ended up co-producing concerts in Montauk for him for four years. So I move deeper into the country, maybe a meet a good looking hunky farmer. No chance. Here I am five years later, living in the country and what happens? Skipping over the five years of details which are just as bizarre, I have found myself in the center of yet another creative whirlwind. My friend Gary Chetkof who owns the Woodstock radio station WDST 100.1 along with a bunch of computer nerds who own a webcast network in Chicago, launched two Internet radio stations up onto the web. They went up on June 17th 1998. That day my office felt like the Starship Enterprise. Actually, what we are up to is pretty cool. One site streams the audio of the radio station and the other is a pirate radio station called Radio Woodstock that has a non formatted music mix. It plays everything I love listening to. Its not just a throwback to the sixties, its criteria is if its original and fits with the New Woodstock Vibe, we play it. We’re also developing other programming that represents the Woodstock philosophy, something that didn’t die in the sixties. That philosophy is something that should be focused on if our species expects to have and redeeming qualities about it. Like a right to freedom of creative expression, non-violence, anti- war. Freedom from man made elements that are distructing the planet or threaten to, a right to eat healthy food, (Fuck Genetic engineered foods...man don't shop in a supermarket!) drink clean water, breath fresh air. All things people feel inside, but things that have a fractured voice in today’s distracted world society. Again, I am on a creative whirlwind. And I like where its taking me!