The following article on 1960s music icon Tommy Boyce was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #14, in 1986. It was written by Nancy Foster.
Around 1985, I was hanging out at Nancy Foster’s apartment on Third Avenue, just south of 14th Street, listening to some music. While the building had once been a high class high rise, now it was a bit of a roach-infested hovel. We had gone out to dinner, as we often had, and she was waiting on a visitor.
A ring of the bell, and Tommy Boyce was at the door. We all hung out for a little bit and joked around, and then I took some pictures, none of which came out well (it was a darkly lit room, and I had no flash yet). After a few minutes, I left Nancy to interview Tommy for the following piece.
Sidney Thomas Boyce, suffering from some physical and mental ailments, pulled a Del Shannon and did himself in with a gun almost a decade later, in 1994, but the music he wrote and inspired keeps on going. – RBF, 2011
What do Jay and the Americans, Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Monkees, the Lettermen, The Sex Pistols, Showaddy Waddy, the Darts, among many others, have in common? They all recorded songs written or co-written by Tommy Boyce.
It’s not surprising that Tommy co-wrote, with partner Bobby Hart, the theme to Dick Clark’s Where the Action Is, but the fact that they wrote the theme for that long running soap opera The Days of Our Lives is outrageous.
Talking to Tommy Boyce is fab and fun – like taking a crash course in pop. There are a lot of great stories out there, and he got a million of them.
Tommy Boyce’s first hit came when his father told him, “Write a song for Fats Domino and call it ‘Be My Guest’.” This was a hot tip. The phrase comes from the song “Sea Cruise”: “Be my guest / You got nothin’ to lose / Won’t you let me take you / On a sea cruise.”
So, Tommy wrote the song in 1959 and called Imperial, Fats’ record company. The guy at the record company said, when Tommy suggested the idea, “Fats won’t like it.” Well, Tommy wasn’t satisfied with that. A friend in the industry told Tommy the name of Fats’ hotel, so Tommy went, demo in hand, and waited in the hotel lobby for six hours. When he finally gave up his vigil, he walked out, only to bump into Mr. Domino himself.
Tommy was beside himself: “Uh – Mr. Domino – uh – I have a – uh – song for you. I know – uh – you’ll like it. Just – uh – listen to it. That’s – uh – good enough – uh – for me. My God! – uh – He –uh – touched it!”
One of Fats’ bodyguards tried to cut Tommy off, and the man himself spoke: “Let the boy talk. I like how the boy talk. Calm down, boy!”
So, Tommy gave Fats the demo and Fats promised to give it a listen. The record company contacted Tommy a few weeks later with the good news: Fats would record it. Even better news – Fats had a hit with it soon afterwards.
But then the drought hit. No hit for two years. So Tommy checked out Billboard and Cashbox. There he noticed something pertinent – the songwriting team of Doc Pomus and Morty Shuman had three hits in the Top-Ten! “Wow!,” thought the budding pop god. “If anyone knows the secret of writing hit songs, they must!” Tommy saved his money and made a 3,000 mile trek to find the key to songwriting.
When Tommy arrived in New York City, he hung out at the Brill Building. Then he approached Doc and Morty at their fave teatime hangout. “I wrote one hit and I can’t seem to do it again. I came 3,000 miles to find out the secret of writing hits.”
The answer was simple: “The title.” With this valuable information, Tommy had a hit three months later with “Pretty Little Angel Eyes,” sung by Curtis Lee. Tommy mixed the doo-wop of “Blue Moon” with the romance of the Everly Brothers’ “Ebony Eyes,” to come up with the world’s first romantic doo-wop record with a white guy singing lead and black guys singing back-ups.
Tommy had some solo singles: “Sweet Little Cathy,” followed by “I Remember Carol,” in 1962. In 1964, Jay and the Americans had a hit with “Come a Little Bit Closer,” a by-then-songwriting-team Boyce & Hart composition.
Then, the men behind the Monkees wanted Boyce & Hart to put their musical Midas Touch on the Monkees’ first album (The Monkees). They wrote the TV theme, “I Wanna Be Free,” “Last Train to Clarksville,” “Tomorrow’s Gonna Be Another Day,” “This Just Doesn’t Seem to Be My Day,” “Let’s Dance On,” “Gonna Buy Me a Dog,” etc., as well as added their production know-how.
Yet, it wasn’t all “peaches and cream” behind the scenes of the Monkees. Mickey was fooling around during the recording of “Last Train to Clarksville.” Tommy chastised Mickey and the air turned blue. Mickey returned in kind saying only he could sing the song right. Tommy left the studio and Mickey kept his promise, and such is the way great hits are made.
After leaving the Monkees' songwriting stable, Boyce & Hart, the reflex hitmakers, had three albums on their own on A&M Records, as well as writing the theme to the film Where Angels Go, Trouble Follows.
In 1975, five years after the Monkees’ demise, David Jones had the idea to put together a new version of the Monkees, with Mickey Dolenz, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. He could not get the legal rights to use the name “Monkees,” so the group of Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart was born. It was so successful that they did a year-long international tour and put out two albums, one studio and one live in Japan.
After the tour, Tommy decided to visit London. He planned to stay a few weeks and ended up staying nine years.
A band called Showaddy Waddy (the British Sha Na Na) recorded religious version of Curtis Lee’s “Pretty Little Angel Eyes” and “Under the Moon of Love.” Then Tommy got together with Richard Hartley of The Rocky Horror Picture Show fame and said, “Let’s put everything I know about the Monkees with everything you know about Rocky Horror, and put it together. The Darts had three albums produced by Tommy, as well as recoding some of his songs, like “Peaches and Cream,” originally done by Tina Turner in 1965.
Tommy also produced the wonderful Pleasers, which included a couple of singles, such as their version of the Who’s “The Kids are Alright.” Tommy said he really enjoyed producing them, and the only thing that held them back was a “rotten manager.”
One of my favorite anecdotes of Tommy’s was the Johnny Rotten story: When Tommy first met Johnny, he introduced himself as the writer of “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone,” and added that he dug the Sex Pistols’ version. Instead of taking a compliment graciously, the ungrateful Mr. Rotten answered Tommy with a beer can in the face.
Years later at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City, Tommy ran into Johnny again and decided he deserved a second chance. So, he introduced himself again. This time, Johnny was more civilized: “You’ve got a lot of money, donca? How about buying me a drink and giving me a few bucks?” Tommy showed his Southern hospitality (he’s from Virginia) by indulging the no-so-rotten one.
Another great story is when Tommy was producing cuts of Iggy Pop’s album, Party. It was a high pressure situation. Iggy said, “Produce me a hit, Tommy, or I’ll kill myself!”
Then there was the time when Christopher “Superman” Reeves asked to meet Tommy. Tommy was impressed with his size and wondered, “Where’s your cape?” Christopher was impressed by Tommy’s wit, but he had a confession to make: “When I was living in the Midwest and I was fourteen, ‘Last Train to Clarksville’ was my favorite song.” When you have Superman on your side, you know you’re okay.
Tommy, who has never been out of the swing of things for long, will soon be back in the public eye. Lorimar Productions wants to do a video on the history of Boyce & Hart. Slated to star in the video are Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden, who will show the Boyce & Hart clip of “Out and About,” from the I Dream of Jeannie show, circa 1965. Elizabeth Montgomery will present another clip from Bewitched, as well. There will also be various and sundry acting and musical personalities, including Tony Orlando, Connie Francis, Chris Reeves (who will aspire to reveal how “Clarksville” was written), etc.
The video will be filmed mostly in Los Angeles, but Tommy took time out to visit New York City and some long-time musical cohorts, like the inestimable Keith Allison (of the Crickets, Where the Action Is, Paul Revere and the Raiders, etc., fame). Where he’ll be next is inn the watching!
This is a British documentary, so you know which one of the three is getting the main focus. Okay, picture two pyramids next to each other. The one on the left is Lou Reed and the one on the right is Iggy. Balancing between them is a line connecting the two (that is Marc Bolan, mentioned often but not in detail). And finally there is the third pyramid of the “sacred” triangle, David Bowie, on top of it all. That is the vision presented here. Okay, I’m done. Naw, not really, as this is still an interesting – albeit somewhat skewed – vision of the three.
Let me quickly add here that I am totally impressed by the choice of interviews that have been selected for this doc, which is so much better than the Pearl Jam one in this series. But more on the talking heads later.
There’s no doubt that Bowie was influenced by Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, but that’s nothing new. Just listen to David Jones’ singing style around the Ziggy Stardust period, and it’s easy to see the progression from his earlier works. Personally, I’d rather listen to Reed’s take, but that’s just me, walkin’ on the wild side on a Sunday morning when comes the dawning.
There’s plenty of clips here of the Velvets; well, as much as there really is, which is limited, and taken by the Warhol crowd “artfully” (i.e., in fast speed) while in Exploding Plastic Inevitable mode (Gerard and his whip dance is often present). Bowie was still in folkie / cutsie mode when he first heard “Waitin’ for My Man,” and (rightfully) became a huge VU fan. An example given here is his “Toy Soldier,” which is such a – er – homage to “Venus in Furs,” it even quotes it in a few place, such as the line “bleed for me.” The video for the song has someone dancing with whips. And on “Black County Rock,” as explained in this doc, Bowie even imitates Bolan. MainMan publicist and photographer Leee Black Childers, who would later manage Iggy and then the Heartbreakers, states here that Bowie’s true talent is to know what to steal. In fact he said this and many of other the other bon mots he posits in a FFanzeen interview conducted by our own Nancy Foster (aka Nancy Neon) back in 1982 (reprinted here: ffanzeen.blogspot.com/2010/02/portrait-leee-black-childers.html).
Andy Warhol is shown as possibly as big an influence as the VU, and to talk about the theatrics of the Factory and its influence on Bowie are the likes of the very wound up VU biographer Victor Bockris, the fabulous aforementioned Childers (who used to have one of the coolest motorcycle jackets ever, with an image of Gene Vincent painted on its back), the equally extraordinary Jayne County, smartly dressed in bright red Little Red Riding Hood mode (she even matches the couch!), 16 Magazine publisher (early on) and Ramones manager Danny Fields, and the Psychotic Frog himself (who was also one of Andy’s superstars), Jimi LaLumia. They paint a vivid picture of Lou and Andy’s influence on not only Bowie, but music in general. But Bowie is the main focus here, and in this case almost rightfully so, as Lee, Jayne, and Jimi were all hired by the Bow-ster to work with Tony DeFries and help run his production company, MainMan. One person seriously missing from the interview call list, though, is Cherry Vanilla, which is a serious deficit.
But the person of interest for me here, interview wise, is definitely Angela Bowie. A while back I found her kind of abrasive, but I must say that my opinion has totally changed, and I now I can see her as incredibly refreshing. She holds nothing back, and will tell the most intimate details at top volume. My apologies to you, for any negative thoughts I may have had in the past. But I digress…
Other interviewees include writers Paul Tryoka and Dave Thompson, and musician John Harlsen, who was a drummer on the Bowie-produced Lou Reed first popular solo effort, Transformer (as well as being Barry Womble, of the Rutles), which included his hits “Satellite of Love” and “Walk on the Wild Side.” They all paint a very detailed portrait of Bowie, and what effect Reed and Iggy had on him, and how Bowie had affected them. Also included are some short interviews (more likely called clips) with the key artists involved, such as Bowie (from 2001 and 2007), Lou Reed (1986), Iggy (1988), and just as importantly, Mick Ronson (looking extremely frail shortly before his death in 1993). There would arguably be no Bowie to the scale he achieved without Ronson as a musical driving force (rather than an influence, like Reed and Pop), I’m convinced.
Possibly one of Warhol’s biggest influences (and he really is as big as either Lou or Iggy in the David Jones pantheon) is the idea that “You’re a Star!” and if you act like it, people will come to believe and expect it. Even before the money, there was the wardrobe, the limos, the expense accounts, and all the trappings. LaLumia states it quite well when he relates that Bowie claimed that “I’m an actor. I’m not a musician. I’m portraying a rock star.” I can’t argue with that, as I’ve always found that Lou Reed was true to what he believed, as was Iggy totally committed to what he was doing, but Bowie was posing, rather than being. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never found him to be someone I’ve looked up to musically, especially in the reality of the punk days of the Ramones and the ilk.
While Iggy’s role in the Bowie history (and vice-versa) is more commonly known, there is much less about Iggy here than either Reed or especially Warhol. Bowie famously helped Pop both get off drugs and revive his career. For me, Bowie major force was in the studio as a producer, more than a vocalist, or especially as an innovator, as he was a series of influences creatively recast. Angela probably had as much to do with Bowie’s success as did David or Ronson – or even DeFries. And I won’t even detail Cherry Vanilla’s outreach program.
The added feature to the DVD is a seven-minute documentary called “The Nico Connection,” which shows how she had touched the lives of all three musicians that are the focus of the main feature. There is a bio for each of the contributors, and it put a smile on my face to see my pals the She Wolves given a shout out by Jayne County, as they’ve worked together over the past few years.
As a last note, I would like to add that after viewing this DVD, check out The Velvet Goldmine, which will then make so much more sense.
The day that the Clash performed at Bonds in Times Square, the Rockats played the Ritz, recording their live album. Nancy and I sold our Clash tickets to go down and watch the taping, for which we were both happy. The Rockats’ finale was a rousing version of Chuck Berry’s (the true king of rock’n’roll) “Round and Around.” A mic was handed down from the stage to Nancy, as we were standing near the front as always, who joined in the singing. Though it never made it to the album, this was a highlight of the evening. – RBF, 2010
The October 7 and 8 Rock Lounge gigs were the hottest Rockats shows I’ve seen so far. I never saw them when they were Levi and the Rockats, except on television. My first time experiencing the Rockats’ rockabilly fever in the flesh was at The Other End, August 1. I walked into their first set late and was stunned by their devastating color flashing like neon, their hot-to-trot drive-in back-seat sexuality, and their good-time rock’n’roll dynamics.
The energy transmitted in their interplay is overtly sexual: Dibbs’ mussing up Smutty’s hair or pinching his nipples – and all that erotic hair combing. It is no wonder the Rockats have made screaming females an integral part of rock’n’roll again. (Excitable girls should always have Sucrets on hand for when Smutty and Tim take off their shirts!)
In August, Smitty and his then-pink stand-up bass (coordinated with [then-Rockat] Jerry Nolan’s pink drums) were a major focal point, and the whirling nucleus for the group’s hyperactive hijinx. Though Smutty is, for many, the main attraction, each member has a definite personality.
There’s Barry Ryan – the moody, melancholic, strawberry blond that the girls want to cuddle and console. There’s Dibbs Preston – the long, lean, blond, stray Briton alley cat with evocative / provocative dance steps, pointed humor and a big, beautiful voice that fills a room with that ‘50s ambience and gut-wrenching emotion. There’s Tim Scott – the more mystical member.
As I admired a photo of Tim, I said to an acquaintance, “He looks like a warlock or vampire!” The answer came back, “He is! He has such cynical eyes!” Perhaps Tim could star in the rockabilly version of A Clockwork Orange. His perfectly chiseled features, his crazed shrieks, the tight set of his almost cruel yet sensual mouth, and his dangerous laser-blue eyes make him perhaps the group’s most intriguing member – and the perfect foil to the swoon-inspiring, sweet nineteen, baby faced, angelic, “Tattooed Love Boy,” Smutty Smith.
Although Jerry Nolan did look a bit like the overseeing (debauching?) uncle amongst the Rockats boys, at least he fit in. The new drummer looks like he should be in an Italian hard-rock band (Ozone, maybe?). Whoever said that looks do not matter has never seen the Rockats. Outside of the visual incongruity of the new guy, everything is tightly unified and all elements – looks, clothes, moves, and sound – reinforce and enhance each other.
Smutty is the acrobat of the group, skittering all about the stage, balancing high atop his bass, and even hovering precariously over the fans like a precipice threatening to tumble down at any moment. Avalanche!
And yet, Tim is getting in a few acrobatic riffs of his own. At the Rock Lounge gigs, Tim jumped down amongst the crowd, slashing at his gorgeous blue guitar in violent frenzy. Then he jumped back, seating himself on the edge of the stage, continuing to wring the neck of his instrument. Then came the back-flip, executed with finesse, leaving both guitarist and guitar intact. Once returned to his original stance, his arresting manner of balancing on his toes and rolling his eyes like planets enhanced the wacky charisma of the Rockats.
From the opening number, the tone is established immediately. Rock’n’roll, drive-ins, late-night fun, love/lust – what else is there? The Rockats’ rock’n’roll utopia is uncluttered by adult problems and preoccupations. It is the realm where dementia praecox reigns supreme and everyone is sixteen forever.
Merde on the old or young fogeys who cannot get it up for the Rockats, because they are not old, southern, or ugly. As much as I adore Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, early Elvis, Carl Perkins, Buddy Holley, et al., and even the new rockabillies like Tex Rabinowitz or Billy Hancock, it is still more fun to hear and see this raw, sexually hyperactive music from boys who look young enough to still have wet dreams. Besides, Carl Perkins never was a convincing teenager.
Moreover, it does not seem wrong to me that the two original members – Dibbs and Smutty – are British. In fact, the British always appreciated Vincent, Cochran, and other rockabilly songs more than their own countrymen. Yes, leave it to the British to play great rockabilly while the true decedents of The Killer and The King sit down in the bayou and numb their brains with too much pot and Molly Hatchet.
The Rockats have a mastery of musical dynamics that would be admirable even in veteran rock’n’roll. They execute with appropriate fervor both slow, poignant Blues-flavored numbers like “You Ought to Be with Me,” “I Miss Your Lovin’,” and “Start All Over Again,” and the fast, super-upbeat numbers like “Be My Rockabilly Doll,” “Love This Kat,” “Tanya Jean,” “Room to Rock,” and their other danceable, impassioned rock’n’roll numbers.
Another one of the fabo things about the Rockats is that it is not a dictatorship. None of this So-And-So-And-the-Blanks stuff. They are all Rockats – a real tight group. Tim Scott takes the vocal spot on one smoldering, manic-paced number as Dibbs landing in, playing Tim’s guitar.
The Rockats are signed to Island, so our rockabilly babies will be down in the grooves soon. By the time of this printing, the Jerry Lee Lewis and Rockats gig at the Ritz has probably taken place and proved to be one of the best rock’n’roll events of the year.
Tom Dickie and the Desires released two albums in their short history: Competition (1981) and Eleventh Hour (1982), both on Mercury (though Jon Macey has hinted that there is enough recorded material to release another). After their separation, Tom Dickie moved to California and is not in music with any major presence, except for the occasional recording. Jon Macey has had much better luck with the seminal Fox Pass (still existing) and Macey’s Parade.
I saw Macey perform a couple of years ago in Boston with Fox Pass bandmate Steve Gilligan, and have recently reviewed Fox Pass’ latest release, Intemporel (2009). – RBF, 2010 I was lucky enough to receive Dickie’s demo tape a few months ago. Tom and his combo have recently “pacted” with Phonogram-Mercury and are managed by Tommy Mottola. But never mind that, rock’n’roll is the main issue here.
When I first heard the balladic “Maybe Next Time,” I was impressed with Dickie’s ability to sing at once smoothly and melodically, and still be aggressive and intense – like a romantic Elvis Costello. In fact, the group’s ability to rock-out without sacrificing melody sets them apart from much of the competition.
All songs are co-written by Tom Dickie and Jon Macey (bass). The emotionalism of the lyrics is enhanced by Dickie’s knowledge of phrasing. The music is full of subtleties and creates a wistful tone in “Maybe Next Time.” That one, along with “Twisted Years,” “Change Your Mind,” “Count on You,” “So Sad,” and “I’m the One,” are my personal favorites on the demo tape.
“5x5,” though, instrumentally paints an ominous tableau. Tom Dickie and the Desires often open shows with this ballsy wave to the Stones. However, with a songwriting team as articulate as Dickie / Macey, and a singer as superb as Dickie, to have no lyrics / vocals seem like a waste of microfilm!
“Twisted Years” has that raw, basic Stones bar band feel with psychoanalytic lyrics. The musical dynamics as the verse builds to the chorus are exhilarating. Michael Roy’s guitar work is colorful and tastefully executed. The harmonies are fine and embellish the song as well.
Though “Add Up the Ad Girls” is sarcastic – a piss-take on vacuous fashion models – Dickie’s voice still sounds too polished and sophisticated to convincingly play the male whose mind is boggled by the media whirlpool of pretty, precise images. Hearing the tape alone, one would think it inappropriate for a man of street nobility like Dickie. Yet, live it is a rave-up. Similarly, though, “On the Other Side” seems heavy-handed and a bit plodding on the tape. Live, it kicks with that signature Tom and the Desires’ emphatic punch. Vocally, “On the Other Side” is a virtuoso performance.
“Change Your Mind” is a hit for sure, highlighting sensuous singing, sensitive lyrics, and an obsessive melody. “Burning Up” features the most artistic and probing lyrics. It is reminiscent of a young McCartney in one of those rare moments when he was aggressive and rocked.
“Count On You” and “So Sad” sound especially fabulous back-to-back, like a double A-side! Both are romantic songs with unhappy endings. Still, the melodies and riffs are catchy. These two, along with “Change Your Mind,” would be my picks for singles.
On “Count On You,” Dickie’s vocal pacing and phrasing are perfect. Phrasing is even used with expertise in the graceful musical breaks. Dickie’s voice is wracked with emotion at the end of the song.
“So Sad” is more intense and analytical than “Count On You.” The bridge is beautiful. Once again, Roy’s lead guitar work is elegant and poetic. “Don’t Wait Forever” has cabaret overtones and is philosophic.
During a visit to NYC, Dickie invited me to one of the group’s rehearsals. The Dickie / Macey team was making impressive progress. The new songs are even better than the ones I enjoyed on the demo.
The newer tunes include the authoritative, commanding, even majestic “You’ve Lost,” the smooth, sensuous “She’s a Desire,” and a frocking, bouncy “Downtown Talk.”
“Waiting Waiting” is a disconcerting, explosive rocker on which Macey sings lead currently:
All the women I ever loved Are waiting in the road See their faces out there They will haunt you like a ghost
Macey’s demeanor convinces you that he is truly tormented by specters from this past. The piece de resistance live was “This Song’s About You,” which Dickie belted out with immense passion. It may have been just a rehearsal, but he was giving 500%. Of the new songs, my picks for a (thematic) single would be “You’re Lying to Yourself” and “All Those Lies.” Both have the “melodic and punch” trademark.
Tom Dickie and the Desires should be playing out again soon. They are currently breaking in a new drummer and a keyboard player, both of who are enthusiastic and do justice to the supreme songwriting of Dickie and Macey. See them and have your faith in music restored!
The following interview with musical impresario Lee Black Childers was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #9, in 1983. It was conducted by Nancy Foster, credited under “NanSuzy Foster.”
Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Leee Black Childers was everywhere, but where I encountered him the most was Max’s Kansas City (introduced to me by Nancy). Before anything about the man, I must say that I so coveted his leather motorcycle jacket, which had an amazing painting of Eddie Cochran’s face on the back.
Childers has had an astonishing carreer behind the scenes to levels that have changed the scope of the music world. When he wasn’t running David Bowie’s MainMan empire, he was managing the Heartbreakers (with Johnny Thunders), or he was photographing living icons into household memories with shots that were published worldwide.
I liked Leee the first time I met him, and though he probably doesn’t remember me, well, I still want that jacket! – RBF, 2010
/www.leeeblackchilders.com/
FFanzeen: When was the first time you came to New York from down South? Leee Black Childers: Well, I kept leaving and going back. The first time was the Summer of Love, 1967. Me and this girl from England, who was down in Kentucky – the Israeli war happened and she got all crazy and decided the world was gonna end and we’d have never seen New York, so we got on a plane and come. I arrived with eight dollars in my pocket at Kennedy Airport, didn’t know a soul in New York; a solider picked us up and took us to the “Y” and paid for our rooms and everything for a few days. He could see that we were helpless. He housed us until we made friends with someone and we moved in with him.
[Wayne County, Max's Kansas City, 1976]
FF: When and how did you connect with people like Cherry Vanilla? Leee: Well, Cherry was back in the old underground theater days. There’s this brilliant director named Tony Engrassia who did Off-Off-Broadway shows like La Mama and New York Theater Ensemble, and the day the men landed on the moon, Jackie Curtis got married. Do you know who Jackie Curtis is?
FF: A transsexual; an Andy Warhol starlet. Leee: Sort of. Whatever. A drag queen. She got married on a rooftop that same evening. She was supposed to marry Eric Emmerson, but he didn’t turn up, so she married someone else.
FF: A publicity stunt? Leee: Yeah, you know, it was just a joke. And everyone was up there, so we got invited up to that, me and Wayne County. Wayne County was my roommate at the time, and at that thing up there we met Tony Engrassia and Holly Woodlawn, and all those people. So Tony invited Wayne down to start being in the plays, and I became stage manager. And that’s when Cherry Vanilla turned up for the one Wayne wrote, called World.
[Cherry Vanilla, Max's Kansas City, 1976] FF: What year was that? Leee: ’68 or ’69; I guess ’69. Yeah, it would be ’69, because then the most successful one (play) was Pork, which went to London in 1970, with Cherry in the title role. [Laughs]
FF: Could you tell me a little bit about your work with MainMan, and how you got associated with Tony DeFries, David Bowie – Leee: Right. That comes through Pork. I was stage managing and Cherry was in it, and Wayne County was in it, and Tony Zennetta played the Andy Warhol figure in it, and we took it to England. Cherry and I were pulling this scam at that time in England, saying that we wrote for Circus magazine. She was supposed to be the writer and I was supposed to be the photographer and, in fact, we didn’t write for them, of course, but who’s to know? We were loud Americans. They believed us, so we got into all the rock shows free.
FF: Love it! Leee: Right, so one day I was reading this thing, and in a little garage behind a shopping center in Haberstock Hill, was David Bowie. So I say, “Oh, I read about him somewhere. He wears dresses and things. Let’s go see him.” So Cherry, and Wayne and I went to see David and, of course, David was entranced ‘cause we were doing an Andy Warhol thing. So David came to see the opening when Pork opened up and he came to see the show, I don’t know, eight or ten times. When the show closed, we came back to New York and we all said we’d keep in touch; then we hadn’t heard from David in about a year. Then Tony DeFries called up Tony Zennetta and said that David was planning his first American tour. In that year, David had become a big success in England. And so Tony said he was planning his first American tour and he didn’t want the normal sort of crew that you get – you know, a bunch of hippies and everything; he wanted us, would we be the crew? I was working at 16 Magazine at the time, Tony Zennetta was working in a photo lab, Cherry Vanilla wasn’t working at all and was deeply in debt – so of course we all said yes – of course, we’ll be MainMan – and so we were. We had no experience, which make it work out, because we were able to ask for the impossible because we didn’t know you couldn’t get it. So we’d walk into the record company or into the club where we were going to perform and make all these impossible demands, and just because we didn’t know that you couldn’t ask for things like that, we’d end up getting it. When I was in St. Louis, we were at this strange little hotel and I was on the phone with Lisa Robinson, who was in Los Angeles, ‘cause we were going to Los Angeles next. She said, “Where are you staying?” – and I forget where it was, somewhere weird – and she said, “Oh, that place is awful, you can’t stay there,” and I said “I’ve never been to Los Angeles, where should I stay?” She said the Beverly Hills Hotel, so I said, okay, and I called up RCA and I said switch our reservations to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Forty people. In the Beverly Hills Hotel. The bill there alone was, like $60,000 or something.
[Holly Woodlawn, set of "Good Night America" with Geraldo Rivera, 1975]
FF: Bless their abuse. Leee: I didn’t know what the Beverly Hills Hotel was; RCA couldn’t say no to me, so they booked us in. I don’t know why they couldn’t. The roadies would go down to Hollywood and pick up tourists and say, “Come back to the Beverly Hills Hotel with us, you can have a complete Beverly Hills Hotel dinner for five dollars a head.” All these people would come back with them, they’d collect the five dollars, and the tourists would order anything they wanted.
FF: That’s incredible! Leee: So these tourists would get $250 meals for five dollars. The roadies, in turn, would make fifty dollars a night, plus tips. Now, if RCA reads this, they’ll know what happened.
FF: Around ’75 or so, I joined the Wayne County Fan Club, and I was in touch with this guy named Eve Emmerson, and he said that David Bowie thwarted Wayne’s musical career by saying Wayne was an actor, rather than a singer. Was there any truth to that? Did David Bowie sort of encourage Wayne to concentrate on acting? Leee: Yeah, a lot of people say that. Even looking back now over the years, it’s really hard to remember exactly what happened. Because those were really peculiar times. There was an incredible amount of money, which none of us had ever had before, all of it really stemming from David. Tony DeFries was such a charismatic character; everyone thought everything he said and did at the time was just perfect. We thought he was a genus. So he moved us out of this crummy apartment on the Upper West Side, where in the bathroom, when we went to the toilet, we had to open an umbrella because there was a constant leak. We moved from that into an Upper East Side duplex, with a balcony and the whole number; you know, got us video tape machines, gave us anything we wanted. We had charges at restaurants all over town; we had American Express cards and MasterCharge. And then, Tony DeFries announced to Wayne, “Now you won’t work.” ‘Cause Wayne had been playing a lot, you know. He said, “The idea is to sit. And wait. And not make you available.” In the course of that, he said, “So you wont’ be doing nothing, we’ll concentrate on some acting and we’ll make a movie and stuff like that.” It could have been David’s idea, ‘cause now we know that 90% of those brilliant ideas we thought Tony DeFries was having had really been coming from David, who was in England at that time. And so we sat. And nobody complained much. He wasn’t just doing it to Wayne, he was doing it to a girl-singer named Ava Terry, he was doing it to Dana Gillespie, he was doing it to Amanda Lear; everybody was getting huge salaries, living in style, and being told to do nothing.
FF: Where can I get a job like that? Leee: Now there are people who say that David did that particularly to all those people to keep them out of the limelight while he, you know, did his number. And he’ll be the first to tell you he used all of those people’s ideas. Periodically, he would either visit, or the people would be sent to England and live with him for a while. He’d pick their brains and he’d get ideas for songs and concepts and everything, I mean, Tony Engrassia wrote a play named Fame a year before David Bowie wrote a song named “Fame.” And Tony spent, like, two months with David, supposedly working on a script of a play about 1984, and in the course of it, of course, he told him all about Fame and his concept, you know, of the whole idea of the destructiveness of it. Out came the song. What can you do? David would say, “Yes, I got the idea (from someone else),” but David’s great genus is knowing which ideas are the good ones. So, we sat, and Wayne couldn’t do a thing, not even acting for that matter. Every once in a while a film crew would come around and point a camera at us, at whatever we were doing. I’d love to see that film now – I don’t know where it is – ‘cause they spent thousands on it. Finally he went crazy and demanded to be allowed to play. So then they did this one show, which was Wayne County at the Trucks, which cost a fortune to put on. Which wasn’t really Wayne. Wayne would put on garbage and would dance around in the back room of some slezoid dive. Suddenly they had this theater down on West Street, that Arts Center, and Tony Engrassia staged and directed it, and they had dancers and they had lights and costumes, and it cost fortunes, and it was an all-invited audience. Nobody could get in who just wanted to play. Champagne and all kinds of stuff that costs fortunes and only the wrong people saw it; a bunch of snobs and businessmen, and people like that. And then he was told to sit again, so then he stared going crazy. Flipping out, you know. And so that’s when Tony (DeFries) said, “I don’t think we can work together,” and that was the end of the relationship. And, of course, as soon as all of the money was cut off and Wayne was back on the Upper East Side, and had to fend for himself, then everything was fine and he wasn’t crazy anymore. Before, he was out all night, taking pills like crazy. He’d come storming into the house at six in the morning with a string of the most dreadful people hanging on him. I’d be throwing them out, you know, and Wayne would be shouting, “Theah mah friends, theah mah friends.” “No, they’re not, get them out; out you go.” And as soon as he was back working for himself, well then, everything went back to normal. He was fine; puttin’ on shows for $25, making $35, and being very happy, and it was great again. It was very peculiar times and we’ll never know how much of it was Tony DeFries megalomania, how much of it was David.
FF: Tony was probably the hatchet man. Leee: Right. [Laughs] Perhaps David meant well. Perhaps he really thought Wayne shouldn’t do anything. The other thing that’s nice is since that time – all those people got dropped at the same time, Amanda, Ava, and everybody – they’ve all gone on to great success.
FF: When and where was the first place you saw the Heartbreakers, and what was your first impression? Leee: Well, the same thing everyone said. Actually, it was Tony Zennetta who went to see them somewhere – CBGB’s or somewhere – and I hadn’t gone. Tony went crazy, and he was on the phone with me and he said, “You can’t believe how completely destroyed these people are. If they manage to live to another set you must go.” And, of course, that’s what everyone then said, and everyone still does. “Catch them before they die.” A thousand shows later, they’re out-living everybody; they’ll out-live us all. It was very macabre, but that’s what I went for at first, to see how physically destroyed – Johnny (Thunders) and Jerry (Nolan) were old friends of mine and I wanted to see what sort of shape they’d fallen into. But then, of course, I really liked the music. It really, immediately, got me. “Blank Generation,” I thought was brilliant. I remember once, at CBGB’s – Cherry Vanilla had this boyfriend named Michael Linder who was a radio talk show type person, and he did reviews and things. Very, very straight: Brooks Brothers suits and this naturally blond hair cut perfectly and all. Clean fingernails and the whole number. So she brought him down to CBGB’s. They were sitting sort of at the back, and the music was going on, but they couldn’t really see anything, and he liked the music. So then, I was so gun-ho on it at the time. I gave him the speech about this music is the future of rock’n’roll and it’s finally getting rid of guitar solos and all this Eric Clapton shit, and I went on and on an on, and I got him real excited, and he said, “Oh, do you think I could talk to one of the Heartbreakers?” And I said, “Sure, sure, I’ll go get one.” So the set was over and I got Richard Hell and brought him and set him down, and then Cherry and I both realized what we’d done. Here was this perfectly groomed person talking to Richard Hell. His (Hell) lips were all cracked and chapped and he had scabs on his face, and his hair was cut in all different directions and he was dirty and his clothes were falling off, and one eye was closed and he was sitting there. And, of course, Richard was adoring it; he was putting it on as much as he could, to see how horrified he could get this poor man. Michael Linder was sitting as far back in the booth as you can get. It was great. I didn’t start managing (the Heartbreakers) until Richard left, unfortunately, ‘cause I adore Richard. I guess it’s just as well, though, ‘cause I hear he’s suing Sire Records and everything, saying Sire destroyed his career. If any of us look back, if anybody could get anything in edgewise as far as destroying with, Richard was doing a very good job himself.
[Billy Rath, Irving Plaza, 1978]
FF: Could you give us a few words on the personalities of each of the Heartbreakers? Leee: Yeah. It’s funny to do it now, not working with them. Probably this is the best time to do it. Johnny (Thunders) is totally adorable. He could be a great con man if he weren’t so self-destructive, ‘cause he’s a very good con artist. But he’s too greedy, so he gets you madly in love with him – and this is anyone – everybody he meets just thinks he’s so sweet and wants to protect him. And to help him. And he is; he’s very good-hearted. But he’s greedy and so he’ll get a little bit. Someone that he could con out of $500,000, he cons him out of $500 instead, and rips him off and then ruin the relationship. He goes for the moment. He over-indulges everything, you know? When we first started recording [the album L.A.M.F. – RBF] for Track Records in England, I told these people – they were all well meaning, I guess, but they were used to the Who and everything, and you’d think they’d have known better – “When we get in the studio, it’s nothing but Coca-Colas and no drugs and not anything that’s destructive.” So they said, “Okay, Okay.” I said, “Please trust me, that’s the way it must be.” Of course, we got in the studio and Johnny said, “I don’t want any drugs or anything, I want to work, but c'mon, I gotta loosen up. How about some Scotch? Just Scotch.” And I was saying, “No, no, no,” right? The record company people, Chris Stanton, they though I was crazy. “We can’t turn him down for that,” so they went out and got him a bottle of Scotch, which he downed instantly, and then fell on the floor. First day of recording. All I could say was, “See, I told you.”
[Jerry Nolan, CBGB's, 1979]
FF: No moderation. Leee: No moderation, which, I guess, helps make him an artist. Walter (Lure) is possibly the most talented one, creatively, in the group. I don’t want to say the most talented, but creative. Because he always had new ideas, he was already ready to try new things, and he didn’t realize, and probably still doesn’t, that he had become a really big star in England. There were as many kids imitating him and cheering for him and freaking out over him as there were for Johnny. He always acted like it was Johnny and assumed it was Johnny. I don’t think he ever really realized that if he ever went back – Johnny has since been back to England a few times. Walter’s never gone back – he’d be a big draw; he was really a big star. The kids loved him ‘cause he’s a psycho.
[Walter Lure, CBGB's, 1980]
FF: That might be what the Heroes (Walter’s group) have to do because in New York, it’s Johnny, and Walter will always be in Johnny’s shadow according to, like, the club owners and stuff, and the Heroes really get a hard time. Leee: Really not so in England. In fact, Walter might be even more fashionable ‘cause England has gone very psycho right now. And Walter has the look and delivery to go with that. I think he’d really do well.
FF: Maybe if he gets a record deal they could send him over there. There’s this real anti-rock’n’roll backlash in New York right now. But I think the rockabilly here’ll knock that right out. That’s gonna be the pervasive thing. It seems like it’s the most healthy branch of the music right now. It’s alive. Leee: That’s why I got into it. That’s why I was first working with Levi (Dexter), and I realized I couldn’t work with both him and Johnny. I talked to Johnny about it, and I said, this is fun for me. I enjoy every (Levi) show, I enjoy touring, and much to Johnny’s credit, he completely understood. He said, yeah, he could see that that would be much more what I would enjoy than working with him, so we parted on the best-of-friends.
FF: Levi’s like a big breath of fresh air; he’s so anti- that junkie jadedness that pervades New York. Leee: After two years with the Heartbreakers, you can imagine what it was like to suddenly be with little sixteen and seventeen year-old kids who were saying, “Ohhh, can we really play? Can we really do a gig?? Two gigs in one night? What fun! [Laughs] With Johnny, I’d have to slap him and say you will do this show. “No, I’m not getting out of bed.” And we’d have a rough ‘n’ tumble and eventually he made every show but one in two years, which is fully to his credit, really. Because sometimes he was in no shape to, but he did. He always made it while I was working with him.
FF: What about Jerry (Nolan)? Leee: I can’t talk about Jerry.
FF: What was your most memorable thing about working with the Heartbreakers? Leee: Oh, well, besides them, generally, which was some experience, I guess that whole period in England when we did the Anarchy Tour [1977 – Ed.]. It came as such a surprise to us; none of us knew what was going on over there. From playing Max’s (Kansas City), it had become very routine here. Then three days later we had to run with our coats over our heads while photographers were trying to get our pictures, and keep our hotel room locked. There were people meeting us at the edge of town with pickets, turning us away, not even letting us in the town. It was such a weird experience. It didn’t know that much anti-rock’n’roll feeling – which is what it came down to – existed anymore, and there it was. It was really such a strange experience. That’s why I told everyone in New York to come to England. Cherry Vanilla sold everything in her apartment. She put a “for sale” sign on her door and sod everything – everything –to get all the money she could to come to England. She was there in a month. Wayne was there in a month. They came fast and cashed in.
FF: Where did the Heartbreakers get the best response? Leee: Well, I guess in London. Pretty well all over England. There was a lot of hysteria in Scotland. Scottish audiences are dangerous. Liverpool, they go crazy for ‘em. They built a very, very good following in Amsterdam. It’s much more hysteria there, and in France, then they ever got in New York because half the people in the audience in New York had slept with them. Some of the glamour isn’t there, where kids in Leeds had only ever seen their pictures and heard the rumors – and suddenly there they were on stage in front of them. It was fantastic to them.
FF: They still had that aesthetic distance. Leee: Yeah, right.
FF: Do you ever go see the Heartbreakers any more? Leee: Do the Heartbreakers play any more?
FF: Yeah. Tony (Coiro) from the Knots plays bass because Billy Rath went to Cape Cod and became a father. He moved in with his girlfriend, Marsha. He got hepatitis in, like, December (1980), and that sort of turned his head around. He said, “Enough of that.” Leee: He’ll probably be a lot happier. He was never really happy doing that (music).
FF: He’s supposed to be really happy getting up six in the morning and doing farm chores, and that kind of thing. Leee: He got very self-destructive, too, but it always seemed sort of imitated, like he thought, “Oh, well, I might as well be self-destructive, too, otherwise what am I gonna do? Read a book?” So he’s probably very happy and Marsha probably is, too. Good, I’m glad. Sure, I’d go see them (the Heartbreakers). It would be a great experience.
FF: Have you seen the Heroes yet? Leee: No, but I haven’t –
FF: Mucho upbeat. Walter’s my favorite dresser and comedian, too. What did you do between managing the Heartbreakers and managing Levi? Or was it straight to Levi? Leee: Straight from. I was in England, and the punks / Teddys war started, and I’d see pictures of Teddy Boys in the papers and they looked awfully glamorous to me – more glamorous than the punks. So I began going in disguise to Teddy Boy shows. It would always be dark so they never knew. Although my hair was quiffed, it had an electric blue streak through it. But they never knew. So I started going and eventually the show where I met Levi the lights went on and I was about to be killed, but I met him. He just got up – it was a Shakin’ Stevens show – and did a couple of songs and I thought he was great, so I asked him to come around to the office. He didn’t have a band and didn’t know anything about starting a band, so I started working with him while I was still working with the Heartbreakers. Then all the trouble with Jerry started. That was in July, when I met Levi, and by about September, Jerry Nolan was pulling his numbers and quitting the group and then going back when Johnny would cry, “Come back for a week.” Then he’d come back if we’d pay him $1,000 a show and things like that, and I was going crazy with all that anyway. So eventually then, Jerry left. And we did whole tours with other drummers – Terry Chimes (of the Clash) and people – and then it really began getting crazy until it was clear the Heartbreakers were gonna break up. So Johnny asked if I’d continue to work with him as a solo artist, so I said yes. But by then, Levi had begun playing, too [with the Rockats – Ed.]. In fact, the very first show Levi ever did, it was the worst show you ever saw in your life. [Laughs] Johnny Thunders did the greatest thing: it was at the Royal College of Art, and Dibbs (Preston) didn’t even come on stage, you only saw a guitar cord go off-stage to nowhere for him to play; and Smutty (Smiff) wasn’t plugged in because he couldn’t play the bass at all; Levi was off-tune on nearly every song. The rhythm guitarist we had at that time jumped off-stage in the middle of the show to dance with his girlfriend – he just laid his guitar down.
FF: Oh, wonderful. Leee: The drummer couldn’t drum. It was just awful! We were on supporting Steel Pulse, and it was a big show at the Royal College of Art, you know, and our agent had just bragged us into it. So everybody was just ready to die, and you could see Levi was just mortified. He was so terrified, he felt so horrible. So all of a sudden, Johnny got on stage – and Johnny could hardly stand up – grabbed a guitar, and he started playing, and he did this, like, Chuck Berry thing, a medley. And soon as he finished one song he’d go into the next one, and he forced Levi to sing along with him, and he forced the band to keep playing and it went for, like, twenty minutes solid. And the audience, of course, by then was going completely crazy, cheering and screaming. When they came off and were back in the dressing room, Levi said, “Oh, Johnny, thank you, thank you. You saved the show. I was horrified.” Johnny said, “I just did it to teach you one thing: it’s impossible to make a fool of yourself on stage.” It was great. We loved him for that. Levi still adores him.
FF: That is a wonderful story. Leee: Yeah, and it was so good of him. So by then, Levi was touring a lot. We did the whole tour with Wayne County – the Eddy and Sheena Tour – all over England and Scotland, and everywhere. A lot started to happen. It was then that Johnny and I mutually realized that I was better off working with Levi.
FF: Which person or persons have you enjoyed photographing the most? Leee: Oh, Lord! Probably the most fun I’ve had taking pictures were (of) a lot of people you probably wouldn’t know. A lot of the early drag queens and everything. They’re all dead now, or old. And also I really enjoyed a series I started and will someday finish photographing people as – I don’t want to say my favorite movie star as much as the movie star they would have been if they had been a movie star, instead of whatever they are. And that’s when I did that Wayne County session of Wayne as Thedda Bara, that picture that’s up at Max’s.
FF: Oh, yeah. When I was in the Wayne County Fan Club, they sent me that one for Christmas. Leee: Yeah? Great! And that picture of Cherry that’s up at Max’s is Cherry Vanilla as Clara Bow. And that was fun ‘cause we’d build whole sets and create characters, and it was really fun. Some day I’ll finish the series. Do Levi as Rudolph Valentino [Laughs].
FF: If you could photograph anyone you haven’t yet, who would it be? Leee: Who are still alive? There are a lot of people I feel very –
FF: They don’t’ have to be alive now. Leee: ‘Cause there are a lot of people I’m really sorry I missed. Great, classic people like Tallulah Bankhead, with brilliant faces. Even when she was old and ravaged – you know, she drank spirits of ammonia for eight years. She gave up booze during the war. She swore she would never drink another drop of booze as long as Hitler was in Europe, and so she drank spirits of ammonia instead.
FF: I would imagine that wouldn’t do very much for your skin. Leee: Right, so she was real ravaged by the time she finally died, but still amazing. I’d love to have done her. Of people that are around now, I wonder who would be really good. I can’t think. Old people still, I think. The real classics, like Estelle Winwood and James Cagney, and people like that. I’d be astounded just to be in their presence. And would like to photograph them. Other than that, probably my next favorite sort of people to photograph are completely unknown. You know, really young kids, because you can do anything with them because they’re excited at being photographed. People like Robert Redford or something; think of how many times he’s been photographed. What more can he do? But you get somebody like – another one of my favorites was a Debbie Harry session I did, you know, when she was just starting, and I don’t know if it was the very first time, but it was one of the first times she had ever been in a real studio with full lights and, you know, seamless paper backdrop, and the whole thing, so she just went bananas. She was wonderful to photograph ‘cause she was living her fantasy.
The following article originally appeared in FFanzeen Number 7, which was issued in 1981.
The Heroes are, in my humble opinion, the best hardcore rock'n’roll band since the Heartbreakers. They are not merely a “lightweight Heartbreakers” as some Johnny Thunders disciples insist. The Heroes are ex-Heartbreakers bassist Billy Rath, Walter’s little brother Richie Lurie on rhythm guitar (and sometimes lead vocals), and drummer Billy Rogers. And, of course, Walter.
Walter Lure is a guitar god and thrift shop dandy who spouts epigrams that would make Oscar Wilde roll over in his opium den. Plus, Walter writes great ‘80s rock'n’roll songs with that unbeatable Waldo Swing. Walter may sing about “Chinese Rocks,” but he has definitely kissed the Blarney Stone.
The following interview with Walter took place in the backroom of Max’s Kansas City, December 10, 1980. Theatre of the absurd, act one:
Walter Lure: I planned to get here on time, but I was attacked by rats in the street – these gross rats. I was walking down the street to my house and I saw this thing walking across my feet. I figured, “Oh, just one went by,” and then they kept on coming. They saw this giant human standing there and they wouldn’t leave me alone. They kept running in front of my feet and I’m screaming, “Oh, no! Assassination!” FFanzeen: The first thing I wanted to ask you was your birth date. Walter: April 22. FF: Are you going to give the year? Walter: Pick a year. Anything between 1950 and 1960. FF: Were you friends with Johnny Thunders before you joined the Heartbreakers? Walter: Yeah. I’ve known John for ages, but not personally. In the ‘60s, every concert I ever went to, John was always there. He was always dressed up in English clothes before anyone had English clothes. He happened to have a rich girlfriend at the time. That’s why he had all these great clothes. He always stood out in the crowd. He was the first one in town to have a Keith Richards hair cut and high heel platform boots. This was all before the (New York) Dolls. He was just a kid who was hanging out. FF: Was this in the late ‘60s? Walter: Late ‘60s. The Fillmore days – ’67, ’68, ’69, and ’70. Every fucking show I went to John was there and I knew who it was. I went to mostly English groups anyway. I’m sure if I went to see a Grateful Dead concert, eh wouldn’t be there. Even at Woodstock, I saw him. At the Atlantic City Pop Festival I saw him. At the Newport Rock Festival I saw him. At Led Zeppelin in Flushing Meadow Park and Iggy Pop. He was at every fucking show and we started to recognize each other and say hello. But I never really knew him. I got to know the Dolls through the lead singer of a group I was in, the Demons. FF: Who was the lead singer of the Demons? Walter: This guy named Elliott Kidd. He’s still around, but he’s not in a band. They actually made an album after I left them. It was on Mercury, but the album never really got pushed. It never went anywhere. Elliott was a good friend of the Dolls and used to hang out with them a lot. We used to share their loft to rehearse in. I didn’t really like the Demons that much. I was just in them because that was my original band. I just wanted to get my face on the scene. I had been hanging out so long that I figured it was about time to make the big break. I was in the Demons and we played two or three gigs. One gig, we opened for the Heartbreakers. It was just Richard Hell, Jerry [Nolan], and John. It was their first gig, at this little shithole out in Queens called Coventry, just over the 59th Street Bridge. It was real gross and terrible. They were all on downs or some other weird drug and they were all playing, like, [mocking a stoned-out slur], “Uh, I’m living on uh dead rock.” They had auditioned me before that gig and had been asking me all along if I wanted to join the group. They had been trying other guitar players, too. The Demon’s first gig was around April of 1975. The Dolls had just broken up. Jerry and John hadn’t gotten a group together yet. They had already spoken to Richard Hell because he had left Television around the same time as the Dolls broke up. So, the Heartbreakers came down to see the Demons because they knew the singer real well. John comes back and says, “Walter, you’re real good, blah blah blah.” I got a call a couple of days later, “Hey, you want to come down and audition? You want to join the band?” FF: What was your reaction when Johnny first asked you to join? Walter: It was cool. I said, “My God! This is my big break!” At the same time, he asked me if I wanted to audition, so I wasn’t sure that I was going to make it. I knew they liked me, but Richard Hell wasn’t all that hot on me. He thought I was too normal, didn’t take enough drugs, and my hair was too long. I had a couple of auditions. They auditioned other people, but they didn’t find the right guy. John liked me and the decision was really John’s. We used to be in clubs and I’d be with the Demons and John would come over: “You want to join the band? Shh! Here comes Elliott. Don’t tell him.” FF: He was afraid that Elliott would get mad for stealing you away? Walter: Yeah, right. And that’s what they did in the end. FF: Were you in any other bands before the Heartbreakers, other than the Demons? Walter: I was in a couple of bands. They were mostly copy bands. My first band was Blood Bath. That turned into the Fabulous Blood Bath Revue. We played Stones, Bowie, Chuck Berry, Mott the Hoople, and all our English Rock favorites. We used to play the college circuit around Fordham, Manhattan College, and the Bronx. I was in this band called the – uh – I don’t remember what they were called – The Beanheads or something like that. The Sea Creatures or whatnot. FF: Where were you born? Walter: I was born in Queens. FF: How long have you lived in Manhattan? Walter: Two years. Before that I lied in Brooklyn Heights for six years. It’s just over the Brooklyn Bridge. You can look out the window across the river to Manhattan. Charming view. They filmed The Sentinel right on my block, you know, the gross pig movie with all the zombie people and devils running around. It was hilarious. Back when I used to work, I’d come home and see these fucking misshapen hunchbacks and dwarves all walking down my block. I’d say, “My God, the neighborhood’s going down.” FF: Was the Heartbreakers’s following bigger or more intense in London than in New York City? Walter: Once we got going it was. In New York City, we had a big following because Johnny and Jerry were from the Dolls and Hell was from Television. The first gig I played with them was at the CBGBs’ First Annual Summer Rock Festival. It was around the fourth of July in 1975. There was this big fucking mob there because the Dolls were so big. I never get nervous before gigs, but this was the first time I felt a few butterflies flying around. I said, “Um, I never saw a crowd this big before. This is going to be weird!” As soon as we went onstage, the people wet, “Waaaahhhh!” I was knocked against the wall, saying, “My God, what’s going on here?” It was a great sensation. The New York following was sort of limited to the New York clubs. The gigs were always crowded. But it was in England that we started getting popular all over Europe. People latched on to us because they liked the music and they thought we were punks because we had been on the Anarchy Tour. We didn’t know what the fucking punks were. There was a punk scene, but we were really a rock’n’roll band, as opposed to a punk band. Any band that played with the Pistol and the Clash on the same tour had to be cool if they were from New York. So they picked up on us. That was when I started coming out more. Hell had left the band six months earlier and we had just played about five or six gigs without him. I was doing more singing because with Hell in the band, I could only sing one song. He would begrudge me even that much. FF: Which song was that? Walter: “Flight.” He wanted to do all the singing. He didn’t even want Johnny to sing more than three songs. FF: The group was more downbeat with Hell in it, right? Walter: It was rock’n’roll. We even did Hell songs rock’n’roll. I have a tape of the old group. We’re doing “Blank Generation,” “You’ve Gotta Lose,” and “One Track Mind,” which used to be called “Love Comes in Spurts” because I’d written the music and Hell decided to write the words, which was an old Television song. When he left, I re-wrote the words myself. It was still rock’n’roll, but his bass playing was limited. His songs were good, but it was more of a funky junkie band. When Hell left, it became more straightforward rock’n’roll, rather than having an aura of beatnik about it. FF: Are the Heartbreakers popular in Paris? A friend of mine from London said that you can get all kinds of Heartbreakers memorabilia in Paris – shirts, buttons, etc. Walter: Yeah, we’re real popular in Paris. We only played there once in December of 1977, at Le Bafaclan, which holds about 1200 people. It’s like a ballroom, and it was sold out completely. People were screaming. I can speak French so I babbled a few words into the microphone and they all went “Yeah!” They loved it, to see someone who could speak French. John got real jealous and started saying, “I taught him everything he knows.” It was real fun. The French loved the Dolls. When the Dolls played Paris, they had riots with people trying to get into the shows – almost like the Beatles. They came to see us because of the Dolls, and also because the Heartbreakers had gotten a big following in England. The French magazines would always come over to write about us. One time, they wrote this gross thing about one of the people that we knew – in the group – who OD’d by mistake. Of course, it’s always by mistake. One of the guys from the magazine was there. The next month, I’m reading this magazine and it’s all there because the guy was in the apartment. He writes all this shit down in this big magazine which is about as big as Creem is in America. It’s an article about the Heartbreakers – how great they were at the show. At the end, there’s “…And, of course, blah blah blah OD’d and they carried him into the bathtub and the ambulance was coming and the syringe is flying out the window.” I’m saying, “What kind of shit is this?” FF: They thrive on that. They love decadent Americans. Walter: Heroin is a lot more fashionable in Paris. Here, cocaine is the drug of the chic, the jet set, and stuff. FF: That’s starting to shift now. Walter: It is. People are getting too burnt out. In France, it’s just the opposite. Yves St. Laurent is a junkie [figures he’d name a perfume “Opium” – nf], so it’s popular. It’s not like I approve or anything. That’s just the state of the art. FF: Did you play any European cities other than Paris? Walter: We played Holland – once in Amsterdam with the Pistols, and twice on our own at the Paradiso. We played in Groningen, Arnhem, and Rotterdam. We were supposed to do an Italian tour, but that fell through at the last minute. We were supposed to go to Germany and Scandinavia, but it never happened. We were supposed to do a French tour and we just did Paris. That was a disaster. They didn’t pay us enough money and we got stuck there. We barely made it out of the country. Every time we came back to London, they would always hassle us in customs because we never had working papers. They kept us in this jail for six hours because they didn’t believe that we had any money. We had to call all these people in London to say that we were a group that was in town for a while to try and get some deals. Every time we came back to London, even for a day, they’d give us a hassle. We’d have to make up all these stories. Everywhere else in Europe, you can walk in the country nude if you want to. FF: What was your impression of Malcolm McLaren? Walter: I knew him when he was managing the Dolls. I met him a few times. I did him some favors or something like that. He was a great guy. He reminded me of the original Stones’ manager, Andrew Loog Oldham. Malcolm was very politically oriented and forever trying to shock people. He’s into a lot of crazy publicity schemes. He’s incredible at making controversy. He made the Pistols. He worked with them for a year and got their clothes, put them together, stuck them out on the road, and made them tour. They sort of carried it themselves once they got popular, but it was Malcolm who held it all together. He’s great at publicity and manipulation of media. He’s real intelligent and he has a lot of good ideas, but he gets a bit flakey at times, even with the Dolls. He made a big mistake by trying to change them with that whole Red Communist thing. It was a bit silly. It didn’t make sense at the time. With the Pistols, it made sense. Even with that, he got carried away after a while. He started spacing out. He’d be your friend one day and the next he wouldn’t. He got real mad at our manager for some dumb little reason. FF: Who was your manager? Walter: Leee Childers. He was our manager from the time we arrived in Europe. He sort of signed on when Hell left the band and decided to take us over. He used to be a big photographer. FF: Bowie; MainMan – Walter: He was a Brian Epstein-type character. We found out in the end that he was a terrible business manager. He was a great personal manager. He could take care of the band, take care of people, make sure everyone’s happy. As far as business, he didn’t know his ass from his elbow. He was terrible. We didn’t realize that at the time. He was good in that he helped us in a lot of ways. I have nothing against him, even though I could, if I wanted to take some things into account. You can’t blame people. Things happen and you have no control over it. He could have done better, but so could anybody. FF: Who wrote most of the music and who wrote most of the lyrics in the songs that you co-wrote with Jerry Nolan? Walter: Most of those songs are all mine. Jerry and I decided at one time that we were going to be a songwriting team like Lennon/McCartney. A couple of the songs that he wrote, like, “Can’t Keep My Eyes On You” and “Take a Chance,” he had written the music and most of the lyrics. But Jerry’s the type of guy who will start something and he can’t finish it. On “Take a Chance,” I ended up writing the lyrics. FF: That’s one of my favorite ones. Walter: We haven’t done that in a while. Yeah, that’s a good song. “Can’t Keep My Eyes on You” was written even before I was in the band. But Hell used to sing it and Hell had written lyrics. Jerry wrote one verse and Hell wrote the other two verses. When Hell left, I just re-wrote the other two verses and sang Jerry’s first verse. “Take a Chance” was mostly Jerry’s music. He had written the chorus and one of the verses. FF: So “Get Off the Phone” was yours. Walter: “Get Off the Phone was all mine. FF: And “All By Myself”? Walter: No, that song was actually a collaboration. Jerry was playing a drum beat in rehearsal. It was just him and me, waiting for the other guys to show up. I started playing these chords and it sounded cool. Jerry started singing, “All by myself” and we actually arranged the whole song. I wrote the chords and he had the title, the first line of the first verse, and started making up words. I just took it home and wrote the rest of the words to the verses and he had the chorus. So, that was our half-and-half collaboration. “Junkie Business” was mine, but it was after Hell left the group that I wrote that. FF: Do you ever collaborate with your brother Richie? Walter: We haven’t done anything yet. We’re supposed to get together and try to do something. There’s one song that he was singing, “When Passion Was in Fashion,” but we haven’t worked on that for a while. I was going to let him sing it and write the words, but he’s lazy. He hasn’t gotten it together yet. I’m not that happy with the song, so we might not do it. You’ve heard Riche’s new song, “Pissing My Life Away”? FF: Yeah Walter: I have a ballad. I actually wrote a slow song. The words aren’t quite completed. It’s called “Golden Days.” FF: But you’re good at ad libbing Walter: [Laughs] Yeah, right. I ad-lib almost all my songs. Yeah, we might do the slow song on Friday, hopefully. We’re rehearsing tomorrow night. We’ll try to polish it and get it together. Then I’ll try to make some sense of the words. FF: Why did the Heartbreakers break up, originally? One rumor was that everyone was mad at Jerry because he snuck back to England and mixed the L.A.M.F. tapes behind the group’s back, and Johnny said in the New York Rocker that it was because you had a big head. Walter: [Laughs] John and I have this ongoing battle in newspapers. He actually started it by saying something shitty about Billy and me in Creem. He said something like we were all fucked up and couldn’t get anything done. And this is John saying we’re fucked up! I read that and I did an interview after that. That was when the Trouser Press came out where I said all this stuff about him. It was just the truth, actually. Even when I showed it to him, he said, “Oh, yeah, it’s true, you prick.” [Laughs] He actually liked it, but then he felt he had to say something back in the New York Rocker. He said all that shit about how the Heartbreakers was the first time I ever got any recognition and it all went to my head, and I thought I was a star. No one thinks he’s a bigger fucking star than Johnny. He’s the most star-conscious scumbag. He throws his tantrums and he thinks everybody’s got to wait on him hand and foot. Jerry was the same way, but John would never say anything against Jerry because he was scared of him. Jerry would threaten to beat the shit out of John. John respects anyone who can beat the shit out of him. FF: That’s a direct quote from your comments about Johnny in Bruce Paley’s article [FFanzeen, Vol. 2, No. 2, “The Survival of Johnny Thunders – ed.]. Walter: Jerry used to do it in the Dolls. The Dolls would get together every now and then and when John would start getting out of hand and obnoxious, they’d call Jerry and say, “Jerry, why don’t you take care of Johnny? He’s starting to get out of hand.” So, he’d take him into a room and give him a few whacks. Then he’d be an angel for two or three months and slowly start fucking up again. Then it’d all happen again. Jerry only did it a few times, I guess. John always looked up to Jerry as a father figure, but Jerry is even more fucked-up than John is. Jerry freaks out totally if he doesn’t get his way. He’ll say, “White’s black! White’s black!” Ten minutes later you’ll say, “Jerry, you said ‘white’s black,’” and he’ll say, “Fuck you, I did not. You’re crazy. Black is black.” You can’t talk to him. He’s like a brick wall. Yet, he’s probably the best drummer I’ve ever played with. He’s a natural. That’s the shame of it, because it’s such a waste. He’s such a great drummer, but he’s so fucked up. If you could just chop his head off and keep his arms and legs, he’d be great. FF: Did you ever play with the Stilettos? Walter: I did a gig or two with them because they were friends. They were getting a record deal thing together and they asked Cheetah (Chrome), Billy and me to do a show or two with them. I played once with them at Max’s as a guest on a few songs. We actually did a show with them at this place in Westchester called Detroit. They booed us off the stage. [Laughs] FF: Who else have you played with, other than the Blessed and the Heroes, since the Heartbreakers broke up? Walter: I had a band called the Hurricanes for a while. We actually did two gigs. It was a year ago, April. We played the Mudd Club and Max’s. It was the same idea as the Heroes. The Heartbreakers had broken up and Billy and me had gotten back from England. We were trying to get a band together because John was saying, “Fuck you, guys. I don’t want to play with you,” although he’d still show up every other month to do the rent party gigs at Max’s. So, we had to put a band together. I had been auditioning guitar players. We found Barry Ryan who’s with the Rockats now. It was Barry, Billy, Ty Styx, and me. Barry didn’t write songs that much back then. He’s a really good guitar player, but he didn’t write and he was afraid to sing. I really liked playing with him, but I never sang whole sets before. My voice would be going after the first five songs. It was driving me nuts. So, it wasn’t working. Barry sang one song, but he didn’t have much original stuff. At the same time, the Heartbreakers’ album was coming out and John and Jerry talked about getting back together. The group was actually going to stay together when the album came out. Everyone was happy again. So, I sort of let the Hurricanes drift away. Barry wanted to play again, but we had all these Heartbreakers gigs coming up. Then Barry got in the Rockats and it was a good gig. So I started auditioning people again that following September. Actually, it was a year ago now. I was playing with Ivan Julian for a while, but that didn’t work out either. He wasn’t used to singing or writing his own songs. But now he’s really good. He’s got his own group. FF: The Outsets. Walter: Yeah, they’re real good. Then I was going to play with Steve Dior (from the Idols) and that fell through. The first gig came up last April and Steve was supposed to come back from London and play with us. He rehearsed with us. He went to London to work on a single and was supposed to come back in a week. He called up saying, “I have a record deal over here, so I’m not coming back. See you later guys.” This was two days before the gig and I’m going, “Oh, fuck! Our first gig and it’s gonna be a power trio.” We did it as a trio for the first six or seven numbers, then I brought Richie up and he played about four songs with us. We did the same thing at the second gig in Jersey and I thought, “Aw, fuck, I might as well have him in the band. It’ll keep in out of trouble and keep him off the streets. [Melodiously] And that’s how we evolved. FF: Were you a Dolls fan? Did you go to a lot of their shows? Walter: I went to see all of their shows. They were events. They were the best thing that happened to New York because they revived rock’n’roll. All the music at the time was getting to be heavy fucking Yes, Moody Blues, and orchestral shit that you have to be a genius to play guitar. It wasn’t rock’n’roll anymore. It was turning into fucking heaven music or something. The Dolls were people that we knew and they weren’t geniuses. They weren’t technical giants. They played rock’n’roll. They revived all these great old songs. They were fun. Everything they did was like a party. They gave all the young kids the inspiration: “If these give clowns who look like idiots and can’t even play can get up, do a show, become popular, and get a record deal, then I can do it, too!” Everybody started forming bands and started the whole New York Scene. They were like the first punk band. FF: What was the first rock’n’roll song that you remember liking? Walter: “Hound Dog.” FF: Was that the first one you bought? Walter: I didn’t start buying records until I was in fifth or sixth grate. I bought 45s. It was probably something like “Wild One” by Bobby Rydell, or one of those old crazy songs like, “Mr. Custer” (Larry Verne) or “Purple People Eater” (Sheb Wooley). I liked Elvis. I had my grandfather buy me an Elvis album when I was a little kid because I didn’t have enough money at the time. I used to like Pat Boone. I liked (Boone’s) “Bernadine.” I was a little kid and I didn’t know who was cool and who wasn’t cool. I didn’t start buying records until I started going out with girls in fifth and sixth grade. In fact, in those Victorian times, you didn’t get laid until you were like sixteen or seventeen. It was real hard to get laid until you were even eighteen, actually. People didn’t fuck when they were two years old like they do today. It was much more difficult. I used to buy Four Seasons and Beach Boys records before the Beatles and the Stones. It was more to have parties with and dance to. It wasn’t serious. I started playing guitar around then, but I couldn’t pick it up, so I gave it up. I was about twelve when I started to play guitar. I took lessons for a couple of months. I couldn’t get the hang of it. I thought it was too boring. Then I started getting laid when I was eighteen. FF: That inspired you to learn to play guitar? Walter: Seriously! FF: What New York groups did you like around 1975? Walter: At the beginning of the Scene? I liked Television back then, when Richard Hell and Richard Lloyd were still in the band. FF: I think Richard Lloyd is great. Walter: They were cool. Now, he’s sort of like a beanhead. He’s gone mental or something. He’s lost his mind. I liked Patti Smith in the beginning before she got too popular. She got obnoxious later on – a big Keith Richards groupie gone mad. She used to do these shows at Le Jardin and these weird little clubs with just Richard Sohl on piano, Lenny Kaye on guitar, and her. She’d be reading this poetry by Rimbaud and it was sort of funky at the time. It was new and interesting. Television was the first group to show up in ripped clothes and eyeballs pointing in every direction. That was more in 1974 than 1975. The Ramones I liked when I first saw them. I thought they were cool. They were funny. The guys in the Demons said, “There’s this real dumb group playing around. They play the same song for twenty minutes. They’re real terrible. They’re gross.” We were on the same bill with them one night. I said, “Oh yeah, I’ll have to see them” I saw them and I loved them right away. I thought they were the coolest thing that was happening. They guys in the Demons were so backwards. They were into old wave rock – heavy metal. FF: What groups do you like now? Walter: Now it’s weird. I go through different phases. I play a lot of stuff. I still like Stevie Wonder. I like his old stuff best. I like Talking Heats, Bowie (and) Stones. As far as New York groups, there aren’t that many. The Blessed I always liked, but I like them because they are fun, not because they’re great. Blondie I like. People say they’ve sold out, but I respect them. Debbie (Harry) deserves it. She’s been around a long time and they’re great people. FF: Speaking of the Blessed, where was their single recorded? Walter: A studio in Bayside (Queens, NY). Actually, the Heroes are going in there December 16 to record their first single. FF: Independently? Walter: Yea, we’re going to print a thousand copies. Managers and agents need a tape and a single to book us, so we need a single. We’re going to try to get a deal out of it. FF: Do you know which two songs? Walter: I know “Crazy Little Baby” will probably be on the A-side. The B-side I’m not sure of. It might be one of Richie’s or one of mine. FF: Put “Flight” on the flip, then it’ll be a fast side and a slow side. Walter: “Fight might be a good one. A friend of mine, Dave Eng, has a studio in Bayside. It was eight tracks when the Blessed did it. It’s in the basement of his house and it’s really nice. He gives us a good deal on the time. Now it’s sixteen tracks. It’s professional. He knows what he’s doing. Jim Miller might produce us. [I phoned Walter on January 8, and he said the basic tracks for the Heroes’ single, “Crazy Little Baby” b/w Richie’s “Turn It Up” were already finished – nf] The Blessed single was just with Dave and us. He mixed it. It was the first time they’d been in the studio and they didn’t really know what they were doing. The drummer was pretty professional. It took longer than it would with an ordinary group. Billy (Stark), the lead singer, is tone deaf, so it took a long time to get the vocals down. We thought “American Bandstand” was going to be the A-side because live, it was a much better song than “Deep Frenzy.” It had a chorus and came out great live. “Deep Frenzy” had a nice little riff in it, but no one knew what the words were. We just screamed the words out and it didn’t make any sense. “Deep Frenzy” came out sounding ten times better than “American Bandstand.” For some reason, “American Bandstand” didn’t jell. FF: What was the most memorable thing about playing with the Blessed? Walter: It was just fun. The audience was all these crazy, young punks screaming. It was like playing in a teeny bop group – the Bay City Rollers or the Beatles, or something like that. FF: They weren’t jaded, they were enthusiastic. Walter: Yeah. The Heartbreakers always attracted the sleaziest crowd – all these gross groupie who dressed up in Frederick’s of Hollywood clothes. They were all drug addicts. The Blessed audience was the average meathead from Brooklyn or New Jersey. The Heartbreakers crowd was older, jaded, and more disgusting. With the Blessed, there were all these young punks. It was refreshing. It was good because you get all these crazy kids running up to you, asking for autographs. The Blessed looked up to me like a father figure. I was like their idol. I didn’t know that. I knew they liked me in the Heartbreakers, but I didn’t know they were thinking, “This is dynamite! Walter Lure is going to play with us.” They thought it was going to make them stars overnight. It was great fun, but I left when they sort of wanted me to get serious. They signed this weird record deal and it was a total rip-off. They ended up not getting anything out of it. It was this guy Bobby Orlando from Yonkers. He got a hit album out of this band called the Now. I saw the record deal and said, “You guys are crazy if you sign this.” There was no advance money and no time limit listed for how long they would be signed. The royalty was like four percent, which is coolie royalties. It was the worst record deal I have ever seen. They signed it because they were desperate to sign anything. They wanted to be rock’n’roll stars. They thought they’d be stars if they signed. But it turned out that they never even got into the studio. The guy rented a van for them to do one gig in Philadelphia. That’s all he ever did for them. It was a total joke. By that time, I had to get out because I knew it wasn’t going anywhere. In the beginning, I thought there might be some potential. They did have a lot of stage presence and they had a big following. FF: Their guitarist, Howie Pyro, has a lot of personality. Walter: Howe’s got personality and Billy looks good, too. But things began to get dormant. Here’s this guy that’s trying to imitate Mick Jagger and he can’t even sing to save his life. I like them a lot. They’re all good friends and real nice guys. They were too young and didn’t know what was going on. I couldn’t wait around for them to grow up because I was getting too old myself. [Laughs] Plus, they were saying, “Walter’s playing around with little boys.” All these sordid rumors were going around. People never think I do these things for innocent reasons. They always have to attribute some sordid, sexual perversion behind everything I do. After I did the single, I realized it was going to take these guys a long time to get it together. I couldn’t wait around that long. One gig at Max’s was the turning point. They had a lot of important record company people coming down. We played and it was blah. I had to break away and start a serious band. Plus, I missed singing. I didn’t sing in the Blessed except backups. I wouldn’t play with a lead singer again, unless he was really great. (Continued)
What do Jay and the Americans, Paul Revere and the Raiders, the Monkees, the Lettermen, The Sex Pistols, Showaddy Waddy, the Darts, among many others, have in common? They all recorded songs written or co-written by Tommy Boyce.
In 1975, five years after the Monkees’ demise, David Jones had the idea to put together a new version of the Monkees, with Mickey Dolenz, Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart. He could not get the legal rights to use the name “Monkees,” so the group of Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart was born. It was so successful that they did a year-long international tour and put out two albums, one studio and one live in Japan.
Tommy, who has never been out of the swing of things for long, will soon be back in the public eye. Lorimar Productions wants to do a video on the history of Boyce & Hart. Slated to star in the video are Larry Hagman and Barbara Eden, who will show the Boyce & Hart clip of “Out and About,” from the I Dream of Jeannie show, circa 1965. Elizabeth Montgomery will present another clip from Bewitched, as well. There will also be various and sundry acting and musical personalities, including Tony Orlando, Connie Francis, Chris Reeves (who will aspire to reveal how “Clarksville” was written), etc.
