Detroit Rock City

by Steve Miller

  Dan Kroha: We recorded an album, did shows. Then Dan Rose, a friend and fan of ours, was a huge Alex Chilton fan. He went backstage one time after one of Chilton’s shows and had a tape of the Gories’ first album. Dan just put the tape on and didn’t say anything. After a little while Alex was like, “Who is this?” Dan was like, “Well, there’s this band who are friends of mine from Detroit.” Alex was like, “Do they have a record deal?” Dan’s like, “Well, they put out a local album, but they don’t really have the record going right now.” Alex was like, “Man, these guys are doing like for R&B what the Cramps did for rockabilly. This is cool.” We drove down to Memphis to record with Chilton; he had gotten a $6,000 budget from New Rose. We were to stay at Tav Falco’s house.

  Mick Collins: We’re sitting on the porch just hanging out, and this car pulls up. And this girl gets out, and she’s kinda walking to the door and said, “Hey, excuse me for just a moment.” And she busts the window and then reaches around and opens the door. We’re like, “What the fuck?” Then she’s in there and we’re sitting there, like, “We’re from Detroit, you know. It’s not like we haven’t seen this before.”

  Dan Kroha: So we drive up to Tav’s, and the first thing we see is Tav’s recently ex-girlfriend, Lorette Velvette, climbing out of the window of the house. She had broken into the house to get back some of her stuff. We said, “Hey, how’s it going?” She’s like, “Hi!” We were like, “What’s going on?” She’s said, “Oh, I’m Lorette.” She had a bag of potato chips. She goes, “You guys want some chips?” I said, “What are you doing?” She’s like, “Well, you know, Tav and I just broke up, and I was just getting some of my stuff out of the house.”

  John Szymanski: We had all heard of the Gories but didn’t know any of them, but I knew we were all inspired by the Back from the Grave compilations on Crypt. We had a ska band at the time. The ska band opened for the Gories at Finney’s Pub. Then we saw them at an after-hours club, and it was nothing but technical difficulties. Maybe when we saw the Gories, we felt that we could do that too.

  Margaret Dollrod: I met Dan when he came to my dorm room at University of Detroit. I was supposed to room with his sister. I had left my dorm room open, and he was in it rummaging through my clothes basket, and I’m like, “Who are you and what are you doing in my dorm room looking at my clothes?” He’s like, “Oh, well, you just have such nice clothes.” So I was like, “Well, I’m glad you like them.” He looked around and said, “Why do you have pictures of sixties Playboy chicks on your wall?” I said, “Well, you don’t? Sixties Playboy chicks are hot, you know. I like having hot things on my wall.” Then I realize this guy is kinda wanting to be open and wild and stuff but was kinda like, “I don’t know, I can’t,” and I’m like, “Oh, I like this.”

  Dan Kroha: I peeked in the room and was like, “Wow! Sixties Playboy pictures in a girl’s room?” I had broken up with Peggy shortly before we did that first show anyway, but it was tough.

  Mick Collins: There were many moments if I had the opportunity to walk away from the Gories, I would have. Sometime between our second breakup and the European tour, Dan started going out with Margaret. And that was bad.

  Dan Kroha: When Margaret first saw the Gories she fell in love with the Gories. She had a crush on Mick too. Not only did she think that me and Mick were cute, but she really genuinely loved the music. She would get up on stage and, like, run between our legs. She already went out just wearing a bra at that point. Like, she didn’t have to take her clothes off. She was already half undressed. Peggy hated that. Hated it. It was stressful, but, I mean, my life was just drama. It was just nonstop drama.

  Margaret Dollrod: Yeah, I loved them. I traveled with them. I carried their equipment. I sold their T-shirts. I was the roadie. I was the hot roadie. I would travel with them, and I thought they were so great. So I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance, and the way that they played kind of freed me. I would be like, “Yeah, taking my clothes off!” You know, okay, so maybe some people do that for Guns ‘n’ Roses, I understand. Peg hated it. She had a meeting in the middle of Europe and said to them, “If you don’t send her home, then I’m gonna quit.” I’m like, even if they send me home, I’m not going home. I got money. I will rent a scooter and follow you, and you’ll really hate it. Because I will dance.

  Mick Collins: When we did the Europe tour Margaret flew over there on her own. She got the tour schedule from Dan and got a Europass and followed us around on the tour. Which didn’t bother me none—I mean it was Dan’s girlfriend. Peg was really bugged about that, even though her boyfriend was with us at the time; he was our roadie.

  Dan Kroha: We did a show in Holland where Margaret was dancing crazy, and it was pissing Peggy off, and she just started playing really slow and then just barely hitting the drums. She ended up dropping her sticks and walking off stage in front of a packed house. Peg disappeared and we didn’t know where she went. We sent her boyfriend to find her. She came back and she was okay. We did a few more shows, and we go to France and for a show. There weren’t a lot of people at that show, but Margaret was dancing, and it was pissing Peg off. Peg throws her sticks down and leaves again. Walks out right in the middle. It was the worst feeling in the world—people are digging it and she walks out. Mick said he felt like bashing Peggy on the head with his guitar. He said, “I felt like hitting her on the head and letting the little people out.” Finally we all decided that we could continue the tour. Margaret toned down the dancing a little bit. Peggy bit her lip and got through it.

  Mick Collins: We finally threw Peg out in France. We were obligated to do these last few shows, however many shows it was, but I said, “When this plane touches down in the US, don’t call.”

  Tim Caldwell: The Gories had great out-of-control R&B, and no one cared. As much as Moe Tucker got beat up in the Velvets for primitive style, I don’t believe Meg White would have gone over if not for Peg having laid down the basics in the Gories.

  Troy Gregory (Witches, Dirtbombs, bassist, guitarist, vocalist): With the Gories, it was typical Detroit. Not too many people got them, but all of a sudden when they found out that people in New York liked them or they were selling records in Europe, they like it. It was the industry people in Detroit who were the real fuckups because they had these bands around and didn’t see it.

  Karen Neal, aka Queen Bee (Thrall, bassist, vocalist): The Gories opened the door to all kinds of new stuff in Detroit. We went to Europe, and the Gories were huge.

  Cool American

  Andrew WK (solo, the Pterodactyls, Mr. Velocity Hopkins, vocalist, drummer, keyboards): I didn’t get into music beyond piano lessons and whatever records my mom would buy me until junior high school. I had no older brothers or friends, not even kids in my neighborhood. No scheme for me to learn about things except cable TV. It wasn’t until I was thirteen and the friends that I had that we were able to branch out in music. To me at that point music didn’t seem as exciting to me as a guy freaking out in front of me making sounds that I’d never heard ever before. First guy that did that was John Zorn. It was, “Oh, this is going on in New York.” But around the same time there was this local guy, James Johnson, who just blew my mind. He lived on his own while he was sixteen years old, and there was this scene. It was a cross between Ann Arbor radical tradition—very political, an anarchist movement—crossed with a crushed punk style, crossed with a colorful new-age hippy vibe. No Mohawks and spikes, but yarn and twenty different kinds of clothes at once, like a clown. The whole vibe was to be as crazy as possible, which often depended on the quality of drugs. It was all living on their own crime, not having jobs, insane vandalism, truly crazy people living together at these sort of flop houses. It was a big street scene, and these dudes that would hang out for years, drifters, would become local legends. I would go to these houses where people were crazy; they would do stuff like try to pee on you. And it was all about mushrooms and acid. I was terrified to do that stuff, seeing how these people lived. These were my ido
ls in high school. The first show I saw was in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor. It was Scheme, and bands related to that scene, and everyone was in their underwear, and all the windows got broken out, and the cops came and shut it down. I thought, “This is what it’s all about.”

  Aaron Dilloway (Wolf Eyes, Couch, Spine Scavenger vocalist, guitarist, tapes, electronics): That was the Nautical Almanac show, and my band at the time, Galen, played. Twig Harper had a rope or string tied around his dick, and he ran it under the handle of a little Peavey Bandit, and he was standing on a table lifting the amp up.

  Andrew WK: I’d go downtown and stand outside the Huron House. This place had mattresses nailed to the outside walls, a swimming pool dug in the front yard, and bicycles in the trees. The doors were pulled off of the rooms, and people would be playing music at all times. The smell was so god-awful, and there was a lot of darkness to it as well. It wasn’t this cheerful happy place. It was like a haunted house crossed with a fun house. Through my friend Moralis, I finally had an older guy to show me stuff; he introduced me to new music. He took me to Schoolkids Records to see this guy Jim Magas from Couch, our favorite band, and we were too scared to talk to him. I had heard MTV, I liked a lot of other stuff, but nothing compared to Couch for me. To have your favorite band in the world be around and to see Jim on the street—I would have butterflies in my stomach every day hoping to see these guys.

  Jim Magas: I was working at Schoolkids when Couch had started, and everyone hated us. But we had played a couple of shows, and young kids started to get into us. No one our age was into it. I was twenty-six, and most of these basement shows, the kids were eighteen. These teenage kids came into the store and asked me questions about Couch, and they were like, “You have to meet Andrew.” The first time he came into the store he was real shy. His hair was bleached LA style, dirty blonde, and had a painted jacket. They had to pull him into the store. He was turning red.

  Jon Howard: There were all these bands that were based on noise around Ann Arbor because Detroit was so bad at the time. They’d go up and play Detroit, but it was just a crappy place to live.

  John Szymanski: We played with Monkey Tailed Skink, but we were kind of innocent kids; we didn’t get too deep into the Ann Arbor scene. We went to the parties but were probably too nervous and shy. They were all at least five years older than us.

  Jon Howard: The noise scene was a little intimidating. It was kind of cliquish. I knew people, but they weren’t openly looking for friends. They had their own thing going. Bulb Records was early—Andrew WK and Wolf Eyes—and they had the real DIY thing going with make-their-own tapes, their own vinyl. Everything was super limited and handmade.

  Andrew WK: Wolf Eyes originated with Nate Young and Aaron. Nate went to my high school. I was blown away by him; he was one of the people I idolized. He got kicked out of high school, so he was a sophomore when I thought he was a senior. Later he met Aaron, around the same time I did. Aaron had a band called Galen, and he moved into the Huron Street house.

  Harold Richardson (Gravitar, Easy Action, Negative Approach, guitarist): Huron House was this place where punk rockers lived in and they had shows in the basement. Lotta shit broken, kids puking on the steps as people were walking in to see the show. It was a place that if you were claustrophobic, you weren’t going to be into it, because the place would be packed tight for almost every show.

  Aaron Dilloway: Jim Magas and Geoff Walker from Gravitar were this bridge between noise and rock. One day I went into Discount Records and saw the Couch seven-inch, and I thought, “How did they get a record out?” This was a month or so after the show with the Hyenas, and I asked Jeff what else was out there like this, and he had other things to show me. Caroliner, this SF band on Subterranean that was huge for us. We wanted to do this stuff. Put out fucked up records.

  Harold Richardson: I spent my senior year in DC after ten years in Germany. My dad was an Army officer; I was a Eurofag. I moved back, and Springsteen was really popular, and I’m still into going to discos—we made fun of all the kids going to the 9:30 Club. I went to the disco, and it was all Miami Vice—we were doing blow off girls’ stomachs, and these other punk rock kids were all sober and straight edge. We thought that was weird: they were pacifists and always getting in fights and getting their ass kicked.

  I had to go to college, and Central Michigan, it was the only place that would accept me in the States because I was a terrible student. When I got there in ’86 Cliff Davies from Ted Nugent was living there at Mt. Pleasant, where Central is, and we both washed dishes. He told me he used to play with Nugent, and I said, “Sure you did.” Then he shows me his gold records and shit; I was like, “Wow.” He said Nuge never paid him off, so there he was, washing dishes and getting some kind of percussion degree at Central. I moved to Ann Arbor—it was more happening for music—and then I joined Gravitar. Jim Magas and Pete Larson—man, they knew shit. I was in a band with Jim called the Browns, which Aaron Dilloway was in. Andrew was a really sharp dresser. He would make his own suits even then, and he was a shy and quiet guy; it was when he did music that he was pretty abrasive. It was a noise punk rock scene that wasn’t punk rock at all. It wasn’t hardcore like it was in Detroit, but more of punk rock kids that were into noise instead of just punk rock.

  Aaron Dilloway: Wolf Eyes were all in that Huron House; Nate, I and Solomon, Sol Meltzer from Nautical Almanac lived there. One morning they tried to wake me up—there was a KKK rally in Ann Arbor, and they were gonna go protest against it. I was hung over and I went back to sleep. Nate woke me up and said we have to hide Twig because the cops were looking for him because he threw rocks at the cops at the rally and he had to move to Chicago for a while. Nate made this tape of Robert Redford reading Peter and the Wolf on one side and wolf howling on the other and he took the wolf sounds and played an organ over it. He wanted me to come in and play guitar on some tracks he was working on, and he had done a show under the name Wolf Eyes—him and a keyboard that he had messed with.

  Andrew WK: We all moved to New York, where they lived with me for two months with the idea they were moving out too. We were all gonna do Wolf Eyes together, maybe call it Mini-Systems. I wanted it to be my band, and we played songs that eventually became Andrew WK songs. But they missed Michigan, and it all eventually became clear that it wasn’t in the cards. And I was so sad when they left; I was back to knowing nobody. It took them being out there to make me play shows in New York. And when they went back, that’s when they focused on Wolf Eyes in earnest and added John Olson not too long after. Once Wolf Eyes blew up, Wolf Eyes in my mind still has the potential to be as big as they wanna be.

  Aaron Dilloway: Andrew left, and we were constantly on the phone and sending tapes back and forth. Andrew was recording under the name Wolf Eyes at the same time as Nate and I, and eventually the plan was to get together for Wolf Eyes. But he was in New York and we were in Michigan. We moved out to New York and stayed a couple of months, but by that time he had his own thing going and we had ours. We wanted to get weirder and he wanted rock and roll. He basically said he was going to get signed to a major label and make music for as many people as possible.

  “Warm Beer and Bestiality Go Together”

  Rusvelt (Blondie’s, owner): The cops hated me, man, oh yeah. I said I always got busted there; they didn’t want the club to be there. There were always problems: the neighbors would always complain, the noise, the kids. There was a guy who used to climb the trees next to the apartment buildings by Blondie’s before the show, during the show, after the show. And he would toot this horn. The neighbors would always complain. They always used to say, “That’s the devil’s place” and all this, and “The devil lives there and satanic bands play there.” Vice would come all the time and bust me; I was always in court all of the time. Mostly the underage drinking. The young kids came to drink. There was this kid’s birthday one time, and two of his buddies are drinking and he wasn’t drinking. So I went over to him
and said, “Why aren’t you drinking, man?” And he says, “I’m not old enough.” “So if you’re not drinking, how old are you?” He says, “Well, I’m nineteen.” So I said, “If you’re not drinking, then get the hell out of here.” I served everybody man. I trained everybody at the door outside if a vice cop pulls in—I trained them—all I said was, “Take all your drinks at the bar.” They all rushed to the bar, and nobody had anything at the table. We got busted, don’t get me wrong; we got busted more than once for serving minors.

  Bill Kozy: Blondie’s was our hangout, man. I didn’t light candles and listen to Venom as some kind of ritual like a lot of the people there did. We’d go to see these wild-ass bands. That was our scene; it’s where you went most nights, and there hasn’t been a club like it since then.

  Karen Neal: I pulled a knife on this guy at Blondie’s who was fucking with my friend, this guy Mark DeWitt. I don’t remember cutting him, but I pulled. I had a straight razor in my boot, and I just like, shook it in his face, and I was fucking pissed off. He told people that I cut his hand, and I don’t remember it. Later on Inside Out was playing a show at Blondie’s with Heresy, and my bass got left up by the stage, so I jumped into the pit to grab, to get my bass, and DeWitt’s friend came up and just—boom!—tried to break my nose. There was blood everywhere. Chuck Burns was such a gentleman. He gave me his towel to bleed on.

  Rusvelt: I opened Blondie’s in 1984. It was all local bands at first, not doing much. Then this booking agent from Ann Arbor calls me and says, “We got this band from LA called Slayer. Would you be interested? $500.” So I’m like, “Let me ask around and give you a call back.” I ask the kids around, and they go, “What is it? Slayer from LA?” I said, “Yeah.” “Okay, get ’em, get ’em, get ’em.” I booked the show. I moved the stage on the other side; I knocked all the coolers out, the wall—just for that show. I was by myself, waiting for the band, and they pulled in, and the fucking tour bus is bigger than the bar. I said, “What the fuck is this?” One of them walks in and says, “I ain’t playing here.” Tom Araya, the singer, says, “Oh man, this is cool. We’re going to rock the house. We’re going to fucking yeah yeah!” Good energy and good attitude and shit. Sound check comes, and everything’s shaking; all the bottles from the bar fell down on the tiles. I had some air conditioning, and it fell right on the fucking floor, and they blew their whole PA system. I says, “What is this?” Their manager goes, “We have a better system in our basement. Are you kidding me?” So I’m on the phone going to get a better system. I was on the phone all day long, and I got a new system for the show. I had to. I didn’t even have any opening bands. I charged $6, and it was packed. It was a Saturday night, and I go to the guys, “Do you want to play another night?” “Well, hell, we’re off. Don’t tell the agent.” So another $500. And the second night was fucking even busier. I asked them, “What do you guys need?” They go, “Man, we heard of this White Castle.” So I brought them bags and bags and bags; they got sick and were fighting it on the stage. Slayer was the beginning, and everybody started calling me—everybody in the world; it was like a snowball effect. It really started a lot of that metal scene in Detroit.