The History of Bones

by John Lurie

  Danny’s head would turn sideways and he would say, “Vince, what the fuck are you doing?” Vince would continue to stare into the mirror and say, slowly, “I am working on my acting.”

  Poor boy. As oddly confident as Vince seems now, he was equally insecure and uncomfortable then. Like a lot of sensitive, intelligent young people, it seemed as though his energies and thoughts were not his to control and moved sideways at painful cross-purposes to his being.

  Vince was also a liar. A compulsive liar, one of those people who start to believe their own stories halfway through. He would come home and say that he had beaten up a train conductor or had lunch with a senator from the United States or God knows what. And you could see that halfway through the story, he now believed what everyone else knew was absolutely not true.

  A few years later Vince and I were on the same softball team. We played over on Hudson Street.

  Vince was on deck with the bat over his shoulder when somebody asked, loudly, “Vince, when you lived in Paris with John Lurie and Danny Rosen, were you a junkie too?”

  “No, I was a liar.”

  The idea that Vince’s lying was as problematic a vice as Danny and I getting fucked up on heroin was absolutely on the mark, and it created a soft spot in my heart for Vince that I am still trying to hold on to, though he sure makes it rough.

  * * *

  —

  We actually made some money on the Meissonnier tour. Danny, Piccolo, and I all bought Borsalino hats. The one I wore in Stranger Than Paradise.

  When I got back to New York I had a fancy umbrella, my new suit, and my hat, and strode into Uncle Jerry’s law office, on Fifty-sixth Street, thusly attired and paid him back a chunk of the money he had loaned me. He was really pleased.

  EG Records killed the first band. All the little devious, insidious things they did just took the life out of it. The thing with the album cover Ev designed. Stiffing us on the money for the first tour so we all went home broke. The worst thing was the equipment thing in London. We had done the whole tour opening for Fripp, using his sound system, which was really good and sounded great onstage, and I assume in the house. When we got to London we were doing a final gig for our own fans as the headliner. It was a pretty big deal.

  EG was so upset about our getting so much attention and excitement on the tour and overshadowing Fripp that they had the sound guys turn in all the good equipment and rented the shittiest mics, monitors, amps, and drums, so that it just sounded awful. We had played a ton of times with shitty equipment and overcame it, but we had gotten used to having this really nice sound onstage, so when it sounded that bad, we just couldn’t quite pull it off. I felt like we had lost the World Series.

  They had booked a tour of the United States that had to be canceled when my hepatitis relapsed, and they were angry because they had already paid for the ads in those cities. They called and threatened me that this would be the end of the band if I didn’t go. Then they went to the other guys in the band and said that, according to their doctor I had seen in England, I wasn’t that sick and could do the tour if I weren’t being such a prima donna. Then two months later they came to me and said that I was the band and that I should consider dumping the other guys. Just sick stuff with no real reason.

  I thought it was over. I started getting pretty into heroin and cocaine, and a bunch of time just disappeared.

  * * *

  —

  Jean-Michel Basquiat, Willie Mays, got really famous and really rich, very quickly. He didn’t handle it so well. Just six months before, I was his mentor and had been for a few years. He was following me around, asking my advice, and sleeping on my floor.

  Suddenly he was this giant art star, hanging out with celebrities and really flaunting the money.

  I suppose I didn’t handle it so well either, was kind of jealous, but mostly I felt like he was buying into this thing that we had sneered at. Or maybe he just sneered at it because I did.

  I felt the currency of what we had, the things we could create, that no one else could, was infinitely more valuable than money and this kind of glitzy nonsense that he was now parading around in.

  He had left a bunch of artwork at my place. It was constantly in the way. I told him he had to come and pick it up.

  Danny and I go over to see him at his new loft on Crosby Street that was supplied to him by his gallery. There is a girl hanging around, smiling out from his bed. I’d never actually seen Willie with a girl like that before. Where she was actually there with him and not told to leave before we arrived.

  Danny is telling this girl how great her show was the other night at the Mudd Club. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. I guessed she was a singer. This amazes me, because Danny was always snide to everyone who tried to accomplish anything. Partly because Danny, who was as handsome as a young man could be, if he ever dared apply himself, could have done pretty much anything better than anyone.

  I didn’t think much about her. She later turned out to be Madonna.

  Funny thing with Madonna, how she can look awful with that nose crooking down and then you see her and, wow, she is an exquisite beauty. This isn’t video lighting. It happens in real life. She just changes.

  Six months later, I am with Tony Garnier, who gives me a chaw of chewing tobacco to try. We’re standing on the corner of First Avenue and Seventh Street.

  “Don’t swallow the juice.”

  “Of course, I won’t swallow the juice.”

  I’ve got this enormous wad of tobacco in my mouth, and I’m spitting into the gutter when this young woman comes up behind me and says, “Hi,” all flirty.

  She is stunning, but I don’t know who the hell she is and she can see this from my face. But she is really nice looking. I don’t want to spit the tobacco juice out in the street, so I swallow it.

  “I’m Madonna, I used to go out with Jean-Michel.”

  Swallowing the tobacco is making the shit just burn me up and I can’t really carry on a conversation. I want to gasp for air but won’t do it in front of this beautiful girl. She mistakes my not talking for disinterest and walks away.

  Tony is off to the side, can see exactly what is happening, and is laughing at me. Tony always seems to be laughing at me, and it is always exactly fair that he is laughing at me, so I can’t ever get angry.

  * * *

  —

  I decided not to be crazy anymore and canceled the SSI money. The checks kept coming for six months. So I kept cashing them. Then I got a call from some government bureaucrat saying that I was going to have to pay that money back.

  I went ballistic on the guy.

  “I’m just getting better! Why are you bothering me? You should be happy for me, not asking for money!”

  He gave up and said that I didn’t have to pay them back, but that my checks would stop now.

  Out of the blue I got an offer to do another tour with Martin Meissonnier. But I didn’t have a band. I had to find a new one. Piccolo was in Italy and Anton Fier was just too cranky to continue playing with. And Danny Rosen, as talented as he was, just didn’t want to do it or take it seriously. He thought it was no fun.

  For a short period the band was Dougie Bowne on drums, Peter Zummo on trombone, Tony Garnier on acoustic bass, and, of course, Evan on piano.

  That was a pretty stinky period for the band. As I tried to get back to the original reasons that I had started playing, the music seemed to get stiff and self-conscious. I couldn’t find how to do it. I was making the music more difficult but not more beautiful or soulful. Part of the problem was that most of the stuff was written on heroin. For a year or two, I thought I had to get high to write, and there was nothing in it. No heart.

  I was asking around about drummers and everyone was recommending Dougie Bowne. I met him, by chance, at Binibon late one night. Binibon was on the corner of Fif
th Street and Second Avenue. It was the only place, back then, that was open all night in the East Village. Maybe there was Kiev, but Kiev sucked. There was a coffee shop on the corner of Tenth and Second, but I didn’t go back there after I was in there by myself one night at three a.m. and saw someone get shot in the ankle. I didn’t actually see it. I heard the gunshot and then saw this guy hopping around on one leg. The guy who shot him was gone, immediately, before I even looked up.

  If you run a coffee shop where the food is truly awful, it can be bad for business if people get shot at the counter.

  Binibon was more central. When we got back from tours, we’d get high and stand on that corner outside Binibon and run into forty people we knew in about half an hour, and soon knew pretty much everything that was going on. It was really like being in a village, but a village that had gone mad.

  So nights when nothing was going on, I’d go and hang out at Binibon. They’d let you sit there for hours just drinking a tea or coffee. They’d let you hang out, but you absolutely could not use the bathroom. Employees only.

  Binibon was the restaurant where Jack Abbott had horribly stabbed a kid waiter to death. Abbott was the author of In the Belly of the Beast and had been released from prison through the efforts of Norman Mailer and others because he was supposedly a great talent. He was living across the street from me in the men’s shelter.

  Jack Abbott went into Binibon late one night with two women. When he asked to use the bathroom, the waiter told him that this was not possible. Jack Abbott thought that he was being disrespected in front of the two women and stabbed the kid just under the ribs, the same exact way that he’d described in his book. It got a lot of attention.

  It’s too bad Jack didn’t know that they don’t let anyone use the restroom. We used to beg them to use the toilet there.

  “It’s the law, a restaurant has to have a restroom for the clientele.”

  “No! Employees only.”

  Evan said, “How many more must die before they let you use the bathroom at Binibon?”

  This wasn’t a scheduled meeting with Dougie. He came up to me and said, “You’re John Lurie, I’m Dougie Bowne.”

  Dougie is hardly five feet tall, and when he shook my hand, I noticed that he had these tiny, tiny little hands. Tiny like a doll’s hands. You’ve got to be kidding. How can this guy possibly play loud and hard enough to play with The Lounge Lizards?

  But we got together and played for a bit and he had incredible power. I was thinking about using Denis Charles on drums, who was a great jazz drummer and a true sweetheart, but Denis couldn’t play in odd time signatures and Dougie was a master at it. Dougie was great, actually better for the gig than Denis, so Dougie got the job. Dougie is also a sweetheart.

  Tony Garnier, who was with me for only a year or so, has now been Bob Dylan’s bass player and musical director for years. Tony is, I think, one of the great bass players. In a way, it’s a shame that he’s spent all these years playing with Bob Dylan, because even though Bob Dylan is obviously Bob Dylan, it doesn’t really give Tony a chance to play like he can play. He is up there with any great bass player you can name. Richard Davis comes to mind.

  When I was writing film scores, I would write a fairly simple, unembellished bass line to go with whatever else was going on and then Tony would take it and turn it into something very special. Not by changing the notes, but just the way he turned the phrase into something really musical and right.

  I have been kind to some people in this book who, years later, when I was in trouble, were heinous to me. They also spread horrendous gossip about me on top of it to cover the tracks of how they had behaved. But this was how I felt about them at that time. So that is what I will write here. I will be gentle.

  But Tony is not that. A tough guy with heart. I fucking love Tony Garnier.

  * * *

  —

  We were playing in Paris at New Morning, a jazz club that holds about seven hundred people. When we’d play there, we’d get a funny mix of intellectuals, jazz fans, models, and the hip French. It was a bit of a dive, but the sound was good. The dressing room was this tiny ten-by-five-foot room right off the side of the stage.

  Rickie Lee Jones is there after the show to see Tony. He introduces her to me by saying, “John, you know Rickie Lee Jones, Tommy Lee’s sister.” Then he laughs by himself.

  We hang out for a while.

  The local chapter of the Hells Angels shows up after the show to see Tony. Some of them are French and some of them are expatriate Americans who, because of warrants, can’t go back to the United States.

  We go to their clubhouse and stay there until late into the next morning. Tony is a little nervous about my coming because he’s afraid I’ll say something or make a joke that won’t be appreciated. That kind of awkward feeling when you introduce two groups of friends from completely different planets. And this, after all, is me, who will say anything at any time, to anyone, and they’re the Hells Angels. We’re all taking a ton of coke, so he’s probably right to be a little nervous.

  I’m having a great time. I love these guys and I am very high. It’s getting light out and suddenly I jump up and announce:

  “I want to join! I want to join!”

  There is silence.

  “What? Am I too skinny to join?”

  “No, a skinny guy with a gun is fine.”

  Tony tries not to look up from the table.

  But at this moment at seven a.m. in Paris, high out of my mind on cocaine in the Hells Angels clubhouse, I am very serious. I want to join the Hells Angels.

  Well, the Hells Angels decide that I’m okay and they want to come to the show the next night. I try to discourage them, telling them that they wouldn’t like the music, but they feel I’m talking down to them and say they will definitely be there. We can count on it.

  We’re onstage playing. The place is completely packed—people are standing all the way to the back of the club. The entrance to the club is at the other end of the long, thin room from the stage, so that the band faces out toward the entrance.

  There’s a big commotion. I can’t really see what’s going on because the stage lights make it difficult, but I can see that people are being jostled all over the place, like a herd of bulls is coming through the crowd.

  It’s the Hells Angels and they’ve decided that, as a show of respect, they’re going to guard our dressing room door.

  Altamont!

  About eight of them just stand there with their arms folded, blocking the door to the tiny dressing room. This way the models, intellectuals, and poets can’t break in and steal the rotting cheese.

  * * *

  —

  That same band played at the Montreux Jazz Festival. I didn’t think we were any good that night, but the head of the festival, Claude Nobs, was taken with us and invited us to lunch. I didn’t want to go but Rene, the tour manager, said it was a big honor and we had to go.

  “You cats.” Claude Nobs kept saying “you cats.”

  Somewhere around that time, Bruno Denger set up a couple of our tours. Bruno was from Basel and he also used to say “You cats” when referring to us. It made my fucking skin crawl, “you cats” said with a Swiss accent. It made my skin crawl even further when, halfway through the second tour, he announced that a couple of shows were canceled, and because of that we were only getting about two-thirds of what I had been originally promised. Now, how it works is this: I get offered a tour for X amount of dollars per week by the promoter. I then call the musicians and offer them X amount per week based on that figure. If the figure changes in the middle of the tour, I can’t pay the musicians less than I’ve promised, so I end up working for a month on the road and actually losing money to pay the band. This shit happened over and over, so that in the early stages of the band, I was losing money, sometimes a lot, on every other tour. �
�You cats.”

  Claude Nobs is bringing out cheese and fancy bottles of wine. We’d drink anything, especially if it was free. Telling story after story.

  Tony goes into his “Really?” mode. Tony has the ability to zone out during a conversation that bores him and say, “Really?” at the appropriate pause in the conversation. He sounds slightly amazed and interested, when his brain is actually five miles away somewhere.

  It’s getting late and Rene is getting nervous about our catching the train. We’ve got to go all the way to Vienna, it’s an overnight trip. Claude assures him that everything is fine, he’ll send us with his drivers. We get to the station and do a mad dash with the bags. The band always has tons of luggage because of equipment.

  Evan, who is bombed from all the wine at lunch, is standing on the train, and we’re throwing all the bags up to him. We get the last bag on the train and it starts to pull off. Rene is running along the side of the train, banging on it and yelling, “Wait! Wait! Hey, wait!”

  Evan grins out the window at us as the train pulls away. Tony is laughing.

  I ask, “What happens now?”

  Rene screams, “The money! All the money is in my bag!” He’s wearing these skimpy little shorts that only a Frenchman would wear.

  Rene is frantically trying to figure out a train route that will get us to Vienna. A couple hours later there is a train to Geneva, we can get that. There isn’t another train to Vienna until the next morning, but we can get cheap rooms in Geneva, spend the night there, and then take the long trip to Vienna first thing in the morning.

  Meanwhile, I’m a little worried about Ev, who is drunk out of his mind with thirty bags. I don’t think Evan even knows that he has to switch trains in Geneva.