by Richard Boch
I went backstage when the show was over, said see you later, and cabbed it to White Street. Chrissie went off to Kate Simon’s and the boys showed up at the Mudd Club late. The next day they were gone.
Pete Farndon was a sweet guy and we had a strange connection: trust was part of it, drugs another. It’s always been hard to figure what makes a friend.
The Original Danceteria
Even standing at the door I was always running, and after fourteen months on the job it was full speed ahead. The Mudd Club was on a different run and never had to compete with anything except itself. Steve might’ve seen things differently.
By the end of April 1980, nearly six months after the momentary clusterfuck that was Pravda, word was out that Jim Fouratt and Rudolf Piper were ready to open a place called Danceteria. By the first week of May, that rumor became fact, adding to the already Ritz-induced paranoia that was driving Steve crazy.
Danceteria would be a weekend-mostly affair, opening late and staying open. Bands might play at 2 or 4 A.M., still onstage when the sun came up. For Jim, the fearless revolutionary who stood his ground at Stonewall, it was a semi-logical next move. For Rudolf, it was a big-time second shot. Together they were ready to pull off a huge illegal club operation, extending into the after-hours and serving liquor without a license.
Jim Fouratt was already lining up a unique roster of local and regional bands along with new faces from the West Coast and Europe. Mudd Club regular Haoui Montaug, who worked with Jim at Hurrah, was set to do the door. My friend Iolo Carew, whom I met at Sunny’s MacDougal Street pot and subway slug emporium, was hired as a manager, with Sean Cassette and DJ Mark Kamins switch-hitting on the turntables. Future art stars Keith Haring and David Wojnarowicz rounded out the crew of busboys, bartenders and checkroom attendants.
Rudolf was the master of design: contributing the visual details and cleaning up the edges, adding the polka dots and a bit of finesse. His uncanny sex appeal and oddly accented charm was set to do the rest.
For the past week Steve appeared more than anxious, and I was outside listening to every bit of news. Danceteria was almost ready and summer 1980 was little more than a month away. Jim kept showing up on White Street but I hadn’t seen Rudolf for a while. I was holding my own at the door but tension was building and something had to give.
That’s when Steve pulled me aside and told me Jim Fouratt was no longer allowed inside the Mudd Club. He might have mentioned Rudolf too but by that time my head was spinning and my eyes glazed over. I’m not sure if it was paranoia or spite, whether Mudd secrets and ideas were at risk or not; I did as I was told—and as usual, tried to play both sides.
Going one-on-one with Jim, delivering a “You can’t come in,” threw me off and I was clearly rattled. It was no flying dead bird to the shoulder, but it was a crack in the armor.
Fouratt may have been sympathetic but I felt like shit. After he left, I picked up my beer, went downstairs and did more cocaine. At closing time, I hooked up with the Funhouse bouncer and stayed out till noon. I slept, went back to work and let almost everyone in. Danceteria’s opening was less than a week away and I was sure I’d never see the inside. In the meantime, White Street was doing its best to keep everyone guessing.
What You Is
Thursday, May 8, promises to be wild even by Mudd Club standards. The joint’s filling up and Jane Friedman’s hanging with me on the front steps. About two dozen people are waiting and I’m working alone, letting in a few at a time. A cab pulls up, Tina L’Hotsky gets out with Willoughby Sharp; Gary gets out of another cab with Mary Lou Green. Lynette arrives alone, starts talking, loses her train of thought and goes in. Steve sticks his head out the door, looks around at no one in particular and doesn’t say a word. I look at Jane; we both smile. A minute later, I step inside, use the phone in the entryway and call Alice. Judy Nylon answers and I tell her to come down early. A minute later, two bridge-and-tunnel kids walk up to the chain, ask what’s happening and I tell them Frank Zappa’s going on around 1 A.M. They look at each other, then back at me and say, “No, really?” They’re a little nerdy but kind of cute so I send them in. They’ll either get eaten alive or be back tomorrow night for more. It’s early and I’m already having fun.
Frank Zappa always loved coming to the Mudd Club. At the Nova Convention held at Irving Plaza in December 1978, he read “The Talking Asshole” from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch. He was a hit. The after-party at Mudd gave Frank his introduction and connection to White Street.
I always loved opening the chain and saying, “Hi Frank,” and he liked hanging out at the DJ booth end of the bar, taking it all in. He wrote a song called “Mudd Club” that appeared on his 1981 release You Are What You Is. The club had the same free-for-all vibe and orchestral chaos that I picked up in his music and for a while “Mudd Club” was a staple of his live show. When he was asked about Mudd he responded, “It’s funny, I don’t know whether the place is happening or not, but I like it and I wanted to play there.”
An hour later, the band’s onstage. Zappa’s guitar is singing a song called “Chunga’s Revenge” and the sound pulls me inside. It’s one of those moments so good it makes you laugh.
Frank finished his set around 2 A.M. Jerry Brandt breezed in, handed me an invitation to the opening of The Ritz on East Eleventh Street, looked around for Steve and left a minute later. The big party’s Tuesday, May 13, just five days away, and the club officially opens the following night. I’ll be working on White Street but I’ll try and stop by.
Late-Night Outpost
I was still lost in Zappaland when Danceteria opened Friday, May 9, along an anonymous stretch of West Thirty-seventh Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. I worked at the Mudd Club till 4:30 and grabbed a cab to midtown. Despite being bookended by Madison Square Garden and Times Square, the Garment District at night was even darker and more desolate than White Street. While Danceteria wasn’t much to look at from the outside, inside was different. There appeared to be a lot going on but like any other packed opening night it was hard to tell. I wandered upstairs, sat down on an old sofa and started watching TV.
Ahead-of-the-curve video artists and pioneers Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong used a $300 budget to set up a one-night Video Lounge installation on the club’s mezzanine. Two or three thrift-shop coffee tables and couches, along with several old television consoles to house the video monitors (they used plexiglass on top to keep the monitors safe from cocaine residue and spilled drinks), and it was ready. Poet and writer Max Blagg, tending the Video Lounge bar, was the final, perfect touch. The popular spot outlived the one-night installation and remained open indefinitely; Pat and Emily’s videos featuring performances by everyone from the Dead Boys to Iggy Pop and the Cramps became a document of the time.
Over the course of a few short months, everyone from R.E.M. to Tito Puente, Jayne County, Sun Ra and Suicide graced the stage. The Video Lounge became the future. The basement dance floor: dark, sweaty and lost in time.
Danceteria was the latest semi-outlaw, totally illegal, all-night nightclub, and for one summer in the city, was a perfect after-Mudd outpost. I kept going back and despite Steve’s anti-Danceteria edict, I never had a problem getting in. For me, it became somewhere else to run to—another place to try and find what eluded me. I just needed to try harder, find a path forward and find comfort identifying as me.
The Ritz
Danceteria’s Video Lounge recalled a do-it-yourself ethos at work. From the early days of the Ramones and Punk Magazine to a Rock ’n’ Roll Funeral at the Mudd Club, everything started out as a crazy dream, and in a sense remained just that. When I moved into a loft on Murray Street with no kitchen, no shower and no hot water, I took that crazy DIY spirit to heart.
Photographer Bob Gruen recalls how “monetary gain was never part of the equation” at least within the creative walls of downtown. Danceteria might have stretched the neighborhood boundaries but it was all the same. People were making music
and art, film and fashion because it was what they loved to do—and usually fun (even for those No Wave warriors). Gruen remembers how “five or ten bucks in your pocket meant you had money”—and not every endeavor had dollar signs attached. It’s a reflection of Judy Nylon’s idea that “we lived out of each other’s pockets” and we often lived well. Even Diego said, when it came to White Street, “it was never about the money,” and it’s true; the Mudd Club opened with little to no regard for commercial success. Then the bills rolled in, free drinks were handed out freely and cocaine became a work-related expense.
When the eighties arrived money began speaking with a louder voice and there was no way to turn down the volume. The Ritz never had a connection to do-it-yourself but for a time managed to find a degree of balance on the cusp of monetary gain and a love of music for its own sake. Jerry Brandt ran a tight ship and, to his credit, never forgot where he came from.
The soon-to-be former Mudd Club DJ Justin Strauss was ready to start spinning at The Ritz. He’d never forget White Street but with three turntables and a DJ booth the size of a small apartment, this new move was sure to be a great gig. Justin’s a star but can’t do it alone, and radio DJ Delphine Blue already has a hungry eye on those turntables.
Opening night, there’s a mob outside on East Eleventh. A blonde named Beverly is doing the door; she knows me and I go right in. The New Orleans band Li’l Queenie & the Percolators offers an understated start to what soon becomes a mind-blowing roster of talent. Chuck Berry, U2, PiL and Kraftwerk, along with Tina Turner’s legendary comeback show, are just some of the names and events that eventually headline The Ritz. The challenge is getting people to stick around after.
The Ritz gave New York what it wanted and needed, and became an institution for nearly a decade. In 1980 it was the place to go before the Mudd Club and a great venue to see a band. I had a lot of fun at The Ritz but it just didn’t feel like home. When the show was over I never stuck around.
Gennaro
Part of feeling like home means sometimes running away. Timing is everything and I was getting burned around the edges just as Gennaro Palermo was getting comfortable at the door. He’d been working with me during the busy hours and occasionally filling in on my nights off. The rest of his time was spent on the dance floor and in the bathrooms. Gennaro knew many of the club people but had no clue about the neighborhood, the artists or the Rock ’n’ Roll crowd, a minor catch offset by ample style, quick wit and a language all his own. The best part about Gennaro is that he wasn’t some dubious referral or employment agency drone. If he could pull off wearing a hairnet with a nickel in his ear on Soul Night, he could definitely handle the door. Between Chi Chi and Gennaro, Aldo on security and Debi Mazar standing at the ready, we were in pretty good shape. It looked as though I might even wind up with a regular five-night schedule.
Almost Civilized
By mid-May, days were getting longer and nights just kept on going. If I made it into bed by 7 or 8, I was trying to get out of it by noon. I was sleeping less, painting more and getting high in the studio. Wandering around the East Village and the Lower East Side, I found what I wanted in a ground-floor shag-carpeted room near Houston: a hole in a wood-paneled wall that took your money and spit out dime bags of heroin. It was quick, easy and almost civilized compared to the bombed-out no-man’s-land cinder blocks of the far-east Alphabets. I’d cab it back to Murray Street and have the afternoon to paint and get high. It was simple and I had it all figured out.
Gennaro Palermo and Millie David, Mudd Club basement, 1980, by Nick Taylor.
I was moving forward.
I started working on some new paintings, still playing around with a version of the tic-tac-toe imagery I used for the billboard in Frankfurt. Lincoln Scott, the manager at One University, came over one morning after Mudd, and the following day, Mickey Ruskin told me he wanted to come by and have a look.
Several days later Mickey arrived at Murray Street with Lincoln and Michael Arlen, part of his inner circle of friends, cronies or henchmen. The back of Lincoln’s head was the face of Chinese Chance, and appeared on the One University posters and T-shirts. Arlen hung out at One U every night and occasionally stopped by Mudd. I knew both of them but I didn’t really know them at all.
Someone grabbed a mirror off the wall and laid out lines. I leaned in, nose down. Mickey walked into the studio, stood in front of three paintings, looked over at me and said he liked them. He pointed, said, “This one” and offered me a tab of fifteen hundred dollars. I told him it meant a lot to me and it did.
Back at the kitchen table, we all did one more nose down on the mirror. They split and I put on Marquee Moon, painted for a while, and crashed.
By early evening, I’m sitting across the street from One University. I’m smoking a joint with Gary and Ricky Sohl on the grassy knoll at the northeast corner of Washington Square Park. It’s the same north side of the same park where a stranger once said to me, “Hey sonny boy, want to buy some pot?” More than a decade later, here I am again.
Hanging out in the park, there’s a sense of freedom that still exists in New York City, and still exists in me. Riding the music—Punk and post-Punk all the way back to sixties Rock ’n’ Roll. Art and poetry; it’s the writing on the trains, buildings and bathroom walls. Sex and drugs—it’s what we learned and what we didn’t. There’s no guilt, little caution and a lot of questions. Some I’m not ready to ask and some I can’t answer.
The following afternoon Ricky and I stop by Electric Lady Studios to harass Andi. She’s sitting at the front desk dreaming of writing and recording a song about our obsession with the video games in the backroom of Chinese Chance. She asks what we’re doing and I tell her, “Looking for trouble.”
I head for the bathroom and do a line of dope. Andi walks in and does half a line. Ricky appears and wants to know what we’re doing but by now there isn’t any left. I look him in the eye and blame Andi.
Back home, I nod off.
Around 9 P.M., I plug the phone back in and it rings. It’s Gretchen, and she’s coming to town for Gary’s birthday, which is a week away, Wednesday, May 21, at our place. She’s bringing a friend and wants to stay at the loft. I tell her okay, fine, talk later and bye.
Arriving at work, I make a quick run for the basement, stop by the coatroom and hear about the upcoming nuptials of Lisa the coat check girl and a bartender named Gary. She’s eighteen and lives in the neighborhood; he’s at least ten years older. Her parents are horrified and think she’s nuts but book the reception at the Mudd Club anyway. I think we’re all nuts and run back upstairs.
I’m smiling as I head outside and start thinking about the birthday party. I’ve already told Steve and Mickey, Ricky and Andi. Teri’s back in Iowa for a spring popcorn festival and won’t be able to attend. Cookie and Sharon, Ross, Lynette and Alice are definitely coming. Anita and Anita, Marcus, Claudia, Rosemary and Michael all know about it. That’s about ten percent of everybody and exponentially equals a few hundred people. Steve definitely will come by to see who shows up and who doesn’t. I’m telling people there’ll be liquor and drugs and that they should bring more. I’ll have a case of champagne and cases of beer to get things started. The psycho dealer from Charlton Street’s a pain in the ass but we’ll need cocaine so I’ll have to invite him too. I’m kind of possessive about the Mudd Club door but I’m letting go and taking the night off. Party planning’s tough but I’ve still got a week to figure it out.
Hard to Miss
It’s an easy night and DJ Anita’s just made a clean, screaming segue from Buzzcocks to Stranglers to Sex Pistols, and “Holidays in the Sun” comes blaring out of the PA. Thirty minutes later I’m in a booth on the second floor, sucking down Heinekens with Lauren Hutton. Even at this hour she’s hard to miss, and the few who can still see are staring. Lauren stopped in to surprise Bob Williamson, the Svengali grifter who’s been taking care of her and her career for more than a decade. At 4 A.M., she finally asks i
f I know what time the old man usually gets here. I don’t have an answer but offer another Heineken. Bob’s nowhere to be seen and it’s not my job to tell her he’s probably fucking one of the waitresses from One U.
I walk her downstairs to a cab, come back up and head for the bathroom. It’s late and whoever’s still hanging out looks desperate—including me.
I head home with two guys named Richard and Stephen. Each has coke but it’s gone by 7; I call Sculls Angels for a cab and both are gone by 8. I might’ve had sex with one of them but I can’t remember which. I’m wiped out and the white-light morning’s pouring in. I put on Stranded, the third Roxy Music album, and “Song for Europe” is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard. I close the shutters and tear open the empty dime bag searching for one last line. I lay down in the living room and try to unwind. If I could stop grinding my teeth, I’d be fine.
It was long before I’d realize fine had little meaning.
Speedballs and Balloons
Two days before Gary’s birthday and I’m running around the club telling anyone I might have missed to come by the loft on Wednesday night. I remind them there’s no buzzer, to call from the pay phone on the corner.
Gary’s working too, running around the dining room at One U. It’s surely busy, and with all the nightly nonsense going on, no one notices a lonely manila envelope sitting on an empty banquette. When Gary finally takes it into the bathroom and checks it out he finds a thousand dollars cash, an ounce of cocaine and a half-ounce of brown heroin.
