The Mudd Club

by Richard Boch

  Left to his own devices, Gary may not have survived the discovery. The dubious decision to share his find with Mickey’s business partner, Richard Sanders, was a blessed curse. Gary wisely stuffed the money in his pocket while Richard kept a healthy share of the treasure. He doled out half the coke and dope to Gary, offering to protect him from whoever might come looking for the goods.

  It’s a tangled spooky web, but we have the party funds and favors we need. Wednesday’s almost here, it’s time to get ready, and nothing says Happy Birthday like cake, champagne and speedballs.

  The day before the party Gretchen and her friend Elizabeth arrived early. We went to the Village shopping for plates, cups, forks and balloons. We picked up the champagne and beer, packed up a cab and hauled it all back to Murray Street. The girls made spaghetti with whatever was on hand and shortly after I headed off to work.

  I stood on the front steps of 77 White and thought about Gretchen. She was my friend, and when she left her job at the Mudd Club it was a mistake. Moving in with the psycho coke dealer on Charlton Street gave her a warped sense of security that came loaded with drugs, guns and money.

  She tried to escape and moved into the Murray Street loft—an impermanent solution bringing mixed results. Charlton Street wouldn’t let go; he paid me her rent with grams of cocaine and sucked the two of us in. When at last the nightmare was over Gretchen headed home to Springfield, Massachusetts. I hadn’t seen her in a while and I was glad she made it to the city for Gary’s birthday.

  Getting the Candles Lit

  May 21, 1980. It was up to me to get it all together and my job to pick up the cake. By early afternoon I was riding the RR to Eighth Street and walking the five blocks to Veniero’s Bakery on East Eleventh. The cake was a big, brightly colored Happy Birthday model, decorated with blue and pink buttercream flowers. All I had to do was find a cab and get it home.

  By 8 P.M. I’m in the shower and Gretchen’s making dinner. We settle down by 10 and do a few lines of coke to hold us over; the big stash of brown Persian tide is high and dry for now.

  The phone starts ringing at 11 and I head down in the elevator. Richard Sohl, Lynette and Solveig come up. We crack open a bottle of Mumm Cordon Rouge as an advance mini-celebration of Ricky’s birthday on the twenty-sixth. The phone keeps on ringing and I keep making trips up and down. By midnight, the loft is getting crowded, the champagne’s moving fast and the cocaine’s moving faster. Anita Sarko shows up and hands Gary a copy of Aleister Crowley’s Diary of a Drug Fiend, everyone’s favorite read. Julie Glantz and Thunders’ manager Christopher Giercke are hanging in the studio, checking out the painting with a Johnny Rotten story scrawled around the edges (two weeks later they buy it). Cookie’s in the kitchen talking with Steve, and Sharon Niesp’s listening and laughing out loud. Marcia Resnick just arrived, dressed to party in Ray-Bans and combat boots; she looks around and says, “So this is where everybody is.” I give her a kiss and make another run downstairs to get Ross Bleckner and Mary Boone. The up and down at this point is too much so I prop open the front door and leave the elevator unlocked. It’s a 1 A.M. free-for-all on Murray Street.

  Back upstairs I find Linda Ludes, the Quaalude dealer, going through my drawers, looking for more drugs. If ever there’s a night more drugs seem like overkill it’s tonight; but when you’re talking about someone whose nickname is Ludes, all bets are off. I ask her, “What the fuck?” and tell her to leave.

  Immediately, I feel better seeing Alice Himelstein in the kitchen. She’s talking to Gary and laughing that big loud laugh. Ricky comes over and we make a quick move, dipping back into the bedroom. Lynette follows us in and asks what we’re doing. I reach in my pocket and pull out the Persian brown. By now everyone’s up, down or somewhere in the middle.

  Marisol the sculptor, whose figurative work defies any label, is wandering around in a daze, accompanied by oceanographer Cathy Drew; Marisol whispers a heavily accented but barely audible “Happy Birthday” in Gary’s direction and Cathy gives him a squeeze. Linda Yablonsky and Big Ron arrive with Lincoln Scott and One U hostess Hester Laddy. The place is well past crowded when printmaker Larry Wright walks in with Charlie Yoder. Mickey’s a no-show but sends his greeting via Michael Arlen.

  I walk over to Jean-Michel Basquiat, who’s on the sofa talking with a girl whose name I never knew. Marcus Leatherdale’s on the windowsill with a guy named Todd, a good-looking downtown carpenter who’s along for the ride. Claudia Summers appears out of nowhere and starts talking with Jean-Michel and the mystery girl.

  People are making themselves at home in a good way (as opposed to going through my bedroom drawers). No one seems to be wanting, and everyone’s still standing. Gretchen is lighting the candles and Gary’s waiting to blow them out. I turn off the music and anyone who can still speak sings “Happy Birthday.” Anyone who can still eat grabs a piece of cake.

  I wander back across the living room, crank up Bryan Ferry’s “Let’s Stick Together” and the party moves quickly out of cake mode. I’m in and out of the bedroom with just about everyone and Gary’s in and out of the other bedroom with everyone else. By 2 A.M., it’s starting to feel like the Mudd Club second floor.

  Rather than spinning out, the party slowly winds down and Steve encourages everyone to come to White Street. The birthday boy’s the last to leave and splits with Lynette. I pull an open bottle of Mumm’s out of the icy kitchen sink and I take a long drink. The sound of Neil Young’s On the Beach is drifting around the room when Gretchen and I finally lie down and crash. The only question, who’ll get up to change the record?

  I Was Too Busy

  The brown dope was a tipping point and I wound up doing some every day. I wasn’t paying attention. I don’t know if anybody was. I thought I was working hard, making an effort and moving forward. I was always a smart guy and I threw a smart party, but didn’t realize what was happening.

  Abbijane warned me. Anita Sarko and Ross Bleckner warned me too. I was too busy and didn’t hear them. I didn’t see what was coming and it would be years before I could or would.

  Running out of drugs and finding, buying or asking for more was both a problem and a routine. I found myself drifting further in and out of real, riding an occasional wave of desperate.

  Saturday, Memorial Day weekend, and Gary’s stash of dope was nearly gone. I worked on White Street till 4, left Danceteria early-midmorning stretched out on the back seat of a cab. My head was spinning, my eyes were open, my mind racing. I thought about where I’d been and where I was headed. I rolled down the window, lit a cigarette, closed my eyes and saw everything.

  In 1975, I was still twenty-one and there was nothing more radical than Patti Smith and the Ramones. The Contortions and Teenage Jesus came along, adding fuel and fire to the juggernaut. By 1978, Diego Cortez grokked it. He and Anya Phillips helped Steve redefine club life and for some, life itself. As graffiti began to radicalize art, the streets replaced the white walls of SoHo. People were inventing and reinventing themselves. Chi Chi Valenti would one day again reference the “do it yourself ethos,” that point of ignition where so many of us began.

  Like Mickey Ruskin before him, Steve Mass gave us the room to breathe and for a few short years, even when it skipped a beat, the Mudd Club was the heart of what was happening. I might’ve been unsure of myself, but I managed to land right in the middle.

  Trying to look ahead and move forward, I sometimes wondered if I was just standing there holding the door, and watching it close.

  Times Square

  A beautiful, rough mix of moving forward found a temporary new home in an abandoned massage parlor at 201 West Forty-first Street and Seventh Avenue. Someone told me The Raybeats were playing but I had a feeling that was only part of it; I headed for Midtown to see for myself.

  The Times Square Show, opening June 1, 1980, was the brainchild of sculptors Tom Otterness and John Ahearn. Organized by the Collaborative Projects group (Colab), in cooperation with Bronx-based Fashion Moda,
the posters called it “Art of the Future.” The art of presentation would never be the same.

  Like Mudd, Times Square had that same kind of collective energy and do-it-yourself vibe, packed into a deliberately transient thirty-day run. Haring and Scharf, Basquiat, Brathwaite, Jenny Holzer and Kiki Smith put effort into the effort, distinguishing themselves as a cutting-edge renegade force. White Street girls Vicki Pedersen, Mary Lemley, Sophie VDT and Eszter Balint set up a Fashion Lounge with the help of Basquiat. Salvation Army clothing smeared with paint was a big part of the fashionably artistic Lounge statement, or what Pedersen calls “our ragtag chic manifesto.”

  Whether you were there for the art or took a wrong turn looking for “massage,” all who participated were part of that energy: a spirit and edge akin to Colab’s independent, communicative and not-for-profit ideal. Square-foot pricing and a corporate mentality had yet to destroy the remaining studio and affordable living spaces available. We still hadn’t experienced the corrosive effects of art’s investment-grade appeal.

  In those early days of June 1980, the sound of The Raybeats drifted thru the building, and the work of those involved painted a new and exciting picture. Like the happening on White Street, the Times Square Show became its own work of art: another new container for a creative, anarchic spirit. Within that chaos and freedom, and thanks to the forever loved but soon-to-be lost ruins of a changing city, New York was still Bohemia.

  When the filmmaker Bette Gordon mentions an “open window,” she recalls the opportunities that “allowed for a collaboration and overlapping of creativity.” She remembers the passion of that brief, 4 A.M. wild time existence when “drugs fueled the work until things got out of hand.”

  Those moments were often dark but beautiful, inspiring and transformative—impossible to repeat. They were a statement of time and time passing. Those moments, along with Mudd and Times Square, were a first and last stand.

  I can still hear The Raybeats as I wander south on Seventh Avenue. I feel the clock ticking even though my friend Larry Wright reminds me I’m still a kid. I’m twenty-six and he’s thirty. It’s after 9 P.M. and the sky’s almost bright when I step out of the cab in front of One University. I head inside; my tic-tac-toe painting is on the right—the first thing you see when you walk in. Two hours from now I’ll be on White Street.

  10. SUMMER OF LOVE PART 2: HEROIN, SURF AND SAND

  Exene Cervenka and John Doe, X, 1980, by Eugene Merinov.

  It’s almost midnight and Dave’s Luncheonette is filled with freaks, blue-collar weirdos and kids crashing and refueling. For half the clientele, White Street is the real destination. I grab a hot dog and run.

  Summer just got started and the Mudd Club’s busy seven nights a week. Gennaro’s working the door on Saturday and Sunday nights and I finally have the weekends off. I just have to figure out what the hell I’m doing.

  I stop by Danceteria, run around inside but never find a comfort zone. Studio 54’s still happening (to a degree) and so is Max’s. CBGB’s seems like it always will be. Club 57 is busy doing its own version of pop culture snark minus the irony. The Ritz has the early part of the night covered but leaves me underwhelmed until the band comes on; whatever’s onstage is the real and only draw. That’s why White Street’s different: you go to the Mudd Club to go to the Mudd Club.

  Furs and Lobsters

  The White Street newsletter had become a thing of the past, replaced by ads in the Village Voice: a bit of editorial nonsense and a lopsided lineup of acts. Still, most nights were carried by word of mouth, and meant to be a surprise. I always enjoyed the eleventh-hour revelation.

  The weekend of June 21, 1980, I arrived at the club and a crowd was already waiting. I heard the band’s name a few times but didn’t know a thing about them. I only found out they were playing when I saw their poster in the doorway.

  The Psychedelic Furs were just off the boat, playing their first American shows. They turned up the volume and blew the doors off the Mudd Club two nights in a row. Steve Mass was staying on top of things, kicking off the summer with a dose of Heartbreakers-style “fuck art, let’s dance” enthusiasm and the crowd on White Street was ready. By midnight the place was full.

  A weekend run by any band was unusual for the Mudd Club and I was sure it had something to do with Danceteria and The Ritz. When Joe Jackson played a one-night stand over a year ago, it was on a Sunday and he was touring behind a hit record. The B-52’s, a band of crazy with a quirky hit about a lobster, opened the club six months before that.

  Tonight’s different and the place is packed. Bowie’s in the house and by 1 A.M., the Furs are onstage. John Ashton’s guitar snakes thru the room and Duncan Kilborn’s sax starts wailing. Richard Butler’s vocal grind jumps out in front and brother Tim Butler’s bass takes the whole thing for a ride. “Sister Europe” and “Imitation of Christ” are loud and raw; “India” sends the dance floor over the edge. The Psychedelic Furs and the room are in sync and the Mudd’s art bar, post-Punk vibe is channeling its inner Rock ’n’ Roll dive. I’m standing in front of the stage and the door seems miles away.

  The Mudd Club’s high- and lowbrow aesthetic, its irony and random political incorrectness existed on and below the surface. Hidden behind a painted camouflage façade, it was, in the words of Glenn O’Brien, “the laboratory of a generation” and everyone was part of Dr. Mudd’s human experiment. The club’s intellectual and semi-intellectual bent, along with its art world sway and anything’s allowed attitude, kept things alive—and occasionally dangerous.

  Fight for Life, open casting. Are you Brandy? 1980, courtesy Howie Pyro.

  My behavior, and nearly everyone’s I knew, was reckless at best; the Mudd Club, and New York City, encouraged it. If you fell down the flight of stairs from the second floor, you got up, made sure you didn’t lose your cigarettes or drop a Quaalude, and headed for the bar. Sex in the bathroom or in the alley was easy: no names, no memory and little regret. Pull up your pants, straighten out your skirt, you were ready to dance and have a good time. No one I knew had any idea what was coming.

  Glenn Branca/Static poster, Mudd Club, 1979.

  Glenn O’Brien with Mary Lou Green and Leisa Stroud, 1979, by Marcia Resnick.

  Seeing and hearing the unexpected was less hazardous, but just as interesting. Avant-garde musician and trumpet player Jon Hassell, percussionist David Van Tieghem, guitarist Rhys Chatham, and saxophonist Dickie Landry all performed at 77 White. Philip Glass doing a 10 P.M. performance in front of leather jackets, de Menils, the Einstein beach crowd and Boris Policeband was a smart idea for a dance floor warm-up. They were all local talent with a connection to the neighborhood. I’d seen them around but I’d never seen any of them play.

  I saw Jon Hassell having dinner at One University and introduced myself. He and Brian Eno were working together in the studio and the result was the 1980 release Fourth World, Vol. 1: Possible Musics. The Eno connection caught my interest and the Mudd Club was the perfect place to hear what Hassell was up to.

  Wednesday, June 25, the club was only half full. By midnight, Jon Hassell took the stage. A line of China White left me dreaming and Hassell had me riding the Enofied sound manipulations of a trumpet. I stood there until my elbow slid off the edge of the bar. I walked outside to get some air and the music followed me into the street.

  An hour or maybe hours later, I’m facing what’s left of a crowd. Losing track of time, it’s like I’ve been standing here forever but can’t pull myself away.

  Johny Hit and Run

  Thursday and Friday night hit me hard; the crowd wouldn’t give me a break. Saturday night Gennaro was on the door and I never left Murray Street except for the half-dozen 3 A.M. nightcaps at Mudd. Late Sunday morning, by way of youth and chemistry, I fully recover. I take the D train to Brooklyn, borrow Aunt Olga’s car and drive to Toms River, New Jersey. My parents are here until November and then back to Florida for the winter. I spend the day, we all get along, but as Jo Shane would sa
y, “It’s like high school all over again.” Pretty much all the time now, they think I’m either on something or something’s going on but can’t put their finger on it. I just smile and think about growing up on Long Island when the music was too loud, a funny smell was coming from my room, and I was staying out too late. That was over ten years ago; some things never change.

  After dinner, I make my way back to Brooklyn and by midnight, I’m back at Mudd on my night off. I slip thru the crowd outside, step thru the door and stop short. X from Los Angeles, one of America’s great Rock ’n’ Roll bands, is onstage. John Doe, Exene Cervenka, Billy Zoom and DJ Bonebrake are putting out a sound so loud and beautiful that it pulls me to the front of the dance floor. I just stand and stare.

  Large freestanding crucifixes covered with plastic flowers (the work of Mirielle Cervenka) flank both sides of the stage: it’s life and death, the band’s playing fast and everyone’s trying to hold on. John Doe’s bass and the Bonebrake beat carry the sound—the Zoom guitar slices it up and makes it dance. When Exene’s vocal pulls up next to John’s, her voice wraps around his and they let loose. He’s all skinny Rock ’n’ Roll passion and she’s in your face with a sonic force of words. Together it’s a sweet scream that I haven’t heard since the glory days of the Airplane. When they put “Johny Hit and Run Paulene” into overdrive it takes my breath away. Wanting to meet them, I head upstairs after the show.

  Zoom was all cool, the grin flashing on and off. DJ was animated, out of breath and taking on all comers. John was sweat wet and talking to friends. I cut in, introduced myself and he responded with easy charm. Exene was different—approachable but cautious, and no wasted words; her sister Mirielle was only gone a few months and Gordon Stevenson stood nearby. I looked at Exene, said, “Thanks, it was beautiful,” and walked away. Three decades later, John still knows me as Richard from the Mudd Club.