by Richard Boch
With upstairs nearly ready, the only other bit of Mudd in need of a makeover is the basement. It’s a concrete, plywood and sheetrock mess with a cigarette machine and a coat check. It’s a fixer-upper with the three things that matter most: location, location, location. It’s a great project for somebody.
More Than Ten Minutes
Talking with Steve Mass was an odd comfort. More an employer and associate than almost-friend, there was still a connection. Privy to most of, though sometimes not, Steve allowed me to be myself or die trying. I’m grateful I didn’t try too hard.
The crowd outside hasn’t slowed down and the regulars are having a hard time dealing without the second floor. John the Greek can’t figure it out while Phoebe and Ellen keep running in circles between the bathroom and the bar. Mick Rock just keeps smiling and calling me darling.
On a break, I’m walking toward the dance floor when DJ David takes it up a notch and the Pretenders start pounding out “Mystery Achievement.” Ronnie and Gigi start jumping up, down and sideways. I whirl around Alan Midgette-style and bump up against the DJ booth. Steve’s at the bar talking to Victor Bockris, both have sunglasses on and Steve’s holding a highball glass with a vodka and grapefruit that’s glowing in the dark. I squeeze by, head back outside and walk over to a guy standing at the chain. He introduces himself as Nils Lofgren. I let him in and tell the door to let him thru. I’m probably the only person at Mudd, other than Lenny Kaye or Kate Simon, who knows he’s played guitar with Crazy Horse and Neil Young. I even have the album 1+1 by Lofgren’s band, Grin. The almost-mainstream cred is interesting and he comes off as a friendly guy. He’s inside, at the bar, in the thick, and I’m introducing him to Anita Pallenberg. She’s gracious but she’s never heard of him.
It’s late, maybe 3 A.M., when I check out the crowd one last time and pull in the faces I know. I let in one of those easy, good-looking suburban kids for free and instruct him to wait for me at the bar. I step back from the chain and I tell it like it is. “The club is full. If you’ve been standing here for more than ten minutes, you’re not coming in.”
I begin to ramble about coming back another night. I lie and tell everyone that it’s early enough to go somewhere else. There’s a low groan and some grumbles, but nobody moves except me. I turn around and tell security, “Nobody,” knowing there’ll be girls they can’t resist, guys who’ll slip them twenty bucks and people who’ll claim to be my friends. I head in and grab two beers, along with the suburban kid with no name. We crash the bathroom on the newly reopened second floor and the kid pulls out a vial of coke. Some girls are at the mirror doing what pop culture maven, singer and self-proclaimed Rock chick Bebe Buell calls “adjusting their glitter.” I smile at a girl I let in hours ago and she gives us two Quaaludes. It’s 4 A.M. when No-Name and I head for the elevator, but at this point it’s just late-night/early-morning foreplay. Twenty minutes later, we’re at Murray Street.
It’s eighty-five degrees and there’s no air conditioning at the loft. Cold beer, drugs, some frozen cans of lemonade and a strategically placed fan help cool things down but like everything else it’s not enough. No-Name tells me he goes to NYU and he’ll tell his friends about the place. I try not to listen, we fuck for a while and he splits around 9 A.M. I’m passed out by 10 and wake up six hours later dreaming about Bea’s Surf and Sand.
Somewhere Between
The past two weeks were summer-appropriate: sex, drugs and hot dogs, let alone Rock ’n’ Roll and a female bodybuilder. By midnight Friday, I’m well into my second Fourth of July at Mudd. There’s a constant rumble from Chinatown and skyrockets pop and fizzle overhead.
Saturday morning, July 5, Montauk is waiting and I’m on the 7 A.M. train headed for Bea’s Surf and Sand. I want to jump into a cold ocean, do a few lines, lie down, nod out and relax. If I’m still breathing at 9 A.M., I’ll drink at the bar and play Loteria, a kind of Mexican bingo. It’s one of my thirty-six-hour vacations and every second counts.
Midnight Sunday, I’m back at One University. Fried zucchini and several rounds of Space Invaders realign my system for the week ahead. I’ll be at the Mudd Club by 2, hanging out in the new and improved, beer-cooled, cocaine-fueled second-floor inferno.
Monday, and I’m back to standing outside, already feeling anxious. Then a speedball came sliding in and the week was gone.
Saturday, July 12, I stayed in town and gave Montauk a rest. I met up with Lynette and we headed for Times Square to see Peter Gabriel play the ballroom of the Diplomat Hotel. I never cared much about Genesis (overrated and why bother); I felt the same about Gabriel but the opening act was Tom Robinson’s new band, Sector 27, and I was at least curious.
Sticking to what we did best, Lynette and I connected with the band’s bass player and guitarist, Jo Burt and Stevie “B” Blanchard. We hung out together, left after three or four Gabriel songs, stopped at One U, and finally made our way to White Street. Sector 27 was scheduled to play Mudd Club the coming week and Danceteria next weekend. We gave Jo and Stevie a full-tilt Saturday night preview of what they were in for.
The gig at the Mudd Club happened late on a hot, crowded Wednesday night. Sector 27 put on a great show that included “2-4-6-8 Motorway” and the Tom Robinson Band’s 1978 UK hit “Glad to Be Gay,” a now forgotten liberation landmark.
When the show was over I went outside. Two weeks short of August I looked around, stared at the crowd but something felt different. Maybe it was me, or maybe somewhere between the dance floor and the front door I realized nothing lasts forever. Holding the chain, staring at the remains of a weeknight crowd, I was smiling but not sure why.
Super 8 Home Movies
Two days later, Saturday morning, I have my cigarettes, half a dozen joints, the usual four bags of dope and two hundred dollars. There’s paper, paint and brushes in my bag and Big Ron’s meeting me at Penn Station. We’ll be on the train at 7 A.M. and by 11, I’ll be on the beach.
Gary, Teri and Ricky arrive by early afternoon. I crash for an hour, get back up and work on one or two small paintings. It’s 6 P.M. when we cross the Old Montauk Highway, stumble over the dunes and head for the water. The waves are huge and crashing hard. Teri drops her towel, walks into the ocean and the surf knocks her over; seconds later, the ocean tosses her back on the sand. Another wave rolls in, hits her again and we can’t stop laughing. Her navy blue one-piece swimsuit’s practically turned inside out. It’s slapstick, a waterlogged version of Teri and Ricky dressed in pajamas tumbling down the Mudd Club stairs. She keeps trying to stand, and ends up crawling her way back to the towel.
I run for the water, dive thru a wave and come out the other side. I’m out past the break, catching my breath and still laughing. I’m treading water, looking back at my friends. It’s like watching an old Kodachrome Super 8 home movie and everybody’s smiling and waving. I’m feeling almost nostalgic until I look toward the horizon, start thinking about Jaws and swim back in. I sit on a towel and light one of Ricky’s Winstons. I lie down, exhale and look up. The sky’s where it should be and White Street seems a world away.
Bea Reilly
Back at the house there’s a real person named Bea Reilly who owns The Surf and Sand. She thinks we’re celebrities and takes care of us. She loves Teri, loves having another girl in the house, but she has no idea. Weathered, blonde and beautiful, Bea Reilly was the Angel of Summer 1980.
I light another cigarette. Bea’s behind the bar and passes me a drink. I’ve got two short days to chill out, get my shit together and get back to the Mudd Club; one day’s nearly gone. Tonight I want to toast marshmallows over the hibachi, order a pizza and have some drinks, tomorrow walk to town, come back and lie on the beach. I wind up staying Sunday night: smoking joints and walking the water’s edge, swimming in the dark. I’ve done it all before, the ocean between Long Beach and Jones; I was seventeen, just a kid. Memories still with me, resisting the fade.
Back in the city by Monday noon and it’s already ninety out. I t
ry to paint, try to avoid, and forget about the Lower East Side. Mexican Village for dinner, a drink at One U; I’m always at the door by 11.
Approaching summer’s midpoint, I’m not sure when something or anything might change. Some days I feel lucky and others, exhausted. What’s the endgame, I wonder, for a doorman at Mudd? Am I an artist or just hiding out? Is Montauk a place for reflection or just a quick fix party at the beach?
I turn twenty-seven in September. I feel like I’m getting old and I feel like getting high.
Chubby
Wednesday morning, July 23, I got up early. I gave up trying to avoid and forget, and made a run for the Alphabets. I looked for any hole in any wall that was open and spent twenty dollars on two bags of “yellow tape.” By the time I got to Mudd I was feeling better until I noticed what was happening. I’m not sure if it was Steve’s idea or someone else suggested it, but again, one of the bartenders was working as a cashier at the door.
I always thought the same hand in two tills was a dumb idea, unless you wanted to make sure your bartenders could afford an extra gram or two of cocaine. With no real accounting for cover charges other than clicking a handheld tally counter, who knows what went on? I just kept working the chain, minding my business.
It was a weird, warm and humid night and I stood outside with Brian Doyle-Murray of Saturday Night Live. Part of the comic relief that busted a hole in what was then late-night television, Brian and the SNL cast and crew added another layer to Mudd’s unpredictable cool fool.
I leaned back against the set of unused doors and took a swig from my Heineken while Brian went in to get a drink. I started talking with Debbie and Conover, two party girl “models” from DC who never paid to come in. They had Quaaludes, looked good hanging out at the bar or in the bathroom, and were unaccustomed to the word no. (In early 1982, Conover would meet Pete Farndon in Tokyo and marry him a month later. In spring 1983 Conover and I crossed the same sad path.)
I watch Bill Murray get out of a cab, his brother Brian still at the bar. They’d been coming around since the beginning, but Brian was here all the time. I went inside, got Bill a drink, and told him a band called the Go-Go’s were going on in about an hour. It was a nonversation, and a minute later, I went back outside. A short time later Rolling Stones Records chief and Jim Carroll producer Earl McGrath arrived alone. He said he came to the Mudd Club to see the band. I guess someone had to.
I heard one of the Go-Go’s played drums with the Germs. It seemed barely a factoid, and she only lasted a minute or two. The Germs lasted a couple of minutes longer, breaking up when singer Darby Crash committed suicide. Thinking about it now, the whole thing sounds like a mess.
Leaving the door for the upstairs bathroom, I run into the Go-Go girls before the show. They’re busy doing a version of getting ready, and left any charm they might have had in the van. I don’t care one way or the other, but first impressions are hard to shake.
Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, Charlotte Caffey and Gina Schock had a sloppy pop sound, a bratty attitude and a pretty good beat. It worked within its limitations and seemed curiously destined for mass market. Belinda jumped around, sang and wore a rag tied around her head—half L.A. gang style, half Hattie McDaniel. The rest of the band did whatever it was they did. They came out of the same L.A. Punk scene that spawned X, but the Go-Go’s were different. X was and is a great band.
I stood in the middle of the dance floor, intrigued by what I was watching. The crowd was sparse and Earl McGrath was near the wall a dozen feet away. Bill Murray was standing next to me.
I leaned over and said, “They’re pretty good.”
He leaned in. “Chubby.”
That was enough for me. I asked the bar for a fresh Heineken, or maybe even a Budweiser at that point, and went back outside. The Go-Go’s kept at it for another thirty minutes while a few regulars started to arrive. Writer Lynn Tillman stood on the steps and we talked for a while. Victor Bockris came outside and asked if Steve had left. I didn’t even know he was inside until that moment, and didn’t know Victor was either.
The club never filled up, and there wasn’t much for me to do. I was Go-Go’d out and bored. Dave’s Luncheonette by 5 A.M., I stared at a pair of fried eggs that seemed to be staring back. I sucked down a vanilla egg cream and twenty minutes later I was home. I lit up what was left of the spliff Dirty Harry had shared with me earlier. The test patterns on television were already winding down. I stared at the ceiling until I fell asleep.
By Thursday afternoon I’d already forgotten about Wednesday. The Go-Go’s, gone for the moment, were playing Danceteria on the weekend. I planned on being anywhere else.
Towncraft and Western
I got up, jumped in the shower and went shopping for some five-dollar vintage sportswear on Eighth Street. I hadn’t been to the Laundry Loft on Leonard Street for two weeks and didn’t have anything clean enough to wear, even at night. I poked around for ten minutes until I found a gray-striped, short-sleeved Towncraft shirt for two dollars. It left me enough money to pay six bucks for a black-and-turquoise Western shirt with pearl snap buttons. I still have the gray-stripes; the cowboy shirt’s long gone.
Finished shopping, I headed over to One U. Big Ron was working and I figured I’d suck down a free Bloody Mary. I thought about taking a walk to the Lower East Side to see who was open for business but decided to wait till tomorrow and buy a ten-pack bundle. I felt a little fucked up but I was fine. The Pretenders’ “Stop Your Sobbing” was playing on the jukebox. I asked Ron for another Bloody Mary.
Summer Wind
Thursday was my fourth night in a row at the door and I had one more to go. Gary came out to Bea’s with me on Saturday; Teri and Ricky were arriving later that day. It was sunny and over ninety degrees. Summertime—the dead of and dog days—real beach weather, I didn’t want it to end.
By the first week of August, The Surf and Sand had turned into that perfect place you’ll always remember. The air was fresher, the nights cooler, and it was ideal for predawn, early-morning sex with drunken townies. The sound of the ocean was perfect, and Frank Sinatra on the jukebox singing “Summer Wind” was perfect too.
At night we sat around the old horseshoe-shaped bar and played Loteria. We met the local fishermen and local locals: everyone from a guy we called Vodka-Water to a middle-aged drunk named Pat who said she loved rubbing elbows with celebrities. She thought Teri was a famous model and asked Ricky Sohl to play us a song. She wanted to know what I painted, and told me she “loved paintings of cats and clowns.” We never saw her again, but for the next month Ricky walked around saying, “I love paintings of cats … and clowns.”
Our friends Lori and Joe Barbaria, along with guitarist Thomas Trask, liked to drive over from East Hampton or Springs, wherever they landed for the summer. They’d stay for drinks and several rounds of Loteria before heading back. Teri soon brought along Stephen Sprouse, and Lynette made plans to come out and visit. Even Kate Simon made an appearance to check out the beach, dabble in the shniz, and see what the hell was going on. By the time Steve Mass showed up, Bea’s Surf and Sand was the place to go. All you had to do was find it and get there.
Gray
Sunday, August 3. Michael Holman’s at the Mudd Club and he’s been working hard all day. When Jean-Michel walks in, Michael can see that JMB is “blown away.”
Jean-Michel goes outside, drags in a wooden crate from Cortland Alley and tosses it onstage. He reaches up and gives a last-minute tear to the perfect unfurl of backdrop paper. A final brushstroke, gestural, painterly and a little offhanded: imperfect makes it perfect. Now it’s Michael’s turn to be blown away.
I’m back from Montauk by 10 P.M. In and out of Murray Street I grab a cab and make a pit stop at One University. By midnight, I’m on my way to White Street. Gennaro’s working the door and already there’s a buzz inside. The 4’ × 4’ plywood cubes that make up the stage are reconfigured with a middle one now missing. The discarded wooden crate from the al
ley sits off center, its open end facing the room. A bare bulb hanging from an overhead cord illuminates the crate’s shiny metal edges and red Chinese letters. An off-kilter scaffold-like cluster, put together with oddly tangled two-by-fours, looks spare and beautiful. It’s Jean-Michel and Michael’s very own Ignorant Geodesic Dome, and it’s waiting for something to happen.
Just after 1 A.M., Basquiat and Holman, Wayne Clifford, Nick Taylor and Vincent Gallo shuffle onstage. Jean-Michel and his Wasp synthesizer sit inside the crate. Holman’s kit of industrial percussion is out of sight, deep in the void of a missing plywood cube. There’s a quick blast, a rattle and a slow drift. An occasional rhythm punctuated by machine beats, blips and blasts starts moving around the room. It’s industrial bebop and a rattletrap grind that’s a little over the head and hard to define. I know the sound though I’ve never heard anything like it. At once distant and in your face, it’s the sound of a strange signal calling. Gray, the neo-No Wave rat pack of a band, is finally playing the Mudd Club.
An instant legend, a White Street ghost; Gray played a few gigs and was gone.
Onset of Puberty
Some of the guys onstage—not to mention the bar, the bathrooms and the dance floor—looked barely old enough to drink or whatever else they were doing. Eighteen was legal but no one carried ID. That was about to change.
