The Mudd Club

by Richard Boch

  Several weeks later, when Steve tried his hand at plunging, Charles stood by, knowing the second-floor toilet needed more. Steve wasn’t giving up when one of the bartenders ran into the bathroom exclaiming, “Steve, Princess Caroline is downstairs!” Keeping his eye on the clog and without missing a beat, Steve calmly responded, “Maybe she can help.”

  From where I stood I could see everything, and between the buzz and word of mouth, White Street became the number-one after-midnight destination. With a half-dozen cabs, two or three limos and a crowd around the door, Princess Caroline of Monaco had to wait until we introduced ourselves across the chain. She brought along her own personal dance partner, while husband Philippe Junot and Peppo Vanini from Xenon (the club, not the planet) stayed at the bar and never broke a sweat. Polite and almost charming, the princess didn’t need anything special—she danced while Junot and Peppo drank. When I checked back it seemed as if they were having fun, though it was hard to tell. I can’t remember if I rolled my eyes or smiled.

  The following weekend, a face in the crowd looked at me from across the chain and said, “Hi, I’m Caroline Kennedy.” Along with her cousin Kerry, the children of America’s “royalty” were friendly and without pretense—ready to drink, dance and run around. I brought them inside and introduced Caroline to Steve, who ordered her a beer and gave her a playing card as a VIP pass so she could get upstairs. (She didn’t need it, but it was the thought.) Caroline walked away with a thank you and a smile and Steve wondered out loud, “What are they doing here?” Still pulling up my Long Island roots and easily impressed, I responded, “Steve, it’s the Mudd Club.”

  A minute later I was back outside unsure whether I was a Kennedy associate or just hired help holding a chain.

  When the Hollywood hotshots came and went no one really cared. Stallone walked in, looked around and quickly exited what he considered a dump. The place was happening, but Rocky didn’t get it. I preferred the big-name clowns who stuck around and made themselves at home. Dan Aykroyd was already living in a loft on the fourth floor with writer Rosie Shuster when John Belushi, Bill Murray and Brian Doyle-Murray were letting loose and getting looser downstairs. Even after Dan and John opened their own Blues Brothers Bar on Hudson Street, Mudd was still one of the places where the Saturday Night Live crew tossed around the crazy in their spare time. They were nice guys, though I did think Belushi was a bit more passionate than the rest of us. Running wild, he was upstairs and down, with my friend Phyllis in a blonde wig and hot pursuit. Sweating, out of breath, and carrying on about the girl that was chasing him, Belushi pounded the bar and rattled a few bottles but not much else.

  Newsletter featuring notes on dress code, floor care and teen auto safety, 1979.

  Then Gilda Radner stopped by wearing a pleated skirt cut below the knee, saddle shoes and ankle socks while I stood there, just short of starstruck. She went inside and joined the familiar fray. The real revelation: seeing saddle shoes at the Mudd Club.

  Another night, a soft cackle from somewhere in the crowd was coming from Bella Abzug, one of New York’s great activist voices of freedom. The outspoken United States Congresswoman came by wearing one of her famous hats with her husband Martin on her arm. Hanging with me at the door before going inside, she kept talking and asking questions. I kept working, trying to explain why the club was so popular while no one outside could figure out what the fuck was going on. I was honored to have had the opportunity and happy that Bella became part of the mix.

  Inside Out Upside Down

  I looked at the crowd inside the club and out on the street. I was part of it but at times felt more outside than in. Everyone was young, some very, and some just at heart. I was just a few months short of twenty-six, and I loved everything about New York City in the ’70s. There was hardly a condo below Canal, barely a tourist, and not a Century 21 shopping bag in sight. New York City, along with the Mudd Club, were leaving one decade behind and moving toward a period of seismic change. Sixties response to fifties conservatism brought about the excess of the seventies. The chaos was still reactionary but different—the tripped-out dream nearly ten years past, having crashed mid-nightmare. The Kennedy and King assassinations combined with seven years of escalation in Vietnam nearly destroyed the country’s morale if not the country itself. The scars left by Manson and Altamont, not to mention Kent State, never quite healed. Updike and Vonnegut, along with Thompson and Wolfe, were zeroing in, turning our lives into stories. Taking a cue from both Duchamp and Warhol’s mixed message on life and death, visual artists began working with concepts, sending new messages. The language everyone was speaking became disillusion and repetition. By 1975, the music scene, centered on CBGB, began to echo that feeling and moved toward anarchy. London jumped in and everyone began screaming for change.

  Psychedelic Party flyer, good trips and bad trips, 1979, courtesy Marina Lutz.

  When the Mudd Club opened in late ’78, change found a home.

  When I looked again the crowd outside was winding down. It was getting late and I walked upstairs. Diego was still hanging out but I couldn’t remember the last time I saw Anya. She’d already become a phantom—living in what became just legend. Her falling out with Steve just as the club was opening seemed largely irrational given the free-for-all and occasional in your face attitude of Mudd. Still, when people started coming and the place got crowded, Anya had already disappeared. She stopped by one night to see Debbie Harry, and I spotted her on the street a few times with her boyfriend, musician and Contortions leader James Chance. Later, I ran into them when James Brown performed at Studio 54. That was late March 1980, and the last time I saw Anya Phillips.

  I nodded at Diego, kept walking and headed for the bathroom. Ten minutes later I was back outside. I stood there thinking, This is it? I can handle it. It’s what I want, so what’s the problem? I knew I was part of what was happening, though where and how I fit in was still the question on my mind. I’d move closer to whatever or whomever I thought was important, insinuating myself rather than speaking truth, saying yes rather than no because it’s what I thought people wanted to hear. Maybe I wasn’t talented or strange enough to fit; maybe I just opened the door and bought you a drink. Maybe you gave me cocaine in return or maybe not. So much seemed surface, little of it real. Then I looked at the crowd waiting to dance and drink and fuck around and knew I was thinking too much—that the extra bullshit was all mine. I lit a cigarette, picked up my beer and reached for the chain.

  The closer-to-norm worktime-playtime schedule I kept before that initial Steve Mass phone call had been turned upside down, stood back up and spun around. The steps in front of 77 White started to feel like solid ground and the chain felt lighter in my hand. Louie was inside, Joey had the night off and Gretchen was either dancing or missing in action. Only four or five people were waiting so I sent them in. I tossed the cigarette, finished the beer and tried to stop thinking.

  3. SPRINGTIME

  Dave’s Luncheonette, Mudd Club outpost.

  Egg creams, lousy coffee and extra grease, 1980, by Lisa Genet.

  What’s next is anyone’s guess. The crowd around the door keeps getting bigger.

  Deep breath.

  Pour what’s left of a Heineken down my throat.

  Everything’s fine.

  At the club full-time, I’d occasionally arrive as early as 9 P.M. and finish as late as 6 the next morning; other nights I show up at 11, some nights trying to keep it midnight to 5. I’m supposedly off duty at 4 A.M. but it’s still a full house and nobody’s going anywhere, including me. The music’s slowing down but everybody’s still looking for that something they never find. Slow motion or hyperdrive, there’s no middle ground; it’s last-call desperate: romper room crazy, cigarette smoke mixed up in a liquor, cocaine and Quaalude haze. Another ten minutes, it’s a spontaneous burn, the aftermath, but it’s hard to leave. I look around one more time. Where do I go now?

  Life Was Still That Simple

  My bef
ore- and after-hours routine keeps changing. I’m moving away from the bars and clubs of Chelsea and the West Village. I’m stepping away from the trucks, the piers and a Meat Packing District that still packs meat. CBGB’s on the Bowery and Max’s on Park Avenue South are both going strong but they’ve become the places to go before.

  At some point I have to eat, and One University Chinese Chance, Mickey Ruskin’s social mecca, is the place to be. Familiar faces, a crowded bar with a jukebox and a well-lit dining room with Serious Art on the walls; the food fills you up but sometimes lets you down. Most important, the place has that feels-like-home thing going on—cutting enough slack for anyone to indulge in bad behavior when necessary. Everyone I know eats and drinks there and half of them find their way to White Street between 2 and 4 A.M. Most important, Mickey likes me and we’ve become friends.

  Last resort: if I’m running late or just running, Dave’s Luncheonette on the corner of Canal and Broadway is a food-on-the-fly kind of place. It’s all about eggs or hot dogs for dinner—and more coffee please. Wash it down with an egg cream and I’m ready for work.

  The other end of the night, another story, and there’s no schedule or plan after 5 A.M. I’m guided thru the after-hours by instinct, drugs and sex. Going home to sleep and stepping out of the late-night/morning mindset is nearly impossible. Piling into a Checker Cab with Gary, Gretchen and future temporary Murray Street resident Teri Toye is fun—but hardly a safe bet. Still, a full-out A.M. club crawl was a weekend favorite.

  Crisco Disco became the Sunday morning special and anyone who could keep up or willing to try was welcome. If you had coke or Quaaludes it was a plus and if you had a car it was even better. The ever-changing cast of characters might include a Pop, a Pallenberg or a Pretender—famous, infamous or notorious—but mostly just us. Arrive at 7 A.M., get checked for weapons and leave by 11—four hours gone missing. The place was a slow-motion train wreck, lights flashing, lost in the fog. The vibe, if we still had a sense of one: past the point of no return. We’d hang in the DJ booth that sat perched on a giant can of Crisco, drink, dance and snort our way thru the morning. I’d take a break, have sex in the stairway and pass out in the VIP room. I’d wake up refreshed, order another drink and dance some more. I either thought I was unwinding after a hard night at work or I wasn’t thinking at all. Other than running fast and searching for some unknown, I’m not sure what I was doing.

  Mudd Club Newsletter, April ’79.

  Existing in the lost netherworld fade of reality, Crisco’s was far removed from the energy of White Street. We eventually escaped, vertical but semi-comatose, and headed into the sunshine hustle bustle of Fifteenth Street and Tenth Avenue. The key to survival was a pair of sunglasses, cab fare and a cigarette. Life was still that simple—but also offered choices.

  The Nursery on Third Avenue near Thirteenth Street was the easy alternative: equally reckless but more of a workingman’s morning out. Sleep-deprived but unwilling to surrender, I barely remember arriving and have no memories of leaving. The first time I showed up there, a big guy named Big Mike turned to Joey Kelly and asked, “You know this guy?” A quick frisk later and I was in. Dim and dirty, red light and cigarette smoke spread out over a few floors, The Nursery was at once benign and scary. For some it was home, but for me it was someone else’s home and most of the time I stayed too long.

  New in town Krystie Keller worked nearby. She loved The Nursery and remembers Rolling Stones guitarist Ronnie Wood wandering around at 8 A.M. just like everybody else. An early-morning night out was always the great equalizer and the place seemed to suit everyone’s need for excess. From Iggy to Belushi, Bowie and even Cher (innocently slumming with a new boyfriend), the hour and the vibe quickly diminished the pecking order. With a second floor dark enough to conceal any residual rock star wreckage, the club was safe harbor for acting out and passing out. Eyes half closed, I drifted around looking for drunken sex, cheap drugs and one more drink that was always the last. I played a slow-motion black-and-white Atari game—one of the very first, called Pong—and it hypnotized me. I got up and leaned against the wall of a tiny bathroom built for pissing and getting high, yet distinctly lacking the clubby feel of a Mudd Club toilet. I remember warm beer, cocaine and Mudd Club DJ David Azarch among the barely standing midmorning crowd. Along with off-duty bouncers and bartenders, a few Hells Angels and drug dealers running out of drugs, it was anyone riding the train to the last stop. The only place left to go was home or the curb.

  Early morning or early evening, wherever I went didn’t matter. My calling card became I work the door at the Mudd Club, now show me yours. It felt like a bit of a pickup line and it worked.

  The Dark Ages

  Never sure when it began, the morning appeared to end sometime tomorrow. Time itself seemed anxious, almost confused; trying to sleep and turning daylight into night was a challenge nearly perfected on Murray Street. I kept the steel shutters on the north-facing windows closed. The phone stayed unplugged until midafternoon or whenever I got out of bed. It was the Dark Ages: the days of limited technology, busy signals and jacked-in phones on long cords. There was no doorbell or intercom and if you wanted to stop by, you’d call from the payphone on the corner. Answering machines were around but I didn’t have one, making it easy to avoid anyone who might ask “Are you working tonight?” If I wanted to talk, I’d plug in the phone, make the call and unplug it again. There was a system for everything.

  Waking up well past late, I plugged in and called Sunny the pot dealer. She lived at 105 MacDougal Street above Panchito’s Restaurant and we met when I lived on Bleecker. She sold decent pot at a fair price and sold subway slugs on the side. My friend Richard Sohl bought the slugs but I used real tokens and just went for the pot. Sunny was the best pot-dealing slug peddler in town.

  I’d buy an ounce and leave MacDougal, duck into the West Fourth Street subway station and take any downtown train on the upstairs tracks to Chambers Street. I’d be home in ten minutes, roll a joint, put on a record and paint in the studio; I was serious about making art and still pretending I just worked late. Facing off with large sheets of paper on the wall of my studio, I’d start playing. Watching oils and acrylics resist one another, I moved in close with a rag or paint stick, never sure where I’d wind up. Loving the feel of paper, big beautiful pages, I’d start writing at the edges and across the middle: memories and lost thoughts, sometimes words, sometimes not.

  I made believe I had a real day-and-night, light-and-dark existence. Never sure if it was time for breakfast or dinner, time to sleep or wake up, I just kept painting, tried to stay out of trouble and make it to White Street on time. It seemed to be working out fine.

  Nova Criminals and the Remarkable Parade

  Arriving at 11 P.M., I always found two or three people waiting but by 1 A.M. the crowd often surprised me. Strangers sometimes looked familiar while the faces I knew began to look like everyone else. Old friends and college friends occasionally showed up; there were even chance encounters with my suburban past. When a girl I knew in high school looked at me from across the chain, the only words she could manage were “Oh my God … Richard?” Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who didn’t see it coming.

  Friends, acquaintances and strangers—every night I witnessed a remarkable parade. Some were finding their way, some were ready to explode and a few already had. Waiting outside, lined up at the bar, drinking or begging for a drink, the faces changed but the parade marched on. When author Lynne Tillman arrived she stood next to me as we talked, and watched it go by.

  A young, underappreciated Jean-Michel Basquiat “vandalized” the Mudd bathroom with his logo-like SAMO Was Here sloganized poetics. Tossed out the door, he came back every night. The SAMO stuff was all over neighborhood; the vandalism was debatable.

  Artists Jeff Koons and Christopher Wool were part of the parade and the future, while musician Johnny Thunders was the hero lost, staggering toward the door. Cheetah Chrome was easy to like and if we h
ad to throw him out, he’d apologize and get back in. Richard Lloyd (ex-Television) was still almost beautiful: he could pick up his guitar, turn up the volume and make it sing. Some of us kept listening; others looked away.

  Artists and writers, drunk Punks and Punks on dope. Out of control, unavoidable, bandaged and lost—predictably, by 2 A.M. someone was always getting the bum’s rush. I opened the chain and closed it behind them. I played diplomat depending on who was getting tossed and let them back in if they promised to behave. I thought it was the right thing to do.

  Looking past lost, I stared into Cortland Alley. I thought about Wednesday, April 4, and a different kind of “Punks on dope.” I’d been working the club just two weeks when Steve called me at home and asked me to come in early; I was eager and agreed. Writer Max Blagg had arranged for William S. Burroughs and poet John Giorno to do a reading that was set to start at 9 P.M. The Mudd newsletter anticipated a room filled with “appropriately attired Nova criminals,” and negotiating a five-dollar cover charge with the I-never-pay-to-come-in crowd was going to keep me busy. I waited outside, hand on the chain, ready for the challenge.

  William S. Burroughs reading, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky watching and listening, Mudd Club, 1979, by Marcia Resnick.

  Burroughs wasn’t known for his readings but was a legend for Naked Lunch, Junkie, Wild Boys and the Nova Trilogy. White Street was out of the way, nighttime desolate, the Mudd Club a dark set piece, weird and perfect. When Giorno finished there was an awkward moment and a minor tussle over who’d do the Burroughs introduction. Blagg had a hand in setting up the evening but author-biographer Victor Bockris got involved. Finally resolved, Max introduced William to the crowd.