The First Time I Saw Joey Ramone: For His Birthday (May 19, 1951)

Text by Shari Edmands / FFanzeen, 2023

Introduction © Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2023
Images from the Internet

I became acquainted with Shari while she worked at Max’s Kansas City, in the late 1970s. She is an amazing artist and cartoonist, and I published a few of her humorous Max’s Funnies in the print version of my physical FFanzeen in the early 1980s. This is a reprint of a Facebook blog on May 19, 2023 that she wrote about the first time she was Joey Ramone perform in a pre-Ramones band which shared a bill with SUICIDE, reprinted with her permission. – Robert Barry Francos, 2023

 

Sniper

The First Time I Saw Joey Ramone: For His Birthday (May 19, 1951)

The very first time I saw Joey Ramone perform live was as “Jeff Starship,” fronting the glam rock band (we called it “glitter” back then) SNIPER, at Coventry, on Queens Blvd in Sunnyside, Queens in 1973. I was 16 at the time and going to Art & Design High School in the city. SNIPER was opening for a duo that my Art & Design friends and I had heard much about, and we’d gone to check out: SUICIDE. We knew the singer was a painter/sculptor/installation artist that was getting a lot of attention, so we were intrigued.

When we got to the club, we found a place to sit on the floor about twelve feet from the stage. The crowd all found seats on the floor around us. The room filled up fast.

When the lights went down, and SNIPER got on stage, I was immediately spellbound by the lanky front man with bangs and sunglasses. First of all, he was taller than anybody I had ever seen in my entire life – let alone someone fronting a rock and roll band. Even without the 8-inch-high hot pink platform boots he was wearing, he would’ve been taller than anyone I’d ever seen. Super long skinny legs in hot pink shiny hip-hugger spandex pants, hot pink platform boots, and a dangling long black scarf. Long dark wavy hair with short bangs, big cheekbones, and round shades. And he had a stance that looked as if he was hardly moving, but even without moving much, his delivery actually seemed quite aggressive. He had a unique vocal style. Everything about him was unique.

I don’t recall the music very well to tell you the truth. And I don’t recall the other members of the band because I couldn’t keep my eyes off the singer. I just remember thinking “I will never forget this front man for the rest of my life.”

After their set, we were anxious to see the headliner. I’ll make this next part short because this story is really about Joey, but I can’t leave out my first impression of SUICIDE.

Suicide

It got dark, and all of us in the audience were sitting on the floor, waiting for what seemed like an interminable amount of time, looking at the door behind us from which the duo would be entering. Finally, a guy dressed all in black leather comes into the room, dragging a large thick chain behind him. Slowly approaching the stage, he wields the chain menacingly around the edge of audience, shouting unintelligible stuff, and being incredibly menacing. I can’t remember if he was on a mic yet, but he was loud. And I don’t remember if the keyboard player, Marty Rev, was on stage yet at that point. I only remember my first glimpse of the singer, Alan Vega, and he held us all in thrall. I was sitting there, and I remember thinking, “Okay this is scary. If I get up now and try to leave, I’d have to make my way out by stepping over all these people in the dark, and he’s gonna see me, and he’s gonna come running after me with that goddamn chain...” I had no choice but sit there and wait and see what happens next. So, I stayed. When they were finally on stage, the music was deafeningly loud and strange, and different from anything I’d ever heard before. And despite the terrifying theatrics of Alan’s entrance, the music was actually mesmerizing, and I became of a big fan of SUICIDE. Years later at Max’s, Alan and I would become great friends. He was a real sweetheart. A true innovator.

Back to my Joey story…

For three years, after seeing that show at Coventry, I would remember that strange looking singer I saw fronting that opening band, wondering what ever happened to him, if he was still performing.

By 1976, I was still living at home in Queens, and going to SVA (School of Visual Arts) in the city. One day I was at my boyfriend’s place. He had just bought a new album. It was by this band THE RAMONES; he said that I just had to hear because they were great. Totally different than anyone. Then he showed me the album cover. I couldn’t believe it. I was like, “Oh my God, that’s the GUY!!! That’s the GUY!!! That’s that front man I told you about! The lanky one with the bangs and the glasses! It couldn’t be anyone else! That’s the singer of SNIPER!” It was so weird that I was the only one in my crowd that ever saw him play in any band before THE RAMONES. Needless to say, that was a great first album, and the rest is history.

I saw them for the first time at Hurrah’s in August 1978 with my friend Jane. She and I were up front and center, standing right against the stage. And many years later I met his beautiful mom, Charlotte, a very sweet lady. And it was obvious that he inherited those big high cheekbones from her.

Anyway, that’s my Joey Ramone birthday story.

JEFF SALEN of Tuff Darts: Not Too Tuff (1982)

© Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 1982/2022
Images from the Internet unless indicated

Jeff Salen is on the far right, next to Robert Gordon

Excuse me, but Jeff Salen was robbed. You ask, who is Jeff Salen? Well, that just proves the point. Jeff was the brainchild of a group called Tuff Darts that was thisclose to breaking. Then, just as the labels started to come sniffing, the lead singer, Robert Gordon, took a powder to go his own separate rockabilly way as a solo act and joined forces on occasion with Link Wray along the way. For a long time, Gordon refused to even acknowledge his stint in the band, but the cuts from the Live at CBGB’s album of Tuff Darts with Robert Gordon, “It’s All for the Love of Rock’n’roll” and “Slash,” are arguably the best cuts on the collection. The former was written by fellow bandmember Jeff Salen. When Gordon left, Jeff tried to reform the band with another singer, Tommy Frenzy, and even recorded the Tuff Darts! album, for Sire Records. It was a failure, basically because, in my opinion, lead singer Frenzy could not fit the image of the band. He tried nobly but the songs felt false under his tutelage. Decent singer, wrong band for him.

But Jeff’s contribution to the scene goes beyond the music, he was also a driving force in the style of the time, going in the opposite direction of the Richard Hell minimalism and instead he went for flamboyance, like the Byrds and Bowie. This is actually not very surprising, considering he worked for such flashy fashion icons as MainMan/Bowie and Wayne/Jayne County.

During his tenue with Tuff Darts, Jeff sidelined as a studio musician for the band Sparks in their heyday.

After the Tuff Darts broke apart, Jeff started working with the American Passions, which also crashed and burned. Between bands, jeff opened his own high-fashion clothing store on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, near the Beacon Theater. It was here I caught up with the man.

This interview was published in FFanzeen, No 9, dated 1982.

Jeff at far left

Jeff Salen: Not So Tuff

Back in 1975, when I started going to CBGB, Max’s, and others, I slowly but surely became aware of the name of Jeff Salen. At that time, it was of his work in one of the better-known underground bands, Tuff Darts. But he began way before that.

Many years ago, Jeff worked as a studio musician for the ill-fated MainMan operation, David Bowie’s organization. When that ended in the early 1970s, he worked his way up to Tuff Darts. All was going well with the world until the lead singer, Robert Gordon, left. The band floundered and, despite a LP released on Sire (Tuff Darts!), the band slowly but surely dissolved. The public was just too used to Robert.

A few years ago, he became involved with a band from Washington, DC, called the American Passions, but again, that just didn’t work out.

While all this trial and error with the Passions went on, he worked in a clothing store on the Upper East Side, a perfect setting for him since he was always engrossed in fashion, feeling that fashion is an integral part of rock’n’roll. This led him to owning his own clothing store extraordinaire, called simply Jeffries, at 50 West 72 Street, in New York City.

Time passed, and now Jeff is ready to put another band together, for as fashion is a part of rock’n’roll, rock’n’roll is also connected to fashion. He’s halfway there.

FFanzeen: So, tell me about your pre-MainMan days.
Jeff Salen: I started out in a group called Butch, with Tommy Ramone. We used to play the Mercer Arts Center, and one of the bands that played there was Queen Elizabeth, which was Wayne County and the Miamis, put together with Dale Powers. Tommy and Jimmy Wynbrandt. [both were in the Miamis – RBF, 2022]. So, they broke up and we broke up. Wayne got signed to MainMan, which was Bowie’s production company. They had all these artists [e.g., Cherry Vanilla, John Cougar (Mellencamp), Cindy Bullens, Iggy Pop, Mott the Hoople – RBF, 2022]. I got signed by MainMan to back up all these people, to be a guitarist for them. So, I was in the Back Street Boys for Wayne County for a long time – for about two years. We were, like, the No. 2 band under the Dolls at the 82 Club. The 82 Club was a good scene. We had a good time. Bowie had a good time. And then something happened with Bowie. He had a lawsuit or something with MainMan - with Tony DeFries – and that was the end of MainMan. And so we got off the gravy train and we broke up. Then I joined Tuff Darts, which was John DeSalvo of Jim Morrison’s band. That got pretty popular and I was pretty popular at that time from the Back Street Boys. We played and we were pretty good. You’d have bills like the Ramones, Tuff Darts, and Blondie. Blondie was third billed, believe it or not. That was, like, at rehearsal studios. There’s a studio called Performance Studios, which the Ramones owned. Everyone used to play there because there were no venues; there was no places for a band to play, except for CBGB’s. I don’t think Max’s even had bands then. Max’s had bands, but they were, like, Kinky Friedman. They were like the Lone Star is now. Tuff Darts took off; all the bands took off, and there got to be more clubs.

FFanzeen: Was Robert Gordon in Tuff Darts when it formed?
Jeff: Yeah. Tuff Darts played only with Robert Gordon in the beginning. There was this guy, Richie Rich, who played rhythm guitar, but they threw him out before I was in the band. That was it. Then we auditioned singers and Robert pushed his way into the audition. We had a whole bunch of people in line, and he said, “I’m the guy,” and he pushed his way right into it. He sang like Paul Rodgers [of the band Free – RBF, 1982] then. And that was what was happening at the time. It was very Bad Company-oriented. We were really knocked out with Robert. We stayed with him for about three years. We built things up pretty good and then he got a deal and he went.

FFanzeen: How did you get approached to do the Live at CBGB’s album?
Jeff: It all had to do with Hilly (Kristal; d. 2007). He picked all the best bands. The only band that had a record deal then was the Ramones. Everybody else didn’t. Everybody except Talking Heads, who backed out of [the live album] at the last minute. But they’re on the back cover. I think that’s pretty funny. The front cover looks like a pizza. It’s, like, one of the worst covers of all time. It looks like a bunch of hippies, ya know? But I can’t bad-mouth Hilly. I have to watch my Ps and Qs. It was a nice scene, though; I was pretty happy. And, you know, if you played CBGB’s you couldn’t play Max’s. Our album (on Sire) came out in early ’79-late ’78. And then I did this thing with Lisa Burns, Sal Maida from Sparks [and Milk and Cookies – RBF, 1981]. Bobby Butani from Tuff Darts, and David Bowler from the Marbles.

FFanzeen: After Robert left, why did you have so much trouble keeping a lead singer?
Jeff: We didn’t know what to do. Ian Hunter set us up with this guy, Kelvin Coney, from England. He was okay, but nobody liked him. He got disgusted and he wanted to get paid, like, to stay in this country, and we didn’t have any money to pay him. Actually, he was causing turmoil between Ian and us. So he went. We tried a bunch of kids from New York, like one gig apiece. Then we got Tommy Frenzy, ‘cause Tommy was a fan. He was the guitar player in a band called Frenzy up in Westchester. They used to do our songs. When they would play CBGB’s, I would jam with them. He was a nice guy and he was into what we were doing, so we figured he would be cooperative. He was pretty cool. I liked what he did, but the critics, like, tore him apart. I wanna go on record, I thought the record was pretty good. Cream’s Mitch Comb says that I’m really good when left to my own devices, but he didn’t like the John DeSalvo songs. The sexist songs. But it’s all fine; it’s a joke. Actually, that’s what got us attention. My songs are just love songs, very standard fare, but they’re not things that would draw attention in a jaded music scene here in New York. John’s were the one’s that got attention, like, “I’d rather slash my wrists and cut my throat (then have to spend the night with you)” [“Slash”]. I think it’s a great song. The critics ripped it apart and they ripped Tommy apart, and I don’t know why. He did it pretty close to how Robert did it. He did his best.

FFanzeen: I think that was part of the complaint, that he was imitating Robert rather than being original.
Jeff: What else could he have done in that situation?

FFanzeen: Created his own style, like Ultravox did after John Foxx left. .
Jeff: Yeah, Midge Ure in Ultravox did that. I’m glad they could do that. I saw them down at Irving Plaza and I was glad they could do that. Maybe that’s what Tommy should have done, but he decided what he wanted to do. We were just happy doing the record. I was just working on my guitar parts and trying to keep the band together. That sort of thing.

FFanzeen: When you were at MainMan, did you record anything?
Jeff: Yeah, we did recordings with Michael Tschudin producing, who used to run the Mercer Arts Center. When people read this article, somebody will remember these names. He’s a cool guy. I wonder what ever happened to him. We did nice little recordings with him; we did a movie. It was a movie with me kissing Cherry Vanilla, or something. And we did a show called Wayne County at the Trucks. You know what the “trucks” are? It’s like a gay thing. All the boys are at the trucks, you know, fist-fucking. Anyway, we did this movie and we rented out the Westbeth Theater, which I’ll come back to later, ‘cause it’s interesting, I think. That was MainMan. They spent, like, you know, $50,000 on this show and filmed it for a movie, with other footage, too, with Bowie and Mick Ronson (d. 1993), and all the MainMan artists: Iggy, Cherry – mainly Cherry Vanilla – and Wayne County, because they were New Yorkers. People came. Everyone thought Wayne and the Back Street Boys would get a record deal from this. This was, like, when Alice Cooper was happening. I played guitar. I was just into being popular.

FFanzeen: Fame. The star-trip.
Jeff: I liked it. They had little ushers who wore cock-and-balls shoes. That was fabulous. Papier Mache cock-and-balls shoes.

FFanzeen: You were going to say about the Maspeth Theater –.
Jeff: Westbeth Theater. Maspeth is in Queens, where I went to Junior High School. Okay, what was I gonna say? The Westbeth Theater pops up all the time because Bobby, from Tuff Darts, did a play. He did some recordings with some guys who worked at Westbeth who were directors there. The guitarist – the other guitarist, Bobby Butani – and I did a couple of gigs with him in a group called the Passions. Maybe people will think that it’s a continuity. Maybe they think I’ve been working on this band for a long time [giggles]. It’s not true! I just joined this band [American Passions – RBF, 2022] a couple of months ago.

FFanzeen: How did you come to join the American Passions?
Jeff: Jonathan Blank is a lawyer for a lot of musicians, like Richard Lloyd, the Rockats, Lisa Burns. Anyway, he’s the lawyer for the manager of the group. He’s not my lawyer now, but at the time he was. Now I’ve got Blondie’s lawyer, the Cars’ lawyer. I’ve moved up in the world a bit. I had come back from LA and I called up like everybody I knew in New York, and said, “What’s happening? Who should I play with? What should I do?” And he told me about this wonderful band in Washington D.C., that were about to be signed, and they just needed a lead guitarist. I said, “I’m not interested because I’m a songwriter, I’m not a lead guitarist.” He said, “Well, go down there anyway, maybe they’ll do one of your songs.” So I went down and I joined the band, primarily because the singer (Steve Avery), like, really loved my songs and was willing to do my songs. And now, it’s, like, half-and-half between Steve Avery and me. We’re even trying to write together with some success.

FFanzeen: Sparks –
Jeff: Sparks is great. Sparks is the most fun I’ve had.

FFanzeen: How did you get involved with them?
Jeff: We had just finished working on the Live at CBGB’s album and the guys from Sparks came to see us. At this time, everyone was comin’ to see us. Mick Jagger came to see us, Ian Hunter, Bowie (d. 2016) – in fact, a great many people – notable people – told us that Robert (Gordon) was more trouble than he was worth; that we would be better off without him, believe it or not. I never thought that. When it came time for Robert to leave, I tried to pull a Henry Kissinger and tried to beg him, please don’t go, stick around. But he thought he was prostituting himself. Tuff Darts was more like John and my band. It was John’s band when he did his songs and my band when we did mine. The other guys were pretty passive. Bobby came more to the front towards the end, but basically it was pretty much playing rhythms and keeping things going in the background. Robert Gordon didn’t have much of a personality in Tuff Darts. Maybe he has one now. I don’t know – I don’t think so. You can print that, I don’t care [giggles].

FFanzeen: Do you ever talk to him?
Jeff: Yeah, we’re amicable.

FFanzeen: The reason I ask is because he practically denies those days even existed.
Jeff: He’s not as reasonable about it as we are. Put it this way: I thought it was a bad time to leave a band. You work together a certain amount of time and you’re accomplishing something – we were supposedly doing very well. At that point, (Amos Poe’s) The Blank Generation movie came out. It just looked like everything was going great. A lot of major labels were interested in us, not just Sire. It was kind of a crummy time to leave a band. Couldn’t he have waited until at least the rest of us had gotten something? I remember he thought he was prostituting himself and he wanted to do something else. Other people had gotten involved with him, and everything seemed to have been falling into place when he left. We just kept trying other singers. We didn’t know what else to do. Did I handle that diplomatically? I hope so. I don’t have anything against Robert; I don’t have any great love for him, but I don’t – he’s a professional. He did what he thought was good for him. I picked up the pieces and did what I could with them; I think he’d acknowledge that. And he’s not doin’ so hot either. Like I said, at the time, a lot of people told us that if he wanted to leave, let him leave. Aside from artistic or aesthetic reasons, I thought it would be bad for him to leave because people had associate him with our songs already. With my songs and John’s songs. I tried desperately to get him not to leave. He didn’t want to know. His management didn’t help. Everybody always thinks they know best. At some point, I’d like to be a producer so I can be the one who knows best.

FFanzeen: Sparks –
Jeff: Okay, Sparks was produced by Rupert Holmes, who did Sailor, Barbra Streisand, and John Miles (d. 2021). Anyway, I remember they called me up – they had Joseph Fluries called me up, who worked for them, and he said, would I be interested in joining Sparks. I said, well, I’m in a group that I really think is gonna break big – this is Tuff Darts with Robert – so I said I would love to come down and talk about it. I’d play on the album, but I wouldn’t join the group. He said come to the Carnegie Deli that night, ‘cause they were staying at the Warwick Hotel, and they were sitting in the back – in the very back. My girlfriend at the time wasn’t into Sparks. I was into the MC5. And Motown; I was really into Motown at that time. I wanted to be black, like Eric Burdon. So, we went to the Carnegie and they said they liked the way I played guitar and would I like to play on the album. They were going to do the album in New York. Sal Maida recommended me. This guy Sal is always doin’ me favors. Sal had been with Roxy Music and Sparks at one point, I think [he was in the band, including on the 1978 album Big Beat, and with the band in the 1977 film Rollercoaster – RBF, 2022]. So I said, sure, I’d love to do it and we talked about the money and that sort of thing. Then we rehearsed for two weeks. They already had a title for the album, Big Beat, so we concentrated on that. Hilly Michaels was the drummer, who later became Ian Hunter’s drummer, because I played on the Sparks album. Anyway, we rehearsed. I’m trying to find a good story outta this. I don’t think there is in this one. We rehearsed, I did the record, had a good time doin’ it, got paid, and declined to tour [missing out on the Rollercoaster appearance – RBF, 1982]. If I would have toured, there would never have been a Tuff Darts album. [Big Beat] was the most fun album I ever worked on. I had a ball working that record.

FFanzeen: Why was it so much fun?
Jeff: First of all, they’re really easy to work with, Ron and Russell (Mael). I have no idea why they have such a difficult time in this business. They can’t get a record company to push their records. They always get shafted. I don’t know what the fuck it is. They’re just wonderful to work with. They’re so loose, they’re so much fun. Very talented. I think they’re great lyricists. I’m just really into what they do. Everything they did was clever and it was so challenging for me to find intelligent guitar parts, ‘cause they just wanted loud guitar, you know, which is sorta my trademark, but there is a sensitive side to me and I try to be in tune with what I’m doing. There was no pressure because it wasn’t my band; I didn’t have any worries. I just showed up at rehearsals, showed up at sessions, and when I left I had a clear head. I had no concerns. Tuff Darts was so mind-boggling with concerns. Not in the beginning, because I was oblivious. I didn’t care. I was still into being just popular and being creative and just living out my Ronnie Wood/Keith Richards fantasy. Towards the end, trying to save it and everything, that took years out of my life. Not just mine, everybody’s. The whole band tried. Bobby tried hard. We kept trying to do things. If I have any success with this, I’m gonna try and do something with Bobby, like produce him or something.

FFanzeen: Is Bobby in a band now?
Jeff: It’s hard to find sympathetic musicians. There are a lot of musicians like Lydia Lunch – that sort of thing – like, what can you do? I can’t play that stuff. Bobby can’t play that stuff. I like avant-garde things. I like innovative bands. I like, you know, John Lydon’s band (PiL). I love all those English bands like Spandau Ballet and Ultravox. They all sound like King Crimson to me, with a disco beat, but – I like the way they look, you know.

FFanzeen: I always picture you on stage in vests and three-piece suits. Are you still into that?
Jeff: In Tuff Darts, but not anymore. I like layers. I’ve always been into fashion. I’m not a superficial person, but I like the trappings of things. We’ve got a whole bunch of pirate clothes now.

FFanzeen: Oh, no! Adam and the Ants strikes again!
Jeff: Actually we got them before Adam and the Ants came to town. We were already into it from reading about it before, and we know some people who work for Ian’s, the clothing store (in New York). They go to England all the time and they told us what was happening. They usually keep me in good clothes. I’m like a mannequin for them, sometimes. We wore a lot of that stuff when the American Passions played Bonds. (Fashion) is what I got off on when I first got into music. I liked the way the Stooges dressed; I like the way they looked. I liked the whole bit. It was, like, you didn’t have to be that handsome – naturally handsome – you didn’t have to be George Hamilton or some shithead like that, but you could still be cool. I think that’s a big part of rock’n’roll. You didn’t have to be perfect – you could be Keith Richards or Mick Jagger, who are not perfect looking but are really cool. Brian Jones (d. 1969) was prettier than most girls, though. You didn’t have to be so manly with this macho-silly thing. I picked up on that and that stayed with me. I like fashion. I think fashion is very important in music.

I lost track of Jeff Salen after this. I do know that in 2002, the Tuff Darts reformed (sans Butani and, of course, Gordon) for the CD release of Tuff Darts!, going on to record the 2007 album You Can’t Keep a Good Band Down. His presence as a rock’n’roll icon was still underappreciated and underserved by the scene, however, when he passed away from a heart attack on January 26. 2008.

Since his passing, as Wikipedia announced, “Tuff Darts have been performing since 2011 with a reformed lineup in and around New York City.”

 

Kids Just Wanna Hear THE FAST (1980)

Interview by Robert Barry Francos and Stacy Mantel
© Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 1980/2022
Images from the Internet unless indicated

Mandy Zone, Paul Zone, Miki Zone

The core of The Fast, previous to when this interview was conducted, consisted of the three Zone brothers from Brooklyn, Miki, Paul and Armand (aka Mandy). Miki Zone was the leader of the group, writing the songs and playing a wild guitar. With dark, spiked hair and pencil-thin mustache, Miki Zone drove the band, with flourishes that would have made Pete Townshend proud; he used pencils and other-purpose implements as picks, to achieve new and strange sounds. Paul Zone had long hair consisting of rows and rows of tight curls and movie star good looks. Mandy Zone, who played keyboards, usually sat in the upper left corner of the stage, with Phantom of the Opera type dark clothes. His falsetto background vocals helped give the band their distinctive sound.

And then, just as Dylan had gone electric, The Fast decided to go metal-lite. Armand left to form another band called Ozone, and Miki and Paul went all-out leather. The biggest physical shocker was Paul cutting off his idiosyncratic locks. One had the feeling The Fast were just tired of playing and not really getting anywhere out of Brooklyn. They decided to overhaul their sound. You can hear it in the band’s two versions of their song, “Kids Just Wanna Dance.”. Occasionally changing the band name/brand to Miki Zone Zoo didn’t help.

My then-Managing Editor, Stacy Mantel, arranged for this interview, and so she came along and therefore became an integral part of it. The intro, however, I wrote. It was published in FFanzeen, Issue No. 5, dated August-September 1980). – RBF, 2022

Kids Just Wanna Hear The Fast
By RBF and Stacy Mantel; intro by RBF

There it was, almost eight o’clock in the evening on May 19, waiting to be picked up by Miki and Paul Zone, the lead guitarist and vocals, respectively, of The Fast, one of the premier rock’n’roll groups that have been around since the early days (pre-1975), when the new rock’n’roll sound was known as “underground” and punk as we know it didn’t yet exist.

The first time I had seen The Fast was at a free concert they gave in Prospect Park (Brooklyn, where we all live), Summer of ’74, before Paul was in the group. Their songs included the “Batman Theme” and early Who stuff. Years passed and they added Paul and started playing at Max’s Kansas City and Rockbottoms. They went through a phase known as “super-pop,” but were unsatisfied with that sound. Eventually, brother Mandy (keyboards/falsetto) left to form his own group, Ozone, and Miki and Paul went “hard.” It took a while to get used to – and now their first album is coming out on Sounds Interesting Records, a label formed by Charles (Record Raves fanzine) Lamey – but that’s another story.

As we waited, there was a tension in the air. FFanzeen’s resident record reviewer Richard Gary had semi-panned the last Fast (Miki Zone Zoo, actually) single, “Coney Island Chaos” b/w “These Boots Are Made For Walking,” and we did not know what would be their attitude toward us.

Eventually their van pulled up and we climbed into the back. We stopped off to buy some beer and pulled up along the service road to the Verrazano Bridge, between 86 and 92 Streets, and drank and talked. And it went like this:

FFanzeen: Tell us a little about the album.
Miki Zone: It’s done and it’ll be out in July. One side was produced by Ric Ocasek [The Cars; d. 2019] and the other side is produced by Ian North (d. 2021) of Neo [also of Milk and Cookies – Ed., 2022]. It’s going to be on Sounds Interesting Records.

FFanzeen: That’s an independent label.
Miki: Yeah, and it’s the way we want to go at this point. It’s the best way. I’m in total control of the sleeve, total control of the recordings which I’ve produced, control over where I want it sold, how much I want sold, everything – even as far as where I want it distributed, what countries. At this point it’s cool because I can make a lot of money on it whereas if I was at a record company, I’d just be selling everything away.

FFanzeen: The album’s been done for a couple of months now.
Miki: The stuff we’ve done with Rick Ocasek. That was done in December.
Paul Zone: We did everything in December, except it’s going to have the “These Boots Are Made For Walking” 45 on it that we made over a year ago, and all the rest of it is “Cars Crash” and two new tracks than the old “Boots” single. So that’s six songs.
Miki: We had a tune on Sharp Cuts (compilation) on Plant Records [Elektra Records]. One of the tracks that’s going to be on our album is on the Planet Records compilation LP that Ric Ocasek produced, “Kids Just Wanna Dance.” We did a version of that with Ric; this is a new version of it – today’s Fast version. That’s out now and it’s getting a lot of airplay in a lot of cities, even New York.
Paul: WNEW’s playing it.

FFanzeen: How did your involvement with Ric start?
Miki: He came to see us at a club in Boston – he didn’t really come to see us, he came to see a band that was on the bill with us, and when the night was over, we had a date to play with them in a 20,000-seat auditorium and he offered to produce an album for us – and this was all in one night.
Paul: Just from seeing one show at a small club. We played with the Cars on Halloween at that 20,000-seater in Portland, Maine.

FFanzeen: How were you received?
Paul: All of The Cars were on the stage watching us after the first two songs, not believing it, because every band, with or without albums – name groups – were booed off the stage, and we did a 45-minute set and went down really well. By our second or third song, they were all in the wings watching us ‘cause they were flipping that we were able to pull it off for our first time at such a large place. We just did a concert up in Toronto with Mi-Sex. We do real well up there, like club dates. We sell advance tickets ... A lot of our friends had albums out and then the record companies sent them on tour and after their first tour they either broke up or had nervous breakdowns ‘cause they really weren’t used to it – they didn’t know what it was like to go out and struggle in all these little clubs.
Miki: That’s also an advantage where doing it ourselves is concerned ... where the album sales are the best is where they’ll go and play more often and that will be an easier thing for us to do, so we’ll have proof that there’ll be an audience for us and we’ll just zoom out there and do a show.
Paul: Two years ago we played in Washington, DC. with the Police and there were 50 people there three nights in a row.

FFanzeen: As long as I can remember, you’ve had this big cult following. These Long Island/Queens girls would stare and swoon.
Miki: You see, that was like a different stage for us. In ’75, the band was different then it is now. Then we had a couple of weird looking people in the band.
Paul: Now we still can’t realize what we’ve got.
Miki: We had so many crossovers of images that we were attracting different audiences, like young girls, people who came for crazy guitars, and we still maintain that image today. The reason we benefited by changing around The Fast today is that the music is better. I haven’t changed in two years. It took me this long to find a band I was happy with. I realized that I didn’t want to play with a keyboard player, that had to come out of me. Not because he was my brother.
Paul: It just wasn’t right for the sound.
Miki: Right. The songs that I was writing, certain sounds I was hearing, were too much for keyboards.

FFanzeen: On stage, you have changed a lot – like Paul used to have long hair with those amazing curls, and Miki’s hair was forked.
Miki: So many people would just look at us and say, “What the hell is going on?” like we were the rock’n’roll Village People because everyone was so totally different.
Paul: We didn’t plan on anything; I guess it’s just what happened, as we are now. We didn’t go in for thinking of things, things just came natural; the way we acted on stage and looked. We just act as we are personally and visually, and maybe enhance it a bit. We don’t go out of our way; it’s just not comfortable.

FFanzeen: I realize this is not a very intellectual question, but I’m really curious: Paul, why did you cut your hair?
Paul: I just got tired of it. I didn’t like it any more.

FFanzeen: Miki, your guitar style is very varied, ranging from very rock to avant-garde. Who are your influences, if any?
Miki: Pete Townshend – not today, but up to about 1970. He, at that period was, like, my mentor, but not like anything after late ‘60s because what he was doing with guitar then was not really playing – he was playing it like a machine, playing the electronics of it, getting sounds out of it that Eric Clapton never could have gotten. That’s why when we do extended things on stage, I’ll play every piece of the guitar and get as many sounds out of it without even using the fret board.

Miki (ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

FFanzeen: Pencils.
Miki: Ha, yeah, pencils or feedback – you could do such amazing things. We have a couple of tapes of live performances and I didn’t even hear those sounds when I was making them on stage. It sounded like a plane or something and I said how it’s great that you don’t know where it’s coming from but you’re making it. Coming out of your guitar and amp put together. That’s where guitar could be as revolutionary as synthesizer, if you just take it that far and not play it as a conventional instrument.

FFanzeen: Isn’t “Cars Crash” done with synthesizer?
Miki: No, it’s guitar. I’m using some phasing on it, which I have in my amp, and everyone asks us who’s playing synthesizer and it’s totally guitar.
Paul: Queen never used synthesizer, it’s all guitar and you’d never know it if you listen to Queen albums.

FFanzeen: Isn’t it done with the aid of the mixing board in the studio?
Miki: No, it’s just if I layer or overdub certain parts over each other, it doesn’t even sound like guitar after a while. I like to do things where the voice comes in and matches with the guitar and you don’t know what’s what, and there’s a part in “Boys Will Be Boys” that’s like that. This new single, “Cars Crash,” I’m playing the guitar in a different way than I do live for the first time. It’s very spacey and danceable. We just wanna do something different.

FFanzeen: So I guess there’ll be no more go-go dancers.
Miki: Ha-ha, no, that’s not true. I mean, there’s so many things we got to say. I’ve got a backlog of material that The Fast did years ago that just had to be shelved because I was writing so much new stuff. All that will be out eventually.

FFanzeen: Who writes most of the lyrics?
Miki: I write all the music and lyrics. The only thing I’ve ever co-written with anyone was this last single with Charles Lamey (“Cars Crash”). I agreed to write a couple of songs with him because I like the lyrics that he writes, so I put music to them and it worked so well that we said, “Let’s do a single,” and then from there the whole album stemmed.
Paul: I’m the interpreter.
Miki: After the year’s end we may probably have a 12-inch live EP. You see, that’s the thing about independent labels. Whatever I think is a good idea they think is good and they‘re just as into it as I am. The big money isn’t there, but a lot can be made.

FFanzeen: Aren’t you afraid of producing “culture shock” with people expecting to come in to see the old Fast?
Miki: No, because they’re never disappointed. All they find missing is the keyboard. What we lost in a keyboard and high-pitched voice, we gained in different songs and in different live presentations, which is a lot more forceful and gutsier – what The Fast should have been all along. We didn’t lose any of our visual things.

FFanzeen: On stage, you said that heavy metal will make a comeback. Did you mean that or was it said because of the way the song was going?
Miki: Ha-ha, well, I don’t know ...
Paul: I guess it was the way it was going. Heavy metal is very big in England.
Miki: Yeah, that’s kind of why I said it ...
Paul: Listen to Blondie’s “Hardest Part” – it’s as heavy metal as you can get. Heavy metal and pop is the result of “power pop,” which everyone’s been using for a while. It’s just harder sounding pop songs.
Miki: There’s a lot of things we do that I would consider heavy metal that we do live because there are some things that I would like to hear heavy. There are just some things that I don’t want to hear harmonies and “la-la-las” with.

FFanzeen: You were talking about your influences ...
Miki: Yeah, beside Pete Townshend and the early Who, next has to be early Alice Cooper, even though what he’s doing today – his new record [Flush the Fashion] is great. I think it’s smart of him to get contemporary – Love It To Death, I was totally blown away by. That and, of course, the early Stooges. I like people in their initial years – that’s when their best stuff comes shootin’ out. If you can follow that stuff, great.
Paul: Iggy isn’t famous now for the stuff he’s putting out now, because the records he’s making now really aren’t that great. The only reason he’s big now is because of the things he’s done with the Stooges.
Miki: It’s always that way. We used to listen to a lot of pop. I like to listen to a lot of vocalists, too. I like Gene Pitney. [Miki would later go to perform Gene Pitney solo shows; see HERE – Ed., 2022]. He’s my idea of pop. No one will ever be able to put that stuff down. At one point, rock’n’roll was just one sound you heard on AM radio – WMCA was the Good Guys – that’s what rock’n’roll was. And whatever you heard there would influence everybody if you were a certain age at that time. Now you just have to go and decide what you want to hear, from reggae to hardcore punk to whatever, country ... I don’t put any style down, it’s just that there are so many different categories where people are taught to be enlightened to it.
Paul: Like New Wave, anything is really New Wave and every other New Wave artist that’s making it is just taking an old style and reworking it. The Police and Joe Jackson are taking every old reggae riff there was and they’re New Wave now. You’re New Wave if you have a nice sounding pop record – that’s New Wave: Blondie, Linda Ronstadt ... It’s just really strange, like anything that comes out now in the ‘80s is New Wave.

FFanzeen: Can you tell us a little about the band before Paul joined?
Paul: They were just a band for about two years and that was it. I was too young to be in the band then.
Miki: I guess the band was first conceived in 1973 where I’d be sitting in school and failing everything because all I would think about was having my own group, and it came about because I was influenced by all the groups I mentioned before. I just put together friends I went to high school with in Brooklyn ... we’d do “Batman” and we’d dress in polka dots and stripes and do things like throw Cheerios boxes all over the place.

FFanzeen: The Speedies do that now. 
Miki: Yeah, I wonder where they got it from?
Paul: I wonder where they got their name from?
Miki: We’d just throw Cheerios and use fire extinguishers, and every song would be a “la-la-la” in it. That’s when we were set up like we are now. There was still no keyboards – just guitar, bass, drums and vocals, and we’d have, like, two stacks of amps behind us painted with arrows. I didn’t even take them seriously when I look back. I don’t even remember having a real guitar until maybe 1974, when I finally bought a real amp, real guitar, and took myself seriously. But the two years from 1974-76, we started playing New York clubs. We were one of the first groups to play. It was like Wayne County, us, Teenage Lust. Blondie wasn’t even around as the Stilettos then.
Paul: It was just like, The Dolls, the [Forty-Second Street] Harlots.
Miki: Maybe Suicide ... and we’d play the Coventry, any place you could play. You’d either play at a loft party or you’d rent your own place out. Clubs wouldn’t book us then, any group then.
Paul: All there was, was a place called the Mercer Arts Center and Max’s.
Miki: Max’s, which didn’t have anything except label acts that would attract a huge following.
Paul: Max’s used to have Bruce Springsteen, Sparks, Aerosmith, the Stooges.
Miki: This was late ’73.
Paul: They didn’t have, like, rock’n’roll – I guess you’d call it Glitter Rock, except the Dolls, and of course the Dolls were number one – the biggest thing, locally.
Miki: The thing that really started it all, of course, The New York Dolls and their popularity, and then everything started bursting open. The Hotel Diplomat would be able to rent you out a ballroom to have your own shows, like three or four bands together that would spring up overnight like they do now.
Paul: It’s just like, the Dolls were just kids that didn’t know how to play their instruments. And once everyone started going wild over it, every other person in the world wanted to be in a band.
Miki: We formed after seeing the Dolls.
Paul: Just like thousands of bands formed after seeing the Ramones.
Miki: Exactly ... and we played Max’s for a while, and then a guy took us into the studio to record like an album’s worth of songs in late ’75, and while we were in there recording we decided to let Paul become the lead singer because he was just as popular as the rest of us because he was always seen with us so...

Paul (ffoto by Robert Barry Francos)

FFanzeen: So this is your first band.
Paul: Yeah, when we played at Max’s, our first show, I was only eighteen.

FFanzeen: A lot of people thought you were in the navy, because of “Boys Will Be Boys.”
Paul: I was in the navy, for three days; I got a dishonorable discharge.
Miki: Ha, and then we recorded this whole album’s worth of material, which “Boys Will Be Boys” came off of, the Max’s version [Live at Max’s, Vol. 1]. The rest of it got canned.
Paul: Except, “Wow, Pow, Bash, Crash.” Someday it will be on the “Long Lost Fast Album”. I have demos that big New York bands did before they got their deals, like the Ramones, Blondie.

FFanzeen: I’m surprised; you were so popular, that a major label didn’t sign you.
Paul: We had all the offers also, and we weren’t going in any good direction. We weren’t really happy with the band. Everybody liked us but we knew something was wrong with the sound. We made that “It’s Like Love” and “Kids Just Wanna Dance” single and it just didn’t spin our heads around; we liked it but we knew we wanted to do something different.
Miki: You just can’t keep it going if there’s clashing in the band. Now, these members of The Fast [Miki Zone, guitar; Paul Zone, lead vocals; Louis Brian Bova, bass/vocals; Joe Poliseno, drums], we work together as one, musically and personally; we don’t have any management problems so everything we’re doing now is coming totally from us, even negotiating our record contract and putting out our albums; it’s just down to what The Fast believes – we have nobody telling us what to do. We get references and help from people, but it comes down to us in the end. If we fail we don't have anyone to blame but ourselves, and if we succeed it will be all ours. We’ve seen all our friends make it.
Paul: Experience in the music, too. The different versions of “Kids Just Wanna Dance” is like day and night, really.
Miki: Sometimes I wish that [first] version didn’t exist, but I wouldn’t be here now if it didn’t.
Paul: We’re not gonna put it down.
Miki: I’ve changed my style of writing, because being that we played so much live in the last two and a half years all around America and played in front of every kind of audience.
Paul: It’s not like New York.
Miki: No, not at all. Everyone dances from the beginning to end of your set. If they’re not out on the dance floor after two songs, you know you’re not going to get anywhere.
Paul: Just recently, all that started in New York with Heat and Hurrah and Club 57, but about two-to-three years ago at CBGB or Max’s, no one would ever think of dancing. But we were playing Philadelphia and Boston, and they had dance floors right in front of the stage and tables all the way in the back.
Miki: And people don’t look at you when they’re dancing.
Paul: They’ll watch for the first two or three songs and then it looks like a movie from the ’60s where everyone grabs each other’s arms and runs to the dance floor.
Miki: At first, I thought it was weird. I thought that they thought we must be the ugliest band they’ve ever seen, but then you realize that they’re just going crazy ... New Wave is everywhere now, it’s happening in every city.
Paul: You go do a discotheque in Arizona and you’re gonna hear the B-52s.

FFanzeen: Why did Armand leave?
Miki: We made an amicable split because he wanted to do a lot of writing.
Paul: He wanted to have his own band, to sing and write his own songs.
Miki: He’s got his own band now called Ozone. So, it’s cool, you know, spread the family out.

FFanzeen: Any more at home?
Paul: Ha-ha, there will be someday.

FFanzeen: What happened with the Miki Zone Zoo name that you reverted back to The Fast?
Miki: I wanted to put out a 45 under my own name. It just showed people who was behind The Fast, which I wanted to see happen. If I called it The Fast featuring Miki Zone, it would have done the same job.

FFanzeen: What I think is strange is that you have such a big following and you have had very little written about you.
Miki: I’m not really worried about what a critic has to say about my music. It could destroy a lot of people and it has, I think that if we were to put out an album when we had a lot of prospective offers, if we didn’t fuck it up management-wise, we would have had a very credible relationship with the press, and people taking us seriously.
Paul: You can never boil it down to people taking you seriously. The Cramps are on the cover of Melody Maker every other week. Do people take them seriously? Yeah ... I guess they do.
Miki: I’m just glad to put out records. We should have had a record out (every) year from ’77 on, and we didn’t. This is the first Fast record since 1978, and at the rate we’re progressing, we hope to have something out every three or four months. In a lot of places we play at, we’re not The Fast from ’76, we’re just a New York band they’re happy to see and that’s the neat thing about it. A lot of people heard “Boys Will Be Boys” and know us because of that. A lot of feedback came to us from Europe. We may go there in September to do a tour with Jayne County, and the promoters all know us from “Boys Will Be Boys,” and they said it will be great. A lot of groups got their names known from just one song. It should be out on an album and it possibly will be. We’ll make the 1980 version of “Boys Will Be Boys.”

FFanzeen: Every fifth record will be “Boys Will Be Boys.”
Miki: Ha, different ways.
Paul: Electronic.
Miki: Ha, that’s a good idea.
Paul: A cappella, country-western ... reggae.

FFanzeen: Did you ever think of working with video?
Miki: We did a video for our last single, “It’s Like Love.” Full-color, animated, it looked like something from “Wonderama.” It looked like the ultimate cartoon-pop group.
Paul: It’s way before anyone did any sort of comical video – way before Devo or anyone. If you would see the old Fast one, you’d flip. It never got released, though.
Miki: We’re going to put it on cassette and have it shown at places like Max’s.
Paul: It will flip people out because it was at the peak of the wildest looking Fast you could imagine.
Miki: It’s wild. I’m wearing yellow rain-boots up to here, big double neck guitar, and my hair is green and there were no amplifiers.
Paul: It was done in a large TV studio and each member was on a big block platform with no microphones, all lip-synched. And there’s acting in it, cutaways to people riding horses. Donna Destri’s in it. We like to use our associates. She sings on “Cars Crash,” too. [Note: Video is at the bottom of the blog – Ed., 2022]

FFanzeen: Since you’ve been through so many changes, how, if at all, do you think your music will change in the future?
Miki: Whatever I do in the future I want to do in this format – guitars, bass, drum and vocals.
Paul: When people listen to “Cars Crash,” they’ll say it’s not us. The tapes we did with Ric Ocasek are great; he caught whatever we were live and put it down and polished it up. We didn’t go into the studio for five months to arrange every little piece.
Miki: He said we sound like the early Stooges if they knew how to play.
Paul: He had a lot of tricks up his sleeve in the studio, but we never got away from guitar, bass, drums and vocals, so you’ll hear weird sounds – but mostly done with guitar and bass. We used feedback and backwards playing, too. We did all the vocals live. He made us set up together like a real band because he was turned on to us live. He made us do the songs an amazing amount of times just to get the energy up there and we got a real adrenaline going.
Miki: I think if I produced the stuff Ric produced, I would have made it sound pop, but I’m glad to have someone look at our sound another way.
Paul: It’s good to have someone who believes in you and not getting paid to believe in you ... it’s different when someone is coming after you and saying they really want to do it and they really want to play with you. He was just as excited as we were and that was really special.
Miki: Want to know our favorite colors?

FFanzeen: No.
Miki: Shoe size?

FFanzeen: Nah, ha-ha. Where’d you get your tattoos?
Miki: Rick Martin. She did Johnny Blitz’s skull, she did Helen Wheels. The tattooer of the stars!

The album that came out was The Fast For Sale, whose name and cover were reminiscent of the Who’s Sell Out. Most of the record, put out as a joint venture by Recca Records (Miki’s label) and Sounds Interesting Records, is just what you’d picture some leather boys to be producing, but there were some fine moments, like the remake of “Kids Just Wanna Dance” and “Love Me Like A Locomotive.”

The next year, 1981, they released the album Leather Boys From the Asphalt Jungle, also put out by Recca/Sounds Interesting. A couple of notable differences include that the group were no longer The Fast, but just Fast. They were also down to just Miki and Paul, with other musicians listed under the category “Special Thanks to” (including Armand, back for one cut). With the exception of a cover of the Stones’ “Paint It Black” and Ian North’s “Girls in Gangs,” all the songs were new and by Miki. The cover had photos taken by Cathy Miller (who was one of FFanzeen’s photographers). While they are wearing lots of leather and chains, they are also looking like they stepped out a techno sci-fi experimentation. The next stage for Miki and Paul was an electronic dance band, Man 2 Man, which had some international hits.

The end was the death of both Miki (d. 1986) and Mandy (d. 1993) to AIDS. Paul moved out to California to start a new life focusing on his amazing photography, putting out an excellent collection in the book, Playground: Growing Up in the New York Underground, and has released a compilation of their releases on CD called The Best of the Fast 1976-1984.