by Steve Miller
Dave DiMartino: The first cover that I worked on was Zeppelin, the live shot, the yellowish tint. At that point U2 was starting to be big. I think it was just their second album, and we ran in to do a set-up with them for a photo. They didn’t want to do it unless they could be on the cover, and at that time Robert Plant and Zeppelin was still massive, and Robert Plant was going to give away one of his only three interviews for his solo career to Creem, and I said, “Look, I’ve already promised the cover to Robert Plant.” The U2 guys are like, “Anyone that would put fucking Led Zeppelin on the cover instead of us, fuck ’em.”
Robert Matheu: My first photo published in Creem was Mitch Ryder with Lou Reed onstage at Masonic. Lou was not really real big at that moment, the Street Hassle tour. Even though the Masonic show was sold out, it wasn’t really Creem fodder anymore. Mitch came out and they did “Rock ’n’ Roll” together. On my way out I see Jean MacDonald, the Arista rep. The next day I get a call from Sue Whitall at Creem saying, “Hey, Jean tells me you got photos of Mitch singing with Lou last night. I’d sure like to see ’em.” I said, “Oh, great. I’ll print some up and bring ’em up tomorrow.” So the next day I go up there about noonish or something, with the prints, and knock on the door and, I’m poking around, and I ask where Sue is. This guy says, “Well, she went out to lunch a little while ago and stuff, and I’m not really sure.” I said, “Who are you?” He goes, “I’m Dave DiMartino.” I said, “Oh,” and I didn’t say anything for a second. And he says, “It’s my first day here.” Because I was kinda thinking in my mind, “Well, I don’t know that name. Dave DiMartino? Am I in the right office? Is this the dentist’s office?”
Pretty soon Bill Holdship and John Kordosh joined, and Creem was real good with them.
Mark Norton: Dave had to go interview the Clash at Masonic, and they were just having a bad day. They were on the bus or whatever, Dave was smoking a cigarette and blowing it in Joe Strummer’s face, and Joe was saying, “What the fuck?” He was really mean to Dave then at the end, and then he smashed his hand on the tape recorder and walked out.
Dave DiMartino: It started out okay, and then all of a sudden Joe got really pissed off because he said I was blowing smoke in his face. It’s actually incredibly fortunate in terms of trying to document the dialogue, because you can tell he’s getting more pissed at me and more pissed at me. Then all of a sudden, when he smashed it, it was like one of those piano-key cassette recorders. It totally sounds like he’s smashing something because it didn’t just go off. During our talk I was a little cocky, and he kept complaining about their deal with CBS to the point where, if I couldn’t elaborate on aspects of the deal, it would just be uninteresting reporting. So I’d say, “What do you mean? What’s the deal, what’s so bad about the deal?” He could have just said, “We gotta do fifteen records. And I don’t really give a shit.” And I’d say, “Oh, that sucks.” But instead, he’s saying, “You’re just sitting there blowing smoke in my face, blah, blah, blah, about to go on stage, blah, blah, blah.” Paul Morley, the NME writer, was on the road with them too, and after the, uh, incident, he said, “Well, how did it go?” I said, “Not too good. It started out okay, and then all of a sudden Joe got really pissed off because he said I was blowing smoke in his face.”
Cathy Gisi: We were also buying interviews from other writers. We relied on word-of-mouth recommendations. We used to get unsolicited transcripts from all over the world. This one came in that was so well written and so well done that we got on the phone to talk with the writer. We had never seen him anywhere, and he sent us this fabulous interview with David Bowie. It comes out, and Bowie’s publicist calls and says David never spoke to this writer. This guy had sent us hotel receipts and his notes—everything checked out. The writer defended himself to the hilt. I don’t know how, but we came to some sort of an agreement with Bowie. They didn’t want us to issue any kind of retraction. They realized we had researched this writer, and it was a great article. We ended up paying the writer too.
Mark Norton: I did some heroin, and Dave and I went to interview Bruce Springsteen. I always wondered if Bruce knew. I was barely awake.
Dave DiMartino: I talked with Michael Bolton one time. Just before that I interviewed Dionne Warwick of all people, and she said something basically negative about Bolton. So then like a couple months later I had to go out on the road and do a Michael Bolton feature because he was at the peak of his fame. Bolton and I were—it sounds like a such a cliché, it’s almost laughable—but he and I were in the back of a limo. I knew I had to ask this because I was told by higher ups to ask it. I said, “Let me ask you something: what do you think about the whole notion of people saying you’re ripping off black music? Let me read you something Dionne Warwick said.” I read him something about him stealing music from black people. His eyes started watering and he was just really quiet, and I could tell I really hurt him deeply by asking him that trash question. My heart fuckin’ broke.
John Kordosh: Arista got me tickets to see Dave Davies, who must have totally been fucked up the night I went to see him. That’s all I can conclude. He had every reason to totally fucking love me because I was the biggest Kinks fan in the goddamn country and also a big Dave Davies fan too. I’m standing around and Dave Davies comes out, and so I figured, well, I’m not interviewing him, but I’ll just go say hi to him, and so I did. I said, “Hi, Dave,” and he’s short, like most of the British rockers of that era. He kind of looks up at me and says, “You’re a fucking insect.” And I go, “What?” This was apropos of nothing. Nothing had happened. I hadn’t been making a pass at his girl, trying to steal his drink, or anything. Then he had some security guy try to kill me. He did, he absolutely did, he grabbed me by the collar—I was wearing a jacket—and he grabbed me by the collar of my jacket and, like, lifted me off the ground. I’m like, “What the fuck?” He used my face to open the door.
Cathy Gisi: People took it all so seriously. Bebe Buell called, and we had run a photo of her and her husband at the time, Todd Rungren, and this other guy who looked like he was talking to them seriously. This other person was saying, “Dr. so-and-so assures the Rundgrens the only thing wrong with their baby is ‘It’s Alive!’” She called and said, “Do you know how hurtful that is?” And the longer she ranted and raved, the more idiotic she sounded. It was all we could do to keep from laughing, and then it was, “You know this is Creem magazine, right?”
Dave DiMartino: I wrote a caption of a paparazzi shot of Christie Brinkley. She was waving at the camera and she had her hand raised, you know, so I put in quotes: “Married to a moron? Why, yes, I am!” So it looked like she was saying that. Billy Joel called up, and nobody was really believing it was Billy Joel, and he was really saying, “Look you can say whatever you want to about me, but don’t fuckin’ get to my wife/girlfriend.”
Mark Norton: When Barry was six years old, his father died at thirty-seven. When Barry was thirty-seven, he died in 1981 and his kid JJ was six. Really, really spooky. On deadline that night—we were supposed to ship in the morning—and Barry walked in and said, “You guys want some pizza?” So we ordered some pizza in, and everybody took a slice. We’re all drinking, and it was getting on about 1:00 in the morning, trying to get the captions done or whatever the hell we had to do. And Barry walks in and he opened this pizza box and he said, “Who ate the last piece?” I said I did, and he stomped out of there, and that’s the last thing I saw of Barry Kramer. He died at three or four in the morning.
Bill Holdship (journalist, Creem magazine): I was told they found him with a bag over his head and, you know, a band around the neck. So to me that sounds like suicide, you know, but I guess he was also way out of it at the end. You know Dave told me stories of him, you know, thinking that there were, you know, the whole cocaine thing, where you think there are bugs under your skin.
Cathy Gisi: As tragic as it was when he died, I thought he wouldn’t have had it any other way. He died laughing. He had that nitrous tank in the hot
el room and had a party.
Linda Barber: He was loved by a lot of people, but I don’t think he realized how much. It was a packed funeral. It wasn’t standing room only, but being Jewish, he had to be buried right away. I got there after the casket was closed, and I’m glad of that. I want to remember him behind his desk.
Mark Norton: I think people like Whitall say I didn’t snort shitloads of coke and drink with Barry. Well I did. Fuck you all. Barry was really lonely. The bartender at the Lemon Peel was his psychiatrist.
Cathy Gisi: When you got Barry by himself he was deeply emotional about people and the magazine and the world he grew up in. His allegiances to people never wavered even if they screwed him. He felt Lester had done that, but he never wavered from his devotion to Lester. When Connie wanted a divorce, he was so afraid he was going to lose this one stabilizing thing in his life. I think he partied one step too far between the coke and the nitrous. I don’t think he intentionally took his own life.
Robin Sommers: Barry was intense at all times. He had drugs that none of us could get. DMT, which is still the best drug I ever had; it looked like tree sap and you smoked it in a hash pipe, and as you inhaled, it took three seconds, and then you started to hallucinate. To take acid the first time I did, it was up over at Barry’s. I looked at the wall and it looked like coral, then flowers, and everything modulated. Barry had connections all over the area with everybody. He had friends that would go to Europe all the time.
You’re Gonna Die
David Keeps, aka DB (Destroy All Monsters, manager): In the midseventies there was jack shit going on around Detroit. The MC5 guys were in prison or trying some new projects with little success. Bands had scattered. A bunch of hippies. I was going to U of M in Ann Arbor, where it was a $5 pot fine, so there was a lot of weed. Christmas break in 1973 Alice Cooper played in Ann Arbor at Crisler Arena. I went with my childhood friends, Cary Loren and Bobby Epstein. We went to Berkeley High School, and Cary had drifted off in a more arty, drug experimentation thing. Bobby and I were more into drama and academics.
Cary Loren (Destroy All Monsters, guitarist, artist): I started going out with Niagara when I was a senior in high school; she was a year older than me. We left Detroit to live in a commune that her sister and her sister’s husband ran in Washington, DC. I was a bike messenger going around Washington, delivering all kinds of shit to people like Kissinger. I got hit by a bus, and my bicycle kind of crumbled up, and my glasses were broke. It was during a rainstorm, and the bus driver just picked me up and threw me on the sidewalk. At that point I just said, “I gotta get outta this place.” It was a good excuse to leave, and the commune really hated us. I think they were getting sick of Niagara and I. So right after the bus hit me, we got these Alice Cooper tickets and we moved back to Michigan, to Ann Arbor, where we decided to kind of stay.
David Keeps: So lo and behold, the show happened. Cary shows up with Lynn Rovner, or Niagara, as she was calling herself by that time. We all went to high school together, so I was aware of who she was. But by this time, 1973, she was a completely different creature. She had a fire-engine red bob and wore sunglasses all the time and was completely obsessed with old movies and knew all the right bands, like Lou Reed, New York Dolls—all that early proto punk. With drugs. I was just captivated by her. That was around the same era that Pink Flamingos came out, because Niagara did not look unlike, at least hair-wise, Connie Marvel. I had gone and seen Pink Flamingos at a midnight screening in Ann Arbor. We saw it and then walked out and turned around and got right back in line and saw it a second time. Because it was just like this life changer.
Niagara (Destroy All Monsters, Dark Carnival, vocalist, artist): I started going to U of M art school, and the first person I met was Mike Kelley. He sat down next to me on the bus because I wasn’t wearing overalls, which everyone else was at that time. It’s hard for me to believe now, but that’s what people were wearing: blue jeans and overalls and stuff. That was “in” for a short time. I was wearing a lot of eye makeup, as usual, and he thought I was kind of a transvestite type, like a Warhol superstar, and so he sat next to me and we got along.
David Keeps: After the Alice Cooper show we all became tight. I really admired what Cary and Niagara were doing. So much so that I ended up conning my parents into sending me to England to go to art school. I thought that I wanted to be an artist or painter or something like that. I left in ’74, and meanwhile Cary started in on all kinds of avant-garde stuff—mostly underground movies and Jack Smith.
Cary Loren: Jack Smith did the film Flaming Creatures, one of the great artists and filmmakers. I was learning about La Monte Young and a lot of the composers of New York and the Velvet Underground and all that stuff of the sixties. I got to meet Jack and stay with him over a summer in New York. I brought his aesthetics back to Ann Arbor.
Niagara: Cary and I were into music, and since he was a guitarist, we had to start a band. We were doing every kind of art there was, going in all directions, so the band was obvious. Mike Kelley was my friend, and I practically lived there after school, at this house he shared with Jim Shaw. They had this big sign there that said, “God’s Oasis Drive-In Church.”
Sue Rynski (photographer): I came back to Ann Arbor after a year in Paris and wanted to finish my art studies at University of Michigan. I wandered into the God’s Oasis house where the band had its headquarters. It was next to my apartment building, and Niagara came up to me and said, “You’re going to be in a movie. Let me get you a costume.” They were filming something, and she was in a bridal dress. Niagara was nice and arty.
Niagara: One day Mike said to me, “Do you sing?” I told him, “Well, we wanted to start a band.” Jim and Mike weren’t musicians per se, and I became the front person. We practiced one day and then went to a party on New Year’s Eve and told them we could play. We plugged in and we just did it. The guy at the house said, “Well, what’s your name?” We had no idea. Jim just said, “Destroy All Monsters,” and it was like, fine, that’s not bad. That night we just jammed on “Iron Man” for as long as we could until they unplugged us. We’re banging on cans. “Is he alive or is he dead” is all that I said.
Cary Loren: It was at a comic book warehouse where they had these meetings and sold comic books and distributed them. It was a party for mostly young kids and people that worked at the warehouse. We thought, “Well, we look like a band.” But we were just screwing around and doing our thing, playing noise, playing with records while we practiced. I think we started to play “Iron Man” or something like that.
David Keeps: When Cary was twelve he was a classical guitarist. He could play like Segovia. I used to sit and watch him play guitar when we were in grade school. Mesmerizing, brilliant guitarist. Then you’ve heard Destroy All Monsters, that period of music, ’73 or ’74. It sounds like he can’t play at all. Certainly not that he has any classical background. So Destroy All Monsters had that same sensibility as the Stooges when Iggy was pushing around a vacuum cleaner. When Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw went to California to continue their art education, Cary found the Miller brothers, Larry and Ben.
Sue Rynski: With the Miller brothers, the music was spacey rock. Ben and Larry were trained musicians and added another dimension. Niagara had songs like “Bored.” Iggy ripped that song off. It was clear he gets a lot of material like that. I was listening to this song from Party and he says, “I wonder if you’ll hear this song.” Then he mentions me in that song “Girls,” where he sings “Hanging down with Susie.” I get angry when I hear that.
Robert Matheu: Iggy had done this little rap and he said, “She’s got big boobs and she’s got high-heeled shoes,” and he was singing about Sue. You know, because she was hanging out and he was watching her at sound check and making up this little thing. I’m not necessarily saying the song was inspired by her, but definitely part of the lyrics.
Niagara: Pretty soon after Jim and Mike left, Ronnie [Asheton] came back from LA after New Order didn’t work out. I met Ronnie
at the Second Chance in Ann Arbor at a Ramones show in ’77. Joey Ramone was walking around backstage with a bag on his nose, and I was like, “You mean that glue thing is like true?” I know he did glue. You can’t write about something that beautifully and not have done it. At least that night. Everyone that I’ve said that to has been surprised. John Holmstrom in New York was like, “What?” Listen, I saw it. If this was the only time he did it, I saw that time. Ronnie looked very dapper. He’d just come from LA, and he had on a white flight scarf with a couple rhinestones in it and a jacket and a vest and had a cigarette holder. His hair was perfect, Brian Jones–like. Aviator glasses. His jeans were pressed. He was really styling in a low-key way. We talked, and at the end of the night he was saying, “I can get you some German military women’s jackets.” I thought, “This is a come on that I usually don’t get.” Cary got his number and told him we have a band and we had the Miller brothers playing for us, these big psychedelic, twin, beautiful brothers. Cary was amazing after that; he didn’t leave Ronnie alone.
Cary Loren: It had come into my mind to get Ron Asheton into the group, and we had a concert coming up at the Underground; it was built into this hill. I got Ron to come out to see us; I gave him a six-pack to come.
David Keeps: Which is odd. I don’t know what Cary was expecting because his vision of what the band was going to be, or at least his vision of the band as it had expressed itself on stage prior to Ron and Mike coming to the group, would be baffling to those guys, who were in bands that had record label deals and wrote their own songs. They came from a place. They had seen the big time. Ron was fairly fresh from the big time, because this was ’77. Ron must have looked at this and said, “What the fuck?!”
Niagara: Ronnie was pretty laid back. He didn’t know what his next step was, and Cary just kept after him and said, “Well, come to a practice. Just practice one day.” Cary finally got him to do it. Ronnie said, “At least I’ll get a free six-pack of beer.” You know, he didn’t have any money. So he came to practice. We hit it off pretty much.
