by Richard Boch
By now it seems late but it’s barely 2 A.M.; the club is busy and the neighborhood crowd is trickling in and out. I’d seen Eric Goode around and figured he lived nearby so when he and his friend Shawn Hausman show up I let them in.
Eric had been back and forth from San Francisco, hung out on the Lower East Side and liked going to Studio 54. He’d been in and around Parsons School of Design, where he met fellow Mudd Club alumnus, It girl and budding supermodel Teri Toye. Like almost everyone, Eric had no money, was interested in the art scene and fit right in. Shawn was his business partner but the business was still in the dream stage. They shared a loft at 49 Walker Street, around the corner from Mudd, and started hanging out on White.
Eric was already on his way to becoming a self-made and self-proclaimed “club connoisseur.” He thought of himself as a “visual guy and voyeur” and appreciated the potential of the Mudd Club’s “dark, empty box of a room.” We both knew it was the people inside who made it happen but Eric knew the box was important too; for him, right off, “the Mudd Club felt like the real thing.”
Taking it all in, drinking beer and watching the dance floor, Eric and Shawn saw something happening and knew it could be more. My vision was more shortsighted, minute-length intervals in need of instant gratification. I had only vague ideas and no plans. I was working for a paycheck while my dreams and ambition sat on a back burner, waiting for me to turn up the heat. I needed to reexamine and refocus my own idea of more but it would have to wait. The door was getting busy.
Cookie and Sharon arrive, a minute later Clarissa Dalrymple and Cramps guitarist Bryan Gregory. A week earlier, Clarissa showed up with Robert Mapplethorpe and the previous night she was here with Francine Hunter. Clarissa, like the Mudd Club, casts a wide net.
Viva (Superstar) appears out of nowhere. Her ex-husband, filmmaker Michel Auder, is already inside. Artists Joseph Kosuth and Sarah Charlesworth climb out of a cab as actress Patti Astor slips thru the crowd. John Holmstrom’s already at the chain while Jayne County and future seamstress to the stars Maria Del Greco try squeezing in behind him. Dylan McDermott comes around front and stands next to me on the steps. People are piling in and either something big just emptied out or the air conditioning at One University stopped working. It’s the kind of night that feels like everyone is here; the kind of night I feel a part of, finally.
Last Tango
I walk home alone to a day of not quite sleep and dirty dreams. Eighteen hours, I’m back again and the crowd appears familiar but somewhat sedated. The street’s quiet and Cortland Alley smells like piss and garbage, looking darker than usual; by 2 A.M. no one’s asking for drinks or falling out the door after too many. I barely finish the thought when John Spacely, a former office supply salesman and Punk Magazine publisher, corners me, leans in close and slurs, “Steve lets me drink for free but I can’t find him.” English translation: Can you get me a drink?
I like Spacely and always let him in. At least once a week security throws him out. He’s the poster boy for the walking wounded or worse and sometimes it’s hard to take. One eye’s covered with a patch—lost to a tranny swinging a chain—and the other one’s glazed over. I wonder how he keeps going, not sure that I could or even would.
Now Spacely’s hanging onto my shoulder and asking for two drinks. He hasn’t fought with anyone or gotten crazy with me so I buy him a beer and move on. The bar’s crowded and I push my way thru but no one seems to mind. Steve’s hiding out at the far end talking to Holmstrom and staring at a crowded dance floor. He’s telling John he could fit another thirty people in the place if he stripped the walls down to the brick.
I thought for a second, realizing it didn’t matter how many people we packed into the place—I got along with almost everyone. No matter how wasted people were, only one person inside the club, other than Gary, ever got in my face. It was a fellow employee and it happened late in 1980 when the road was getting rough and I was getting lost along the way. Outside the club was a different story: punches, threats, name-calling and bottles flying thru the air. I ducked or disappeared, did another line, had another drink. If I freaked and lost my mind, I’d find it the next day. I survived and showed up but not everybody would be so lucky.
A beautiful guy and six-string genius, he gave a shit and didn’t at the same time. Johnny Thunders’ guitar was still on fire but his flame was starting to fade. He wasn’t the only one.
Last Tango in Paris star Maria Schneider, famously butter-fucked in the movie by Marlon Brando, shot up—and fucked up—in a Mudd Club bathroom. Moments later, she staggered toward the bar, fell over and got back up. She tried to stand. I steered her closer to a booth but she had no interest in sitting. I didn’t think anything was wrong; she was just a little high on heroin. In my mind, she was a movie star hiding out on the second floor. I lit a cigarette and walked away. That’s when still beautiful supermodel Gia Carangi and girlfriend Sandy Linter wandered past. I didn’t know them at all but offered a smile, barely got one back and made my way downstairs. The girls were headed for the bathroom.
There was no “writing on the wall” and any warning shot went unnoticed. When the drugs ran out you went and got more. If something got in the way, you stepped around it or pushed it aside; if someone got in the way, you either said excuse me or told them to fuck off. No one thought about consequences. No one, including me, thought there were any.
Spacely drifted by again but didn’t see me. Roxanne came over, I bought her a drink and we went back to the second floor. Punk power couple Gyda Gash and Dead Boy Cheetah Chrome passing us and nearly out, on the way down. Jackie Curtis stood halfway up the stairs trying to figure out which way to go. Everyone was on a mission. Roxanne and I got in the elevator and disappeared.
Supremes A’ Go-Go
Saturday, July 7, and the big holiday came and went. I avoided the midtown Macy’s display and the fireworks downtown were just firecracker noise. Other than that, I have no other real or imagined memory of Independence Day, 1979. After nearly four months at Mudd, I feel it’s where I’m supposed to be. I’m working a job that came out of nowhere and those springtime days seem long ago. I’m fueled by a hot dog from Dave’s Luncheonette, a half-dozen drinks and as many lines of coke. I’m prepared as I can be. My shirt’s unbuttoned, unzipped or torn, depending on what I reached for in the closet or picked up off the floor. I’m at the door and the air conditioning’s still working. Everything and everybody’s cool.
There’s maybe a hundred people waiting outside when Diana Ross blows past me—the only person I ever let duck under the chain on her own. It’s one fluid motion, a full-speed reverse limbo and she does it beautifully. Studio 54 graduate and future Continental and Milk Bar owner Scotty Taylor, hanging at the door, looks over and says, “Diana Ross.” I say, “Yeah” and step inside to check it out.
She’s already dancing with her friend and only a few people know what’s going on. The dance floor practically in heat, Diana’s in the middle and the room can’t spin any faster. I just stare, stay in the Mudd moment, and never once think of my 1966 Supremes A’ Go-Go album. Thirty minutes pass in a wave of sweat, Rock ’n’ Roll and a heavy beat until the DJ goes Motown, the Supremes start singing and Diana makes her way to the door. Columnist Michael Musto’s at the bar wondering, what just happened, why did the DJ do that? Nobody knows but Diana’s gone.
The moments come and go when my memory takes a jump. It’s 1967 and I’m buying 45s for sixty-nine cents. Diana Ross is still making hits and Mary and Flo are still singing along until Blondie’s “One Way or Another” picks up speed, starts bouncing around the room and snaps me out of it.
Back outside, Scotty’s disappeared and the crowd’s gotten larger. I ask several people, “How many?” and open the chain. Another cab pulls up and a tall kid with dark wavy hair makes his way thru the crowd. He’s the one I’ve been waiting for.
Edward
Edward is either from Long Island or the Upper East Side, maybe both. He�
�s seventeen, beautiful and still in high school. He has a vial of cocaine and a laid-back attitude and I have a joint that Dirty Harry just gave me. We step inside, go downstairs and get lost. It’s a routine but with him it’s different—we just never have enough time.
Leaning against the basement wall, I look at Edward and remember things about myself from a decade earlier. Thinking about him now makes me remember then. I was that teenage kid, looking for something and wanting more than I could handle. I do another line and Edward smiles, says nothing. Ten minutes later we pull ourselves together, head upstairs and he’s gone.
Back outside I get hit with a blast of hot thick air. The street smells like street, the temperature’s probably eighty-five degrees and the bottle of beer I just picked up is warm after a couple of sips. I put it down on the step behind me, light a cigarette and think about Edward—for a few brief moments forgetting everything else. Then someone calls my name. The chain is in my hand. The crowd is still waiting. Those basement moments still a part of me.
There are some people I’ll never forget. Some I barely remember and others I can’t even see the memory of. I never knew their names or where they came from. I never saw them leave. They were ghosts of New York nightlife, specific to the Mudd Club, White Street and Cortland Alley. Some were real and some I might have just imagined. Edward was real—and all these years past I still wonder. I smile, close my eyes and still feel my back against that basement wall. I’m still waiting for Edward.
I light another cigarette and suck down another beer. Jerry Nolan, the drummer for the notorious on-again, off-again Heartbreakers, gets out of a cab and makes his way to the door. Walter Lure, Billy Rath and Johnny Thunders round out a wrecking crew that can tear a place apart if Johnny feels like showing off and the other guys feel like playing along. I saw it happen at the Village Gate in August ’77.
Jerry says hi but hardly knows me; he seems a polite guy, considering his history and résumé. Platform heels, drugs and a set of pink drums, he and Johnny left the broken New York Dolls behind in 1975. Four years later, the Heartbreakers are hanging by a thread.
Walter Lure plays guitar and looks better in a polka dot shirt than anyone I know. He’s the good-natured funnyman and fills in the lead and rhythm around Johnny’s loose ends. When he celebrated his last Happy Birthday at Mudd the cake was decorated with hypodermic needles. Someone had a very dry sense of humor.
Ten years earlier, Walter and I attended Saint Mary’s High School in Manhasset, Long Island, a Catholic school run by the Marist Brothers. Walter was a senior as I was arriving, and Catholic clergy crime was still in the closet. Luckily my parents wised up after freshman year and got me the hell out of there. I discovered the Walter Lure connection at the Mudd Club.
Johnny Thunders is already upstairs. He’s charming, lovable and impossible, a natural born killer on guitar. As a group, the Heartbreakers are iconic—a dangerous, drugged-out, sexy dirty image backed up by a workingman’s version of everything that’s Rock ’n’ Roll. I liked almost everything about them, though songs like “Too Much Junkie Business” never got me past an all-too-obvious self-conscious roar. The band’s history: some great music but more legend than anything else.
Dreamy Babble to Silent Drift
Even without a slogan or a theme song I was getting more and more drug-hungry. I wasn’t sure if I could be me without getting high or if I wanted to be someone else. I was feeling anxious and it was difficult to tell if the summer was moving fast or slow. Then the phone rang.
Monday, July 9, less than a week after the Independence Day fireworks that happened somewhere, I hooked up with Raygun Ray. We made plans to purchase an ounce of cocaine, complete with an extra gram or two of regret—that feeling when the drugs are gone, the money’s spent and nothing’s changed. It was the connection Ray told me about a few weeks ago: they have the best coke, he said.
We hop on the train and head for Central Park. Blondie’s headlining the Dr Pepper Festival at Wollman Rink, and Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds’ band Rockpile is opening the show. It’s warm and sunny and my Mudd credentials get us thru the back gate.
Blondie’s riding high on the whole Parallel Lines “Heart of Glass” insanity. They step out onstage, throw down the hits and the crowd eats it up. Chris and Debbie get it on and close the show with a choice cover of the T. Rex classic “Bang a Gong.” Ray and I try and hang out for a few minutes afterward but eighteen hundred cocaine dollars is weighing heavy in our pockets. We cab it over to Midtown East, Ray does the deal and we arrive at Murray Street after what feels like a three-hour hour later. When he finally dumps the bag on the table it’s hard to describe.
An ounce of cocaine looks big and small at the same time, it’s a sexy drug—a come-on and a setup. We take some out and line it up. It’s got a mother-of-pearl shine: flaky, beautiful and a little scary. We weigh it, divide it and cut half of it with whatever you use to cut coke. Then we blow our brains and profits out the window.
We have beer and pot to take the edge off and I have a few crumbling Quaaludes in a pocket somewhere. Six bottles of Dos Equis and a couple of grams disappear fast. I’m staring at Ray and he’s staring at the coke. The conversation goes from dreamy babble to a near-silent drift. I take the blade, set up two more monster lines and lean into the mirror. The coke I can have but Ray I can’t and even the endless lines of blow won’t change that. Hours pass without a word. Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain spins by in the background two or three times. Ray eventually splits with his share and I float away on the frozen. Night and day pass by in gray-out blur. I have to be at the Mudd Club in a few hours, unload a few stepped-on grams and get my money back. I’ll need a few drinks before the regret kicks in.
I leave Murray Street sometime after 10, order a vanilla egg cream at Dave’s (it’s about as much “food” as I can handle) and walk over to White. The club’s empty and the lights are on. The ceiling’s a black painted tangle of ductwork, wires and pipes; the walls are gray and there’s a trash barrel in the middle of the dance floor. I feel like lying down next to it and waiting for the music to lift me up or move me to the side of the room. I finish the egg cream and sit on the basement stairs instead.
Ten minutes later I’m at the bar staring into a room that Ernie Brooks described as dominated by void. People gave the void shape; sound and vision, combined with a tough door policy, gave it identity. Eight months after the club’s official opening, the crowd, the white light noise and the void were in sync.
Moving thru summer of ’79 we were busy every night and the old maxim that the city emptied out during July and August held no truth when it came to White Street. By 2 A.M. the dance floor was packed, the second floor was buzzing and people were still waiting to come in. I was working hard; I still believed my job was important but I wanted more than a doorman identity. I kept telling myself, and anyone who’d listen, that I was making beautiful paintings. With the exception of a fucked-up relationship, too many drugs, a touch of anxiety and the occasional nosebleed, I was happy. While I was busy with all of that, Steve was making plans for the Mudd Club’s future. I assumed, without thought, those plans included me.
Anyone Could Go to Xenon
Saturday night, the phone at the loft happened to be plugged in when Steve Mass called. He was low-talking but less hesitant than usual.
“Why don’t you wear a necktie tonight, let’s try getting some of that Xenon crowd in here.”
My eyeballs did the talking and rolled.
I knew I was hearing correctly and at this point nothing surprised me.
The only speak I could muster, “Okay, I will.”
Xenon was the Howard Stein and Peppo Vanini default outpost for unnaturally tan Europeans, moneyed tourists and junior executives between the ages of nineteen and seventy. Located on West Forty-third Street, the club prided itself on being not much more than a lower-wattage competitor for the slowly fading Studio 54. The only difference: just about anyone could go to Xenon. If
Steve thought we should or could bait that crowd with a necktie, who was I to disagree? It was the weekend and I figured what the hell.
The choices at my immediate disposal were the typical skinny, Punk and New Wave retro styles. I had a few in black, one in silver leather and the red leather tie Bryan Ferry took a liking to back in March. I tried a few on, jumped on the midtown Disco train and opted for the silver. Paired with my turquoise pants and a pale yellow sport jacket it was perfect in a ridiculous kind of way. I weighed about one hundred forty pounds and was thin enough to wear what my friend, the restrained but ever stylish Wayne Hawkins, called “circus wear.” I thought it was a good look.
The lure of silver leather must have worked. By 1 A.M. the place was a madhouse and by 2 the crowd outside stretched halfway across the street. By 4 A.M. my shirt was gone, eaten by the mob or lost during the course of the night. The silver tie was around my bare neck and the jacket was torn. The necktie became my badge of courage; the missing shirt and damaged jacket, a hallmark of success. My friend Lynne came to the rescue and took the jacket home for repair.
When the sun came up I got in a cab and headed for Crisco’s. The tie was in my pocket, and—whether mine or someone else’s—I’m pretty sure I was wearing a shirt.
