HELL: That’s my base fear.
BOCKRIS: College kids?
SONTAG: A lot of theatres have been taken over by sex films. There just aren’t the theatres where they can be shown. I mean even Fassbinder, how many people have actually seen a Fassbinder movie?
HELL: But you could say that about somebody like Godard. How many people have seen Godard movies?
SONTAG: More, a lot more, a lot. Godard was really a major event, he changed movies, single-handedly. You can say before Godard and after Godard. Fassbinder, all these people, would have been inconceivable without Godard. He changed the whole media. I mean you can’t say Beckett or Burroughs changed writing.
HELL: That remains to be seen.
BOCKRIS: Do you think anyone ever had an idea which was the happiest country?
SONTAG: Well you know hundreds of millions of people have thought that America was the happiest country. And then I read one writer who said, “Happiness stops at Vienna.” I thought that was a wonderful line, everything east of Vienna is just a continental tragedy for a thousand years.
HELL: I bet America is the happiest country.
BOCKRIS: I bet it is, I would never live in England because everyone in England is so miserable.
SONTAG: Yeah, but England is a particularly miserable country.
BOCKRIS: Particularly miserable, and probably always has been.
SONTAG: That’s why they like it so much when there’s a war. Everyone in England says how great it was during The Blitz.
HELL: That’s the only subject that arouses any interest in the whole country. Even the First World War still stirs their interest.
BOCKRIS: It’s because then they felt the pulse of English life. It was wonderful because the English love to be told what to do by a thundering person like Churchill; his speeches were just like Hitler’s.
SONTAG: Only if you don’t have a politics. I think it makes a difference what the context of the speech is. I mean, Churchill was a bastard and a terrible racist and an imperialist and everything but I mean those speeches were heard in a certain context and they inspired people to feel good and to behave well to each other and to carry on in a correct way. Hitler’s speeches made people hate each other and aroused all kinds of ugly feelings. You can’t be such an aesthete, Victor, that you really hear two people shouting and say they’re shouting the same thing. I mean, God, I never thought if I lived for a hundred years I would defend Winston Churchill, but I must, you know, if you compare him to Hitler.
BOCKRIS: A lot of people do.
SONTAG: Well I think that’s a really shallow attitude. You said this even before Richard came, because we were talking about England. You said that England wants a leader. I mean if you think the English were so hypnotized by Churchill and they had such a gas in the Second World War, how come they threw him out in 1945?
BOCKRIS: They were bored and Churchill told them that the economic situation was very bad and that things would be horrible for a while and his opponent said it was alright, don’t worry. It was very English, totally economic. The English are very economical people, they don’t buy drugs …
SONTAG: And that’s why they’re in the …
BOCKRIS: They just buy cheap pills and things.
SONTAG: If they’re such an economical people, as you put it, and that word’s very ambiguous, why are they in such a pickle now?
BOCKRIS: Because they’re too economical, you know, if you don’t take any risks …
SONTAG: America may be the happiest country, but I don’t think Americans are happy. I guess there aren’t any happy countries.
BOCKRIS: Do you think that a person should have an opinion or an attitude towards something? I really don’t.
SONTAG: No, I’m not interested in opinions.
BOCKRIS: Yes you are. You’re saying if I don’t have an opinion or an attitude …
SONTAG: I think you do have an attitude. Listen, I hate opinions. I’ve begun to think that one of the reasons I write essays – and I really don’t like to write essays – is to unload my opinions. If I can just write it down then I don’t have to hold that opinion anymore.
HELL: Opinions as opposed to what?
SONTAG: As opposed to energy, as opposed to feeling, as opposed to sensations, as opposed to perceptions. Opinions are like some kind of crust that grows on things and you want to kind of peel them off.
HELL: I don’t think you can just separate opinions from feeling for instance. I think you’re saying you shouldn’t have prejudices.
SONTAG: No, they could even be true opinions. Like we both agreed a while ago how terrific Godard was, that’s an opinion. My impulse is if I like Godard that much and I think he’s that interesting then I want to write an essay on him which is what I did. I want to keep on making space for other things. I think that’s important.
BOCKRIS: Do you think people are still fascinated by space, or do you think that fascination has been killed?
SONTAG: I’m always amazed how unfascinated they are. I mean about the reality. In 1969 when people went to the moon it was amazing how unimpressed people were.
HELL: You’d think there would be the fascination of traveling. The only kind of travel which is available now in space is not available to anyone but these astronauts, so it’s really boring. Who cares about it if you can’t go and the only thing is to watch it. My biggest ambition is to get out into space as soon as possible.
BOCKRIS: I know that Burroughs wants to leave as quickly as he can get off the planet.
HELL: I’ve got this fantasy which says when I get to be forty they won’t just be choosing guys who are astronauts to go. That’s why I want to establish my reputation as a poet, so I can convince people in Congress that you gotta have a guy who can explain what it’s like to be there …
This is an extract from a 5,000 word piece called Negative Girls, which pins the punk experience through the point of view of the seminal punk chick.
19
Notes Of A Punk Rock Groupie
That’s when I started going down to Los Angeles and hanging out with musicians at Rodney Bingenheimer’s. Then we went over to the Ramada Inn because we wanted to meet Kiss. That was when Kiss first came to Hollywood. When we were hard up for money we would go to the hotels and see what bands were in. Then we went to the coffee shop and ordered whatever we wanted and just signed somebody’s name and room number. So we lived off the bands without the bands really knowing it. They probably were so drunk and stoned all the time they thought they had eaten …
When I was hanging around the Hyatt House one time I met The Kinks. I was hanging around with Dave Davies. Leo Sayer was there. B. B. King was there. Led Zeppelin came in. Foghat was there. I just walked around and I would hear party noises coming from all these bands. I would just knock on people’s doors and people would always invite you in. I stayed with Davie Davies for two weeks. He had quarts of vodka and gin. I used to walk around the hotel with a quart of some alcohol or bottles of champagne and of course if you had that much alcohol and knocked on somebody’s door, they always invited you in for sure. At this one Kinks party they took this girl and they got her totally undressed and these two roadies held her upside down and spread her legs and somebody poured the champagne on her cunt while somebody else took pictures. We would sit around with BB guns and shoot out the lights. We tore chairs attached to the walls outside the elevators out of the walls and plomped them in front of Robert Plant’s door. When I was with The Kinks we threw a bed out of the window. These people from Leo Sayer’s room took my girlfriend Lisa and they pulled her pants down and they took shaving cream and made a face on her butt and stuck a cigarette in her ass and took a picture, and you really couldn’t tell it was an ass. But then Lisa’s mother, who was fucking this guy in Silverhead, was at the Hyatt and she ran into somebody from one of these bands and they said, “Look at these pictures to have of this girl Lisa.” And it’s like she goes, “That’s my daughter!” And then she blamed it all on me
because I was older.
On the plane to New York I was sitting next to a Hell’s Angel and he asked me where I was going. I said, “East 3rd Street,” and he goes, “Oh, I live on East 3rd. What’s your address?” It turned out he lived next door. I said, “Well listen, I will be frank with you, I am terrified of the Hell’s Angels.” He said, “Hey, listen, I will tell everybody you are the new kid on the block and nobody will mess with you.”
The apartment on East 3rd was really disgusting and I got a horrible job at Burger King. One day I could not get into the apartment to get my check and I was really pissed off. So I told my Hell’s Angel friend and he went into the apartment above mine and said, “We have to use your fire escape.” He got my check and my clothes and said, “Come on. I will take care of you.” He introduced me to Terrible Ted and his wife and they took me in as their housekeeper.
They kept their guns under my bed. In the middle of the night a guy would come in and say, “Oh, I am sorry to disturb you,” and he would reach in and pull out a gun. The first time it happened I am like, “Oh my God I am sleeping on top of artillery!” But I got used to it.
On the eve of my 21st birthday we went to CBGB and Anya introduced me to Sylvain Sylvain and then he said, “Well, I am going home. You coming?” So I went out with him and I had a really good time and the next morning I woke up and it was my birthday. I said, “Oh, it is my birthday.” He went, “Oh, great,” and he ran out and got me a scrambled egg sandwich and coffee and made me take a bunch of vitamin B. He said, “You know when you drink a lot you have to take your vitamins.” Then he told me all these stories about Japan and the early New York Dolls when they had a lot of money and went through heavy duty drinking. Then he walked me back to Anya’s at 101 St Marks Place.
That night we were going to see Talking Heads at the Ocean Club. Anya talked me into taking acid. I said, “No, no, no.” She said, “Yes, come on. It’s your 21st birthday you got to take acid.” So I did. She dressed me up in skin-tight purple satin peddle pushers, black stiletto high heels boots with caribou feathers around the top and a really tight angora sweater and we went out. I made her buy me a bottle of Jack Daniels because I told her if I started freaking out I wanted something to come down on.
They were videotaping at the Ocean Club that night and we were at a very fun table trying to share a shrimp salad. It looked really horrible. The lights were so bright I could not stand to look at anybody. Then Joey Ramone came in. So I told him, “Look, I don’t have any money and I am just coming down off acid. Can you help me out? Buy me a couple of beers or something.” There was this girl following him around and she kept saying, “You’re talking to him too much. I want to be with him. Please go away and let me have a chance.” I said, “I am just drinking with him.” I didn’t like plan on going home with him or anything but it ended up Joey was trying to, like, ditch the girl. So he says to me, “Come on let’s go to CBGB and drink there.” It was well after five in the morning. I go, “But it is closed now.” He goes, “It’s not closed to me.”
On the way to CBGB I held my coat so nobody could see him take a piss, and this girl is still following us. She is, like, practically crying. So Joey said, “Come on with us,” and the rest of The Ramones were there and Hilly and a bunch of people like Roberta Bayley and we were playing pinball. I was sitting on the pool table and Joey asked me to watch his beer because he had to go to the bathroom. He comes running out of the bathroom and jumps on top of me and spills beer all over my pants. And he starts kissing me. And I am, like, going, “Oh my God this is really exciting. I got Syl last night who I always wanted to fuck and now I am getting Joey.” And the girl is, like, crying, “Oh, that’s right! Why don’t you just drag me all over town and then just ignore me!” And he is like, “Oh, we are going home now.” This girl was following us right to the door and he goes, “Well, we are going to bed.” She goes, “Oh, that’s it. I take the train all the way to the Bronx.” And it’s like, “Okay, come on up.” So we are sitting on his bed giggling and kissing and she is sitting on the corner of the bed crying. So Joey said, “Hey, do you want to watch TV? Just keep it low so Arturo don’t wake up.” She goes off and we hear her fumbling around in the dark and she knocked a bunch of stuff over and Arturo jumped up screaming and threw her out and me and Joey were just laughing our heads off but trying to be quiet so Arturo doesn’t scream at us.
I ended up fucking Joey but it was, like, really awkward the next morning. He was looking for his glasses. I couldn’t find my bra. It was like really, “Oh God!” We were both really embarrassed and I couldn’t wait to get out of there.
I once accompanied Norman Mailer and his wife Norris to a Ramones concert at CBGB. After the third song, Mailer, who was standing on a chair to get a better view, turned to me and yelled, “Heroic!” This single word perfectly summed up the aura of the Ramones. I met Joey Ramone in 1977, and we became fast friends. At the time I was juggling three careers, working with Andy Warhol, William Burroughs and working with Blondie. The Ramones were one of the hardest working bands of the Seventies, and Joey spent most of his time on the road. As a testament to the value of our friendship, we communicated largely through letters. The two short pieces that follow were originally published in my apartment’s house journal, Traveller’s Digest. The third one comes from a piece I wrote with Joey for High Times. He is still the coolest, most intelligent, funny guy I ever met in downtown New York.
20
Joey Ramone: A Literary Relationship
After the people I’ve written books about, the coolest punk celebrity I met in New York is undoubtedly Joey Ramone. John Holmstrom, then editor of Punk magazine (this was in ’77) now publisher of High Times, introduced me to him in ace punk fashion. Joey was staying with the band’s lighting designer and a talented painter Arturo Vega, around the corner from the renowned punk club CGBG. One night after a gig John and I came careening out of the club and took turns creaming Legs McNeil, who had had the affrontery to recently attempt to sleep with my girlfriend when I was in Australia! I guess he thought I was far enough away that he was out of danger, but no such luck! Immediately we had left Legs lying in the gutter, where he had been attempting to pick up a chick, I found myself following Holmstrom literally straight up the face of Vega’s building via those metal screens that close across windows at night keeping hoodlums out. Entering the loft through a second storey window we charged the unsuspecting Ramone, Vega and a couple of their friends but soon found ourselves getting the worst of the altercation. Joey had me pinned to the floor, one bony knee plunked on each shoulder demanding I surrender. No sooner had we introduced ourselves than we became fast friends. Everybody loved Arturo, but Joey was clearly something of a loner. A wildly creative, intelligent guy surrounded by a lot of less intelligent guys (not Dee Dee who he got along with best), he liked nothing more than to settle down in a comfortable bar or apartment around three am and spend the balance of the night solving the problems of the world. The problem was, I tried to explain to him, I was desperately trying to make a living as a nine-to-five writer. Consequently we met much less often than I would have liked, but even when he was on the road Joey made a real effort to keep in touch, as one can see from these two letters:
“Hey ol boy whats the doop?” he wrote from LA where The Ramones, in perhaps their single most productive period were making an album with Phil ‘The Great’ Spector, and filming Rock n Roll High School with the great ex-Warhol Superstar Mary Woronov (Chelsea Girls). “What’s doin. Hanging out swatting flies recordin the album it sounds incredible really explosive!! cant wait for ya to hear it though its only ½ done. Just saw a picture of Wayne County” (which Joey thoughtfully included) “with his new operation he looks more like Debbie Harry everytime I see him. Saw Robert Gordon & Spedding he’s great – say hi to Jeff and everyone. See ya soon. Hi from everyone here. P.S. Los Tacos is the best Mexican dump in LA better than Lucy’s. No bands. No gas. Aggressive flys. They repainted The Trop pool black and f
illed it with turquois green shitty water it looks like a lagoon Joey Ramone.”
In another missive from the road he wrote: “Last nite I saw somethin on TV that really flipped me out. This was the first report ever let out in the whole US bout cloneing. This guys puttin out a book called Who Will Be The Next God. Anyway Upjohn the Quaalude Corp. & 20 other major drug corp have gotten the rights from the Federal Gov to syntheticaly create & clone & own!!! people & that until recently only frogs could be successfully cloned. But some scientist from New York has just successfully created a 14 month old kid thats an exact replica clone of himself. That’s fuckinamazin that’s really weird. I mean when ya think about it. Anyway I thought you should. They said that this would come out nationally in June. Hanging out in N. Carolina. Don’t understand what people do here since I haven’t seen one person outside of the hotel. Last night went to see High Anxiety. It sucked but was really great, I’m really into Cheap Trick. They’re fucking incredible. Listen to their 1 & 2 album. Legs story in new Hit Parader was fucking riot. Best thing he’s done fantastic. See ya. Joey Ramone.”
In fact, perhaps appropriately considering he wrote songs and I wrote celebrations, our friendship turned into something of a literary one: the next thing I found myself doing was collaborating with him on an editorial he had been commissioned to write for High Times in 1978. This is the first of its eight pages:
“Living on the Bowery’s very exciting, people are getting stabbed and murdered all the time. It’s very exciting, lots of atmosphere. Tomorrow we’re playing The First World Festival in Toronto with Ted Nugent and Aerosmith, a whole day affair for 100,000 people. Gotta get up and fly at 5.30 am.
Beat Punks Page 19
