by Richard Boch
I step inside, replacing streetside fray with smoke and music. Kate Simon’s across the room with Steve Mass, talking about life and what it all means. I walk over as Steve’s walking away and offer Kate a Rastaman spliff that Manny L’Amour just gave me. She laughs out loud and we head upstairs. Five minutes later, I’m back outside. Even though it’s mid-December, it’s not too cold, and strangers, friends and anonymous curiosities continue to arrive well after 2 A.M.
In a momentary lull, photographer Allan Tannenbaum gets a picture of me in my new overcoat. I smile for the camera just as Andi Ostrowe runs out the door, throws up in the alley and falls into the back seat of a cab. Teri Toye and Richard Sohl are still floating around or “sleeping” somewhere inside. I reach for my drink as Jean-Michel Basquiat tumbles out the door laughing. He turns around, grins and lets a smile say good night.
When Dylan McDermott arrives after a shift at his family’s bar on West Fourth, he hangs around for a couple of minutes keeping me company. He’s good at it in an effortless way—eighteen, handsome and likable with a seen a lot for so young look in his eyes. I’m easy, he’s untouchable and I send him in for free.
The door opens; people in and out. It’s Dave’s Luncheonette, breakfast for dinner and the slow-go morning rush of Canal Street. The night’s over and it’s still dark outside. I walk home alone. I’ve got to put some fresh paper up on the studio wall. I’ve got to paint. I’ve still got to figure out what’s happening.
The Pink Loft
Asleep by 10 A.M., when I wake up it’s my own version of tomorrow. I grab a bite at One University, walk over to Bleecker and pick up a small bag of groceries. I’ll stash them in the coatroom at Mudd and bring them home later. Still feeling burnt, I’m hoping it’s going to be another work and then home kind of night. A minute later, I run into Betsey Johnson, the designer and scenemaker who lives in a big pink loft on Church Street about two blocks from the club. We share a cab, she bypasses home and we arrive together on White Street. I get her a drink, run downstairs with the juice, bananas and Pepperidge Farm cookies and head back outside to work. The autopilot’s already on.
After a while, I’m back inside and talking to Betsey. It’s over six years since she moved into the pink loft and nearly a year since she showed the first namesake Betsey Johnson Collection on White Street. It was January and I was still just a customer. Photographers Dustin Pittman and Allan Tannenbaum were on hand taking pictures, capturing the chaos. The catwalk that night: a wobbly lineup of folding tables extending from the stage and held in place by the crowd, several rolls of duct tape and a little luck. The clothes were stripes and neon; the models wore everything from Juicy Fruit boxes to Comet Cleanser cans on their heads. Betsey still laughs about the accessories, calling them “Pop Art, tongue in cheek” and without pause continues, “It was the best kind of fashion show I could ever do. Sexy and Rock ’n’ Roll.”
The bar’s getting crowded and Betsey wanders toward the dance floor. I grab another beer before going back to the door. Inside for good around 4 A.M., the handsome and popular Frankie DeCurtis takes a photo of me in the basement. My teeth are clenched, I guess I’m smiling but I can’t tell if the picture makes me look really good or really bad. I pick up the bananas, juice and cookies and jump in a cab. I really need some sleep.
Betsey Johnson and model, preparing for the show, 1979, by Dustin Pittman.
Elvis
The seventies were slowly getting ready for 1980 and the holidays were less than two weeks away. Gary and I carried home a ten-foot balsam fir from the Farm and Garden Nursery located on the future site of the Roxy (Tribeca Grand) Hotel. Chi Chi came over after work and the three of us tinseled the tree; I got up on a ladder and stuck the star on top. I climbed down and crashed.
Twelve hours later, I woke up, went into the studio and started slicing up scraps of paper. I made about thirty handmade Christmas cards out of everything from brown paper bags and painted envelopes filled with tinsel to swatches of acid green fun-fur tied with a red ribbon bow. All I could say was “Merry 1979.”
The message slowly changed to “Peace and Love,” the years turned into a life and the mailing list kept getting longer. Along the way, part of it got lost, part of it got erased, and part of it’s just gone. Like an old address book with pages missing and names crossed out—people I knew, barely knew or never knew at all. A few names from Christmas ’79 are still on the list. People I love, survivors like me.
I ask friends who or what they remember. I think of now and then. Then is where we came from, a decades-old dream when everybody was young and lived at the Mudd Club. Photographer Henny Garfunkel called it “the days of struggling without a struggle.” Most of us made it through.
I worked the Mudd Club door on Christmas Eve. Jeff Koons stopped by and slipped me an annual membership for MoMA as a holiday thank-you. He was working at the museum and surely “purchased” the gift at a substantial discount. Danny Fields arrived and gave me an actual old-school Christmas card with a much appreciated fifty-dollar bill tucked inside. Everybody else gave me a Quaalude, a joint or some coke. There was no snow that night and the temperature was in the forties. Christmas Day was even warmer. I called my parents. I roasted a turkey. I listened to Elvis sing about the holidays. The eighties were just a week away.
Gold Krylon Spray
New Year’s Eve was like any other night at the Mudd Club with a couple of extras thrown in. There were free bottles of fake champagne, noisemakers for extra noise and party hats just because. The stairway to the second floor was painted gold, thanks to Gennaro Palermo, his boyfriend, Costa Pappas, and two dozen cans of gold Krylon spray. By 11:30 the club was already filling up but the paint wouldn’t dry and it started rubbing off on everything. The stairs got slippery and the gold dust haze was a holiday huffer’s delight. The giant hourglass on the side of the stage was almost empty and 1979 was nearly over.
The temperature outside dropped down into the thirties and a chill in the air kept me on my toes. The crowd in the street was happy and everyone who came in got a heavy dose of fake champagne. I started out with my own private stash of Veuve Clicquot that I drank from the bottle at midnight. It was very 1980.
By 1 A.M. I moved on to brandy, beer and a gram of coke. When things started getting a little too festive I shoved a cut straw into a dime bag of dope to take the edge off. The eighties were just a few hours old and my midnight buzz of drunk and happy was on the verge of becoming a half-frozen speedball drift. For the moment I stopped worrying about my behavior.
When my friends Sara Heidt and New Yorker cartoonist Michael Maslin arrived it was time to leave the door and offer them some bottles of the free not-quite-Champagne. Bubbles in hand, Sara disappeared onto the dance floor while Michael and I headed for the basement with photographer Mick Rock. Except for my twenty-dollar bottle of Veuve, it felt like just another night at Mudd.
Well into post-midnight morning, Marilyn, the Mudd Club’s official chanteuse, stepped onstage. Wearing a tight green dress, green painted lips and green-tipped platinum hair, Marilyn sang the shit (or something like it) out of her “hit” single “Sex Means Nothing When You’re Dead.” As only a cadaverous white girl could, she put a new spin on sex, death, and holiday entertainment.
According to what Marilyn called “an exclusive agreement with Steve Mass,” she was paid two hundred fifty dollars a show. For New Year’s Eve, she might’ve gotten two seventy-five. When it was finally over the DJ cued up the Sex Pistols’ “Pretty Vacant” and Marilyn’s performance disappeared into the gold Krylon haze.
Marilyn, “Sex Means Nothing When You’re Dead,” 1980, by Nick Taylor.
I stepped back and looked across the bar. I walked upstairs and squeezed into the bathroom. It was close to 4 A.M. and the unhinged craziness of the Mudd Club was a beautiful thing. The new year was bound to be interesting, the old decade having left me in a sentimental mood. I found my way out of the bathroom and woke up on my way downstairs. Thinking abo
ut sex and drugs and getting high, I was lost in the same soft-core dream turned hard that started when I was a teenager. Within a few short years I crossed the line; and now, January 1, 1980, I stopped thinking. I looked around and stepped outside to get some air.
The eighties were here. The seventies were really over. Happy New Year!
7. WINTER 1980
Glenn O’Brien’s TV Party at Mudd.
Charm, chaos and television excitement, 1980, by Bob Gruen.
I’m not sure what got me so desperate. Maybe it was too much cocaine and not enough sex or maybe I had it backward. I ran around all morning in the cold chasing two bags of heroin while my dirty white Converse high tops went from wet to frozen. Avenue B and Fourth Street, I found a cab. Ten minutes later I was home; five minutes later I was warm. I worked in my studio for the rest of the day and never went to sleep.
By 9 P.M. I was buying a forty-five-dollar half-gram of coke from the psycho dealer on Charlton Street. He only sold grams or larger but was doing me a favor. An hour later I was staring at a plate of food I couldn’t eat; 11 P.M., I was on White Street. I was wearing motorcycle boots and my feet were dry but cold.
Tired but wide awake and getting busy, I spotted Wendy as she got out of a cab. She offered the usual “Hi Sweetie,” gave me a kiss, and I sent her inside.
Wendy Whitelaw was seventeen when she arrived in New York. She started doing makeup, landed at Studio 54 on opening night and wound up “painting” the faces that appeared on more than seventy-five covers of Harper’s Bazaar, Elle and nearly every variation of Vogue. Dark hair, pale skin and red, red lips—Wendy Whitelaw was beautiful, and she was good at what she did. She remembers how “It happened fast, it all fell into place.”
Before long, Wendy hooked up with Glenn O’Brien and Maripol, the Polaroid-snapping artist, future Madonna stylist and provocateur occasionelle. Then she headed for White Street where Robert Molnar pointed her out and introduced us. I wanted to know who she was, and Robert wanted to make sure I’d always let her in.
Tonight she strolled into the upstairs bathroom, looked in the mirror and reached for a lipstick. The only color to choose was “Cherries in the Snow,” created by Revlon and released in 1953. Deep red with barely a hint of pink, it was glamour, retro and Punk all at once; by 1980, Wendy Whitelaw had girls at the Mudd Club and women all over town wearing “Cherries.” Lip-printed on my cheek and smudged on the collars of John Lurie, Danny Rosen and Ken Compton, it was Wendy’s signature, a kiss me come-on that went with everything.
Ten minutes later I’m still outside, bundled in the heavy wool overcoat, sipping a double Rémy from a plastic cup. It’s snowing but the wind’s just blowing it around. Chi Chi’s minding the stairway wrapped in red fox, keeping warm regardless of what she is or isn’t wearing underneath. I light a cigarette and finish the brandy.
Deadpan Was Alive
I think it was January, maybe two weeks into a new decade; the weather warmed up and for the moment I forgot about overcoats, fur coats and red lipstick. I was outside wearing a motorcycle jacket, slowly drifting back from a post-seventies hangover. It was hard to say if anything or everything had changed.
Minding a small well-behaved crowd at the door, I watched Glenn O’Brien park his Toyota Corolla across the street. The club was open early, people were already inside and Glenn was set to tape one of the Mudd Club episodes of TV Party. No one, except Party orchestra leader Walter Steding, was ready.
The cast, crew and TV Party guests were pretty much one and the same: whether the night’s cavalcade included Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Basquiat, Bowie, a Bride of Funkenstein or rap pioneer Li’l Rodney C didn’t seem to matter. The dance floor was filling up, Walter’s electric violin was starting to speak and by 11 P.M. the camera was on. Thanks to the show’s wide-ranging appeal and my deft handling of the door, Glenn had a room filled with what he liked to call the “weird mix” of people he came to expect at Mudd—a backhanded but genuine compliment.
The panel discussed issues and nonissues of the day while the audience stood spellbound in the glare of quasi-celebrity. Deadpan was alive and Glenn O’Brien’s “cocktail party that could be a political party” was happening.
The night’s episode closed to a smattering of applause and Glenn graciously thanked everyone, including the audience. I asked for a beer and went back outside. Everybody else headed upstairs. That’s when it happened.
Unstoppable
Over a dozen black-and-white photographs were hanging on the walls of the second floor. They were portraits, some candid, and they included almost everyone on TV Party. The photographer was Bobby Grossman.
A familiar face at Warhol’s Factory and a regular at CBGB’s, Bobby had come to know nearly everyone, including Steve Mass. When the Mudd Club opened he showed up on White Street. Steve eventually offered him the opportunity to show his photographs, giving him money for plexiglass to protect the images but warning there could be no guarantee the photos would survive. Bobby wanted to do it anyway, hoping it would become a permanent installation.
The pictures were hung in time for the TV Party taping and everything seemed fine. The show ended, the second floor was packed, Bobby’s photographs looked great and the plexi was doing its job. The only problem: an unstoppable Teri Toye.
It’s hard to remember, and harder to describe. It happened fast, in plain sight, in a crowded room. Teri grabbed three photos off the wall, including a shot of Richard DNV Sohl, and disappeared, leaving a trail of cracked plexiglass behind. Everyone else kept drinking.
TV Party was always enlightening and entertaining no matter where it was taped. Add a bit of post-Party vandalism, a dash of true crime and a beautiful woman with a big dick, and it was Mudd Club magic.
Nightly Swarm
Midwinter, strange weather—cold one night, fifty degrees the next. My new oversized overcoat is working overtime trying to adapt. My priorities continue to seem out of whack and my better judgment seems to have flown south. Meanwhile, the country’s better judgment (or lack of any at all, depending on what side of right wing you were on) has moved Ronald Reagan that much closer to a White House run. Like the freakish weather, it’s difficult to predict how things will go but given the political climate, I’m cynical at best. From the back pages to the front, the Soviet Union and Afghanistan continue to be a problem while the storm over immigration and border security along with the increasing burden of student loans seems to only get worse. Even from the relative safety of detachment, with a drink in one hand, the chain in the other, I still wonder how and when it will end.
Though I’m handling the door like a pro, fitting in remains the occasional challenge. I take pride in some of my paintings but moving forward leaves me at a loss. Feeling comfortable is more closely related to drugs than people with whom I’m close. The new overcoat tries to help as best it can.
Facing a nightly swarm of strangers, I’ve started calling people I barely know my friends and drifting from those who really know me. It’s become harder to think straight leaning over a mirror with a razor blade in one hand and a straw in the other.
The Red Sea Routine
My Friday night crash turns into a broken late-morning dream. Saturday and Sunday go sliding by. I’m off on Monday and Tuesday is hardly there. By the middle of the week, I’m standing in front of that not-quite-mob of so-called strangers, looking for anyone who meets the I know them, I like them, they look interesting criteria. I’m about ready to give up when photographer Marcia Resnick appears out of nowhere. She’s got on her leather jacket and black hat with a pair of black Wayfarers to keep the moon out of her eyes. When she moves toward the chain the crowd does what Marcia refers to as “the Red Sea routine.” Maybe it’s the way she walks or simply mind over matter, but the few who make it happen I count on one hand.
Marcia Resnick frolicking on the second floor, 1979, courtesy Marcia Resnick.
Marcia studied at Cal Arts, Cooper Union and New York University. Like me,
she was born in Brooklyn, she knows everyone, and we’ve been running around together on and off since I started working on White Street. She’d just moved into a loft at the west end of Canal Street far enough out of range, but still within striking distance. Marcia loves to hang out, says the camera makes her feel “less guilty” about it. Even behind a pair of shades, her eye sees everything.
From the front steps of 77 White I saw everything too. I ran around before and after hours but never felt guilty about hanging out. I felt bad about other stuff and might’ve gotten chills when I looked in the mirror, but that only happened after too much coke, an ugly confrontation or some reckless, anonymous fuck. Except for a few blackouts and black hole nods, the coast was still pretty clear. I wanted to believe that almost everything was working, though finding the right amount of the right drugs combined with the correct number of drinks still baffled me. That constant desire for late-night/early-morning sex made me feel awkward and obvious. The heavy wool coat could only do so much.
Aunt Olga and the Top-shelf Martini
The worlds of art, music, film and fashion continued to converge and collide on White Street, with no sign of slowing down. Even my Aunt Olga heard what was going on from all the way out in Gerritsen Beach and wasn’t going to miss the chance to see what was happening. She told me, “I’m looking forward to a free Beefeater martini” and kept threatening to show up at Mudd. I told her, “We only have Tanqueray” but she didn’t care.
