Detroit Rock City

by Steve Miller

  Paul Zimmerman: Bookie’s was like the clean up, then, after Bookie’s you’d frantically try to find an after-hours party. So sometimes it was in Palmer Park—Mark Norton had a place there; Vince had a place there. In Palmer Park, these apartments—we had this thing called tumbling. It’s where you’d pretend to throw yourself down a flight of stairs but you’d actually hold the railing carefully, and pretend to roll down the stairs, but that would entice someone else to try it. So one night we had Stiv Bators from the Dead Boys with us, and if you’ve ever been in the Palmer Park apartments, they’re metal, the stairs. And so we showed Stiv how to do it, and he just did this swan dive onto the stairs, rolls down, smashes the bottom, hits this door. This old lady comes out like with this horrified expression like, “What are you doing?” And he just goes, with this big smile, “We’re tumbling!”

  Jerry Vile: During one of our parties Steve King started up a chainsaw and cut the coffee table in half. Another time we got up one morning and saw Steve’s car on the front lawn and the wheels were all that was left. The tires looked like those little drill things with the squares of sandpaper on it. We couldn’t believe the car was drivable, three out of four tires were like that—they weren’t flat tires; they had turned into these, like, sanding wheels. I don’t think he was purposely sideswiping cars that night; I think he was sideswiping because he was drunk. We used to purposely sideswipe cars when we were driving home drunk anyways because we drove such shitty cars. I don’t think Steve was doing that, but the cars on the street were dented pretty bad. Bootsey was so mad that we were evicted from one place that he broke the toilet upstairs and it flooded for a couple days; it destroyed the house and all this art on the walls, and it ruined all my art. Our equipment was in the basement, and that’s where all the water ended up. We lived at 8 Mile, right by the State Fair—we were a block off of Woodward. Frisco’s, that’s where Bambi danced at. She was good looking; she was hot.

  Stirling Silver: I called her Michelle, and I went out with her off and on for at least two years. I went and saw her strip a few times. She was beautiful, sexy, and liked to have sex. Plus she liked rock ’n’ roll and all that. The Talking Heads came over one time to my house after playing in town at the Punch and Judy. Four guys lived in that house, and between us we had ten thousand albums because we all worked in record stores. So the Talking Heads came over, and Michelle was there. David Byrne sat in this big chair, and he never moved all night and barely talked to anybody. Jerry Harrison wandered all around, talked to a lot of people. Tina and Chris were conversational. Michelle was walking around; she was always wearing, like, something up to here. She had a body. She would wear this one satin dress a lot; it was like, “Jesus Christ.” So Jerry Harrison started hitting on her. She wasn’t my girlfriend. I didn’t want her to necessarily be my girlfriend because I knew she’d break my heart, so he was flirting with her, and I think they went off for a while. The next day party’s over and Michelle was there, because she would stay there for a couple days with me, then take off. The next morning there’s a ring at the doorbell. I opened the door, and it’s fucking Jerry Harrison. By himself. And he goes, “Is Michelle here?’

  Michelle Southers: I was a fifteen-year-old runaway. At first I was a live-in housekeeper for this young couple with a toddler in Warren. I’m from Milford, the boondocks. I met this couple at one of our field parties, and I decided to run away from home. They let me live with them because they both worked and had a little child, and I got to live there for free and babysit. One of the woman’s friends was a topless dancer, Diana. She’d pull up in this big convertible, and she’d be all, like, just so flashy and blingy and all that, and she was probably all of twenty. I always lied about my age, so she thought I was seventeen. Diana wanted to hear my story and my problems and everything, and I told her the altered version, and I said, “I’m just trying to get a job,” and she said, “Well, if you lived with me, I have a beautiful place.” She had a gorgeous, huge apartment. She said, “You can just stay with me and clean my apartment and I’ll give you $150 a week and you don’t have to babysit kids.” So yes. One day her car wouldn’t start, so the owner of this topless bar she worked at on 7 Mile and Woodward came to pick her up. He saw me and said, “Who is this? Bring her with us. We’ll buy you lunch, sweetie.” So I go to the strip joint, and they asked me if I wanted something to drink. I didn’t know anything about drinks, so I wanted something ridiculous like Annie Green Springs or Strawberry Hill or something they didn’t have. He sent the bouncer to the corner party store to accommodate me, and I had a couple glasses of wine. Then the owner offered me three $100 bills to do one song, to pick a song and go up there, and I’m like, “No, I can’t do that—dancing.” “Oh, come on. I have so many costumes, and you only have to take your top off just for like thirty seconds. At the end of the song, just flash ’em.” So I did it. And while I was up there, I also made $200 in tips. I had them play “Brick House.” The rest is history.

  Bob Mulrooney: She lived at the apartment where me and Vince were. She lived in the front room on our couch for a few weeks. It turned out, she gave like five guys from Bookie’s VD, and then she ended up moving somewhere else, and she might have moved to LA for a little bit, and then she came back, married this punk rocker. I remember them at parties; they were always doing a ton of coke. I saw them at some little Chinese restaurant; they were ordering food right around that time of the killing.

  Michelle Southers: I was making so much money, and I would only go out with rock stars. Then I met this guy, he was gorgeous. He was six-foot-four, Russian and Italian—Joseph Bazzetta. I met him at the Red Carpet at a 3-D Invisibles show, and after that we were together constantly. After eight months he murdered his stepmother. He was living at his parents’ house, and she was looking to get rid of him and get him out of his father’s house. They had been on vacation for a few months. She came back first because she wanted to make sure she had everything prepared for her husband’s return. We were at the City Club, and it was late, so I stayed there at his house. His bedroom was in the refinished basement, and she would never know anyway. I wake up to this loud noise. Like if somebody dropped something on the roof, like a loud, loud drop, like bam, thud. And he’s not with me, and I’m waiting to hear another noise because I’m not supposed to really be there, and I don’t want to front myself off; so I threw my clothes on and I started creeping towards the noise, upstairs. I keep going up the stairs, and I walk into the kitchen and he was strangling her. It was a horrible thing. I was frozen. I can’t even explain it. It was like being trapped underwater and you can’t move and you can’t scream. I was paralyzed. Eventually I screamed. And he turned around and he looked like a monster. I was standing in front of … there was the stove here and the refrigerator here, and like a little bit of a counter top, and he was in front of me this way by the sink area, and he turned around, he stood up, and he came to me and started shaking me and said, “Shut the fuck up, bitch, or you’re next!” This is my boyfriend. So I help him. I went with him while he buried the body in a wooded area in a shallow grave in Oakland County; it was a place where I was from. When you’re dating somebody and you show them where you grow up, and this is the place where we used to party, big gravel pits, way out off of Hickory Ridge Road, and he said, “We’re going to that place.” He stopped at a nursery on the way there, with a dead body in the car in broad daylight, to buy foliage to plant over and make it look like it’s not a fresh grave. But he bought forsythia, which is ornamental. It has no place in a forest, but he didn’t know, because at the time it was green. He was always a suspect, and I never told. With this guy, and his reign of abuse, and “If you ever leave me, I’ll kill you and your family.” I was a classic battered woman.

  How he got caught was really a fluke. This was in August of 1983 when the murder happened. There was an article that came out in the newspaper in early ’88 about this drug dealer that went to federal prison in the fall of ’83 from that area. It was found t
hat he had buried a half a million dollars somewhere in the woods out there. So this hunter guy who lived out there, he reads this article in the paper and thinks about when he had seen this forsythia, and he thinks that’s a marker that was put on the money. And of course what they find is a skeleton. She was identified by her dental records, and her jewelry was all still on. I got to court, the prosecutor was saying, “She didn’t tell for five years. That means she’s just as guilty as he is.” I got fucked. I got totally fucked. He got found guilty of first degree but mentally ill. I got second-degree murder with a life sentence. I was in prison for twenty-one years.

  “You’re Not Punk Rock”

  Paul Zimmerman: There was a point where Bookie’s became a victim of its own popularity. They gutted it; they wanted more space. They also opened up this thing downstairs that used to be storage and made it a second bar. It wasn’t Bookie’s as much anymore.

  Scott Campbell: After two years Vince decided he wanted to run the place all by himself. Some drug dealer was financing his attempt at doing concert promotion. That dealer eventually got shot by some rival drug dealer. That was the guy that got killed in the parking lot in ’80. I didn’t want to deal with those people. I was doing everything except sitting there and drinking with the old man.

  Vince Bannon: I didn’t know what I wanted to do, to be perfectly honest with you. Scott was really focused on his band, the Sillies. I’ll give it to Scott—he was so focused on the band. I was a haphazard musician. The funny thing about it is that I ended up becoming, say, the more mature person out of all the kids around me. One day it just occurred to me that this putting on shows is working. We’re getting people into this place. I’m making it where I can pay for an apartment and other things.

  Bob Mulrooney: Scott Campbell has his own version of the whole history of Bookie’s, that’s for sure. He started it with his money, but then Scott was incompetent in a lot of ways and Vince ended up firing him. I can see both sides, but Scott was just a really unusual person, and he doesn’t really have a lot of common sense. He’s just a weird person. I was the drummer in the Sillies, so I know.

  Katy Hait: I joined the Sillies as a singer after Sheila left to go to Los Angeles and join the Screamers. I’d never sung before in my life, but I knew everyone in the band, so there I was.

  Chris Panackia: There were more places because there were more bands finally. It was Bookie’s. Now Monday and Tuesday at the Silverbird would do the same bands. The Dead Boys, Destroy All Monsters, Wayne Kramer played there—same bands that would play Bookie’s. Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at the Silverbird, they would have gone to Bookie’s before. Wednesday you would go to the New Miami. All those bands would play there Wednesday and Thursdays. Now you could take six nights a week and find that music at that time.

  Paul Zimmerman: That’s when the shift turned to places like Lili’s and Paycheck’s. The only problem with Lili’s was you couldn’t get far enough away from the band if you didn’t like them; there was a little alley entrance, so you could go out there; that’s no good, up front is no good, up front there was a pool table. But if you didn’t like the band, you would still be too close.

  Brian Mullan (sound man, promoter): During the week Lili’s was a regular bar, and you would walk in off the street and musicians would hang there. Almost everyone and a lot of the time bands from out of town would be directed there.

  Paul Zimmerman: After the Clash played at Masonic, they were directed to Lili’s. We had already been introduced to the place by Art Lyzak; it was a cool little joint in Hamtramck. You go in and get a Stroh’s and a Chrysler, which was a beer and a shot of Kessler’s. We were hanging out there, and the Clash came walking in, Joe Strummer and Mikey Dread. We walked over and started talking to them, and I showed them the latest White Noise and said to Strummer: “Buy an issue of this magazine.” Dread goes, “Do you know who that is, man?” and I went, “Yeah, I know who it is, and I know he’s got enough money to afford a dollar.” Strummer was very cool, and he said, “Oh, I want to pay” and whipped out some money. These guys were so polite. Somebody offered them some blow and Strummer said, “That’s so nice, but no. We’ve got our own, thank you.”

  Art Lyzak: My mom started Lili’s 21 in Hamtramck in 1975. My mom was Lili—she was twice divorced and had five sons. In the early seventies, late sixties, the second husband who fathered my four half-brothers wasn’t giving her any dough. So she was a barmaid in a place called the New Dodge Bar in Hamtramck. She was a beautiful chick, and she liked working the bar and found out about a bar called the Columbia Bar, which eventually she changed to Lili’s. She got some dough from my dad, who she still got along with. It was a nice place, just as a shot-and-a-beer place. If I was doing a gig and or hanging out, I’d be like, “Hey, my mom’s got this bar. Let’s go over there.” When we started having bands, for a good eight or ten years my job was, like, the booking guy.

  Jerry Vile: I got banned from Lili’s. It started because I had put Locker Room on their towel machine and was sniffing it and then I put my lighter on it to dry off the towel machine. When it caught fire, I ran out to the bar to get a glass of water to put it out. They were pissed, but I told Art, “I just saved the whole bar from burning down. You should be thanking me.” So he’s mad about that, and weeks later I’m in there with Sailor Rick, who’s Paul’s brother-in-law. He’s, like, six-foot seven, and we got our feet on the jukebox and we’re, like, kickin’ back, getting drunk, and they got pissed again, and it was, “All right, fuckers, you’re out of here!” On our way out Rick takes a bottle, throws it through the window, smashes their Lili’s neon sign. The fucking bar erupted, and everybody wanted to kill us. Rick was surrounded by, like, eight guys, and I was always getting into fights anyways, and I’m surrounded by a whole group of people. But Art cooled it down. That could have been life changing. I could have had no teeth—it was like thirty-five to two. A couple weeks later the opportunity to play a show at Lili’s came up, and I started thinking about how fun it would be to do because I’m banned there. So I came up with the idea of doing it from the van. We were called Free Beer for the Boners that night, and we ran cables from the van into the club into a TV onstage and the mic cable into the van with a camera on me. I had a series of disguises in the van, so I had, like, a bag over my head, hand puppets, whatever.

  Art Lyzak: I thought, “Well, he may be banned, but not his image.”

  DJ Dianna: There was a cool place called Nunzios. I was already going to Bookie’s, and I had been through the Grande and the Eastown. But Nunzio’s was four blocks from where I lived in Lincoln Park. All I knew is that it had huge disco parties. So I go to this place, and the guy who was the DJ, who was buying these cool new records, was a guy we all called Twig, who liked to get high. So Nunzio, the owner, said “If you are going to hang, why not work the door?” It was inevitable—every evening Twig would start out the night fine and get higher and drunker, and by the end of the night he couldn’t work. So one night he got drunk and Nunzio said, “Okay, you’re the DJ.” I said I didn’t know how to do that, and he took me to the booth and showed me how, and it went from there. It turned into me and Twig cospinning records, and eventually it worked itself into me working. Nunzio’s was picking off some of the bands from Bookie’s. Twig eventually died.

  Glenn Johnson (Mr. Unique and the Leisure Suits, drummer): There were these weird shows all over the place even during Bookie’s. We went to see Wild Man Fischer at the Latino Ballroom in Pontiac; it was this ballroom with plastic folding chairs and a stage like a church basement. The promoter bought Wild Man a bus ticket and had him come out. About forty people showed up, and I had just gotten out of the hospital from a car accident, and I had both my legs in casts. Fischer walked out and says, “Is there a drummer in the house?” So my pals carried me up in two leg casts and I played drums for him. They had a kit from the opening act, so I just came up and played the worst drums ever. He learned “Night Moves” by Bob Seger just before he go
t up there, figuring he was in Detroit and had to play something like that. There was this great network for bands starting about this time. Not just for people like Wild Man Fischer, but it was becoming more possible to do shows in other places.

  Nikki Corvette: Since I’ve been going to shows as a kid, I made friends with bands. Even before I was ever in a band I made friends with everybody. I was pen pals with bands from all over the world back in the days of letters, which is great because I have letters. When bands would come to town I would do what I could to help them out. “Okay, but when I’m coming to play your town, you help me out.” I’d meet people, and they’d hook me up with shows. We’d play the East Coast. We played down South a lot. We’d play the Midwest. Los Angeles. We played with the Ramones at the Second Chance in Ann Arbor at one point. A couple days later they we were doing a show in Toronto, and the opener canceled and the promoter called and said, “Do you want to open for the Ramones?” Yes, we did. After the show Johnny Ramone came up and introduced himself. And, well, he really pursued me after that. A year later, after End of the Century, Johnny called and said, “This is where we’re playing. What shows do you want to open?” They were playing a venue on the west side, but I didn’t really want to go because the promoter, Gail Parenteau, did not like me. She thought that I was going after all of the guys she was after. Johnny just said, “We’ll put you on the guest list and make sure you get in.” And I’m, like, it’s just going to be a hassle you know. And then he said, “We won’t play if you don’t get in.” “Oh, I am there.” You know I want to be there for that conversation. After that Johnny used to call me every day from the road. It was really uncomfortable when I would go see Johnny on the road. Years later I realized that the reason everything was so uncomfortable was because he was going out with Linda. And not only was he going out with Linda, but he was having me come to shows and used my band to open shows.