by Richard Boch
Among those friends and acquaintances I’m still amazed at what we could do. We lived our own version of luxury in tenement walk-ups, raw commercial space and bombed-out ruins of Alphabet City. The bathtub was rusted and cracked, the hot plate was on the living room floor and there was no lock on the building’s front door. The neighborhood, whether south of Canal Street or the far East Village, might have been dilapidated but it was our home.
Times were lean, and even New York City was struggling. We appropriated food, clothing, liquor and drugs, and occasionally did the same to make art, but we all lived within striking distance of White Street. The creative energy downtown continued to explode and the Mudd Club was the 4 A.M. ground zero. I often pushed that limit till 5 and beyond, regardless of what I was searching for. A cab ride to nowhere or a walk home to Murray moved the morning toward noon. Before the crash or after awake—what wound up on the walls of my studio was the response to both nighttime morning mayhem and reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Oftentimes it was beautiful, other times a mess.
I ask Linda Yablonsky, “What was different then, what allowed us to be who we were?”
She offers that one word, “Energy.”
She mentions then being “a much bigger stew with more ingredients, places like Club 57, Tier 3 and Mudd tied all the strands together, all the DNA. Life today is more fractured.”
Listening to Linda or walking the streets, I come to realize a sense of community diminished. More often than not we show up somewhere, offer a hello, engage in conversation and go our separate ways. Today, there’s no longer a next stop Mudd Club, or what Linda calls a “catalyst.”
Survival
Between those lean times and moments of truth, living just blocks away from White Street had its advantages and perils. Returning to Murray Street, whether at 5 A.M. or high noon: survival sometimes meant just getting home.
The nine blocks between Murray and Mudd seemed safe and manageable, the possibility of danger rarely considered. With a degree of purpose it took less than ten minutes to walk to work. I headed up Broadway, right on Franklin Street, turned left down Cortland Alley and never had a problem. Then one night I heard a woman screaming and everything changed. She was beaten, raped and slashed just steps away from her own front door, less than a hundred yards from the Mudd Club.
My neighbors, Suellen Epstein and artist Jim Biederman, had just left dinner at Meryl Streep and Don Gummer’s loft on Broadway, around the corner from 77 White. Don brought them down to the street in the elevator, I turned onto Franklin and everything happened at the same time. The attacker started running, Jim gave chase and Don rushed back upstairs to call the police. Neighbors heard the screams and started yelling out the windows. I ran down Cortland Alley and gave the two cops parked outside Mudd a vague description. The woman barely survived but thanks to everyone who got involved the rapist was caught. The two cops stopped by later and told me the guy had been “taken care of and dealt with.” It seemed a bit old school even then, but considering the crime, a tough call to make.
In view of the comings and goings of an endless party on White Street, a neighbor’s near-death encounter with a violent predator was a harsh dose of reality. The city was dark and often deserted below Canal: a wrong turn at the wrong time and anything could happen.
I stood outside that night and kept watch. At 4 A.M., I disappeared upstairs and when I left the street was empty. I lit a cigarette and walked home. It felt as though everyone, including the neighborhood, had lost something. I wasn’t worried about myself but I was worried about the city.
Mid- to late-’70s New York was the one I really knew. The one my parents showed me as a kid, and the one I wandered as a teenager, was a tease: the big show started when I landed on Bleecker in 1976. Crime was high but the rent was cheap, and in 1979, we were still four years away from big money moving in and changing things forever. Ed Koch was in his second year as mayor but would seem to have little power keeping rents low or getting a handle on crime. No matter how often he was elected that never changed. Artist and musician Walter Steding agrees: the pivotal year was 1983. That’s when developers started stealing the city away from young artists—when finding a cheap place to live became a full-time job. I took a gamble when I left Bleecker and got lucky.
In the seventies, money followed art; surely the real estate money did. In the eighties and nineties, SoHo and Tribeca, along with the East Village, the Lower East Side and, eventually, far west Chelsea got eaten alive. For years Max’s Kansas City founder and One University Chinese Chance owner Mickey Ruskin saw it coming and stayed one step ahead. When it came to opening up a new joint he was an artist, divining his way to the next hot-spot watering hole. Sadly, after more than two decades, he couldn’t hang on to that gift. The year was 1983.
Today the neighborhood I moved to in 1977, the onetime creative universe just blocks from Mudd, is nearly culture-free. In its place, a mountain of money and a malled-out urban-burb built on the backs of artists who came before. Over thirty-five years ago, I grabbed a piece when I had the chance. I wound up with a loft on Murray Street, found my way to White Street, and hung on.
Now summer’s beginning to darken. By 11 P.M., I’m back at the door; two hours later, the rest of the world shows up.
I look at the crowd and realize Steve was right—it feels like I know everybody. I start asking, “How many?” and start sending people in. By 1 A.M., it’s somewhere between a cocktail party and a Molotov cocktail. By 2 A.M., it’s magic.
6. THE LONG TWEED COAT
Richard Boch, chain, cigarette, long tweed coat, 1979, by Alan Kleinberg.
Mid-September 1979. My twenty-sixth birthday or what I remembered of it was two weeks past. The nights were cool until the summer came back Indian and the biggest problem I was facing was what to wear.
My almost semi-permanent roommate Teri Toye was hanging out with Scott Daley and both were hanging out at Mudd. They appeared together in the Victor Hugo show back in July and were still occasionally appearing together on the old fold-out sofa bed at Murray Street. I was just trying to mind my own business and solve my fall wardrobe dilemma when Teri and Scott got off the sofa and came to the rescue.
By way of a hand-me-down from six-foot-four Scott, I came into possession of the tweed overcoat. Large enough to fit over a motorcycle jacket, it was warm enough to take me into December. The summer of 1979 was almost over and I was ready.
On a cold September night, before the calendar officially turned fall, I made my move. Motivated by weather more than style, I worked the door in the new-to-me long tweed coat. When designer and fashion muse Abbijane saw me she screamed, “You’ve officially started the fall season!” I smiled, knowing my unfashioned fashion sense had just been validated.
Besides the leather jacket, I wore everything from pajamas to a denim vest and a quilted velvet-collared Yves St. Laurent jacket underneath the coat. It became my uniform and was about as fashion-forward or backward as I’d get. The MC jacket was from the West Village Leather Man; the PJs and the vest were thrift. Where the St. Laurent came from will forever remain a Mudd Club mystery.
Within a few days of Abbijane’s scream I was the guy in the long coat, an identity with a shade more sophistication than last season’s “guy in the orange pants.” Glenn O’Brien, an enduring barometer of style and taste, remembers me as “wearing some kind of proper overcoat and never getting hysterical even when the situation warranted it.” As for my state of mind and demeanor, Alanna Heiss (a neighborhood regular who founded the nearby Clocktower Gallery in 1972 and MoMA’s PS1 in ’76) recalls me being “good-looking and relatively sane, an unusual combination then and now.” I remember the coat more than my relative sanity and credit the warmth it provided for any perceived sense of calm.
Low-Slung Weapon
Then suddenly the warm weather’s back and I’m rushing around. I throw on an old blue jean jacket with a pink-and-black Levi and the Rockats button on the pocket flap and head out the door; I’m meet
ing Pat Wadsley at Mickey’s for dinner. We quickly finish a meal of fried zucchini spears and one-dollar-fifty-cent-per-shrimp shrimp cocktail and walk seven blocks to the Thirteenth Street backstage entrance of the Palladium. The security guy knows me and we go right in.
It’s September 20, 9:30 P.M., and The Clash are ready to go on. The band’s DJ, Barry “Scratchy” Meyers, is making scratchy sounds as Pat and I step into the orchestra. We wander around, steal two seats about ten rows from the stage, and the lights go down. The entire place stands up and The Clash hit the stage running. “I’m So Bored with the USA” sounds like an explosion.
Three guitars and a drummer start firing songs into the crowd. Mick Jones lets loose a blast of rhythm on his Gibson Les Paul as Joe Strummer spits out the word. Paul Simonon breaks a wide-legged stance and leaps toward the edge of the stage, swinging and shaking his bass guitar like a low-slung weapon. Topper Headon pounds the beat and powers it all forward. Pat’s hypnotized and I’m yelling so loud I’ll need a couple of brandies to get my voice back. By the second song, the Palladium’s out of control and a dozen songs later it’s hard to pull myself away. I have to be at White Street by 11 but I’ll be back here tomorrow night for more.
London Calling
Punk started out in New York, and London fired back an angrier, more politicized voice. Whether you ascribed to the politics or were only looking to get pounded by the beat, The Clash were ferocious. Ninety minutes later, my ears were still ringing.
I told David Azarch about the show, asked for a Jack Daniels to soothe my throat and tried to remember the first time I met Joe Strummer. It was either at One University or at Mudd and he showed up with Kate Simon. I already knew Clash DJ Barry Meyers, who was hanging out in both places.
Joe started calling Barry Scratchy after the ’78 tour and the name stuck. By 1979, Scratchy was coming to Mudd whenever he was in town. There was none of that What are you doing here? vibe, like the one that greeted the band on their visit to Studio 54. The Mudd Club was different—I was at the door.
Friday night, September 21, I returned to the Palladium. I found a seat up close on the left side of the orchestra and the band roared thru “Safe European Home” and “Complete Control.” A new song, “London Calling,” nearly caused a riot and everything seemed louder and more frantic than the night before.
With the room practically on fire, Paul Simonon smashed his Fender Precision bass on the stage. It was a wild fuck it moment of frustration and mayhem that no one saw coming. Feedback was screaming, the Palladium went crazy and photographer Pennie Smith captured the moment. The photo became the cover of the band’s next album—one of Rock ’n’ Roll’s great images. I was glad I stuck around.
“London Calling” rattled my brain for the next few hours and I was upstairs when one of the security guys told me, “Your friends are at the door.” Never knowing what that meant, coming from someone who didn’t know me at all, I checked it out. Paul Simonon and another guy were sitting on the steps outside, looking for free beer and some late-night strange. I said, “Hey, yeah. Come on in,” and that was it. Having witnessed a moment that went down in history, by 4 A.M. any large talk felt pointless. The smashed pieces of a Fender bass were somewhere else, the night came full circle, and a new Rock ’n’ Roll hero was shambling thru the hazy morning wreckage of the second floor. When I left the club at 5 A.M. the streetlights were still bright and a few yellow cabs still sat near the curb. I walked home, the opening chords of “London Calling” still crashing in my head.
The Baptist and the Hook
Saturday afternoon I worked on a new painting. I gave The Clash a rest and listened to Chris Spedding’s Hurt two or three times. I left Murray Street early, went to One University, had a beer and some baked macaroni and left in a cab. I always got to White Street on time even though there was no one to tell me You’re late. The original crew was gone and all the door staff, except for me, was new.
Colter returned from Europe, heard a rumor that “the Mob” or “the Angels” were doing security and stayed away. Gretchen was willingly abducted by a psychotic coke dealer and lived with him on Charlton Street. Joey Kelly left with Glenn during the summer management upheaval and Louie went on a long break and never came back. Robert Molnar’s Mudd Club career ended right there at the door—suddenly and without warning—during the middle of a shift. Depending on where you were standing and which way the fists were flying, his last night was one either to remember or forget.
I’d just given up trying to negotiate when security saw what was coming. Seconds later, Robert caught a punch in the face thrown by a Hells Angel named John the Baptist. When another Angel with a hook for a hand started swinging, the situation went from zero to chaos in seconds. Luckily for us, the hook got snagged in the front door and Robert and I escaped out the back. We ran down Cortland Alley to Franklin Street, jumped in a cab on Broadway and headed for Beekman Downtown Hospital. Robert’s nose was busted, blood was everywhere and I stayed in Emergency just long enough to catch my breath and offer some sympathy, encouragement and moral support.
When I got back to the club the crowd was still outside; the Angels were inside, drinking at the downstairs bar. John the Baptist was a big, good-looking biker, a fighter and the real deal; the Hook was a man of few words with an edgier hook-for-a-hand way about him. They both seemed okay once they stopped punching and swinging and the three of us headed for the third-floor office.
Baptist John had a bag of coke in his jacket and a hunting knife strapped to his belt. We sat on a table, he stacked the end of the blade with piles of white powder while I smiled and said thanks. We shared a few beers and ten minutes later we all shook hands and hooks. They went back to the first-floor bar and I went back to the door. Robert left the emergency room, went home and never returned.
There was no reality check, just another fine line between fun and trouble. I just turned twenty-six—I was working, having a good time and making new friends. Why wouldn’t I snort coke off the end of a weapon held to my face by a biker named after a cousin of Jesus Christ?
Robert got hurt, caught in the crossfire. I went home, smoked two or three joints and was back at the door the next night. Nothing changed and the only thing missing was a police report. A week later, Steve Mass held his ground and reached a peaceful accord with Hells Angels president Sandy Alexander. A little respect and a lot of free drinks went a long way. A standing invitation to Sandy and his wife sealed the deal. I just smiled and said, “Come on in.” They seemed nice enough.
Notable New Hire
Chi Chi Valenti was by then hanging out at Mudd, getting acquainted and making herself at home. She seemed more than nice enough and her charm seduced everyone, including Steve Mass. The second floor still needed an “admissions director” and Chi Chi had a certain something that made her perfect to rule the stairway. She was the Mudd Club’s first notable new hire in a long time and well positioned for her eventual role as The Empress of New York City Nightlife.
Chi Chi and I worked as a team and quickly became friends. We “read” nearly everyone, blew some off and wrestled with others. We found fun in the bathrooms, excitement on the second floor and trouble in the hours before and after work. We understood each other stone cold sober and when our eyeballs were rolling around in the back in our heads. I introduced her to everyone I knew, barely knew or didn’t know at all and she returned the favor. Thank God she was there.
The rest of the new crew—with the exception of Aldo, whose hiring was still a few months off—were just a bunch of low-rent, not quite thugs from New Jersey. With the old man Jim Connelly in charge, security meant punch first, ask questions later and carry a concealed weapon for good measure. Their idea of culture and celebrity was The Exorcist actress Linda Blair, Tiny Tim, and Jay and the Americans; also, anyone who lacked irony and charm.
The big Tiny thing was already well past its fifteen minutes of tiptoe tulip fame; the sullen, demon-possessed child of Satan was closing in
on her own expiration date. I sent Tiny in for free but made devil girl pay. Neither Jay nor any of the Americans ever showed up.
I stayed outside and did my job. Tiny Tim didn’t stay long and left without saying good-bye. Child star Linda Blair came and went; her inevitable drug dealing and cocaine possession rap pleaded to a lesser charge. By then her career had turned into a pop culture footnote headed for the low-budget horror bin—the same receptacle where Jim Connelly and his crew belonged.
I never could figure out how that old man sold Steve his idea of security.
The Grief We All Felt
Considering my peculiar status at the door and the people I was hoping to meet, I tried to become better informed with the world beyond pop culture. I started buying the New York Post and noticed Rosalynn Carter was already campaigning hard for Jimmy’s reelection bid, shaking hands everywhere except the Mudd Club. I wasn’t surprised to hear that a cloud of doubt lingered over nuclear power given the recent Three Mile Island accident or that the United States and the Soviet Union continued to bicker over who had the bigger dick. Meanwhile, the cause of Elvis Presley’s death—coming two years after the fact—was officially described as drug-related (as opposed to heart-related). The pathologist’s report made note of 5,300 tablets, various downers and stimulants prescribed during a seven-month period. That number appeared to rival even Linda Ludes’ recent Quaalude sales figures during the first and second quarters of the current fiscal year (I did the math and figured it out).
Sunday, September 23, 1979. Taking that knowledge in hand and to heart, I watched a Rock ’n’ Roll Funeral procession slowly make its way up White Street. The long black funeral cars Patti Smith once visualized when she spoke of death and loss pulled up out front and everyone in attendance was duly grief-stricken. Dead rock stars were celebrated and memorialized—a few even hanging out on the second floor.
