Swimming Inside the Sun By David Zweig Second Guess Media (NY), 2009; 461 pages Secondguessmedia.com DavidZweig.com Daniel Green has become unstuck in mind.
Okay, perhaps that’s a cop-out way to begin a book review, yet it feels appropriate to this novel. The first-time author of Swimming Inside the Sun is New York-based musician David Zweig, who has two strong CDs under his belt, All Now with Wings (2000) and Keep Going (2003).
The main protagonist of David’s novel, Dan Green, is also a musician, but whose life has taken a different direction than its author. Green has recorded his perhaps breaking release on a major label, only to have it snatched away by the record company on the verge of its public drop. As the novel begins, Dan is in limbo, not sure what to do next, while watching the money given to him by the company start to evaporate by merely living.
Over the next year in which the novel takes place, Dan’s world is filled with New York City’s Lower East Side scenery (many touchstone places are mentioned within the story, in a way that Bret Easton Ellis touches on materialistic culture; Dan’s awareness is as much places – if not more – than things, women who come and go in his life in varying degrees of length, and friends, many of whom are also musicians. One of the more powerful forces that has suddenly become missing in Dan’s life is a self-exile from music. With his guitar firmly stowed in a corner (or under a bed), he cannot face picking it up since his career has seemingly vanished, along with his desire to play.
While all of this is fluttering around Dan’s life, the one quality he is slowly but surely losing touch with is the connection between his body and his mind. In a nearly out-of-body displacement, Dan views his life with a detachment that is nearly voyeuristic, and increasingly out of control.
The build-up in the novel is sure and steady, as the first-person narration starts off being linear, and then escalates toward stream of consciousness; that thought pattern becomes more erratic with a, well, mind of its own. We readers follow it step by step, as helpless as our protagonist, yet as conscious as he is of what is going on around him. His thoughts are open to us, from the emotionally detached way he treats those around him, to the minute inner fears as his life concentrically spirals inward towards a form of sane (or conscious) madness, if you will excuse my oxymoron.
[All Now With Wings]
As Dan’s thoughts evolve and revolve around, David also plays around with the physicality of the book itself, changing fonts and text sizes to make certain points, throws in empty page for emphasis, and will talk directly to the reader. Along the way there are line graphs to explain points, and philosophical turns of Dan’s peculiarities. As we all have thoughts that, as individuals, are unique, and the reader can identify with his explanations and explorations, such as why he switches soy milk or water brands regularly.
One of the more startling turns in Dan’s life is his nearly unconscious writing on Post-It notes, which begin to overtake both his living space and his mental environment. I really enjoyed what happens with this phenomenon in the story, which is quintessential New York, but you’ll have to read as I will not reveal that sort of detail. Some of the Post-Its are recreated within the novel form, giving territory to the map of Dan’s conscious.
[Keep Going]
As Dan’s mind starts to take over his life, the narration begins to change, as we – the reader – are also increasingly shown his thinking as opposed to his doing. But David plays with this form, as well, and yet keeping the reader right there with him as he struggles back and forth between narration and unfolding commentary. His voice-over keeps us right there with him at all times, sometimes in a comforting way, and at others feeling as claustrophobic as is the character.
For a first novel, this is a powerful piece of work, and I must say truthfully, one of the better ones I’ve read in a long while. In a total self-disclosure, I’ve known David since his first musical release in 2000, but I must add that whether I knew him or not, I was thoroughly impressed by this book. It is a mental manifestation of Poe’s “Decent into the Maelstrom” (one of Marshall McLuhan’s favorite stories).
By use of manipulating the physical text and commentary, David uses Media Ecological systems to express his points, and even find ways to bring this to the forefront, not only mentioning Media Ecology stalwarts McLuhan and Neil Postman, but actually brings the term “Media Ecology” into play. As I am involved with the Media Ecology Association (media-ecology.org), this definitely was a “wow” moment.
Below are three questions I asked the author, in sort of a mini-interview, and his responses:
1. You mention Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman (p. 273) and Media Ecology (p. 274) in the book. What role does this interdisciplinary academic theory have in your book, and in your life?
Media Ecology has been important to me for a long time. In college I took a course on politics and media, which included reading [Neil Postman’s] Amusing Ourselves to Death, and unearthed my interest in thinking critically about media and how it effects us. After college, though, is when I really began a passionate pursuit of learning and thinking about media ecology. Living in New York has been great for this for a variety of reasons, but one of the most fun was attending the Schmio Awards that Neil Postman ran for a number of years. Those ceremonies, particularly the first few, opened me up to a host of new ideas and the people who spoke eloquently about them.
The connection between alienation and self-consciousness and living in a media-saturated environment fascinates me. Because I so often view the world through a media ecology frame I began to draw related connections and explanations for a vague feeling of loneliness I'd had for some time. Fiction seemed like a really effective and interesting way for me to explore this concept. When I began formulating Swimming Inside the Sun, even before I had an outline, I knew that I wanted one of, if not the major thrust of the novel to be about self-consciousness and how media, in a very macro way, effects one's sense of self.
Daniel, the hero of the novel, suffers from a psychological disorder called depersonalization, which is the phenomenon of viewing oneself in the third-person, as if in a movie or a dream. To me, this is the most literal and extreme endpoint of a larger problem of self-awareness that I believe is becoming increasingly common due to our immersion in what is now largely, what I call, an "observational reality," rather than the "experiential reality" that has been dominant for all of history. I tried to use the craft of fiction to express this both through narrative (like Dan's struggle with an addiction to TV), and through stylistic elements (e.g. late in the book the POV changes from first-person to third-person to reflect Dan's own alienated view of himself). And, using the novel as my vehicle, I proposed a new theory called Fiction Depersonalization Syndrome that points to a media ecological explanation for his depersonalization (rather than internal explanations like trauma, anxiety, and depression that the mental health field currently points to as causes).
2. In one of your CDs, All Now With Wings, you have a photo of what I am presuming is your wall, full of Post-Its. The character in the book becomes obsessed with these Post-Its and puts them on his wall in the same way. So, did that happen to you, and how much of the character and/or events in the book resemble you and/or your own life?
You have a good eye, Robert! Dan Green's propensity for Post-It notes was definitely inspired by my own love of the little yellow squares. Connected to that, I'll just say Dan, and to a lesser degree the narrative, were inspired by my life but certainly not the same as my life.
3. On both your CDs, the bass player was listed as Daniel Green. The main character of the book is Daniel Green. Does that mean you played bass on your albums as a pseudonym, or did you just like the name of your bass player and use it for the character?
I think you're only the second person who has noticed the Daniel Green connection! Amazingly, I had been working on the manuscript for a long time using the name Dan Green before I realized, "Oh shit, but what about the Dan Green that I know in real life?" The real life Dan and I hadn't been in contact for a while when I started the book, and without thinking of him, the name just came to me for the character. Once the connection occurred to me I thought about changing it but by then the novel's Daniel Green felt so real to me that I couldn't change his name, it was him. I also wanted the name because of the fresh or naive connotations the word "green" evokes, which fit the character. Lastly, there is a play on his last name being Anglicanized by his father and changing it would have messed up that part of the book. So, to be absolutely clear - the book's Dan Green has absolutely nothing to do with the real life Dan Green.
The following article about the Sex Pistols was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #3, in the Winter-Spring 1978-79 issue. It was written by Sue Starstruck.
Do I really need to go into any background or detail about the Pistols? Didn’t think so, thereby let me say that Sue Starstruck, along with her cohort Alex, used to live in Whittier, California (near Disneyland), and published their own fun and fabulous fanzine, called / (which as subtitled “The fanzine without a name”). I was friendly with them, and somehow, when they both moved to England, I lost contact with them. If anyone knows their whereabouts or what happened to them, please let me know. – RBF, 2010 It’s fucking St. Valentine’s Day, and I celebrated by playing a Bryan Ferry record. Now I’m in my room, there’s a kite on the bed – but no wind outside.
So: The Sex Pistols. When Alex and I first worked out the idea of doing their fan club, we knew it wouldn’t be ordinary. That wasn’t what the Pistols were about. We just wanted to share information, to give people a chance to get t-shirts, posters, all that; and to just DO SOMETHING, in a personal, non-boring way.
Well, the fan club never got off the ground due to delays and the increasing possibility that it would be run by a merchandiser – the same one who supplies the KISS Army.
Time dragged on; the album was released, the film off and on and finally off (good). Then it hit. The Pistols were coming to America. Then they weren’t. OK, they were. It was enough to drive a crazy person sane!
Knowing I didn’t want to see them at Frisco’s Wonderland (too big and too crowded), I scraped together fanzine money and some I was saving up to move out, and went to Dallas.
As soon as the show at the Longhorn Ballroom was underway, I thought I’d wasted my money and my effort. The Sex Pistols were so bad; they reminded me of the New York Dolls, who I don’t think were ever what they are now thought to have been – Sid Vicious was so gone, but we’ve probably all read about this in Rolling Stone…The band was furious, but the music wasn’t. It was just sloppy and self-centered.
The next night was Tulsa – Cain’s Ballroom. I waited for hours in the snow, but I’m not complaining. I thought it was great! (It was only the second time I’ve ever been in snow, so you’ll have to excuse me.) The Pistols arrived late afternoon in their tour bus. They clowned around in the snow. Another kid who had been waiting outside went to shake Sid Vicious’ hand. Sid hit him, not hard tho. I thought it was funny and I was glad it wasn’t me.
I managed to see some of the soundcheck. Boy, I saw enough to know. “Let’s do it together this time,” Rotten pleaded. During “Liar,” which I don’t think they ever did in the actual shows, John (I must be trendy and call him John) just sat on the edge of the stage and looked out, hollow, empty – what am I doing here?
The show that night was fantastic despite the fact that Rotten had the flu. Paul played well as ever, Steve (who looked none too happy) explored a new guitar, Sid was carefully watched by a guard as he fought the temptation to swing his bass at the people like myself who were smashed together right in front of the stage. And John – definitely on, like a man possessed, his performance sliced by his cat-and-prey stares with the crowd. It occurred to me as I caught his stare, “It’s all for him. He’s putting forth so much but he’s doing it for himself, and not for the audience.” I stared back with a vengeance.
But this was the show I had waited for since way back when. I’m glad they had it in ‘em like I’m glad I wasn’t wrong.
A few days later was the SF show topped off by the break-up. Why it happened, who threw out who more exactly we may never find out. But what will happen next: Paul & Steve form a power pop band (here we go again with labels!). John does reggae – “I mean it, mon.” Sid with Jerry Nolan… is luckily yet to be learned.
By the way, I really recommend a book that is, as far as I know, only out in England: The Sex Pistols by Fred & Judy Vermorel it’s called, and try writing to Tandem Publishing… It’s pieces of interviews, news stories, and best of all, portions of Sophie’s (McLaren’s secretary) insightful diary. The book’s loosely done but it speaks for itself as in “look afar and see the beginning” – I got that in a fortune cookie once.
The following article and interview with R.E.M. was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #10, in 1983. It was written by Julia Masi.
As far as I know, this is one of the first full articles about R.E.M. to appear outside their local area of Athens, GA (not counting reviews). When the article came out, they were relatively unknown, though on the brink, and in a very short time, they were at the top of the college radio circuit, on their way even further up. While I never saw R.E.M. perform live, I did see them once on the street outside Irving Plaza just as they broke nationally; I was leaving and they were entering, along with their manager, the late Jefferson Holt. I recognized them, and introduced myself. Most of them did not even acknowledge my existence and just kept on walking; they didn’t need my level of publication anymore. I shouted out after them, sarcastically, “You’re welcome.” Peter Buck was the only one to turn around, genuinely smile, and say “Thanks,” before rushing off to join the others.
Still, I’ve liked some of their music over the years, and have met some pretty rabid fans (hey, Joanne), yet with some song exceptions, I never caught R.E.M.-fever. But fame is a strange and powerful thing. How else can one explain the incredibly bad photos of the 1995 Patti Smith tour taken by Michael Stipe and published in the book Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith (Little Brown & Co., April 1998)?
What’s most important about R.E.M. is that they really did change the position of the power of college radio, which promoted the band to its heights (MTV also helped). R.E.M. became one of the stronger influences to arise out of independent music in that period. There were so many bands trying to sound like them and not succeeding, which is a sharp irony to this article. – RBF, 2010 They jokingly refer to themselves as “four pretty vague people,” but R.E.M. – Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Pete Buck, and Bill Berry – are really the most modest and misunderstood stars to soar out of Athens, Georgia. Solely on the merit of their 12” EP, Chronic Town, on IRS Records, R.E.M. have propelled themselves from playing for a few friends in an abandoned church to facing audiences of 12,000 in major concert arenas. But even though their reviews have been raves, the rock’n’roll press has only been bombarding them with left-handed compliments as they constantly compare the band to other groups who are musically incongruous. Or accuse them of being overly influenced by musical forces that they never even heard.
“It’s like the Big Boss in the Sky says, ‘You have to tell the people what the music is,’” says Michael. “We’ve been trying for two-and-a-half years to come up with a term that describes the band, but we can’t. We’re not a pop band. We’re certainly not power-pop. We’re not punk. Though maybe we were punk in the beginning, but that was two-and-a-half year ago.
“It’s not that we’re so incredibly original, but it’s hard to find a category that we fit into. The best thing we’ve come up with is “folk-rock.” With a hyphen. But that’s sort of tongue-in-cheek.
“I wouldn’t call us a dance band. We’re not predominantly on stage to make people dance. If you want to get up and dance you can. The beat is fairly obvious. If you want to just sit there you can. If you want to walk out the door, you can do that, too. Many people have.”
He finds comparisons between R.E.M. and psychedelic music to be a “pretty loaded statement. If it is psychedelia, it’s 1982 psychedelia.” He says it’s a “let-down” to be compared with bands just because they hail from the same city or state, but he is complemented that R.E.M. has been said to sound like Love, Television, and Pere Ubu. He admits that journalists who’ve found parallels with the later, “have just been listening to us talk for too long. If you pushed it to extremes you could say we sound like them but…”
“We read our reviews and laugh,” admits Peter. “Then we’ll go out and buy records to see what we’re imitating. We’ll go out of our way to buy something just to see what it is we’re supposed to sound like. I bought a Beau Brummells album because some reviews said I played like Beau Brummell. I listened to it and I didn’t recognize anything. A lot of people have compared us to the Byrds, but none of us has ever listened to them.”
“Well, I’ve heard ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’,” Michael interjects, “but I didn’t listen to anything before I was 15 [he’s 23 now – JM], except Gershwin and Mancini. My parents had limited, but very good taste. Right now, I’ve got Rhapsody in Blue in my pocket.” He’s also got a penchant for classical music, especially the Overture 1812, “with real cannons,” and Patti Smith, who is the only person he ever wrote a fan letter to. “Her mother wrote back to me! It was really a touching birthday present.”
Recently, R.E.M. has been put on the receiving end when it comes to fan mail. And they love hearing from their listeners. “We’re all fans,” admits Michael, who tries to write back, except that, “We’ve only got one typewriter (among the band), but if someone has a question that’s valid, we’ll go out of our way to answer them. That’s what we’re here for.” Although almost all the letters start out the same, “This is the first fan letter I’ve ever written,” some of them can be quite original.
Most of the people who write to Michael are trying to find out what his lyrics are. At times, his singing sounds a little muddled. “It’s intentional on our part. It’s pushing on our part. The subjectiveness. People have sent their versions of the words and I’ve changed the original because their words were better. It’s very helpful.
“I’ve always loved sitting down with a record and not having the lyric there. Having the lyrics in front of you is like taking the raisins out of the raisin bread and expecting it to taste the same.
“The people will write in to tell us that they feel like making movies when they listen to the records. And they go into detail. Or that some of the songs make them feel a certain way. That’s what we’re trying to do; to have the music so that you can subjectively have the feeling come up by yourself with it.
“Some of the letters say, ‘The first time I heard that song, I got so depressed it made me cry.’ It’s great! That’s what we’re going for. You don’t have to sit down and force yourself to listen or even like the music. It’s just there and it’s a fairly recognizable form of music. That’s no problem with the audience. They can find out what the song means to them. If they give that much thought.” “By-and-large, they’re interesting,” says Peter. “We’ve gotten a few acid-chaser dementeds. There’s one girl who wrote us and said she’d ‘come in contact with our little sphere,’ whatever that means, and then she said something about ‘working a certain flag.’ The whole letter made no sense at all. Real psychedelic, real ‘hey, man,’ that sort of thing. A lot of it is stream of consciousness writing. Some of it is really neat, like poetry. And some of it is like a teenager on a bad trip.” Peter feels that people write to them “not so much because we’re a great band, but because we’re accessible.”
They began playing as a hobby when they lived in an old tenement building in Athens. The building was originally a church, but the congregation it served had lost all its followers at the turn of the century. A real estate agent bought it and fixed it up enough to rent it as a house. After Michael moved in, he discovered a hole in the closet that, if you crawled through on all fours, would lead you to the back room of the church, which still had its pews and pulpit intact. Michael discovered that the acoustics of the room was great and there was plenty of space for dancing.
Playing in the church had no effects on their music. “I’d love to have some great religious vision,” confesses Peter, “but it was just our garage. We had parties there. We played our first dates there. It was real wild. Very sloppy and loose.
“It’s not that we’ve improved, we’re still very loose. It’s just natural of playing there. It’s really just fun to do. The hobby has taken over our lives.
“We’re not geniuses, but we write and play together real well. What I like best about the music is that it comes from nowhere. No traumas or anything. I’ve always imagined that the Beatles or the Kinks, when they sat down to write every day, had a bolt of lightening come from somewhere. But from writing, I realize that doesn’t happen.”
“I’m the stupid one, musically,” quips Michael. I don’t know anything musically; not that the other guys do, but they have to know a bit more because they carry an instrument. I help them veto or edit songs. I write most of the words, but those guys veto them, too, if I get ridiculous or too depressed to be happy.” His main concern when writing lyrics is to transmit “feelings or attitude.”
And that’s one of the reasons why R.E.M. was reluctant to tour, opening for bands like the Go-Go’s, before their EP came out. They felt their music would be lost on an audience who was just waiting for the headlining act. And they felt it would be devastating for the band if they had to play for an audience who wasn’t paying attention to them. But now that Chronic Town is on the charts, they’re anxious to get out and play.
“I can’t wait to make eye contact with as many people as possible. I can’t wait to stare down 12,000 people,” Michael laughs. “Twelve thousand people! What a joke. But the band has a good sense of humor. I hate comedy and despise jokes, but you have to have a sense of ‘you’ to be in a band. To be in this band, anyway!”
Most of these photos, taken after the February snow storm, were in a garden scupture shop. I've always loved snow on statues and the like, as they are organically sculpted in their own right by nature. The last photo is of the Broadway Bridge. Photos can be enlarged by double-clicking them.
The following interview with musical impresario Lee Black Childers was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #9, in 1983. It was conducted by Nancy Foster, credited under “NanSuzy Foster.”
Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s, Leee Black Childers was everywhere, but where I encountered him the most was Max’s Kansas City (introduced to me by Nancy). Before anything about the man, I must say that I so coveted his leather motorcycle jacket, which had an amazing painting of Eddie Cochran’s face on the back.
Childers has had an astonishing carreer behind the scenes to levels that have changed the scope of the music world. When he wasn’t running David Bowie’s MainMan empire, he was managing the Heartbreakers (with Johnny Thunders), or he was photographing living icons into household memories with shots that were published worldwide.
I liked Leee the first time I met him, and though he probably doesn’t remember me, well, I still want that jacket! – RBF, 2010
/www.leeeblackchilders.com/
FFanzeen: When was the first time you came to New York from down South?
Leee Black Childers: Well, I kept leaving and going back. The first time was the Summer of Love, 1967. Me and this girl from England, who was down in Kentucky – the Israeli war happened and she got all crazy and decided the world was gonna end and we’d have never seen New York, so we got on a plane and come. I arrived with eight dollars in my pocket at Kennedy Airport, didn’t know a soul in New York; a solider picked us up and took us to the “Y” and paid for our rooms and everything for a few days. He could see that we were helpless. He housed us until we made friends with someone and we moved in with him.
[Wayne County, Max's Kansas City, 1976]
FF: When and how did you connect with people like Cherry Vanilla?
Leee: Well, Cherry was back in the old underground theater days. There’s this brilliant director named Tony Engrassia who did Off-Off-Broadway shows like La Mama and New York Theater Ensemble, and the day the men landed on the moon, Jackie Curtis got married. Do you know who Jackie Curtis is?
FF: A transsexual; an Andy Warhol starlet.
Leee: Sort of. Whatever. A drag queen. She got married on a rooftop that same evening. She was supposed to marry Eric Emmerson, but he didn’t turn up, so she married someone else.
FF: A publicity stunt?
Leee: Yeah, you know, it was just a joke. And everyone was up there, so we got invited up to that, me and Wayne County. Wayne County was my roommate at the time, and at that thing up there we met Tony Engrassia and Holly Woodlawn, and all those people. So Tony invited Wayne down to start being in the plays, and I became stage manager. And that’s when Cherry Vanilla turned up for the one Wayne wrote, called World.
[Cherry Vanilla, Max's Kansas City, 1976] FF: What year was that?
Leee: ’68 or ’69; I guess ’69. Yeah, it would be ’69, because then the most successful one (play) was Pork, which went to London in 1970, with Cherry in the title role. [Laughs]
FF: Could you tell me a little bit about your work with MainMan, and how you got associated with Tony DeFries, David Bowie –
Leee: Right. That comes through Pork. I was stage managing and Cherry was in it, and Wayne County was in it, and Tony Zennetta played the Andy Warhol figure in it, and we took it to England. Cherry and I were pulling this scam at that time in England, saying that we wrote for Circus magazine. She was supposed to be the writer and I was supposed to be the photographer and, in fact, we didn’t write for them, of course, but who’s to know? We were loud Americans. They believed us, so we got into all the rock shows free.
FF: Love it!
Leee: Right, so one day I was reading this thing, and in a little garage behind a shopping center in Haberstock Hill, was David Bowie. So I say, “Oh, I read about him somewhere. He wears dresses and things. Let’s go see him.” So Cherry, and Wayne and I went to see David and, of course, David was entranced ‘cause we were doing an Andy Warhol thing. So David came to see the opening when Pork opened up and he came to see the show, I don’t know, eight or ten times. When the show closed, we came back to New York and we all said we’d keep in touch; then we hadn’t heard from David in about a year. Then Tony DeFries called up Tony Zennetta and said that David was planning his first American tour. In that year, David had become a big success in England. And so Tony said he was planning his first American tour and he didn’t want the normal sort of crew that you get – you know, a bunch of hippies and everything; he wanted us, would we be the crew? I was working at 16 Magazine at the time, Tony Zennetta was working in a photo lab, Cherry Vanilla wasn’t working at all and was deeply in debt – so of course we all said yes – of course, we’ll be MainMan – and so we were. We had no experience, which make it work out, because we were able to ask for the impossible because we didn’t know you couldn’t get it. So we’d walk into the record company or into the club where we were going to perform and make all these impossible demands, and just because we didn’t know that you couldn’t ask for things like that, we’d end up getting it. When I was in St. Louis, we were at this strange little hotel and I was on the phone with Lisa Robinson, who was in Los Angeles, ‘cause we were going to Los Angeles next. She said, “Where are you staying?” – and I forget where it was, somewhere weird – and she said, “Oh, that place is awful, you can’t stay there,” and I said “I’ve never been to Los Angeles, where should I stay?” She said the Beverly Hills Hotel, so I said, okay, and I called up RCA and I said switch our reservations to the Beverly Hills Hotel. Forty people. In the Beverly Hills Hotel. The bill there alone was, like $60,000 or something.
[Holly Woodlawn, set of "Good Night America" with Geraldo Rivera, 1975]
FF: Bless their abuse.
Leee: I didn’t know what the Beverly Hills Hotel was; RCA couldn’t say no to me, so they booked us in. I don’t know why they couldn’t. The roadies would go down to Hollywood and pick up tourists and say, “Come back to the Beverly Hills Hotel with us, you can have a complete Beverly Hills Hotel dinner for five dollars a head.” All these people would come back with them, they’d collect the five dollars, and the tourists would order anything they wanted.
FF: That’s incredible!
Leee: So these tourists would get $250 meals for five dollars. The roadies, in turn, would make fifty dollars a night, plus tips. Now, if RCA reads this, they’ll know what happened.
FF: Around ’75 or so, I joined the Wayne County Fan Club, and I was in touch with this guy named Eve Emmerson, and he said that David Bowie thwarted Wayne’s musical career by saying Wayne was an actor, rather than a singer. Was there any truth to that? Did David Bowie sort of encourage Wayne to concentrate on acting?
Leee: Yeah, a lot of people say that. Even looking back now over the years, it’s really hard to remember exactly what happened. Because those were really peculiar times. There was an incredible amount of money, which none of us had ever had before, all of it really stemming from David. Tony DeFries was such a charismatic character; everyone thought everything he said and did at the time was just perfect. We thought he was a genus. So he moved us out of this crummy apartment on the Upper West Side, where in the bathroom, when we went to the toilet, we had to open an umbrella because there was a constant leak. We moved from that into an Upper East Side duplex, with a balcony and the whole number; you know, got us video tape machines, gave us anything we wanted. We had charges at restaurants all over town; we had American Express cards and MasterCharge. And then, Tony DeFries announced to Wayne, “Now you won’t work.” ‘Cause Wayne had been playing a lot, you know. He said, “The idea is to sit. And wait. And not make you available.” In the course of that, he said, “So you wont’ be doing nothing, we’ll concentrate on some acting and we’ll make a movie and stuff like that.” It could have been David’s idea, ‘cause now we know that 90% of those brilliant ideas we thought Tony DeFries was having had really been coming from David, who was in England at that time. And so we sat. And nobody complained much. He wasn’t just doing it to Wayne, he was doing it to a girl-singer named Ava Terry, he was doing it to Dana Gillespie, he was doing it to Amanda Lear; everybody was getting huge salaries, living in style, and being told to do nothing.
FF: Where can I get a job like that?
Leee: Now there are people who say that David did that particularly to all those people to keep them out of the limelight while he, you know, did his number. And he’ll be the first to tell you he used all of those people’s ideas. Periodically, he would either visit, or the people would be sent to England and live with him for a while. He’d pick their brains and he’d get ideas for songs and concepts and everything, I mean, Tony Engrassia wrote a play named Fame a year before David Bowie wrote a song named “Fame.” And Tony spent, like, two months with David, supposedly working on a script of a play about 1984, and in the course of it, of course, he told him all about Fame and his concept, you know, of the whole idea of the destructiveness of it. Out came the song. What can you do? David would say, “Yes, I got the idea (from someone else),” but David’s great genus is knowing which ideas are the good ones. So, we sat, and Wayne couldn’t do a thing, not even acting for that matter. Every once in a while a film crew would come around and point a camera at us, at whatever we were doing. I’d love to see that film now – I don’t know where it is – ‘cause they spent thousands on it. Finally he went crazy and demanded to be allowed to play. So then they did this one show, which was Wayne County at the Trucks, which cost a fortune to put on. Which wasn’t really Wayne. Wayne would put on garbage and would dance around in the back room of some slezoid dive. Suddenly they had this theater down on West Street, that Arts Center, and Tony Engrassia staged and directed it, and they had dancers and they had lights and costumes, and it cost fortunes, and it was an all-invited audience. Nobody could get in who just wanted to play. Champagne and all kinds of stuff that costs fortunes and only the wrong people saw it; a bunch of snobs and businessmen, and people like that. And then he was told to sit again, so then he stared going crazy. Flipping out, you know. And so that’s when Tony (DeFries) said, “I don’t think we can work together,” and that was the end of the relationship. And, of course, as soon as all of the money was cut off and Wayne was back on the Upper East Side, and had to fend for himself, then everything was fine and he wasn’t crazy anymore. Before, he was out all night, taking pills like crazy. He’d come storming into the house at six in the morning with a string of the most dreadful people hanging on him. I’d be throwing them out, you know, and Wayne would be shouting, “Theah mah friends, theah mah friends.” “No, they’re not, get them out; out you go.” And as soon as he was back working for himself, well then, everything went back to normal. He was fine; puttin’ on shows for $25, making $35, and being very happy, and it was great again. It was very peculiar times and we’ll never know how much of it was Tony DeFries megalomania, how much of it was David.
FF: Tony was probably the hatchet man.
Leee: Right. [Laughs] Perhaps David meant well. Perhaps he really thought Wayne shouldn’t do anything. The other thing that’s nice is since that time – all those people got dropped at the same time, Amanda, Ava, and everybody – they’ve all gone on to great success.
FF: When and where was the first place you saw the Heartbreakers, and what was your first impression?
Leee: Well, the same thing everyone said. Actually, it was Tony Zennetta who went to see them somewhere – CBGB’s or somewhere – and I hadn’t gone. Tony went crazy, and he was on the phone with me and he said, “You can’t believe how completely destroyed these people are. If they manage to live to another set you must go.” And, of course, that’s what everyone then said, and everyone still does. “Catch them before they die.” A thousand shows later, they’re out-living everybody; they’ll out-live us all. It was very macabre, but that’s what I went for at first, to see how physically destroyed – Johnny (Thunders) and Jerry (Nolan) were old friends of mine and I wanted to see what sort of shape they’d fallen into. But then, of course, I really liked the music. It really, immediately, got me. “Blank Generation,” I thought was brilliant. I remember once, at CBGB’s – Cherry Vanilla had this boyfriend named Michael Linder who was a radio talk show type person, and he did reviews and things. Very, very straight: Brooks Brothers suits and this naturally blond hair cut perfectly and all. Clean fingernails and the whole number. So she brought him down to CBGB’s. They were sitting sort of at the back, and the music was going on, but they couldn’t really see anything, and he liked the music. So then, I was so gun-ho on it at the time. I gave him the speech about this music is the future of rock’n’roll and it’s finally getting rid of guitar solos and all this Eric Clapton shit, and I went on and on an on, and I got him real excited, and he said, “Oh, do you think I could talk to one of the Heartbreakers?” And I said, “Sure, sure, I’ll go get one.” So the set was over and I got Richard Hell and brought him and set him down, and then Cherry and I both realized what we’d done. Here was this perfectly groomed person talking to Richard Hell. His (Hell) lips were all cracked and chapped and he had scabs on his face, and his hair was cut in all different directions and he was dirty and his clothes were falling off, and one eye was closed and he was sitting there. And, of course, Richard was adoring it; he was putting it on as much as he could, to see how horrified he could get this poor man. Michael Linder was sitting as far back in the booth as you can get. It was great. I didn’t start managing (the Heartbreakers) until Richard left, unfortunately, ‘cause I adore Richard. I guess it’s just as well, though, ‘cause I hear he’s suing Sire Records and everything, saying Sire destroyed his career. If any of us look back, if anybody could get anything in edgewise as far as destroying with, Richard was doing a very good job himself.
[Billy Rath, Irving Plaza, 1978]
FF: Could you give us a few words on the personalities of each of the Heartbreakers?
Leee: Yeah. It’s funny to do it now, not working with them. Probably this is the best time to do it. Johnny (Thunders) is totally adorable. He could be a great con man if he weren’t so self-destructive, ‘cause he’s a very good con artist. But he’s too greedy, so he gets you madly in love with him – and this is anyone – everybody he meets just thinks he’s so sweet and wants to protect him. And to help him. And he is; he’s very good-hearted. But he’s greedy and so he’ll get a little bit. Someone that he could con out of $500,000, he cons him out of $500 instead, and rips him off and then ruin the relationship. He goes for the moment. He over-indulges everything, you know? When we first started recording [the album L.A.M.F. – RBF] for Track Records in England, I told these people – they were all well meaning, I guess, but they were used to the Who and everything, and you’d think they’d have known better – “When we get in the studio, it’s nothing but Coca-Colas and no drugs and not anything that’s destructive.” So they said, “Okay, Okay.” I said, “Please trust me, that’s the way it must be.” Of course, we got in the studio and Johnny said, “I don’t want any drugs or anything, I want to work, but c'mon, I gotta loosen up. How about some Scotch? Just Scotch.” And I was saying, “No, no, no,” right? The record company people, Chris Stanton, they though I was crazy. “We can’t turn him down for that,” so they went out and got him a bottle of Scotch, which he downed instantly, and then fell on the floor. First day of recording. All I could say was, “See, I told you.”
[Jerry Nolan, Johnny Thunders' Memorial, 1992]
FF: No moderation.
Leee: No moderation, which, I guess, helps make him an artist. Walter (Lure) is possibly the most talented one, creatively, in the group. I don’t want to say the most talented, but creative. Because he always had new ideas, he was already ready to try new things, and he didn’t realize, and probably still doesn’t, that he had become a really big star in England. There were as many kids imitating him and cheering for him and freaking out over him as there were for Johnny. He always acted like it was Johnny and assumed it was Johnny. I don’t think he ever really realized that if he ever went back – Johnny has since been back to England a few times. Walter’s never gone back – he’d be a big draw; he was really a big star. The kids loved him ‘cause he’s a psycho.
[Walter Lure, CBGB's, 1980]
FF: That might be what the Heroes (Walter’s group) have to do because in New York, it’s Johnny, and Walter will always be in Johnny’s shadow according to, like, the club owners and stuff, and the Heroes really get a hard time.
Leee: Really not so in England. In fact, Walter might be even more fashionable ‘cause England has gone very psycho right now. And Walter has the look and delivery to go with that. I think he’d really do well.
FF: Maybe if he gets a record deal they could send him over there. There’s this real anti-rock’n’roll backlash in New York right now. But I think the rockabilly here’ll knock that right out. That’s gonna be the pervasive thing. It seems like it’s the most healthy branch of the music right now. It’s alive.
Leee: That’s why I got into it. That’s why I was first working with Levi (Dexter), and I realized I couldn’t work with both him and Johnny. I talked to Johnny about it, and I said, this is fun for me. I enjoy every (Levi) show, I enjoy touring, and much to Johnny’s credit, he completely understood. He said, yeah, he could see that that would be much more what I would enjoy than working with him, so we parted on the best-of-friends.
FF: Levi’s like a big breath of fresh air; he’s so anti- that junkie jadedness that pervades New York.
Leee: After two years with the Heartbreakers, you can imagine what it was like to suddenly be with little sixteen and seventeen year-old kids who were saying, “Ohhh, can we really play? Can we really do a gig?? Two gigs in one night? What fun! [Laughs] With Johnny, I’d have to slap him and say you will do this show. “No, I’m not getting out of bed.” And we’d have a rough ‘n’ tumble and eventually he made every show but one in two years, which is fully to his credit, really. Because sometimes he was in no shape to, but he did. He always made it while I was working with him.
FF: What about Jerry (Nolan)?
Leee: I can’t talk about Jerry.
FF: What was your most memorable thing about working with the Heartbreakers?
Leee: Oh, well, besides them, generally, which was some experience, I guess that whole period in England when we did the Anarchy Tour [1977 – Ed.]. It came as such a surprise to us; none of us knew what was going on over there. From playing Max’s (Kansas City), it had become very routine here. Then three days later we had to run with our coats over our heads while photographers were trying to get our pictures, and keep our hotel room locked. There were people meeting us at the edge of town with pickets, turning us away, not even letting us in the town. It was such a weird experience. It didn’t know that much anti-rock’n’roll feeling – which is what it came down to – existed anymore, and there it was. It was really such a strange experience. That’s why I told everyone in New York to come to England. Cherry Vanilla sold everything in her apartment. She put a “for sale” sign on her door and sod everything – everything –to get all the money she could to come to England. She was there in a month. Wayne was there in a month. They came fast and cashed in.
FF: Where did the Heartbreakers get the best response?
Leee: Well, I guess in London. Pretty well all over England. There was a lot of hysteria in Scotland. Scottish audiences are dangerous. Liverpool, they go crazy for ‘em. They built a very, very good following in Amsterdam. It’s much more hysteria there, and in France, then they ever got in New York because half the people in the audience in New York had slept with them. Some of the glamour isn’t there, where kids in Leeds had only ever seen their pictures and heard the rumors – and suddenly there they were on stage in front of them. It was fantastic to them.
FF: They still had that aesthetic distance.
Leee: Yeah, right.
FF: Do you ever go see the Heartbreakers any more?
Leee: Do the Heartbreakers play any more?
FF: Yeah. Tony (Coiro) from the Knots plays bass because Billy Rath went to Cape Cod and became a father. He moved in with his girlfriend, Marsha. He got hepatitis in, like, December (1980), and that sort of turned his head around. He said, “Enough of that.”
Leee: He’ll probably be a lot happier. He was never really happy doing that (music).
FF: He’s supposed to be really happy getting up six in the morning and doing farm chores, and that kind of thing.
Leee: He got very self-destructive, too, but it always seemed sort of imitated, like he thought, “Oh, well, I might as well be self-destructive, too, otherwise what am I gonna do? Read a book?” So he’s probably very happy and Marsha probably is, too. Good, I’m glad. Sure, I’d go see them (the Heartbreakers). It would be a great experience.
FF: Have you seen the Heroes yet?
Leee: No, but I haven’t –
FF: Mucho upbeat. Walter’s my favorite dresser and comedian, too. What did you do between managing the Heartbreakers and managing Levi? Or was it straight to Levi?
Leee: Straight from. I was in England, and the punks / Teddys war started, and I’d see pictures of Teddy Boys in the papers and they looked awfully glamorous to me – more glamorous than the punks. So I began going in disguise to Teddy Boy shows. It would always be dark so they never knew. Although my hair was quiffed, it had an electric blue streak through it. But they never knew. So I started going and eventually the show where I met Levi the lights went on and I was about to be killed, but I met him. He just got up – it was a Shakin’ Stevens show – and did a couple of songs and I thought he was great, so I asked him to come around to the office. He didn’t have a band and didn’t know anything about starting a band, so I started working with him while I was still working with the Heartbreakers. Then all the trouble with Jerry started. That was in July, when I met Levi, and by about September, Jerry Nolan was pulling his numbers and quitting the group and then going back when Johnny would cry, “Come back for a week.” Then he’d come back if we’d pay him $1,000 a show and things like that, and I was going crazy with all that anyway. So eventually then, Jerry left. And we did whole tours with other drummers – Terry Chimes (of the Clash) and people – and then it really began getting crazy until it was clear the Heartbreakers were gonna break up. So Johnny asked if I’d continue to work with him as a solo artist, so I said yes. But by then, Levi had begun playing, too [with the Rockats – Ed.]. In fact, the very first show Levi ever did, it was the worst show you ever saw in your life. [Laughs] Johnny Thunders did the greatest thing: it was at the Royal College of Art, and Dibbs (Preston) didn’t even come on stage, you only saw a guitar cord go off-stage to nowhere for him to play; and Smutty (Smiff) wasn’t plugged in because he couldn’t play the bass at all; Levi was off-tune on nearly every song. The rhythm guitarist we had at that time jumped off-stage in the middle of the show to dance with his girlfriend – he just laid his guitar down.
FF: Oh, wonderful.
Leee: The drummer couldn’t drum. It was just awful! We were on supporting Steel Pulse, and it was a big show at the Royal College of Art, you know, and our agent had just bragged us into it. So everybody was just ready to die, and you could see Levi was just mortified. He was so terrified, he felt so horrible. So all of a sudden, Johnny got on stage – and Johnny could hardly stand up – grabbed a guitar, and he started playing, and he did this, like, Chuck Berry thing, a medley. And soon as he finished one song he’d go into the next one, and he forced Levi to sing along with him, and he forced the band to keep playing and it went for, like, twenty minutes solid. And the audience, of course, by then was going completely crazy, cheering and screaming. When they came off and were back in the dressing room, Levi said, “Oh, Johnny, thank you, thank you. You saved the show. I was horrified.” Johnny said, “I just did it to teach you one thing: it’s impossible to make a fool of yourself on stage.” It was great. We loved him for that. Levi still adores him.
FF: That is a wonderful story.
Leee: Yeah, and it was so good of him. So by then, Levi was touring a lot. We did the whole tour with Wayne County – the Eddy and Sheena Tour – all over England and Scotland, and everywhere. A lot started to happen. It was then that Johnny and I mutually realized that I was better off working with Levi.
FF: Which person or persons have you enjoyed photographing the most?
Leee: Oh, Lord! Probably the most fun I’ve had taking pictures were (of) a lot of people you probably wouldn’t know. A lot of the early drag queens and everything. They’re all dead now, or old. And also I really enjoyed a series I started and will someday finish photographing people as – I don’t want to say my favorite movie star as much as the movie star they would have been if they had been a movie star, instead of whatever they are. And that’s when I did that Wayne County session of Wayne as Thedda Bara, that picture that’s up at Max’s.
FF: Oh, yeah. When I was in the Wayne County Fan Club, they sent me that one for Christmas.
Leee: Yeah? Great! And that picture of Cherry that’s up at Max’s is Cherry Vanilla as Clara Bow. And that was fun ‘cause we’d build whole sets and create characters, and it was really fun. Some day I’ll finish the series. Do Levi as Rudolph Valentino [Laughs].
FF: If you could photograph anyone you haven’t yet, who would it be?
Leee: Who are still alive? There are a lot of people I feel very –
FF: They don’t’ have to be alive now.
Leee: ‘Cause there are a lot of people I’m really sorry I missed. Great, classic people like Tallulah Bankhead, with brilliant faces. Even when she was old and ravaged – you know, she drank spirits of ammonia for eight years. She gave up booze during the war. She swore she would never drink another drop of booze as long as Hitler was in Europe, and so she drank spirits of ammonia instead.
FF: I would imagine that wouldn’t do very much for your skin.
Leee: Right, so she was real ravaged by the time she finally died, but still amazing. I’d love to have done her. Of people that are around now, I wonder who would be really good. I can’t think. Old people still, I think. The real classics, like Estelle Winwood and James Cagney, and people like that. I’d be astounded just to be in their presence. And would like to photograph them. Other than that, probably my next favorite sort of people to photograph are completely unknown. You know, really young kids, because you can do anything with them because they’re excited at being photographed. People like Robert Redford or something; think of how many times he’s been photographed. What more can he do? But you get somebody like – another one of my favorites was a Debbie Harry session I did, you know, when she was just starting, and I don’t know if it was the very first time, but it was one of the first times she had ever been in a real studio with full lights and, you know, seamless paper backdrop, and the whole thing, so she just went bananas. She was wonderful to photograph ‘cause she was living her fantasy.
The following article with musician, actor, and performance artist Nona Hendryx was originally published in FFanzeen magazine, issue #11, in 1983. It was written by writer and photographer Jim Downs, and our managing editor, Julia Masi.
I had the opportunity to meet Nona when she was interviewed on the cable access show, Videowave, where I worked as a floor manager for a number of years. The picture below is from that day.
While we were not in the habit of printing articles that did not focus on rock’n’roll, but Nona was very nice to all of us there, with a joyous heart and an open mind, which not everyone had being on public access. We would all later learn about her relationship with Dusty Springfield, but it is Nona’s own funk queen work that brought her to both Videowave and FFanzeen. – RBF, 2010 Her light blue inside-out pants suit sports a bright silver patch that says, “Tailor Made.” And although she confesses to picking it up off the rack, on Nona Hendryx, it’s an original. Her style is all her own and her vice is unmistakable, and almost impossible to imitate.
Since her days with Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells (and then Labelle), to her more recent work with Talking Heads, or her new album, Nona, on RCA Records, she managed to transcend the trends and keep a thread of consistency in her music.
“I don’t particularly like my voice,” confesses Nona. “I just use it because it’s the only vehicle I have for getting my music across. And getting my words across. Poetry is my first love. I think it will continue to be, and music is a tool. I don’t think of myself as a singer.
“A lot of the singers today try to sing like Mahalia Jackson or Aretha (Franklin). I once did one of Mahalia’s songs when I was about 13 or 14. I don’t even remember which one it was. It’s not something I tried to emulate in my voice. I just never had any delusions in my mind that I could sing like Aretha so I didn’t ever try. I appreciate her voice.
“Music really hasn’t changed that much. The only changes have been the electric guitar and computerized music. Punk was a variation of the hippies. Punk shock. That to me is not a change. And the other biggest change is the involvement of women in the arts and, therefore, music. Those are the biggest changes I’ve seen,” notes Nona.
“After 22 years in the music business – I started at five,” she doesn’t see that it’s any easier for a woman now than it was in the early ‘60s, “it’s not so much easier, but it’s less restricted. If it were easier, you’d just be a musician.”
One of the major differences between being accepted as a musician and being labeled a “female musician” is the cosmetic packaging of the performer. “It just seems that to become a part of what’s considered the norm and to be successful, you do it (package yourself). They assume that you’re gonna look like Brooke Shields. Every woman who reaches that status, and the people who’ve gotten to that place like the Go-go’s, it all goes back to that whole image of being glamorous. There’s always someone trying to sell that to you. Because that’s necessary to be liked. I think, in a way, it’s sad because a lot of women with talent are not given the opportunity because they don’t look like Brooke Shields or Diana Ross, or Farrah Fawcett.” Oddly enough, no one has ever tried to package Nona. “I do such a good job of it myself,” she laughs. “I think I’m just a very visual person. I like visuals. I love the movies. I love clothes. I go buy make-up, and then go home and try it all on.”
Nona’s also quite handy with the pen and paint brush. “I was always good at art. It came naturally and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the creative process. The frustration. I love it!
“I love poetry. It was a way to write down my feelings and divorce myself from my feelings. Like a lot of teenagers, I was very shy, except when I was around my friends. Then I wasn’t shy; I was bad then. And I mean bad as in being bad. And after junior high, ‘cause I was switched from a different high school from my friends, which was a predominately white school, and I came from a neighborhood that I’d say was a 95% black neighborhood, I felt disoriented. A teacher there helped me; you know, introduced me to poetry and also worked with me on the poems. And I just took to it really quickly. I was really good at interpreting what was being said. And then I began to write some and took public speaking in high school and did a couple of plays.
“When I started going on the road with Patti LaBelle and the Bluebells, I tended to use that as a way of passing the hours or riding in a station wagon, writing short stories and developing a writing style for myself. And what I began to develop was one of – well – taking a word and – like, joy: joyfulness; joyless; overjoyed. All the things you can add to a word (like) the prefix and the suffix, and summing up the word. I love words.”
Her taste in poetry is eclectic, ranging from Shakespeare to e.e. cummings, to Nikki Giovanni, and every style in-between. When someone admits they have a hard time understanding when words become a poem, Nona is happy to explain: “The fact is that it’s verse and it needs nothing else to make it. It needs no music or visuals to make it. Although in modern poetry what matters structure within literature, within how you use verse. Poetry can be one word; if the choice of the word fits the feeling. And if it causes your mind to bounce off or if it’s like a magnet that draws you, it pulls you into the poem.”
She believes that writing lyrics is different from writing poems. “Poetry has its own meter. When you read it, you’re reading to the meter. In a song, music has that meter also, but you must write the words to flow with the music. The syllables must fit the notes of the melody.”
When Nona writes songs, she usually goes into the studio with “the musical ideas set and the lyrics can change up to the last minute of my singing it. Sometimes I think I have the right words for something and later on in singing it and singing another words by accident, it becomes the right word instead of the one I had.
“I always leave it open for change. The music is always changing. That way it’s still something I enjoy doing. I don’t do it the same way live as I do it on record. And I don’t do it the same way each time I do it. Each time I do it, it’s different.”
Recently, a cousin said to me, “You know why you’re no good at sports? ‘Cause your father was a lazy fuck who wouldn’t take you to little league or some other organized kid’s sport.”
Maybe. As a young’n, I remember running a lot and playing tag kinds of things, though my favorite game was called Skelly, which was sort of marbles with bottle caps played on the sidewalk in a field drawn out of chalk. There was skill, but no real physicality other than being on your knees to shoot the caps.
Sure, I watched professional wrestling in my early teens, but I was never into organized sports, whether in a gym class or watching it on television. Sometimes I would be amazed at hearing kids talking about batting averages and the like, reeling off numbers. To me, it was like a foreign language.
By the time I got to high school, I had no coordination or sports acumen at all. I was bad at basketball, football, baseball and softball. In all the time I played on the (cement) baseball field in gym class, I hit the ball perhaps twice, and never made it to first base. All the other kids on whatever team I was on hated me for this, so eventually, when I was forced to play, the gym teachers created a position for me: I would stand outside the fence and retrieve any ball that went over. And I played the same position for both teams. Basically, I got to hang out and play “fetch.” My last year, the teachers gave up on even that, and they let me basically run around the track for three miles each class.
Meanwhile, though not a follower of sports, my dad would occasionally get tickets to hockey, basketball or baseball games through his work, and I would always enjoy going. It was the whole zeitgeist to the spectacle experience that would appeal to me; what was going on in the stands was always as intriguing as whatever was happening on the field, ice, or boards. Once I even took in a professional soccer game and saw Pele play with the Cosmos, but all I really remember is the literal pain in the ass from sitting on the cement seats on Randall’s Island, and that it went into triple-freakin’-overtime. When I got to college and had to take PE credits, I went for karate (taekwondo). I had taken it once before as an early teen, in a community center (the JCH). The week after I bought the correct clothes, the instructor, who was twice my size and more than double my weight, said, “Throw a punch at me.” So I put my arm up and half-heartedly threw out my fist, figuring he was explain to me slowly what to do. Instead, he full force blocked my arm (I thought he had broke it in that instant), picked me up, and threw me over his shoulder and across the room, as I skid on my knees across the canvas mat. “Learn how to fall,” was all he said, and walked away. I looked down at my painful knees, and the friction had burned right though my expensive karate pants, and my knees were bleeding. “Fuck this,” I thought, and limped out. I had blisters for weeks.
But I decided to try again. At the end of the first year, I had attained a yellow belt (the one after the white; the teacher/instructor said to us, “Congratulations, you now know enough to get yourself killed” (meaning by overconfidence, believing we knew more than we actually did… I did not have that problem). The second year of it (and the final athletics credits I needed), I was 19 years old). It was somewhere in this year, while we had to run around the gym backwards to build up our calves, that my ankles started to hurt. Then they began to really hurt. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, and the instructor, idiot that he was, had no sympathy. He yelled two inches from my face, “Little kids in Asia can do this, so don’t complain!”
I knew I most likely had flat feet, so I went to a podiatrist. He confirmed that condition, and gave me these Frankenstein’s monster-type shoes that weighed a ton and were ugly as anything (and very costly). Also added to it were these metal insoles that were unwieldy and kept me off balance.
Soon, they both hurt my feet more than without them, so I stopped using them. And yet, the pain was still there, and reached my knees. After a while, it started on my hips, and worked its way up over time to my neck. There it was particularly strong, and I couldn’t turn my head without extremely sharp agony. To get out of bed, on those days, I had to put my hand behind my head and lift it manually while my body rose. The muscles in my back began to spasm, especially when I would laugh. I just couldn’t breathe, and had to stand still until the spasm passed. My whole body was screaming.
At age 24, I went to a doctor who specialized in arthritis and finally nailed it down, and it had a name: ankylosing spondylitis (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ankylosing_spondylitis). It was not a great thing to have, but just knowing what it was, was a relief. Still, I was not sure what to do about it. This doctor, who was a big macher on the Arthritis Board, gave me a prescription for Indocin, a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug commonly used to reduce fever, pain, stiffness, and swelling. It works by inhibiting the production of prostaglandins, molecules known to cause these symptoms. More potent than aspirin, it had some strong side effects, giving me severe stomach cramps. The doctor didn’t tell me it would eat away my stomach lining and could cause ulcers. After about a month of taking this crap, I didn’t renew my prescription. Over the years, I’ve relied on either ibuprofen or acetaminophen, when I needed it.
My family was supportive, and about a year after my diagnosis, I received a phone call from my brother’s friend, Pete Ceuter. I’d know Pete since my brother met him in college, and they had become good pals. Pete started out working in medical clinics, and now he was graduating as a chiropractor. He told me that he wanted to check me out. I didn’t pay much attention, figuring he was just trying to drum up new business.
The pain was there every day, in some form or another, and because it was a spinal thing, it could show up in any joint at any time, but the muscle spasms behind the lung were among the harshest. Over time, my back began to twist and curve, as is standard with this disease (hence my wonderful posture). After running into Pete again at one function or another, I finally agree to see him professionally.
Pete was a good guy. Very honest and very blunt, with a sharp sense of humor, and so I trusted him. After examining me at an intake, he told me point blank that he would never get me standing straight, as no one could, and if anyone told me otherwise, they’d be lying. He had researched the disease for a while since he heard about my condition. What he did say was that he would do what he could. I started seeing him for three times a week in the ‘80s, as the treatments were partly covered by my work plan (only 60%, for a limited amount of visits per year, and the rest was to be paid in full by me). After a couple of years, it went down to twice a week, then once a week, then once very two weeks, where it stayed for years. By the time the ‘90s came around, I had less steady pain, more movement, and had gained a full inch on my height. He didn’t straighten out my spine, just as he claimed, but he made it straighter.
I continued to see Pete until his death a few years ago, of lung cancer. The man never smoked – anything – in his life, ate only healthy foods, and exercised regularly, but he grew up with two parents who were chain smokers, and he was second-hand smoked to death. I’ve seen a few other chiropractors over the years, but no one has had his touch, or has been as effective as Pete. Next week I start some sessions with a local chiropractor (thanks to insurance due to an auto accident) who is supposed to be one of the best in town. I’ll reserve my judgment.
This may sound like a digression, but hold on: in the company I used to work, they wisely had an area where people could put things they didn’t want, and anyone could just take them. One section was for books, which were mostly crappy romance novels or Mary Higgins Clark-type tripe, but every once in a while something semi-interesting would show up that I may not normally read, but since it was there and free, why not? One of these books was the autobiography of Slash, and even though I never cared for Guns n’ Roses, I read that, and the tome was okay. Another was Motley Crue: The Dirt - Confessions of the World's Most Notorious Rock Band by Tommy Lee, Vince Neil, Mick Mars, and Nikki Sixx. Again, I’m not a fan of the band at all, but it was there and free, and it was about musicians, so what the hell. At some point, I’m reading a part written by guitarist Mick Mars, and he’s talking about some pain he has, and how it started. I’m thinking, wow, this sounds just like mine, even starting at age 19. And sure enough, yes, it is ankylosing spondylitis. His condition, though, is far worse and further progressed than mine, including hip replacements, losing three inches in height, a more fused spine, and constant pain.
That could have been me, if it weren’t for the due diligence of Pete working on me for all those years. Yes, I still have pain right now, even as I type this, and especially when the humidity level either rises or drops sharply, but I’m a lot better off than I may have been. It could be me that is as bad as Mars, and I’m grateful that I’m not disabled like him. I shovel snow (slowly and carefully), vacuum as necessary, and even packed up my old apartment and unpacked into our new house.
I’ll never be able to run long distances, and putting on my left sock is an ordeal (that side is particularly stiff, especially clipping that foot’s toenails – yikes, TMI). Walking up and down stairs a lot gets to me, but I’m moving, and I even climbed a 10-story pyramid in Mexico three years ago. The biggest effects that I find, other than the semi-regular flare-up of pain (which is not as bad as it used to be), is that my hip extension is not as wide as it was, so I take smaller steps (which means most people walk faster than I do with less energy output), and the other is my rib cage is tight, so it is harder to draw deep breathes, which means I get winded faster.
What I find amusing is the list of famous people that have this condition in Wikipedia. There’s Mick Mars and Ed Sullivan, but most of the others are athletes. How do they do it? I’ll never be an athlete, but I’m okay with that, because I probably wouldn’t be anyway, as my lack of interest in sports predates my AS.
But all things considered (see, I told you I read Slash’s book), I’m proud to say that in all these years, I’ve lost only one day of work to this thing, and that was in the late 1980s.
Currently living in Saskatoon (email at RBF55@msn.com for address). From 1977-88, I used to publish a print version of a music magazine in New York called FFanzeen, which dealt with the wide-ranging independent music scene. I also photographed many bands from the period (and since). Now I write this blog. And the beat goes on.
Daniel Green has become unstuck in mind.
While all of this is fluttering around Dan’s life, the one quality he is slowly but surely losing touch with is the connection between his body and his mind. In a nearly out-of-body displacement, Dan views his life with a detachment that is nearly voyeuristic, and increasingly out of control.
[All Now With Wings]
[Keep Going]
Media Ecology has been important to me for a long time. In college I took a course on politics and media, which included reading [Neil Postman’s] Amusing Ourselves to Death, and unearthed my interest in thinking critically about media and how it effects us. After college, though, is when I really began a passionate pursuit of learning and thinking about media ecology. Living in New York has been great for this for a variety of reasons, but one of the most fun was attending the Schmio Awards that Neil Postman ran for a number of years. Those ceremonies, particularly the first few, opened me up to a host of new ideas and the people who spoke eloquently about them. 
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