by Richard Boch
Either by accident, necessity or default, it was tall, curly-haired and friendly Glenn McDermott who tried to take on the task of “managing” the Mudd Club. I’m not sure if manager was really his title and even less sure anyone could’ve handled something so expressively free-form. There were hardly any straight lines in the game plan when it came to getting the place open each night and fewer when it came to closing it down at daybreak. I think Glenn scheduled the bartenders and occasionally the DJs, ordered the liquor and tended to minor repairs. He might have scheduled some of the door people but never me. He looked like he was working hard, but maybe it was cocaine that left him out of breath and running around or hiding out in the basement. It was a routine I came to know.
The Cocktail Napkin
I barely knew Brooke Delarco, a sound technician who worked with The Feelies, the B-52’s and Richard Lloyd, among others. She was at White Street from the beginning and her contribution was a key element that affected anyone who ever walked thru the doors. When Steve Mass handed her a cartoon schematic doodled on a cocktail napkin by musical superman Brian Eno, she laughed but didn’t think very much. When she went ahead and built the Mudd Club sound system on her own, she blew the place away.
Steve understood the importance of a great PA and provided Brooke with a generous budget. She picked out mikes, extremely large speakers, woofers, several Crown amps, and a sixteen-channel deluxe soundboard. Using her experience at Vanguard Records, a bit of formal training from the Institute of Audio Research and her intuitive sense of sound, she put it all together. Joey Kelly helped hoist and hang the speaker stack from the ceiling as Brooke watched nervously. A quick sound check had the room vibrating.
Brooke worked the boards for the bands she knew. She liked a live performance as loud and clear as the system could handle. She didn’t last very long on White Street and was gone by the time I got there but that sound system was her Mudd Club legacy.
Maybe Steve Mass liked to think Brian Eno designed the system; who wouldn’t? Brooke just thought about the cocktail napkin and kept smiling.
Sound of Mudd
Late April ’79. I kept doing my job and the door staff seemed to be functioning in its own appropriate and sometimes inappropriate way. The mix we sent inside helped fuel the fire and White Street became the place to dance. DJ David Azarch went from making a mixed tape for a pre-opening event to becoming the Sound of Mudd.
David was already a star and I’d been at the door just five weeks when Anita Sarko arrived from the Motor City by way of Atlanta. A former radio DJ with an eclectic taste in music, Anita knew how to spin and went after a job on White Street. She dropped off tapes that wound up getting lost, gently muscled her way into the club when she had to, and strongly let her opinions be known. That’s another thing that never changed.
The night of Anita’s “audition” Steve didn’t even show up. When he asked her how it went, she said, “Great!” The process seemed even more passive-aggressive than my own trial by fire but in the end it didn’t matter. Steve said, “You’re hired” and the New York chapter of Anita Sarko’s DJ career began. She offered DJ David a worthy partner in crime and her vinyl collection added a new dimension to Mudd’s playlist. Despite the games Steve played, and the odd musical requests she endured, Anita became an essential part of the Mudd Club sound.
By now there was no stopping the Mudd Club’s dance floor, and the roster of DJs included both the tenured and short-lived. When musician and Punk legend Howie Pyro got behind the turntables he took everybody for a wild ride, splattering the room with Fifties Rock and Las Vegas Grind, some Goo Goo Muck and his own collection of children’s records. Encouraged by Steve to play the Chipmunks doing back-to-back Beatles songs, Howie followed up with their squeaky rodent version of “On Top of Old Smokey.” Steve urged Howie to keep it up until both he and the dance floor felt uncomfortable and alienated. An inside joke without many insiders, Steve walked away smiling and somewhat amused.
Howie’s other contributions to Mudd life and culture came as both a member of The Blessed and Steve’s posse of troubled teenage party planners. Behind the scenes or in the middle, Howie helped orchestrate as much mayhem as music.
DJ Sean Cassette had a Mudd moment early on. The club had just opened, I was still a customer, and I remember only his leather jacket with Cassette stenciled on the back. The next time I saw him was at a new club on Thirty-seventh Street in summer 1980. Danny Heaps, a future music biz professional, was working the turntables the night I started; he played music I liked but never put a stamp on the Mudd Club sound. Danny was friendly but seemed skeptical or unconvinced of my involvement. I always felt that he was part of Glenn’s crew and he was gone by the summer.
Milk ’n’ Cookies vocalist Justin Strauss, encouraged by designer and Mudd Club regular Abbijane, returned from the West Coast and within weeks he was spinning records on White Street. Working the nights in between David and Anita, he was a perfect fit.
The multitalented Johnny Dynell got his start under the tutelage of DJ Anita, and by January 1980, he was working the turntables all by himself. I’d be outside, hear the call, leave my post and drift inside. I watched that dance floor move in ways beyond what anyone could have choreographed or even imagined. I jumped in and went with it.
DJ Johnny called the Mudd Club “The Cradle of Civilization.”
Reality
For me, the Mudd Club is where I found out what was going on, where I started to figure out what I was doing and where I eventually got lost. Like a childhood memory, it was the place where time began. The world might be spinning out of control, the bad news cycle on endless repeat, but White Street was both shelter and a different kind of storm.
The staff at the door—Joey, Robert, Louie and me—remained in position for the moment. Gretchen was still the cashier, and I was mostly out in front with the exception of a few events on the second floor.
I began to take what I was doing seriously and thought of it as a big deal. I was enthusiastic about being there. If anyone questioned my choices, I had little response and even less need to defend them. It became obvious that together we knew or at least recognized the art, music, fashion and neighborhood crowd. We had the great White Street convergence covered and everything was working fine, up to a point.
Then reality began to set in and Steve wanted a house full of paying customers. That meant the number of people who paid at the door versus those who didn’t needed an adjustment.
The party was getting crowded and someone had to pay the rent.
2. JOAN CRAWFORD, NYQUIL AND FRIED CHICKEN
Jackie Curtis and David Bowie in Ronnie Cutrone’s Cage, 1979, by Bobby Grossman.
Costume parties and Halloween always made me uncomfortable. As a kid, costumes left me feeling alone and isolated; as an adult, I refused to wear one. Never understanding the appeal of dressing as a pirate, a clown or Superman, I avoided even the possibility. Mudd Club theme parties were different; here, I felt no more or less estranged from everyone else. Maybe I was making progress or maybe it was the alcohol and cocaine.
The Joan Crawford Mother’s Day Celebration took place on Sunday, May 13, 1979. I wasn’t frightened or uncomfortable and it didn’t disappoint. A greeting card invitation suggested maternal attire, forbade wire coat hangers and offered the lure of a free buffet. Pretty boys with thick arched eyebrows came dressed as the always handsome Joan; a dozen bruised and battered daughter Christinas, plenty of booze and lots of Quaaludes helped turn the evening appropriately tragic. Juvenile, heavy-handed and right on target, it was a real Happy Mommies Dearest.
Political incorrectness was part of Mudd’s recurring theme and despite any shame or regret there was a demented sense of freedom that came with the ability to speak and act without thinking. Collective memory helps clarify my late-night blackouts and the good or even bad memories at last fall into place. Today I mention a name, you tell me what you remember and maybe it all comes back. Drunken sex in a bathro
om might be happily lost but a patriot-themed Combat Love party with the tagline “Nuke ’em till they glow” is unforgettable even thru the blur.
Behind the scenes there was never a shortage of gofers, jailbait and Mudd Club stars willing to set up and get things started, some even coming up with their own ideas. Tina L’Hotsky’s inspired events were one thing, while the whim of a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old with big tits and no underpants was another. In the latter case, Steve generally mumbled a non sequitur response and handed out the money to make it happen.
The Dead Rock Stars Rock ’n’ Roll Funeral Ball was already in the works but still a nightmare away. A Soul Night celebration with pimps, hookers and uptown fried chicken was somewhere on the horizon. Three months in, I remained the new guy but I was getting hungry; and no matter how strange and offbeat things got, there was something comfortable if not always familiar about the club’s feels like home insanity.
Teenage rebellion past its expiration date, 77 White was the house party when your parents were away, smoking pot in the basement or drinking and dropping acid at the dance in the high school gym. Alcohol, drugs and sloppy sex were an adventure at fifteen and by twenty-five, the bad behavior felt new again. The Mudd Club was just darker and louder. I looked around and thought it might last forever.
The Night in Play
Walking the line between awe and detachment was a nightly challenge I didn’t see coming. Feeling alone in someone’s company confused me and reminded me of my childhood but I was sure this situation was different. Chain in hand and smoking a cigarette, I was surprised to find myself passing what amounted to judgment, considering how unsure I was of myself. Whether you were a troubled teen, a musician or an artist celebrating a Guggenheim retrospective didn’t matter. My job was to make sure that if you were supposed to get in you did, even though “supposed to” was often arbitrary.
Joan Crawford Mother’s Day Celebration invitation, 1979, courtesy Marina Lutz.
Learning to go with a first impression, avoiding confrontation and working without a guest list was the easy part; reading Steve’s mind, or staring at the outsiders who didn’t have a chance, was harder. There were times when I felt like those people, despite always having managed to ease my way at least halfway in. Then I surprised myself, suddenly moved past the middle and wound up working the Mudd Club door. Steve trusted me to get it right and most of the time I did. Thankful for that trust, though I never said so at the time, my gratitude for Steve and the job came largely in retrospect.
Standing on those front steps, I watched as 77 White took on a life of its own. The mixed-up soundtrack, the dark No Wave sensibility and a disjointed beat playing at full volume provided the full embrace. The performers and events were as varied and off-kilter as the fit was perfect. The dance floor was a wildfire and the bar, three deep. Whether by strategy or luck, the fruit of inspiration or happy accident, Steve Mass brought smarts to the party and the rest just happened. His friendship or acquaintance with such musicians as The Contortions and James Chance, filmmakers such as Amos Poe and journalists like Legs McNeil was just a beginning: the three-way brainstorm on the road to Memphis pushed things a little further. A Brian Eno connection through Judy Nylon and Diego along with introductions to Talking Heads, Blondie and the B-52’s made things interesting. Handing out a free drink to anyone who looked thirsty sealed the deal. Beyond that, it was all about the people who wanted in, and made it past the door.
Once inside, the sound of Mudd, like everything else, remained anything goes. Walter Steding’s violin could fill the room and make it spin; Screamin’ Jay Hawkins rising from a coffin singing “I Put a Spell on You” was tough to beat. Actor and Warhol superstar Jackie Curtis did just that, with an amphetamine crash/vodka-fueled cover of the tried and true: Elvis Presley’s “Loving You.” I was unsure whether to laugh or cry.
Later, when a smiling David Bowie caught up with Jackie on the second floor, photographer Bobby Grossman snapped a few pictures of them in one of Ronnie Cutrone’s steel cages. No one else paid any attention, it was business as usual, but today those pictures place a mark in time. They hold a memory of just another night on White Street.
Things got started around 11:30 or midnight with a few people at the bar and even fewer dancing. Art world legend Billy Kluver, a scientist and engineer turned multimedia creative partner of Robert Rauschenberg, was often first to arrive. After a dinner at One University he and his wife Julie Martin would stop by, take a spin on the dance floor and leave before things heated up. They were in their late fifties, and I thought they were sweet but very old.
The place started getting busy around 1 A.M., some nights earlier. The DJ had the dance floor in a frenzy while inspired scheduling of avant-garde pioneers Philip Glass, Glenn Branca and Dickie Landry added something to the mix that might’ve been missing elsewhere. The 2 A.M. live performance became the sudden move that kept the night in play, the bar and bathrooms busy and everyone entertained. Despite the distractions and amusement, the door was my job and I tried to focus.
By 3 A.M. it was well past the witching hour but the Mudd Club wouldn’t or couldn’t stop. When things wound down around 4 or 5, the dance floor had its own stories to tell but was too beaten and battered to come clean. By that time I was either upstairs, dancing somewhere else, or riding the nighttime high toward noon.
Fashion show twirl, 1980, by Nick Taylor.
The art world might have been where the Mudd Club was anchored but everyone came to drink and dance. Filmmakers and photographers, painters, sculptors, dealers and patrons either crowded the downstairs bar or attempted to navigate the second floor. Whether it was the party after an opening, the next stop beyond One University or the pursuit of whatever’s happening, everyone was headed this way. They stood side by side with Rock ’n’ Roll, from Iggy to the Stones, assorted Sex Pistols and Pretenders, while the soon-to-be-known unknowns stepped in alongside. That was the mix and the moment; the White Street scene perched on the cusp of ’79 and ’80 was a new and different take on Max’s Kansas City’s late-’60s social riot. Whatever I missed back then was happening again, and it seemed everyone wanted to be part of it.
Fashion from the streets of London and the Lower East Side was also trickling down and taking shape at the door and inside 77 White. It was downtown couture and retro cool, thrift shop chic, Rock ’n’ Roll, Punk and leather. Mary Lemley’s painted paper dresses, Millie David’s plastic wraps and the Western wear of Katy K all found a home and audience on White Street. Francine Hunter’s Jungle Red Studio style had only a short walk from Desbrosses Street before it hit the dance floor, while British design legend Zandra Rhodes’ arrival was a one-night go-round of high-end fashion tourism.
Never a boy Teri Toye could show up wearing anything, look beautiful and keep people guessing. Boy Adrian was all-boy sexy, whether he was platinum blond or brunette. Joey Arias and the kids from Fiorucci were hanging out after a hard day on Fifty-ninth Street, and Klaus Nomi’s inspired visions of the future were becoming a now look. Designer Anna Sui and photographer Steven Meisel were just starting to make a move, and Maripol was Polaroiding her way forward, looking for the next big or medium-sized thing. Betsey Johnson, who’d seen it all, was seeing it again. She practically lived around the corner, stopped by nearly every night and staged one of her early namesake collections on the Mudd Club “runway.”
Then, now and future, the old guard, pioneers, and next-wave contenders walked up to the door and usually went right inside. When a guy looking like an auto mechanic in a dirty white T-shirt approached I told Gretchen it was the artist Richard Serra. She smiled, stopped asking him for three dollars and let him thru. Painter Brice Marden, handsome, easygoing and wearing a fairly clean shirt, breezed in without a problem. Dead Boy Cheetah Chrome with no shirt at all was right behind him. A minute later I sent in two kids from the neighborhood; they just wanted to dance but didn’t have any money. Then I looked at Gretchen and we both laughed. I realized that at lea
st for the moment, I was part of what was happening.
Performance artist, shop girl and Strange Party entertainer Joey Arias called the Mudd Club “one big Petri dish.” Walter Steding would consider it a vast new constellation. Photographer Marcia Resnick said it best and filmmaker Eric Mitchell agreed, “It was a democratic society once you got inside.”
Today this is one of the precious commodities vanished from New York. The Democratic Society phenomenon, in terms of nightlife or city life in general, is gone. Our culture’s become fractured; the mix no longer exists. There’s no longer a scene, not to mention a heart.
What Are They Doing Here?
I was still figuring out how to turn a mob in the street into that Democratic Society while Steve was trying to figure out how to keep up with day-to-day, night-to-night repairs. An ad in the Village Voice reading “Wanted—Carpenters High Pay” seemed like it might be the answer.
Charles Patty called the number listed in the ad and in less than an hour the carpenter job turned to plumbing. There were two clogged sinks and a broken toilet at the Mudd Club, conditions that were becoming routine. The new plumber had a full-time job.
