Neon Angel

by Cherie Currie

  “I’m telling you, Cherie,” Joan was saying to me. “Once we start playing these big gigs . . . man, we’re NEVER going to want to stop! The big halls will be so different from those little clubs we play back home. Just imagine it! There’s going to be thousands of people. Thousands! And they’ll be screaming for us! The stage is gonna be the size of a fucking tennis court! Now THAT’S rock and roll!”

  When I closed my eyes and tried to picture it, I asked, “You really think it’s gonna be that way? You really think we can be that hot?”

  “Hey, babe,” Joan said, ruffling my hair, “I know we can! We’re gonna be like Benny and the Jets!”

  The next night, the Celebrity Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio, was sold out. A capacity crowd was squeezed into the hall, and another five hundred were turned away at the door. We were the headline act, which meant that all of those people showed up to see us. Backstage, everybody was pumped, but I was sure I wasn’t the only one who was feeling anxiety about the upcoming performance.

  “Five minutes, girls!” someone yelled through the dressing-room door. We were blasting Suzi Quatro’s album, and whenever a track faded out, we could hear the stomping, clapping, and cheering of the impatient crowd. I bit my lip, and checked one last time that my black fishnet stockings were pulled up all the way, and secured tightly to my white satin corset. I checked myself in the mirror, which was covered in Magic Marker graffiti left by all of the other bands that had passed through. I didn’t feel like a sixteen-year-old girl anymore. The lyrics to “Cherry Bomb” had pretty much become autobiographical at this point: I was not in school; I wasn’t at home. I had become the girl that your mom warned you about. I smiled a little as I thought this. Suddenly Scott Anderson was behind me. He put a hand on my bare shoulder and put his mouth close to my ear.“You look so fucking hot,” he whispered, before straightening up and continuing with whatever it was that he was supposed to be doing. I looked around, but none of the other girls had noticed. They were all busy: Sandy bouncing her drumstick against her legs and nodding along to the music, Joan fixing her makeup with the guitar slung casually over her shoulder, Lita tuning her guitar. True to form, Jackie was off in the corner reading a fucking book.

  I put on my black jumpsuit, covering the corset. Right before “Cherry Bomb,” I was supposed to strip it off; it was easier that way. Bad girls: that’s what they expected and that’s what they were gonna get.

  I thought about the order of the songs one last time. We had rehearsed the set so many times, I felt like I’d been born knowing it. There was no uncertainty. Every move, every gesture, had been practiced and practiced until it became second nature. A little bit of Bowie, a little bit of Cherie. I was my own creation now: the Cherie-thing that first came alive back in junior high school was fully grown now. I was complete.

  My hands were cold. I thought about that first audition. I felt the same way—like a scared little kid. I could hear thirteen hundred fans chanting our names, I was surrounded by the band, by the road crew, but that dark pit was still inside of me. That emptiness.

  A fat roadie called Ralph came over to me. He was wearing a filthy Playboy T-shirt and chewing a wad of tobacco. “Mellow out!” He grinned, exposing brown teeth and giving me a friendly nudge. “It’s only fuckin’ Cleveland!” Then he cackled a dirty laugh and walked out toward the stage. The truth was that the idea of being anywhere but Los Angeles was enough to set my heart racing. Up until earlier this week, I had never been more than one hundred miles outside of L.A. in my life.

  Suddenly the crowd’s cheers became a roar, like a tidal wave about to crash. The lights must have gone down. The door burst open, and we all gave each other one last look before Joan led the way through the darkness to the stage. We stood there for a moment, shrouded by darkness. When the lights came up, I was in another world.

  I could see dozens of guys wrestling with the security guards, all trying to push, punch, or otherwise force their way to the front so they could be close to us. Some people were holding up our posters, or copies of our LP. They screamed our names, and reached their hands out toward us as Sandy counted off the first song. . .

  All at once the stuff Joan had been saying to me made perfect sense. With the spotlights on me, and the makeup already beginning to melt down my face . . . with the earsplitting roar of the crowd and the scream of Joan and Lita’s electric guitars . . . With the pounding of Sandy’s thunderous, heavy beat, the throbbing of Jackie’s bass . . . with all of this going on around me—the frenzied mob in front and the band all around me—I could understand everything that she said. “Benny and the Jets”—idols of teenagers all around the world—that was US!

  I realized that the crater inside of me was instantly gone. I realized that the screams of the crowd had filled that hole inside of me in a heartbeat. I didn’t need my mother! I didn’t need any of that shit! I had rock-and-roll authority, just like Kim demanded, just like my audience demanded. I realized that yes, YES! This IS what I wanted! This was the answer to all of my problems. The crowd, and the music, and the smell of burning pot rising up from the audience in great waves—this was my life! This was my family!

  I used to want to take what everybody hated and shove it right back into their faces. Not anymore! Now I wanted to give the fans what they wanted. If they wanted their sexy little Cherry Bomb, then that’s exactly what they’d get. I concentrated on the primal momentum of the music. In an instant all of my fears, all of my anxieties, were gone. All that was real in the universe was the driving beat of Sandy’s drums, the glorious wailing of Lita’s guitar. Song by song, we fucking destroyed them. I knew that some of these people came here to gawk, to see if we really could play our instruments like on the record. I wanted to give the doubters the most insane, intense rock-and-roll experience of their lives. I wanted to touch them, the way that David Bowie touched me all those years ago on the Diamond Dogs Tour. I wanted to change their lives! I wanted to alter them—transport them! I realized that we were their fantasy. We wanted to be their fantasy. . .

  As Joan sang “You Drive Me Wild,” I ran offstage and stripped off my jumpsuit. I ran my hands through my hair, my body literally vibrating with the adrenaline pumping through it. I stood by the curtain, watching the performance go on. I waited for the downbeat that announced the start of “Cherry Bomb,” and then I appeared—strutting across the stage, and teasing the boys in the front row who were all beating the shit out of each other for the chance to edge close enough to the front to be in touching distance of me. I wrapped the microphone cord around my body like a snake, and I wailed the opening line of the song . . .

  Chapter 12

  Kim Fowley’s Sex Education Class

  It was New Year’s Eve 1975, and we were in our roadie’s VW bus, rumbling toward an anonymous motel in Orange County. Tonight we were due to open for the Tubes. Just over a month before, I turned sixteen years old. Somewhere out there in the California heat, I knew that people were getting ready to celebrate at midnight, but for me and everyone else in the van, today was just more miles of asphalt zooming past with monotonous regularity as we were shifted from the venue to the motel and then back again. What nobody tells you about being in a band is how fucking monotonous it can get between shows. Already I had seen—and smelled—enough of Stinky’s van to last me several lifetimes.

  I felt lousy. The van didn’t have air-conditioning, and the passenger window was jammed, so only a sliver of fresh air was making it inside. With me and my friend Rick shoved in the back with all of Stinky’s junk, it felt like it was a hundred degrees at least. To top it off, there was Stinky’s body odor, which permeated the entire place like mustard gas. The radio was on, and our driver was tapping the steering wheel, singing along to Brewer & Shipley’s “One Toke Over the Line.” The steady rocking of the van started to make me feel nauseous.

  “Are we almost there?” I groaned.“Yeah. Like, five miles to go . . .” Stinky said, before returning to his drumming. Ugh! Five miles. I concen
trated on breathing through my mouth. Rick, sensing my discomfort, pulled me closer, giving me a hug.

  Rick was a friend of mine from the Sugar Shack scene who was going to join the band on stage tonight. We all called him Rick Bowie, because he had based his entire look on David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period. He had been helping out backstage for a while, sometimes assisting me with the costume changes, but tonight he was going to get up onstage with us and dance, doing his whole Bowie bit. The show was at the Golden West Ballroom, a nice big local club. Opening for the Tubes was always a highlight for us: we liked the guys in the band a lot, and Kenny Ortega, our choreographer, worked with them as well, and was a part of their stage show. Playing shows with our friends was always a good time.

  Sandy, Kim, and Scott were waiting for us at the motel, which we were using as a dressing room. Lita was supposedly driving to the sound check herself, and I supposed that maybe Jackie would be coming with her. Up until the stink in the van started blowing my groove, I had been feeling really good about the upcoming show.

  “Are you okay?” Rick asked. “You look pale . . .”

  “Yeah,” I croaked. “I’m just a little carsick . . .” I signaled by pointing to Stinky and holding my nose. We started giggling like schoolchildren, which, I suppose, we actually were.

  After what seemed like an hour, Stinky pulled the van into a motel parking lot and announced that we’d arrived. We piled out of the van, and I started taking huge gulps of fresh air. Thankfully, the nausea started passing, and I took a look around me. It was still early afternoon, and the bright sun was unforgiving. True to my expectations, the motel was a total dump.

  Kim was a master at cutting costs. He controlled the money, so nobody was really sure how much was actually passing through his hands, but if you believed Kim, there was never any money for anything, and every dollar he laid out was sending him deeper and deeper into debt. He was always crying poverty, and did everything as cheaply as possible. A favorite gimmick of Kim’s was to have the band turn up at important shows in a limo. “Rock and roll is about glamour!” he’d insist. “To be a legend, you have to be separate from the rest of the scum and the human flotsam out there! You must be bigger than life . . .” So he had us roll up in a fancy-ass limo with all the windows blacked out, all for the benefit of the kids and press who were lined up on the sidewalk trying to get into our show. What those kids didn’t know was that in an effort to cut costs, Kim had made us stand around on a street corner two blocks away from the venue so the limo could pick us up. It drove us the two blocks, and we’d make a big show of exiting and being rushed into the venue. When we were done, we were ushered back into the limo, driven two blocks, and dropped off on the same dark street corner we started from. From there, we’d hop into an idling, beaten-up van driven by one of our roadies. When we complained about it the first time—“Why can’t we just take the limo home, Kim?”—our manager scowled at us and sneered. “Who do you think you are? Elton fucking John? I pay for that thing by the mile! My name isn’t Nelson A. Rockefeller, you stupid fucking dogs! Are you trying to put me in the poorhouse?”

  The motel was one of those typical seedy places on the outskirts of nowhere; there was a small, dark office in the lonely forecourt with a flickering vacancy sign and a 7UP machine that looked like it had been sitting there rusting since the 1950s. We all filed into the motel, and as usual, Kim had only rented one room for the entire band.

  Inside, the place was small, cramped, and decrepit. The wallpaper had turned brown, and had musty damp patches on it. The carpet was stained, and the whole place smelled of mildew. There was a tiny black-and-white television bolted to one wall, and the window looked out upon a blinking neon sign that announced grande lux motel. There was some time to kill before the show, and we were running around the tiny room, laughing and goofing off. There was a woman, let’s call her Marcie, sitting on the bed, pouting. I didn’t know what she was doing there.

  “I’m huuuuungry!” she said, while Kim messed around with the TV trying to pick up a signal. “Yeah, me, too!” Sandy yelled. We all noticed an agitated look come over Kim’s face, so we joined in laughing. “Can we order room service?”

  “NO!” screamed Kim. “You greedy fucking dogs! Wait until after the show!”

  “Pleeease, Kim!” Marcie said, whining. “I could faint if I don’t eat!”

  I rolled my eyes at Sandy. This Marcie woman was acting weird. She was slurring her words a little, giggling to herself, and rolling around on the bed like she was loaded on quaaludes or some other kind of downer. Sandy raised an eyebrow and whispered, “Cherie—what the fuck is up with her?”

  We basically ignored her, though she was acting like a total space cadet. Kim was ignoring her, too, perched on the end of the bed like a crow on a telephone line. He had a grimace on that ugly old face of his as he tried to ignore the commotion in the room. Scott was rummaging through some papers from his briefcase, trying to look productive now that Kim was around.

  “FOOD!” we yelled, laughing. “FOOD, FOOD, FOOOOD!”

  At this, Kim jumped to his feet. “God FUCKING dog pucks!” he screamed. He threw his hands up in the air as if the very idea of spending money on food were causing him some deep, spiritual pain.

  “Come on, Kim!” Sandy said. “Just some burgers or something. We’re starving!”

  Scott scowled at us, as if we were interrupting his important work. Kim looked thoughtful for a moment, and started stroking his chin. He looked like a cartoon supervillain, plotting some diabolical scheme so he would never have to buy us food again. Sometimes Kim would give us what he called our “per diem”—which seemed to be Latin for an occasional ten, maybe twenty dollars to buy alcohol, cigarettes, or food. Other than that, we hadn’t seen a penny from all of those sold-out shows we had been playing. Whenever we brought this up, Kim would tell us that we still owed the record company for the album and promotion, and that unless we had a hit single, we would owe money to Mercury for the rest of our lives. Not knowing much about how the industry worked, we’d just nod sagely and take whatever pitiful handouts Kim decided to throw our way.

  “Keeeiiiiimmmmmmmm!” Marcie pleaded. “I’m gonna diiieee if I don’t eat something!”

  “All right, you fucking DOGS!” Kim finally screamed in disgust. “I’ll get you your fucking dog food. Here . . . you!” He shoved a twenty in Stinky’s face. “Go pick up some burgers for these ungrateful dog cunts, will you?”

  When Kim handed over that twenty-dollar bill, he looked like he was about to collapse from the strain of it all. Scott watched this all go down with a look of amused indifference on his face.

  As we waited around for the burgers, it became more and more apparent that Marcie was not herself. She got up and tried to walk over to us at one point, wobbled, and then fell back onto the bed. Nobody asked her what was wrong; we were content to watch her make a fool of herself. She was acting like a total mess. I started to wonder if someone had slipped her a mickey.

  After a while there was a knock on the door, and Stinky returned with our burgers. We started pulling our food out of the grease-stained fast-food bag, and finding a place to sit down and eat.

  “OUT, DOGS!” Kim suddenly bellowed.

  The girls and I looked at him like he’d lost his mind. Then I went right back to my cheeseburger.

  “Dog DAMN it, you dog cunts! Eat outside! I have some business to attend to! Scott, get the bitches out of my room!”

  Kim stared at us until we realized that he was dead serious. Scott got up and started ushering us toward the door. We all grumbled under our breath and began gathering together the food so we could trudge outside. When I was halfway out the door, I looked back into the room. Marcie was still lying on the bed staring at her food with a dazed expression on her face.

  “You coming, or what?”

  Kim shot me a dirty look. “She stays!”

  Marcie just sat there, looking up at me through heavy-lidded eyes. I looked over to R
ick, who seemed as puzzled as I was. He shrugged. I looked at Scott, who smiled at me knowingly.

  “Come on,” he said. “Kim has a surprise for you all. A real treat. Just do what he says . . .”

  “GET OUT!” Kim bellowed.

  “All right, all right!” I said as we backed out of the door. “Keep your damn wig on, man!”

  As we shuffled out, Sandy asked Scott what the hell was going on. “What do you mean he’s got a surprise for us? What kind of a surprise?”

  “Oh, you’ll like it . . .” Scott said, winking conspiratorially. “It’s gonna be wild!”

  With that, he went back in the room, closing the door after him. We sat in the decrepit outdoor hallway, eating our food and complaining about what a wack job Kim was.

  “Man,” Rick said, stuffing a handful of french fries into his mouth, “is he always such a dick?”

  “Always.” Sandy laughed. “Actually, that was Kim being nice. At least he bought us food this time . . .”

  Stinky had either left to help set up for the gig or was in the van smoking pot. We were all pretty glad because it meant we could breathe easy for a while.

  We were still shit-talking Kim when suddenly the door to our room was wrenched open and Scott stuck his head out. “Come on!” he whispered, frantically waving for us to come inside. He peered down the hallway like a lookout during a robbery heist. He held the door open, and with a sigh we all trailed back into the room with our half-eaten burgers in our hands.