1975 In New York Rock - A Summary

Fifty years ago, at the end of 1975, I was called upon by Melody Maker’s editor to summarise the year in rock in New York, where I had lived for almost the whole year. Here’s what I wrote:

As New York slows down for the Christmas Holidays and shoppers gather in Rockefeller Centre to gaze up at the enormous illuminated tree, it seems an appropriate moment to glance back at the year here.

We read that New York is heavily in debt, that Mayor Beame can’t afford to pay his workers and that President Ford has vetoed any government assistance, but the skyscrapers are still standing and Madison Square Garden is still boasting sell-out shows. Traditionally, the entertainment business holds its own in times of stress – there’s nothing like a good depression to sell records and concert tickets.

New York is no exception. It’s more newsworthy when an established act’s record doesn’t go gold here, or when their concert doesn’t sell out. Music of all kinds thrives in New York and 1975 has been no different.

The most important event of the year has been the re-emergence of Bob Dylan, not only as a New Yorker but also as a Village Person. Quite what motivated Dylan to tread the downtown streets once again no one knows but our lives have certainly been richer for it. The luxury of Malibu and the pleasures of living upstate in the country have lost their attraction: Bob’s back where he started and don’t we know it.

The year began with Blood On The Tracks, a spectacular return to form, and ended with Desire. In between were The Basement Tapes and numerous unscheduled appearances in the city that culminated in the most extraordinary tour of his career, the Rolling Thunder Revue, which climaxed, somewhat limply, with a benefit for Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter at the Garden two weeks ago.

Bob’s in New York right now, seeing to the release of the new album. Last night, my spies tell me, many of the Rolling Thunder crew stopped off at The Other End to catch John Prine, a slight indication that the excitement is not yet over. There’s talk that the Revue will play concerts in California early next year, and a chance they’ll travel to the UK. 

During the year the Beacon Theatre has risen to prominence as a rock venue, taking over the role previously played by Howard Stein’s Academy of Music on 14th Street, which has all but closed down as far as live music is concerned. Aesthetically, the Beacon is a vast improvement, though its situation, at 74th and Broadway up on the Westside, is not as convenient as the old Academy.

Despite its impersonal, cavernous nature, the Garden still thrives as a rock venue. The Rolling Stones broke all attendance records this year when they played for six consecutive nights and grossed well over a million dollars, easily eclipsing both Elvis Presley and The Who, who have both sold out four-day runs.

But outbreaks of violence at the Garden have left an ugly scar, though these have occurred only at concerts by black artists. New York still rings with tales of thieves who went about their business with alarming efficiency at a recent concert at the Felt Forum, the Garden’s smaller annexe, stealing purses and jewellery while the security guards were powerless to help. A step-up in security is bound to be enforced next year.

If the second half of the year has belonged to Dylan, and the summer to the Stones, then the first part of 1975 belonged to Led Zeppelin whose earnings from the US during February, March and April must have been astronomical. Not only did they tour the entire country – including three shows in New York – but their Physical Graffiti album topped the Billboard charts and sparked off remarkable sales for their entire catalogue. At one time there were five Zep albums in the Top 100.

Elton John, another of Britain’s big dollar earners, chose to ignore New York this year, although he did play the Garden last November, bringing John Lennon on stage for a memorable guest appearance. Elton’s Rock Of The Westies tour was restricted to the Western States.

The Who, too, have been absent, probably because they played the city in 1974 when Pete Townshend was unhappy with the shows. It seems likely they’ll include New York on their schedule early next year when they return for the second half of their US tour. Who manager Pete Rudge, though, was still undecided at the time of writing. 

On a lesser scale, the clubs here continue to thrive. Queues line up outside the Bottom Line nightly, and the re-opening of the Other End – formerly the Bitter End – has provided some competition, attracting Dylan to its stage in the process.

The so-called underground in the city has thrown up another potential star in Patti Smith, easily the most prominent artist to have emerged regularly at CBGBs, a Bowery bar catering for unsigned local bands. The first band to emerge from this strata, the New York Dolls, split this year but re-formed later with a change in personnel though they don’t have a record contract and are currently dormant. Television, the underground’s other big hope, remain unsigned despite critical recognition and earlier this month they released a privately distributed single. Patti Smith did the same thing before Arista signed her earlier this year.

Only two major outdoor events occurred in Central Park, both, coincidentally, within 24 hours. The first was a mammoth gathering to celebrate the end of the Vietnam War, organised by Phil Ochs. Paul Simon made an unscheduled but welcome appearance, alongside Ochs, Joan Baez, Peter Yarrow and Richie Havens. The following day Jefferson Starship, certain winners of the comeback-of-the-year award, played their annual free concert attended by over 100,000 fans.

Paul Simon AND Art Garfunkel remain firm New Yorkers, and Simon’s season at the Avery Fisher Hall last month was among the year’s musical highlights. Garfunkel showed up at his midnight Saturday concert and joined his former partner for two songs.

The disco boom has continued with scores of private clubs opening in downtown Manhattan to cater for dancers who keep going until the following day. The trend continues to break records each month. ‘Fly Robin Fly’ by Silver Convention was number one last week and ‘That’s The Way (I Like It)’ by KC & The Sunshine Band is number one this week. Both are perfect examples of the disco trend.

Predictions for next year: Aerosmith, who blatantly model themselves on The Rolling Stones, will become a major band in the US; Patti Smith will have difficulty broadening her cult following into mass appeal; Paul Simon will score a Broadway show; Bob Dylan will remain active: and John Lennon, whose immigration problems seem to be almost over, will visit the UK at last.

PATTI SMITH - 50 Years Ago This Week

Fifty years ago this week I met up with Patti Smith at a rehearsal studio on New York’s West Side to interview her for Melody Maker. We already knew one another. Patti was a fixture in the downtown clubs where musicians and their friends, and writers like me, liked to hang out until late, and her guitarist Lenny Kaye and I were introduced by mutual friends just after I arrived in New York in 1973. I'd also seen her on stage, at CBGBs and The Bottom Line, so I knew where she was coming from well before Horses, her debut LP, was released.

Because NME latched on to punk before Melody Maker, MM has been accused of being a bit stick-in-the-mud but I think this is unjust. ‘Punk’ seems to have become a catch-all phrase for young bands that emerged in the mid-seventies whose modus operandi was a bit DIY. They put anarchic emotion over technical skills, they disdained arena rockers like Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, they wore their hair short and spiky and dressed in hand-me-downs. Over in New York I was writing about these bands as early as 1974, when I first met Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, and reviewed The Ramones and Television. It happened in New York well before London and I think this was well before NME cottoned on to it. 

Either way, I was quick to recognise Patti, who belonged to the same genre. Horses made a big splash in New York, just as it did earlier this year when it celebrated its fiftieth birthday. This called for an interview, and here it is, unedited, among the first interviews with Patti that appeared in the UK press. It was headlined Poetry In Motion and appeared in MM dated 29 November, 1975. 

Last month they caught Patti Hearst — and so ended the biggest man (or woman) hunt in the history of the US.

        All this is history now, of course, but it’ll probably be the subject of at least two best-selling novels in the near future, not to mention a major screen movie.

        But perhaps the first outside view of the Patti Hearst case was provided by New York’s sparrow-like poetess Patti Smith, then a struggling personality in the underground rock scene of the city. With considerable difficulty she raised one thousand dollars and headed for Electric Ladyland Studios in Greenwich Village and recorded a version of the traditional Hendrix classic, ‘Hey Joe’.

        The inspiration for this move was provided by the words of Randolph Hearst who, on seeing the picture of his daughter holding a rifle, exclaimed to the anxious ears of America: “What are you doing with that gun in your hand?”

        Patti Smith’s version of ‘Hey Joe’ was a bitch of a record. Opening with a poetic dialogue about the Hearst situation, it gradually flowed into the regular song. It was chock-full of atmosphere and, for topicality, it really couldn’t be beaten. Had it received more exposure, I’m sure that Patti Smith would have been an overnight sensation.

        It didn’t, though, and it never will. About 1,000 copies of Patti’s ‘Hey Joe’ were pressed and made available by mail order through her management company and selected record shops down in the Village. According to Patti’s manager, Jane Friedman, the project lost around 3,000 dollars, even though the singles were sold at $2.50, a mark-up of over 50 per cent on the regular singles’ price.

        Today it’s a collector’s item, and no more are available.

        Also today, Patti Smith stands on the brink of success after a long, hard struggle. This summer she signed with Arista Records, and her debut album is out in the states this month.

        Thanks to Clive Davis, the boss of Arista, she is only the second of many artists in this (New York) fringe rock fraternity to be recognised by a record company. The first, of course, was the New York Dolls, whose recording career slumped after two albums.

        But Ms. Smith cannot be placed in the same category as the Dolls, or any rock band, for that matter. Some may call her a singer, but she is really an improvising lyricist whose performances rush with crazy momentum as each song, or poem, unrolls. She recites with a musical backdrop, frequently breaking into song as the energy spirals, criss-crossing between the two and, more often than not, making up the words as she stumbles headlong forward.

        Her band has been increasing in size over the years. Four years back it was just Patti and her guitarist Lenny Kaye, an occasional rock journalist and walking encyclopaedia on the last two decades of pop in America. Kaye, who three years ago, incidentally, compiled the Nuggets album of relatively obscure US singles for the Elektra label, might be described as a free-form guitarist, as he plays random notes at will according to the prompting of Patti’s dialogue. They understand one another and, as such, it’s doubtful whether any orthodox guitar player would fit.

        Pianist Richard Sohl is a similar performer. Like Kaye, nothing he plays can be predicted beforehand.

        Recently two other musicians have been added: a second guitarist, Ivan Kral, who, like Patti, bears a striking resemblance to Keith Richard, and drummer Jay Dougherty. There is no bass player — Patti feels a drummer is ample rhythm.

        John Cale was brought in to produce her first Arista album, Horses, which is released this month. It was on this topic that we began what turned out to be a very lengthy conversation last week.

        “It’s a live album,” she announced, squatting on the floor. “There’s hardly any overdubbing at all. We just went in and did the songs straight away. In the studio we went through hell. I asked John to do it for me, I begged him to, and we had nothing but friction, but it was a love-hate relationship and it worked. At first I wanted an engineer producer, somebody like Tom Dowd, but Atlantic wouldn’t let him go, so I figured I’d get a top artist producer who would act as a mirror. The whole thing in the studio was us proving to John that we could do it the way we wanted, so we fought a lot but it was fighting on a very intimate level.”

        The result is an album that’s actually far more melodic than the half dozen or so occasions I’ve watched Patti perform in various clubs in New York. The inclusion of a drummer — Dougherty was brought in immediately before the sessions began — tightens up Patti’s style no end. Before, it was often shapeless and without discipline of any kind. Now you can even dance to Patti Smith, or at least some of the tracks.

        Even words were improvised in the studio, she says. “I’m not into writing songs. I find that real boring. All our things started out initially as improvisation, but doing them over and over again got them into a formula.

        “I can’t play anything at all, so Lenny and I work out tunes as they go along. I have words and know how I think they should go, so we just pull it out and pull it out further until we get somewhere.”

        She and Kaye first got together in 1971. This followed a period of Patti’s life when she lived at the Chelsea Hotel, writing poetry and spending time with rock musicians in what she describes as a “tequila split life.”

        Before that she was at art school, which followed work in a factory in New Jersey, where she was brought up. It was Dylan sidekick Bobby Neuwirth who introduced her to the changing musical inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel. (Neuwirth is currently playing on Dylan’s tour of New England with Joan Baez).

        “Neuwirth recognised my poetry and immediately introduced me to everybody he knew in rock and roll and kept pumping me to work at it. I studied Rimbaud, too, but being surrounded by these rock and roll rhythms the two moved simultaneously.”

        It wasn’t until 1972 that Patti started making regular appearances in New York. In 1973 Lenny Kaye appeared following a reading Patti gave on the anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death, and from then on things accelerated. Pianist Richard Sohl joined the ranks and gigs followed at anywhere manager Jane Friedman could book them.

        Which just about brings us up to where we began: the ‘Hey Joe’ single recorded at Electric Ladyland. It was a deliberate choice of studio, for Patti strongly allies herself with Hendrix, another artist who took his art beyond contemporary strictures.

        “We had three hours of studio time, but I just did it like we were on stage. Eventually we had ten minutes left and no ‘B’ side, so I recited this poem and the musicians just joined in and we had it done.”

        According to Friedman, that ‘Hey Joe’ chapter lost about $3,000 as so many copies were given away to friends instead of being sold. Part of their deal with Arista was a clause that no more could be made, so it’ll remain a collector’s item for ever.

        Clive Davis’ interest in Patti stems from his days with Columbia, when Patti wrote the lyrics to two songs recorded by Blue Oyster Cult, a CBS act. The deal with Arista is for five albums over the next three years, and meanwhile she has branched out from New York, playing concerts in California for the first time. In the coming months she will embark on her first proper tour, mainly visiting colleges across the country.

        “We’re a group now,” she said. “We’re together and that’s it. I’m in rock and roll now and I’m proud to be in it.”

* * *

There is a rather sad postscript to my friendship with Patti. About a year later a New York underground newspaper called The Planet printed several topless photographs of her with cheesy captions written in the style of top-shelf magazines. Predictably, she was livid and the whole lurid business was the talk of the town in rock circles. As Melody Maker’s man in New York I felt duty bound to mention the vexed issue of Patti and the topless pictures in the news column I sent to London every week. Patti saw it and wasn’t amused. The next time we collided with one another she let me have it. In vain did I try to explain that I wasn’t endorsing the actions of The Planet but that it was my job to report everything, good and bad, that occurred in the NY music world. Patti wasn’t having it and she never spoke to me again.

DAVID JOHANSEN - The Last Doll To Fall Over

The New York Dolls in 1973, picture by Bob Gruen. David Jo is on the right.

The legend of The New York Dolls, erstwhile nominees for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame yet shamefully never inducted, reached its finale last week with the announcement that David Johansen, their singer, had died aged 75, so it’s a pound to a penny it’ll never happen now. Or maybe it will. A dead Doll can’t disrupt proceedings after all. 

        The Dolls were the trashiest of the trash and for a year or two in the 1970s I was on first-name terms with David Jo, the last Doll standing. They were a band that never fitted in but never wanted to either. The field they ploughed alongside very few others, Iggy perhaps, maybe Lou at times, was at the extreme end of decadence, which was where they believed rock should squat. With the possible exception of Keith Moon, I cannot think of anyone who revelled in licentiousness as much as the five Dolls, David, Johnny Thunders, Arthur Kane, Sylvain Sylvain and Jerry Nolan (who replaced original drummer Billy Murcia who died in London in 1972). They made the Pistols look like choirboys. It made them enemies as well as friends, and I liked to think I was their friend, well for some of the time. 

        For a couple of years in New York, from 1974-76, when I was Melody Maker’s man in America, I saw David and his band regularly but they presented me with a dilemma. My predecessor in that role, Roy Hollingworth, adored them, declaring them the future of rock’n’roll, writing, somewhat loquaciously, in MM: “Here on this stage battles a baggage of balls and trousers and high-heeled shoes; and drunkenness and unwashed hair; and untuned guitars and songs that musicians would call a mess but a rock and roll child would say ‘God Bless You – You are so necessary!’ Rock and roll is sex. And the Dolls played on. And they played sex. Non-stop.”

        Such was Roy’s enthusiasm for the Dolls that it seemed churlish for those MM writers that followed him not to share it, to some extent anyway. There was much to admire about them, not least their enthusiastic embrace of an “us against the world” attitude, a stance much respected by those music writers who harboured a militant streak, but at the same time, as Roy noted, they could be very loose on stage, almost to the point of incompetence. Some of their songs, though, were absolute killers, especially ‘Personality Crisis’ and ‘Looking For A Kiss’, both of which were played endlessly on the juke box in Max’s Kansas City and, later, at Ashley’s Bar. 

        The first time I saw them, at the Whiskey in Los Angeles in 1973, I thought they were a hoot, and the second time, at the Academy of Music in New York a year later, I wrote about how much they’d improved but how they seemed intent on imitating the Stones. I would see them perhaps half a dozen more times over the next couple of years, a period that saw their fortunes slipping and sliding alas. At the Academy, however, they were still on a pedestal, their set preceded by a short film that had been made by their biggest fan, Bob Gruen, New York’s hippest rock photographer, then and now a good friend.

The Dolls were social animals, hanging out in New York bars like Max’s and Ashley’s where musicians gathered late into the night, and I got to know singer David Jo well, along with his girlfriend Cyrinda Foxe, a beautiful blonde who left him for Steve Tyler, the singer with Aerosmith. We also bumped into one another at parties and yesterday the US writer Jon Tiven posted this picture of me at the same table as David on my FB page. I think – but I’m not 100% sure – that the girl I’m with at the back is the model Lisa Stolley. 

        Later that same year I saw the Dolls at Club 82, the joint where I first encountered Debbie Harry with The Stilettos. “For the past two Mondays, the Dolls have appeared at the Club 82 in New York, an ideal place for premiering new ‘glittery’ talent in New York, but hardly the kind of venue for a band with two British tours and two albums under their belt,” I wrote in MM. “An obvious step down, in fact, and a sure pointer that all is not well in the Dolls’ camp. Some observers are going as far as saying the Dolls’ demise is a carbon copy of the Velvet Underground’s story in New York. Perhaps in five years’ time, their albums will be hailed as works of art and David Johansen, Johnny Thunders and Co will be resurrected in much the same way as Lou Reed has made his recent comeback.”

It wasn’t to be though Malcolm McLaren, a Dolls groupie, tried his best to resurrect their career by dressing them up in red uniforms and declaring them communists. “The Dolls had only just survived being labelled gay transvestites and had the bruises to prove it. If they were going to pursue the Communist trip under Malcolm's regime, Vivienne [Westwood] was going to have to run up matching bullet proof vests,” wrote Nina Antonia in Too Much Too Soon, her biography of the band, published by Omnibus in 1997 and eagerly commissioned by me. 

Nina's book - highly recommended. 

         When I left New York I thought I’d never see the Dolls again but I was wrong. On the evening of March 10, 1996, I watched what remained of the group – just David and Syl – at Selfridges on Oxford Street where they played in the basement, the Ultra Lounge as it was called in those days, and it was very dark and noisy and smoky, and throughout the evening beautiful models in off-the-shoulder short black dresses with long legs and six-inch heels plied me with champagne. Decadence still followed the Dolls everywhere, it seemed. The event was to mark the opening of a punk fashion week, though quite why the Dolls had been flown over at huge expense from New York for one free gig escaped me completely. For starters they weren’t really punks, more 60% glam, 35% Rolling Stones clones with the remaining 5% punk – but only in attitude, not musically.

         It would have been around midnight when the Dolls finally tottered on to the small stage in their high heels and finery but they played so excruciatingly loud that I was hard pressed to identify anything other than the opening number, ‘Personality Crisis’. Thereafter the Dolls turned up and up and, in a room with a relatively low ceiling that was never intended for live music anyway, the sound degenerated into a great wash of noise. I don’t think my ears have been assaulted in such a way since I stood on John’s side of the stage for Who shows back in the Seventies. As ever, David Jo pranced around like Mick Jagger, colliding into Syl and sharing his mike. Still, despite the volume the Dolls didn’t disappoint.

         My final Dolls show was on June 18, 2004, when the two Dolls who were at Selfridges, David and Syl, appeared with their original bassist Arthur Kane at the Royal Festival Hall as part of that year’s Meltdown Festival, curated by Morrissey, one of their biggest fans who once published a Dolls fanzine. At one point in the show, between numbers, David approached the microphone and thanked their English fans for their support. “And we got a lot of support from a writer on Melody Maker,” he said. “I can’t remember his name.” 

“It was Roy Hollingworth,” I yelled at the top of my voice from where I was sat, in a box at the side. 

David glanced up at the box but I doubt he recognised me from those days back in New York. “That’s right, Roy Hollingworth,” he mumbled into the mike. 

RIP David. 

WHO'S THAT GIRL? Melody Maker 50 Years Ago This Week

Fifty years ago this week I wrote my first piece for Melody Maker on the bands that played in downtown New York, in places like CBGBs and Club 82. The photographer Bob Gruen was my guide and in Club 82 he introduced me to a beautiful girl called Debbie, one of three singers with a group called The Stilettos. 

I visited both CBGBs and Club 82 several times before I wrote the piece and it mentions many acts, the Stilettos among them. I now realise that this was the first ever mention of Debbie Harry in a British newspaper, music or otherwise, and Chris Stein graciously confirms this is in his recent memoir Under A Rock. A Bob Gruen photo accompanied the piece and when I got my hands on a copy I called Debbie at the beauty salon where she worked in those days and we arranged to meet so I could give her that issue of MM. She was very excited to have her picture in a paper, any paper, for the first time. I found the picture below, which was probably taken by Bob, on the internet and if my memory serves me correctly, this is the dress she was wearing on the night I first saw her, so the chances are it was taken that night.

This is the unedited piece I wrote for MM, issue dated July 6, 1974. 

“HEY MAN, what’s happening?” The inevitable hip American greeting is accompanied with “gimme five” (an invitation to shake hands) and responded to with: “Hey man, what’s happening with you?”

    The cynics who say that nothing’s happening in New York today are very wrong. There are dozens of immature young bands playing in scruffy late night places in Greenwich Village and the Bowery every evening, creating a similar atmosphere to that which existed in London in the early sixties.

    Excitement, sweat, crude and simple music and a “take-it-or-leave-it” attitude mingle together in this new generation of bands.

    Cynics dismiss them as trash. They will point out, quite correctly, that they’re not as good as so-and-so who can fill Madison Square Garden, but it’s a lame attitude. Rock must always look towards the future.

    In these seedy clubs inhabited by barely competent musicians lies that future. Somewhere, in among them, is the next generation equivalent of The Rolling Stones or The Who.

    In the same way that the Stones and The Who began their careers as brash and exciting clashes with the accepted music business establishment, so these New York bands clash with their superiors in rock. Through the passage of time the Stones and the Who and countless others have become the establishment they once clashed with so fiercely: the new young bands are railing against this establishment in the same way.

    While record companies promote their newly signed artists with expensive parties for press and radio jocks at established clubs, the new bands just play for the kids. They might not be very good technically but then so were all of today’s rock giants in their formative years. A parallel could easily be drawn between London’s pub rock and these brash new Manhattan bands and their shameless punk rock, overtones of bisexuality and happy untogetherness.

    Two similarities stand out immediately: both types of bands are young musicians from a different generation than the accepted heavies and their followers, and in both cases many of the groups have yet to sign record contracts if, indeed, they will ever be offered one.

    Both types are doing it for love.

    But here the lines draw apart. In the case of the British pub rockers, it seems to be a desire on their part to return to basics, to pull away from the accepted course that rock has taken over the past five years (all original numbers, masses of equipment, blistering guitar solos demonstrating the instrumental ability of the lead guitarist) and simply display general good taste in repertoire culled from the last ten years.

    The music is all important and the band takes second place.

    With the New Yorkers the opposite occurs. The effect is paramount to the music. Shock and outrage is the name of the game: the more freakish, the more outlandish the fetishes of the personnel and the more bizarre their clothes the better. It’s not much more than grabbing a guitar, learning a few chords, applying lipstick, and bingo!

    In general, the music is pretty duff, crash bang repeated riffs coupled with an amateurishness that smacks of taking the plunge before they’re ready. They seem to thrive on tuneless singing and have little concept of sound balance. Good PA systems are probably out of their financial reach, anyway.

    Nevertheless, these misgivings are lost in the atmosphere they create from a mixed bag of influences from rock over the past eight years. They’ve taken ideas from the Stones’ lawlessness, the Who’s punk, Bowie’s bisexuality and Zeppelin’s riffs.

    Who are they? Starting at the top we have the New York Dolls, who are no newcomers nowadays. Regardless of musical merit, they cannot be accused of jumping on the bandwagon as they set it rolling in the first place.

    The Dolls are really outside the confines of underground New York by now: they’ve released a couple of albums and toured on a countrywide basis. They’ve even been over to England.

    In the wake of the Dolls are scores more, too numerous to mention and chances are I’m missing some here and now. In no particular order we have Teenage Lust, the Fast, Jet Black, Television, the Stilettos, the Miamis, Palace, the Harlots of 42nd St., Star Theatre, Wayne County, Another Pretty Face and the Brats. At the time of writing some may be splitting, some may no longer exist and personnel from two or more may have formed a new band.

    They play at places like the 82 Club (far and away the most popular), the Coventry in Queens, CBGBs in the Bowery, Upstairs at Max’s (occasionally) and the Mushroom in the Village. Without exception, they’re seedy low-spots in a city that has managed to encompass the best of the best and the worst of the worst.

    ‘Phone up the 82 Club any time of the day or night and you receive a recorded message: “Dance, dance, dance,” says an oldish-sounding man. “Dance the night away. This is where the Stars hang out. David Bowie, John Lennon. Free roast buffet on Sundays and live music every Wednesday. This Wednesday...”

    Almost all of the above bands have played the 82 Club and even if they haven’t, the musicians who comprise them can be found down there. I’ve seen Bowie there once, and Lennon reportedly once paid a ten minute visit but left after being surrounded by kids.

    It costs anything between two and five dollars to get inside, depending on the night of the week or whether there’s a band. It’s more like an English discotheque than a club, but the premises (and name) have a long history. From the 1940s up to the end of the sixties it was one of New York’s most glamorous drag theatres.

    Female impersonators, transvestites and their ilk made the 82 their home, and even today the element of bi-sexuality runs strong. On the door and behind the bar are some of New York’s more celebrated butch women.

    But back to the bands. They play on Wednesdays and generally pack the place. Never had I seen the 82 more crowded than about three weeks back when Wayne County topped the bill over the Stilettos. Wayne came out in full drag which was pretty stunning, but the music was overly loud and under inspired for my tastes. He went down a bomb though.

    The Stilettos, who opened up, had more potential but less rehearsal. Fronted by a cuddly platinum blonde called Debbi [sic], they’re a girl vocal trio with a male guitar/bass/drums back-up band.

    The three chicks take turns to sing solo while the other two chant away behind, and some of the songs were well worth putting on vinyl. Ninety-five per cent were original, but the style was taken from the late ‘fifties era of vocal groups.

    In the same vein, but slicker and with an added male singer, are Teenage Lust who’ve been going the rounds for over two years now. Again there’s three girls aptly titled the Lustettes who are the focal point of the group. The girls have carefully choreographed routines which they stick to with rigid discipline.

    Their singer wears a white tail suit and white topper, and jumps around a lot, easing himself from the stage on to any piece of furniture available that will stand his weight. They were loud and visually exciting, but I felt the material let them down, especially when the girls weren’t on stage.

    Television are another whose expertise is overshadowed by their enthusiasm: I saw them a few months back when they were woefully under-rehearsed and little more than a joke. Last weekend at CBGBs (far less populated than the 82), they did better.

    They’re crude but young and the bass player needs a crash course in fundamentals before they’ll get any better. The second time I saw them they reminded me of The Searchers with their unison vocal work and ringing, trebly guitars. Again, they did all original material.

    Another Pretty Face are a five piece band who don’t rely entirely on their own material, but pick intelligently from British material which never caught on in America. They plunder savagely from Roxy Music and T. Rex and put over excellent cover versions.

    Though their initial impact is with the gay rock liberation movement, and the singer imitates David Bowie depressingly well, there’s talent beneath the make-up that’s gotta show through sooner or later. I think it will. Star Theatre actually drove me out of CBGBs the other night when I’d gone along to catch the Stilettos for a second time. They feature Eric “Love” Emerson on vocals, a one-time protégé of Andy Warhol who comes on rather like Arthur Brown, lighting candles and squatting like a Russian folk dancer to sing his songs.

    It was the volume that drove me away rather than the actual show as they’re as tight a band than any around. After the happy untogetherness of the Stilettos it was too much to take: miking up drums in a place no larger than the average living room is surely going too far.

    There are the Miamis who everyone assures me are “better than so and so,” and the Fast are forever filling my letter box with invitations to go and see them. 

Lou Reed in 1974

Fifty years ago this week I interviewed Lou Reed which wasn’t as onerous a task as I had been led to believe it might be. Lou could be a bit of a curmudgeon at the best of times but apart from when I asked him if he’d been to see Bob Dylan during his recent shows at Madison Square Garden, he was reasonably civil towards me. His response to the Dylan question comes towards the end of the piece I wrote for Melody Maker which I’ve now posted on Just Backdated, link below. 

As it happened I became reasonably friendly with Lou in 1976, as my stint as MM’s man in New York was coming to an end. He was a regular at Ashley's bar & restaurant on Fifth Avenue at 13th Street, often in the company of Jonny Podell, his manager at the time, and Rachel, his girlfriend whose gender was always in doubt. One night, my friend Glen Colson – who was sleeping on my couch at the time – and I got talking to Lou at Ashley’s and I mentioned that I’d reviewed his show at the Palladium, and Glen offered to drop off a copy of that week’s MM at his apartment. 

At Lou’s place on the East Side he was greeted by Rachel. She roused Lou from the bedroom and the MM was handed over. Their living room full to the brim with old black and white RCA TV sets that he’d used as the backdrop to the Palladium show and Lou offered Glen some. Glen called me and when I gave him the thumbs up he relieved Lou of three TVs which he loaded into a cab and brought round to my flat on East 78th Street. I think Lou had got them from a hospital where they were surplus to requirements. They didn’t work that well, probably because we had to use coat hangers from a dry-cleaners as aerials. I wasn’t that bothered. In the four years I spent in New York I never felt the need to watch TV. I liked Robert Stack as Elliot Ness and a news show called 60 Minutes but most US TV was crap and, in any case, I was out and about pretty much every night. 

Over to you Lou. 

Lou Reed: Man Of Few Words

We’re up on the 37th floor of a Park Avenue office block that faces north and thus commands an extensive view of New York’s Central Park and Harlem way out in the distance. Lou Reed sits in a director’s swivel chair and looks uncomfortable.

    It’s not that he doesn’t like doing interviews, it’s just that it usually helps if he has a friend with him to smooth out the atmosphere and encourage conversation. Today no such friend is available and Lou seems a little lost for words, and rather than say something he doesn’t want to say, he doesn’t say anything at all.

    The continuing story of Lou Reed reached another chapter last month with the release of a live album titled Rock And Roll Animal, recorded at New York’s Academy of Music around Christmas It contains familiar Reed material, ‘Heroin’, ‘Sweet Jane’ and ‘Rock And Roll’ and the sound quality is really excellent for a live show.

    And, in keeping with Reed’s persistently changing image, his appearance has changed yet again. Today, and for at least the next few weeks, he has very short hair, almost a crew-cut, dyed black, and without any growth at all descending below the height of his ears. Last week he had Iron Crosses dyed into the black, but they’ve gone today.

    He looks, in fact, rather like a convict or a soldier. He is very thin. His blue denim jacket tends to drop off his shoulders and his jeans would be tight on others if not on him. He talks very quietly. Also very little.

    Thus when I inquired what motivated him to put out a live album of old material at this stage in his career, he replied quite simply that a mobile recording studio was available and he thought he might as well use it. And he was equally vague about the musicians who played with him on the concert and record.

    “There was Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on guitars, Prakash John on bass, Whitey Glan on drums, Ray Colcord on bass and me on vocals. I don’t know whether I’ll be playing with them again, though. They all have private ambitions of their own.

    “I’ve almost got a band together of my own at the moment, but we haven’t rehearsed yet. It includes Doug Yule, who was in the Velvet Underground, and Steve Katz and I may play acoustic guitars or we may not depending on what happens.”

    It seems that Lou had plans to go over to England to record with this new band during early May, but the power problems have put him off. “I think the English work harder in the studio,” he says, “but I can’t go there if there’s no power. The engineers seem to care more and they do more with less than the Americans do.

    “I’ve written plenty of material recently, more than enough for an album and I like it. I think it’s rock and roll. It has a drum,” he grins.

    I asked whether he preferred to work in the studio or onstage. Again his answer was vague. “I haven’t done either in such a long time that I really don’t know.” So why is it he doesn’t work too often? “My condition.” He was reluctant to amplify.

    I changed direction and mentioned David Bowie. “He’s very clever. We found we had a lot of things in common.”

    I suggested his career took an uplift as a result of this flirtation but he wasn’t about to give Bowie any more credit than he felt was due. “David learned how to be hip,” he replied with a glint in his eye. “Associating with me brought his name out to a lot more people, too. He’s very good in the studio. In a manner of speaking he produced an album for me.”

    But certain observers thought it was a step in the wrong direction for Reed. “People think a lot of things,” he replied.

    “I enjoyed those shows I did in London at the Rainbow, but I kept thinking, Frank Zappa fell 17 feet down into that pit. I hate Frank Zappa, and it made me so happy to think about that.

    “I like the direction my career is going right now. It has more direction and cohesiveness. I don’t think I’m a singer, with or without a guitar. I give dramatic readings that are almost my tunes. Did you know that my real voice has never been heard? What they usually do in the studio is to speed up the vocal track and make my voice higher. I scream, when I play live because when you scream your voice goes up...like this – Sweet Jane,” he yelled.

    He paused: “I liked Mott The Hoople’s version of that song,” he went on. “I did a reference vocal for them. The one I really liked was Brownsville Station’s version of that song. I loved that. I hope they release it as a single.

    “I liked ‘Walk On The Wild Side’, too. I found the secret with that one. I was supposed to write a play called The Walk On The Wild Side and I read the book and wrote the song. Nothing came of the play but I wasn’t going to waste the time and energy I put into the song so I put it out.

    “People don’t deserve good lyrics because they never listen to them these days. That’s why the melody has to be good, When I have a lyric that I think everybody will like, I won’t drown it out, though. If it’s a secret lyric I’ll bury it. I don’t print lyrics on record sleeves, except with Berlin and then they wrote them with a quill pen, the stupid fuckers. They wrote them out in longhand because they thought that was chic. I could have killed them.”

    Reed says he listens to very little music other than his own and The Kinks. He is a great admirer of Ray Davies. “I liked the Great Lost Kinks album where Ray stands revealed. I’d love to see them in a nice little cabaret setting singing their nice little songs.”

    Reed says he is continually changing his appearance through boredom. “I found I couldn’t really solve the boredom by changing my appearance but at least I could stop some of the hassle. I don’t have to comb my hair now because there isn’t enough.

    At this stage in the interview, Steve Katz walked into the room. Katz, the former guitarist with Blood, Sweat & Tears, produced Reed’s live album, so I asked how he came to be involved with Reed.

    “I admire him as a person, musician and organiser,” said Reed. “I can’t organise anything. I have a lot of problems when it comes to organisation.”

    For no apparent reason, Reed then launched into a seething criticism of Jefferson Airplane, expressing the view that they represented the worst in everything, both musical and ideally. “I hate everything about them, the way they dress, the way they look, the way they play, the cute name. I despise every San Francisco group except Moby Grape and they broke up.”

    So I asked whether Lou had been to see Bob Dylan on the recent tour. “Are you kidding?” he replied. “I know what Bob Dylan looks like and he’s too short to see anyway. I saw the back of his head once. I didn’t want to go to see him, especially if he is giving his money to Israel. If he gave some to Israel and some to the Arabs it would be different.”

    I mentioned the New York Dolls a band I thought Lou would like. 

    “You know, I tried so hard to like the New York Dolls but I couldn’t. I like the titles of their songs. It’s such a shame. They’re just another glitter trash band.

    “I’m still mad that Fats Domino never made it properly. He could have been a blues artist in the tradition of Bessie Smith.”

    And with that last comment, Reed offered a limp handshake and disappeared into the afternoon.

THE NEW YORK DOLLS

The New York Dolls presented me with a dilemma when I was Melody Maker’s man in America. My predecessor in that role, Roy Hollingworth, adored them, declaring them the future of rock’n’roll, and such was his enthusiasm that it seemed churlish for those that followed not to share it, to some extent anyway. There was much to admire about them, not least their us against the world attitude, a stance that was respected by all music writers who harboured a militant streak, but at the same time they could be very loose, almost to the point of incompetence. 

They were social animals, hanging out in New York bars like Max’s Kansas City and Ashley’s where musicians gathered, and I got to know their singer David Johansen and his girlfriend Cyrinda Foxe, a beautiful blonde who left him for Steve Tyler, the singer with Aerosmith, whom she married. My pal Bob Gruen loved the Dolls too, and this only added to my dilemma when it came to writing about them.  

    Fifty years ago last week I watched them headline over Elliott Murphey at the Academy of Music in New York, and this was my rather orthodox review for MM’s Caught In The Act page, dated February 23, 1974. 

A noticeable aspect of the current rock scene here is the number of artists who are very directly influenced by musicians from the sixties. Generally, these fall into two schools – those with Dylan leanings and those with Rolling Stones leanings.

    The Dylan school encompasses a string of “thinking” lyric-writing electric guitar players who front their own bands and seem to be reliving Dylan’s Blond On Blonde era. The Stones school includes hordes of bands who are out to shock and outrage and whose musical ability is far surpassed by their physical appearance and apparent enthusiasm.

    Elliott Murphey belongs to the former school and the New York Dolls to the latter. Both appeared at the Academy of Music on Friday evening, the Dolls headlining in front of a sell-out crowd that was partisan to say the least.

    Enough words have been written about the Dolls in these pages recently to encircle the globe, but it seems only fair to point out that their prowess as musicians does seem to have increased since the last time I saw them – four months ago at the Whiskey in Los Angeles. Nevertheless, of course, there isn’t a shadow of originality about their entire performance, based so obviously on the Rolling Stones that one tends to think that maybe it’s some kind of Mike Yarwood of rock and roll up there on stage.

    The early half of their set – which began with a film of themselves – was surprisingly tight. They’ve obviously been rehearsing recently and taken instant courses on how to play guitars. The latter half, however, descended into a deafening musical abyss, all stemming from David Johansen’s vocal work which gradually lost its pitch amidst his enthusiasm. By the end he was yelling his head off.

    But the Dolls are the Dolls and in New York it doesn’t really matter how well or badly they play.

    Elliott Murphey, on the other hand, had to work hard but even then his music seemed lost on the Dolls aficionados. While Murphey’s band does have its flaws, the man himself has star quality. He plays an electric guitar well, writes some good songs and stands squat about the stage as if he means business. 

    Murphey’s band includes an excellent drummer, his own brother on bass and a keyboard and rhythm guitarist. The second guitar player might as well not have been there – his contribution was a big zero – while the organist, too, seemed held back. Murphey, in white suit and shades, is the obvious star of the proceedings and some of his guitar licks were both tasteful and original.

MY STINT AS MM’S MAN IN AMERICA Part 19 – 1974 continued

My Melody Maker credentials made it remarkably easy to infiltrate New York’s rock’n’roll scene. The paper was selling 200,000 copies a week back in the UK and labels were well aware that coverage in MM would help their acts sell records there. I soon became a familiar face among the rock’n’roll cognoscenti. I saw the same men and women at clubs like the Bottom Line and Bitter End or backstage at gigs or at record company parties and was soon on Christian name terms with all the city’s music writers, PRs, and a few managers and concert promoters. It was a bit of a closed world but, boy, did we enjoy ourselves. 

        As far as I was aware, there were three rock photographers operating in New York in those days: Bob Gruen, who was everywhere that mattered, Leee (note the three e’s) Black Childers, who was outrageously gay and favoured the glam world, and Chuck Pulin, who seemed the least well connected, at least to me, and worked for Sounds. Leee’s pictures had already appeared in MM when Roy Hollingworth was our man in NY but my instincts told me Bob was the man to approach as my photographer of choice to accompany me to interviews and shows where I needed a picture to illustrate my story. We cut a deal that suited both of us. Any picture he took where access was enabled by me belonged to Melody Maker for one month. Thereafter it was his to sell to all and sundry in perpetuity. We saw a lot of rock together and became good friends. Still are. 

Bob operated out of a cramped apartment on the Lower West Side and could be counted on to fill me in on whatever was happening in the New York rock world. Every time I called Bob he’d say, “What’s happening, man?” and sometimes he’d call me and open up the conversation with the same question. Of course, Bob always knew what was happening more than anyone else I knew in New York, whether it was on the streets or in the clubs. It was instinct with him, and I liked the fact that he was just as enthused about taking pictures of some unsigned punk band as he was taking pictures of The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin or John Lennon, with whom he developed a close relationship. Bob was an energetic, wiry little fellow with afro-styled hair. He drove a beat-up old VW Beetle, always wore a black leather jacket, t-shirt and jeans and more often than not had a tiny spliff clamped between his lips. For all his energy, he was as laid-back as anyone I’d ever met, unflappable, Mr Cool. Still is.  

Bob Gruen. I think this is a self portrait. 

Inevitably, it was Bob who introduced me to the New York Underground. It was a matter of routine for me to write about acts, famous or otherwise, that were contracted to record labels but it was quite another thing to venture out on my own initiative to see an act that wasn’t signed and wasn’t expecting any interest from a paper like MM. I’d heard a bit about rowdy young bands playing in a rough downtown club on the Bowery called CBGBs and in a club not far away called Club 82, and I decided to check out this scene for myself. I was a bit unsure about all this so I called Bob for advice. He suggested I join him in a couple of night’s time in Club 82 where a band he liked called The Stilettos was playing. “There’s this singer, a blonde girl, looks just like Marilyn Monroe,” he said on the phone. “Check her out man, you won’t believe it.”

Club 82 was an old-style drag club with mirrors everywhere, famous in its day for its risqué floor shows but now fallen on hard times, and the girls who worked it, all of them of a certain age with short cropped hair and dressed in dark men’s suits with buttoned-up shirts and ties, had figured that a bit of rock’n’roll might keep the creditors at bay. For a while it became a sort of sister club to CBGBs, of which more later, but it was never as well-known. Still, it was fun, with more of a party atmosphere than CBGBs. On the night Bob suggested I paid my $3 on the door – no freebies for MM writers here – and went inside, bought a beer and found him by the stage, camera at the ready.  

The Stilettos turned out to be supporting Wayne/Jane County, with whom I was already familiar because I’d seen him/her at Max’s Kansas City. The support act, The Stilettos, was a trio, backed by a four piece, who took their cue from the girl groups of the pre-Beatles Sixties. There was a black girl, a redhead and a blonde who stood in the middle and appeared to be the leader, and Bob was right. She wore a clingy, low-cut, full-length, off-the-shoulder, satin ball gown in all gold that flattered her figure, and she was a dead-ringer for Marilyn, with platinum hair, a cute smile and strawberry lips. Their set was under-rehearsed and short – everybody’s was down there – and afterwards Bob took me backstage to meet her. 

Her name, of course, was Debbie. Up close she was incredibly beautiful, but she was also cool, committed and she knew her pop. I tried not to let her appearance interfere with my interviewing technique as we talked about this and that while Bob took some more pictures. She told me she wanted to be a full-time singer but she had a daytime job in a New Jersey beauty parlour right now. She hoped someday to get into the music business full time. I told her I’d stay in touch and she gave me her phone number. Bob took some more pictures, and I went away and, in a week or two, mentioned her and The Stilettos in a generic piece I wrote about several unsigned New York bands who were operating downtown. 

        “Never had I seen the 82 more crowded than about three weeks back than when Wayne County topped the bill over The Stilettos,” I wrote. “Wayne came out in full drag which was pretty stunning, but the music was overly loud and under inspired for my tastes. He went down a bomb though.” 

        The piece mentioned 10 other acts, but I found room for Debbie. “The Stilettos, who opened up, had more potential but less rehearsal. Fronted by a cuddly platinum blonde called Debbi (sic), they’re a girl vocal trio with a male guitar/bass/drums back-up band. The three chicks take turns to sing solo while the other two chant away behind, and some of the songs were well worth putting on vinyl. Ninety-five per cent were original, but the style was taken from the late 'fifties era of vocal groups.”

        I have good reason to believe that the 74 words in that second paragraph – out of a total of about 1,500 in the whole piece – were the first ever to be written about Debbie Harry that appeared in a British paper, music or otherwise.

The Stilettos on stage at the 82 Club. Left to right: Chris Stein, Debbie H, Elda Gentile, Rosa Ross & Frankie Harlot. Picture by Bob Gruen.

It just so happened that Bob gave me a few pictures of Debbie that I sent over to London and, somewhat inevitably in the light of her appearance, someone on the subs desk at MM opted to use them to illustrate the feature. A week or two later that issue of MM landed on my doorstep so I called her up at the beauty parlour where she worked and told her that her picture was in Melody Maker. She was very excited about this. It was evidently the first time she’d ever had her picture in a magazine, or so she told me, and she seemed desperate to get her hands on a copy. 

        A night or two later she drove up to my apartment on East 78th Street in an old green banger with bench seats. I gave her three copies of the paper and took her out to dinner at a Japanese restaurant on the West Side. Over sushi and tempura and sake she told me that The Stilettos were breaking up and she was forming a new band with her boyfriend, Chris Stein, their guitarist, its name as yet undecided. I took note of this and would mentioned her plans in my next MM New York news column, no doubt the first mention of the fledgling Blondie anywhere. 

        It was around midnight when Debbie Harry drove back through Central Park to drop me off at my place over on the East Side. Before getting out of her car I pulled her towards me across the bench seat, kissed her on the lips and invited her inside. But I was too late – she’d already met that other Chris.

BLONDIE, The Roundhouse, May 3, 2017

Anyone labouring under the misapprehension that Blondie is an oldies act sustaining their career into the 21^st Century by relying on a catalogue of juicy hits from yesteryear would have been rudely awakened at London’s Roundhouse last night. The group’s tight and assured 15-song set included no fewer than five new songs from the album Pollinator, due for release tomorrow, and it must have been heartening for them to observe how the packed crowd responded, evidently enjoying the new material almost as much as they did tried and tested favourites like ‘Rapture’, ‘Heart Of Glass’ and ‘Atomic’. This probably had something to do with the fact that they sounded a bit like Blondie of old, of which more later.

Indeed, it is a tribute to the confidence of the present-day Blondie that three of their biggest hits – ‘Sunday Girl’, ‘The Tide Is High’ (both UK number ones) and ‘Denis (Denee)’ (their UK chart debut at number two) – went unplayed. This is a supercharged, thoroughly modern Blondie, match fit through extensive touring; together now since 2010, when guitarist Tommy Kessler replaced Paul Carbonara, joining the core trio of original members – singer Debbie Harry, guitarist Chris Stein and drummer Clem Burke – alongside relative newcomers Leigh Fox (who arrived in 1999) on bass, and multi-keyboard player Matt Katz-Bohan (2008).

Arriving on stage promptly at ten minutes to nine the group tore into ‘One Way Or Another’, the same opening song as when I last saw them about two and a half years ago at this same venue. On that occasion it was a double bill with Chrissie Hynde, who opened the show, but this time Blondie were on their own, poised and in command of the stage from the outset, and after a slight adjustment to the sound levels – up in the balcony I couldn’t hear the vocals at first – we had lift off.

Throughout the group played before a backdrop that alternated between futuristic films of the sci-fi variety and footage from their first flush of success, and for the first four songs Debbie chose to wear a black smock with the legend ‘Stop Fucking The Planet’ over her red dress, leaving little doubt about her attitude towards the current incumbent of the White House. Almost 40 years to the day from Blondie’s UK debut (Bournemouth, May 17, 1977), their singer is a legend now and rightly so, but she’s no Greta Garbo, shrinking into a closeted hinterland of introspection to grudgingly observe the many who have jumped on the bandwagon she herself launched. Using the whole of a large stage to greet her fans, she has an affable, warm personality that comes across rather like a favourite aunt, the one in whom you could confide when you were a teenager. As I noted at that earlier show, however, she is still as pretty as a picture, an ageless miracle in fact, her peroxide blonde hair falling over her shoulders and shimmering beneath the spotlights as she sings. Her voice is in good shape too, with solid vocal back up from Stein, Kessler and, most especially, Katz-Bohan. Immediately behind her Clem Burke is fronted by a transparent Perspex screen and from where I was sat it was possible to make out Debbie’s rather ghostly reflection when she was stage centre and the lighting just so. I suspect she wasn’t even aware of the effect.

‘One Way…’ was followed by ‘Hanging On The Telephone’, preceded by a brief explanation from Debbie about the nature of phones in the era it was recorded (1978) in case any in the mobile-fixated audience found the lyrics bewildering. Next up was ‘Fun’, the first of the five new songs and, like the others (‘My Monster’, ‘Fragments’, ‘Long Time’ and ‘Gravity’), it was clear that the group is seeking to replicate the power pop sound with which they triumphed in their heyday. Less experimental in tone and with more emphasis on uplifting choruses, they sound like the Blondie of the late seventies, though ‘Fragments’ goes through varying tempos, and a keyboard solo in ‘Long Time’ sounded like the theme from one of those old westerns when a male voice choir serenaded a coffin up Dead Man’s Hill.

Judiciously blended with the new material were old favourites like ‘Call Me’, which featured Katz-Bohan soloing on one of those portable keyboards around his neck; ‘In The Flesh’, their first hit, given a slow, dramatic but slightly ponderous reading; and ‘Rapture’, which as before segued into ‘Fight For The Right To Party’, a rap extravaganza reflecting Blondie’s early pioneering of this style. It gave Chris Stein a chance to solo, playing with harmonics and feedback, his most upfront contribution to the evening, while Clem turbo powered consistently from the back.

These days Stein seems content to play a supportive role in the stage group, the wise old lion looking on while the younger cubs prance around. ‘Rapture’ aside, he confines himself to chords and riffs, usually on the lower strings on his guitar, cool as ice, permanently shaded, his hair white now, the soul of the group. His fellow stalwart Burke, on the other hand, is still the band’s engine room, unrelenting, staunch and sturdy. I probably wasn’t alone in noticing that Clem wore a New York City t-shirt in the design favoured by John Lennon that for the encore he had changed to one emblazoned with the logo of CBGBs. Always the Blondie man most respectful of rock’s past, he is a showman drummer in the tradition of Keith Moon, chucking his sticks into the air, tumbling around the kit and at one point adopting one of those Moon poses with one arm high in the air and the other at right angles. He is largely responsible for bringing many of Blondie’s songs to a thumping close, soloing briefly before the final crashing chord, and tireless throughout. 

A glorious ‘Atomic’ proved a crowd favourite, greatly extended as Tommy Kessler, as skinny as a whippet, played the guitar hero in an expanded coda, ending up on top of a speaker cabinet and playing behind his neck while Debbie watched from the side, content to let the spotlight fall elsewhere. ‘Heart Of Glass’, more muscular than the discofied hit single, brought the set proper to a close before a three-song encore that opened with ‘Maria’, another sing-along, and closed on a full-tilt ‘Dreaming’, Clem as busy and irreplaceable as ever.

Ninety minutes had passed remarkably quickly, and on my way out I found myself in step behind Keren Woodward, Sarah Dallin and Siobhan Fahey, the reunited Bananarama, unchaperoned and no doubt deep in thought after watching Debbie Harry and her men demonstrate how it should be done. If Bananarama can muster up half the panache of Blondie they’ll do ok.

PATTI SMITH – 1975 Interview

This year marks the 40^th anniversary of the releases of Patti Smith’s Horses album, which she is performing in its entirety while on a world tour, and a week or two ago it was announced that she and her band will be one of the headlining acts at Glastonbury in June. I wish her well. The first time I saw her, at New York’s Bottom Line Club in 1974, I was intrigued – and then a little surprised when she and her band closed their set with a ramshackle stab at ‘My Generation’. For a few moments I wasn’t sure whether this was a tribute to The Who or a pisstake, but I decided that since she looked like Keith Richards and her heart was so obviously in the right place it had to be the former.

          I knew Patti’s guitar player Lenny Kaye quite well. He was a rock writer, and a very good one, and also a mine of information about New York rock, garage bands and everything that was great about rock’n’roll. He once gave me a Gene Vincent 78 – ‘Blue Jean Bop’ on a silver and blue Capitol label – for my birthday, a seriously fine present, that I kept on a shelf in my flat for three years but it got lost somehow when I left NY for London in 1978. So did quite a bit of other rock’n’roll memorabilia as it happens.

          Through Lenny I got to know Patti, saw her play a few more times and interviewed her for Melody Maker in November 1975 just as she was emerging as a serious contender. Then it all went pear-shaped. The Soho Weekly News, a sort of poor man’s Village Voice, published some topless pictures of Patti with cheesecake captions that were guaranteed to infuriate her. For a week or so this was the talk of the NY rock biz and I felt obliged to mention the uproar in the ‘News From New York’ column that I wrote each week. Patti saw it, took umbrage and gave me an earful the next time we met, at a post-gig party for Black Sabbath at the Plaza Hotel if I remember rightly. In vain did I plead that I wasn’t supporting what the SWN had done but felt I had a duty to cover all music biz stories from NY and, like it or not, this was a story. Patti felt I should have ignored it – and she never spoke to me again.

          Here’s my story about Patti and interview with her, written in 1975 and timed to coincide with the release of Horses. The interview took place in an empty apartment on the Westside where Patti and her band were rehearsing.

Last month they caught Patti Hearst — and so ended the biggest man (or woman) hunt in the history of the US. All this is history now, of course, but it’ll probably be the subject of at least two best-selling novels in the near future, not to mention a major screen movie.

          But perhaps the first outside view of the Patti Hearst case came from New York’s sparrow-like poetess Patti Smith, then a struggling personality in the underground rock scene of the city. With considerable difficulty she raised $1,000 and headed for Electric Ladyland Studios in Greenwich Village and recorded a version of the traditional Hendrix classic, ‘Hey Joe’.

          The inspiration for this move was provided by the words of newspaper magnate Randolph Hearst who, on seeing the picture of his daughter holding a rifle, exclaimed to the anxious ears of America: “What are you doing with that gun in your hand?”

          Patti Smith’s version of ‘Hey Joe’ was a bitch of a record. Opening with a poetic dialogue about the Hearst situation, it gradually flowed into the regular song. It was chock-full of atmosphere and, for topicality, it really couldn’t be beaten. Had it received more exposure, I’m sure that Patti Smith would have been an overnight sensation. It didn’t though, and it never will. About 1,000 copies of Patti’s ‘Hey Joe’ were pressed and made available by mail order through her management company and selected record shops down in the Village. According to Patti’s manager, Jane Friedman, the project lost around $3,000, even though the singles were sold at $2.50, a mark-up of over 50 per cent on the regular singles’ price.

          Today it’s a collector’s item, and no more are available.

          Also today, Patti Smith stands on the brink of success after a long, hard struggle. This summer she signed with Arista Records, and her debut album is out in the states this month.

          Thanks to Clive Davis, the boss of Arista, she is only the second of many artists in this (New York) fringe rock fraternity to be recognised by a record company. The first, of course, was the New York Dolls, whose recording career slumped after two albums.

          But Ms. Smith does not belong in the same category as the Dolls, or any rock band, for that matter. Some may call her a singer, but she is really an improvising lyricist whose performances rush with crazy momentum as each song, or poem, unrolls. She recites with a musical backdrop, frequently breaking into song as the energy spirals, criss-crossing between the two and, more often than not, making up the words as she stumbles headlong forward.

          Her band has been increasing in size over the years. Four years back it was just Patti and her guitarist Lenny Kaye, an occasional rock journalist and walking encyclopaedia on the last two decades of pop in America. Kaye, who three years ago, incidentally, compiled the Nuggets album of relatively obscure US singles for the Elektra label, might be described as a free-form guitarist, as he plays random notes at will according to the prompting of Patti’s dialogue. They understand one another and, as such, it’s doubtful whether any orthodox guitar player would fit.

          Pianist Richard Sohl is a similar performer. Like Kaye, nothing he plays can be predicted beforehand. Recently two other musicians have been added: a second guitarist, Ivan Kral, who, like Patti, bears a striking resemblance to Keith Richards, and drummer Jay Dougherty. There is no bass player — Patti feels a drummer is ample rhythm.

          John Cale was brought in to produce her first Arista album, Horses, which is released this month. It was on this topic that we began what turned out to be a very lengthy conversation last week. “It’s a live album,” she informs me, squatting on the floor. “There’s hardly any overdubbing at all. We just went in and did the songs straight away.

          “In the studio we went through hell. I asked John to do it for me, I begged him to, and we had nothing but friction, but it was a love-hate relationship and it worked. At first I wanted an engineer producer, somebody like Tom Dowd, but Atlantic wouldn’t let him go, so I figured I’d get a top artist producer who would act as a mirror.

          “The whole thing in the studio was us proving to John that we could do it the way we wanted, so we fought a lot but it was fighting on a very intimate level.”

          The result is an album that’s actually far more melodic than the half dozen or so occasions I’ve watched Patti perform in various places in New York. The inclusion of a drummer – Dougherty was brought in immediately before the sessions began – tightens up Patti’s style no end. Before, it was often shapeless and lacked discipline of any kind. Now you can even dance to Patti Smith, or at least some of the tracks.

          Even words were improvised in the studio, she says. “I’m not into writing songs. I find that real boring. All our things started out initially as improvisation, but doing them over and over again got them into a formula. I can’t play anything at all, so Lenny and I work out tunes as they go along. I have words and know how I think they should go, so we just pull it out and pull it out further until we get somewhere.”

          She and Kaye first got together in 1971. This followed a period of Patti’s life when she lived at the Chelsea Hotel, writing poetry and spending time with rock musicians in what she describes as a “tequila split life”. Before that she was at art school, which followed work in a factory in New Jersey, where she was brought up. It was Dylan cohort Bobby Neuwirth who introduced her to the changing musical inhabitants of the Chelsea Hotel. (Neuwirth is currently playing on Dylan’s tour of New England with Joan Baez.)

          “Neuwirth recognised my poetry and immediately introduced me to everybody he knew in rock and roll and kept pumping me to work at it. I studied Rimbaud, too, but being surrounded by these rock and roll rhythms the two moved simultaneously.”

          It wasn’t until 1972 that Patti started making regular appearances in New York.

In 1973 Lenny Kaye appeared following a reading Patti gave on the anniversary of Jim Morrison’s death, and from then on things accelerated. Pianist Richard Sohl joined the ranks and gigs followed at anywhere manager Jane Friedman could book them.

          Which just about brings us up to where we began: the ‘Hey Joe’ single recorded at Electric Ladyland. It was a deliberate choice of studio, for Patti strongly allies herself with Hendrix, another artist who took his art beyond contemporary strictures.

          “We had three hours of studio time, but I just did it like we were on stage. Eventually we had ten minutes left and no ‘B’ side, so I recited this poem and the musicians just joined in and we had it done.”

          According to Friedman, that ‘Hey Joe’ chapter lost about $3,000 as so many copies were given away to friends instead of being sold. Part of their deal with Arista was a clause that no more could be made, so it’ll remain a collector’s item for ever.

          Clive Davis’s interest in Patti stems from his days with Columbia, when Patti wrote the lyrics to two songs recorded by Blue Oyster Cult, a CBS act. The deal with Arista is for five albums over the next three years, and meanwhile she has branched out from New York, playing concerts in California for the first time. In the coming months she will embark on her first proper tour, mainly visiting colleges across the country.

          “We’re a group now,” she says. “We’re together and that’s it. I’m in rock and roll now and I’m proud to be in it.”