Kim Fowley: "I Used to Fuck Burn Victims in High School for Money"

  

Kim Fowley died this week after a robust and creative life. He was 75. I spoke with him in the summer of 2012 about Detroit, a city in which he had done a lot of business over the years.

Here’s something from the cutting room floor from Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in America’s Loudest City.

He’s talking about coming to Detroit in the late 90s for a session.

Kim Fowley: Ben Edmonds calls me up and says, ‘Car City wants to bring you to Detroit because there’s been a contest between Car City and three other record stores  as to who is the weird, not yet dead, final underdog hero, and it’s you. Car City wants you to record a record. Are you willing to do it?’  I said, ‘For money.’  He said, ‘What do you want?’  I said, ‘Give me a thousand bucks and I’ll bring along some lyrics that I’ll record. We did it at Jim Diamond’s Ghetto Recorders.

Matthew Smith: Ben Edmonds was talking to me about a story he was doing for Mojo about producers and he was talking to all the great producers. He said, ‘I gotta call Kim Fowley later.’  I just mentioned off hand to Ben Edmonds, I said, ‘Oh Kim Fowley, that’s a guy I’d like to work with.’ He said, ‘Well I just might tell him that.  You know you just might get a phone call or something.’  So 24 hours later I get a phone call.  ‘This is Kim Fowley.  What is it you want to do?  And don’t give me any bullshit.  What is it you have in mind?’  I just said, ‘Well I thought we could make a record together.’  ‘Well how much money can you come up with?’  I go, ‘I don’t know.  I might be able to raise a couple grand.’  ‘Well I want one thousand of it up front and the other thousand when I arrive at the airport.’  It happened that quickly. The next day I went into Car City Records, where I was working and I said, ‘Do you think the record store might want to kick in some money to help me make a Kim Fowley record and get all these Detroit people to play in it?’  They said yes.  A week later he showed up. Kim stayed at my house for a week.  He was in a bit of an intense frame of mind.  He was a bit confused or suspicious about our motives. He didn’t understand exactly why we wanted to do the record we wanted to do. By the time we got in the studio with all the musicians, it was almost like we were all under hypnosis.  John Nash, Bootsie, Troy Gregory, it was this all star local cast. Kim kept us up for days; he doesn’t sleep, he doesn’t eat.  Then after five hours, ‘I need a banana.’  He’d eat a banana and then he has energy for another six hours.  He hardly slept at all. 

Bob Mulrooney aka Bootsey X: He was looking for a new place to base himself and was moving from New Orleans. He liked me because I brought the chicks, some hot girls. The girls that ended up on the album cover. He said ‘I’m gonna rent a limo and you girls are going to show me Detroit.’ I said, I want a finder’s fee. They never showed him anything.

Kim Fowley: I brought seventy lyrics, and I used sixty-eight of ‘em.

Jim Diamond: Kim had people coming in, people from His Name is Alive, the Witches, Bob Mulrooney was playing drums and Mary from the Cobras was there. Kim said every song just had to be whoever is in the studio is fair game to be on the record. Kim would just make up stuff as it went on. He would make up lyrics and say, ‘Play this beat. Play something that sounds like this.’ And everyone would start playing and that would be the song. He told Bob, ‘play a beat like ooo-pappa-do. I want to hear that song oo-pappa doo, this old R &B song.’ And that would become a song. Everything was like that.  Everyone was drinking except Kim and it was total chaos. Then he did the show at the Magic Stick. 

Kim Fowley: It was the show that almost turned into fisticuffs.  I went on the Wayne State radio station and asked for lipstick lesbians to join me on stage. I had songs about shaved cunts and everything that I performed on radio; talking to the uterus, you know.  I said, ‘Come on bitches.  Come down and join me.’  Then I went to Noir Leather in Royal Oak and tried to get all those fetish chicks down there.  Remember I used to be a sex worker.  I used to fuck burn victims in high school for money.  So I understood ‘dirty bitches’, you know.  My mother was a lesbian.  I understand filth.  The Detroit Cobras thought I was a horrible human being for exploiting women.

Rachel Nagy: That guy is such a fucking egomaniac.  At the Magic Stick, he was doing this thing, ‘Come on everybody.  Come on stage.  Come on!  Let’s party!’  I’m like, ‘Okay.’  No one was going up.  I’m like, okay.  I will party. He starts trying to dance with me and I grabbed him.  Then he tried to push my head down and that’s when I tackled him. He was kind of pawing me and, well, baby, hey. He tried to push my shoulders down and I just fucking knocked him over. You know what, dude?  Fuck you.  You invite people up.  You want to party.  Then you want to get fucking sexual with me?

Jim Diamond: Next thing I know they ran up there and tackled him. We pulled Mary and Rachel off of him and then, he's a frail older guy, you know. He's like, ‘I had polio.’ They were laughing at first but I don't think they understood that he was a little, older guy who had polio. He didn't deserve to have fucked up chicks jumping on him, trying to strangle him.

Kim Fowley: I’m a cripple because I have the polio cane and whatnot, so they tried to pull me by the bad leg, Gene Vincent style, into the audience. The roadies were pulling me back.  I was caught between the two.  Rachel says, ‘You know I threw a punch at him or I did this or that.’  She’s a talented person who has her priorities incorrect and she never charted anywhere. Mary was on the album, funny enough.  Ben Edmonds took her side, whatever it was. You know, womanizer from out of town, crippled with a limp.  I mean who needed that?  Who cares, you know; I’ve been disliked by people before.

Jim Diamond: The next day they came over here and Kim and Ben Edmonds were going to do this thing called Abba Zabba, where Ben was going to ask him like A – Z different band and Kim would tell some story about them. Like it started out with Abba. And Kim would be like, ‘Those girls were a bunch of fucking whores who didn't deserve dog piss.’ He'd just say stuff like that about all these bands, and it was funny. Then Mary comes over and Kim goes on this long diatribe. I have some of it recorded because I had an open mic out there and I turned it on and Kim's going, ‘I'm casting a spell on you right now. Your dreams will never come true.’ and ‘usually when I come to a city, I hire a bull dog. That's someone who will murder people for me.’ and he went on to tell this story about how he was going to take care of her. It was crazy and it went on and it was just very quiet in there and very uncomfortable. Everyone was just silent and he's just telling how he usually likes to have people killed and he had guns.

Kim Fowley: Detroit became a music hotbed again because I had been there.

Jimmy Recca talks Stooges in a Detroit Rock City outtake

Jimmy Recca, former Stooge, in his inimitable, animated ramble, on writing “I Got a Right” and entering Stoogeland as the bassist. This is an outtake from Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Rock 'n' Roll in America's Loudest City (Da Capo 2013)

Recca: I joined the band around February 1970. The song that was first recorded by the band the three of us, Ron [Asheton], James [Williamson]and myself as a way to break the ice and to get Ron to accept me as a bass player was “I Got A Right.” We all had the same input on it. We had a lot more songs, but my performance rights to those songs, well, that's why they never did any of those other songs after I left.

Also, they never reproduced them because they were too complex and James couldn't remember, to tell you the truth. He had very little to do with anything other than his parts, his riffs. He had his riffs, I had my riffs, Ron had his riffs. Nobody tries to write a person out of history when that's the way it is. I was there and those guys don't want to write me out of history because they don't want to go back to remember what they can't remember. The only thing they remember is that song, “I Got a Right.” Ron knew it and that's why Ron and I finally got along so well, he knew my ability in that band you know. It took at least seven rehearsals before Ron would even say a fucking word to me. He wouldn't even look at me. He didn't like me. He had that fucking rock star thing like ‘I don't have to accept you if I don't want to. Say whatever you want to. It doesn't matter what you say, we didn't join you, you joined us.’

And I think for the most part, none of it was going to fucking matter, nothing was going to come out of it. Ron started feeling the pangs of James hooking up with Scotty because Scotty and James were the same age and they kind of hung out together and James was getting into the band through Scotty [Asheton]  and Scotty was promoting him to come to rehearsal. Ron was not digging that at all. When things get to him, you know he's fucking caustic, man. But he would get over it eventually. So that's the way it was with James and him and that's how it went on.

"American Band" came from pissed off...American band. Don Brewer explains

There are all kinds of stories about how the song "We're An American Band" came to be, and I had to ask Brewer, I'm sure for the hundredth time, about it. It never made it into the book, Detroit Rock City, but I'm always interested in all things Grand Funk, as everyone should be,

Don Brewer, drummer, Grand Funk, on writing the song, “We're An American Band”: There was some rumor goin’ around at times -- and I’ve seen it written, over and over, actually, I think I even saw it on Wikipedia –that we came up with the concept for “American Band” because we got into a fight with Humble Pie one night about who’s better, the English bands or the American bands. That wasn’t the case at all. I came up with that concept for “American Band” from us being sued by Terry Knight, traveling around from town to town, being sued at every city we were playing at, and I’m goin’, in my head I’m goin’, ‘we’re coming to your town, we’ll help you party it down. ‘That what I thought was happening, and then later the term came up -- popped into my head -- ‘we’re an American band.’ I needed a tag line for it. It had absolutely nothing to do with the English bands or anything.

Typical week in the life of Mitch Ryder’s great band, Detroit

Johnny Bee was among the best of the older subjects I interviewed for Detroit Rock City. Once he started telling stories, he didn’t seem to be able to stop, which is why he was included in quite a bit of the book. You can’t deny his greatness and his experience.

I decided to focus on the band Detroit because it represented Ryder’s last big chance to make it big. He made a great album and no one seemed to notice.

When I was interviewing Ray Goodman, who played with Mitch for a while, he mentioned he had some outtakes from the Detroit album sessions and we went into the control room of Goodman’s home studio. Sure enough, there were versions of songs with Johnny Bee singing, demos, and some covers I’d never heard, including a Sly and the Family Stone tune. I mentioned that it would be great to see that stuff released as a deluxe reissue double lp and connected Goodman up with Bob Ezrin, who produced the album. Maybe someone will have the good sense to organize that some day.

Johnny Badanjek, drummer Mitch Ryder, on Detroit (the band):

We played everywhere, anywhere, all the time. One summer, we played two sets on a Friday night in Detroit and we stayed up all night then headed to Carbondale, Illinois. Go to the hotel, a Howard Johnson's. They put us in back where the pool is and no one can see us. After Carbondale, we drive to St. Louis, play, go to another Howard Johnson's to finally sleep, then catch a 7 a.m. flight to go to Washington DC to play the May Day rally with the Beach Boys. There's like 200,000 people there. We play and Steve Hunter wears his Army uniform. Not a great idea for the time. We play and leave, we're going back to National Airport and the Army comes in and starts giving everyone shit, it got real violent. But we’re out of there. We got back to the airport and flew back to St. Louis and drove two more hours back to Carbondale, Illinois, and played two more sets without any sleep. We haven't gone to bed yet since before the May Day show. Then we went back to the hotel with 15 girls and everybody got naked and was using the sauna and swimming. This was how we were living. We had real bikers hanging around us all the time, you know, bikers love Mitch. They all wanted to hear “Devil With a Blue Dress On.” We were also playing a lot of Hell's Angels parties and all the outlaw clubs. We'd play and they'd all be fighting. It was like a crazy wedding party or something. We’d play for an hour and a half and we’d take a break and the whole place would break out in a riot. The guy in charge would go, “Play! Get up there and play! Maybe they'll stop.” The Outlaws, the Vigilantes, all these biker gangs, they’d have us in to play their parties.

Dennis Thompson of the MC5 on playing over the volume of Sonic Smith and Wayne Kramer

Dennis Thompson, drummer MC5: Well, I wasn’t impervious to the volume when the boys bought Marshalls.  You see, back in those days the PA systems in the clubs we played were very very primitive. And drummers were never mic’ed.  So the guys had Marshalls and they played hard and loud, the volume was on 10.  I had to develop a style of playing extremely hard for the drums to cut through that wall of electrical sound. I had blood blisters underneath my skin, calluses on every one of my fingers on my left hand.  They would all explode every time I played so my left hand was just raw meat.

What I didn’t like about it was that I couldn’t play anything more delicately. You know, something more on the lines of, you know, 32nd notes and double-stroke rolls and things that require your wrists and not your arms. I had to use wrists and arms and play really fuckin’ hard for the drums to cut through.  I would get comments all the time that, you know, ‘Dennis you gotta play a little louder. ‘

So I would just hit until I was just really, really playing hard.  I was breaking cymbals.  Sinclair used to be so pissed.  But I was breaking 22” cymbals, one a week.  I’d go through 20 or 30 drum pairs of drumsticks per two shows, three shows. We used to order them by the gross, 5B and 2S.  Big.  2S is lumber.  That’s how you learned how to play the rudiments, with the big fat sticks.  Heavy sticks, so it builds up your wrist.  I’d break a rim on the snare drum, bass drum pedals, bass drum heads, tom tom heads. Unbelievable shit that I wouldn’t do now because nowadays you’ve got the remote in-ears and I’ve got the sound just the way I want it, dialed in, ‘cuz I’ve got a 16 track mixer. But back then, like I said, the band’s putting out a loud, ferocious sound that you had to play over.

Niagara on Ron Asheton in the later years - Detroit Rock City outtake

NIAGARA (Destroy All Monsters, Dark Carnival) : Ronnie ended up being a millionaire when he died. He would call me and say ‘I’m almost there.’ He really lived it up.  He bought all these collections, the Nazi stuff.  He bought a ceremonial dagger for like $12,000. When things started back with Iggy, he had money and he would say ‘you like this furniture?’ And I’d be like, ‘no, no.’

Whenever he went up north with the Colonel, he would buy me things like a fur coat.

Even after we split, he would come over and we’d stay up all night and talk and he’d stay the night and get high. So he used to stay here a lot. Then he got his place up north, near the lake up by Saginaw.[Michigan]. We used to hang out at antique places and he’d come in and they’d say ‘Ronnie, I got something you might like.’

He bought a decent place, more modern, perfect for him. Ronnie did the right thing. He always said ‘I’m only going to live 10 more years.’

When I was with him we bought a '66 Cadillac. We must have had some money at that time, because I was with him then.  

When he died, Ronnie was supposed to go out with us, January 4 is the Colonel’s birthday. So he called him a few times, and Ron didn’t answer which was normal. Ronnie never answered his phone, he just let it go to voice mail. But now the voice mail was full and that never happened. So a couple days later, Colonel said to me, ‘this is bad, there’s something wrong.’

I thought Ronnie was going to die but I wasn’t sure this was it. So we called [Asheton girlfriend] Dara, who Ronnie bought a house for a few doors down.

We called her and said ‘go see Ronnie.’  She said, ‘we had a fight, fuck him, he’s a clown, I’m not going over there,’ and finally she said ‘ok.’

It was the middle of the night and she went and called us back and said he’s dead. He was in his bed. Ron was not taking care of himself and he would not go to a doctor. Those tours were really strenuous and he was always on stage doing his thing. One night he woke up and his nose was running and he put a Kleenex in it and when he woke up there was blood all over it.  Something had burst.

He had been diagnosed with high blood pressure, and he wasn’t fat, he had like, from waist down he was so skinny and he had been losing weight.

He was so skinny with the Stooges that he always looked bigger.

Anyway, he was smoking and drinking and taking the high blood pressure pills, which he ran out of and he wasn’t going to get more.

I was always telling him to think about it. Ronnie hated anything new and I never got him started back on the pills.

Iggy Pop talks about Jack White not recording the Stooges

photos, 2003, Mojo (www.mickhutson.com)

A largely unknown part of a book like Detroit Rock City is the portion that is never seen. In movies, it’s called the cutting room floor, and these days you can see what ended up on that floor through DVD extras. We aren’t smart enough to come up with that in the book world, and “updated” has little of the panache of an "extra." So what didn't make it into Detroit Rock City for any number of reasons? I'll be running some of these extras once a week or so over the summer. 

Check it out.

IGGY POP (on Jack White producing a post-reformation Stooges recording) : It was one of these things, it went back and forth two or three times. I heard he [White] wanted to do it and I thought that could work in the group’s favor for a couple of reasons, but I didn’t want to do a whole record, I just wanted to do a few tracks. That was mostly because I had already recorded some of that record, that record, this was around the time we did Skull Ring, and I needed to respect the fact that I had already recorded half of that record with my touring band, The Trolls.

I wasn’t going to tell them, or call them up “Hey I’m going to work with a bigger star than you and fuck all your work.”  I can’t do that to an artist. So I offered him a few tracks and Jack being Jack, said, “well I don’t want to do that, I want to do a whole thing.”  

Yes, of course and he wouldn’t want to be a part of something else, being a Jack White production. Let’s just say I felt where he was coming from.

At one point I felt I was just about ready to do it and we were having a conversation and the last thing he had to say was, “Okay I’ll call you up when I have time.”

I put down the phone and part of me was like, “fuck you kid.” I didn’t say anything because I’m not a confrontational person, so we didn’t do it at that point. And he had some good concepts, it would have been interesting. But I think what we would have ended up with would be a kinda indie reality show. He wanted to lock us in a house together and record the results. The idea was nobody would leave until we had an album done. I think had we agreed that very quickly cameras would have come into it.

It would have been interesting... At one point there was a lot of pressure from the record company, “What are you crazy, you’re not going to play with Jack White?” Blah blah blah. At one point I was ready to do it and I think he wasn’t. Then much later he was ready to do it and we had a lunch about it in Australia. But at that point I had a meeting with Ron and Scott and Ron said, “Look, for me that would be like all of the glory of it would be about Jack White and not about me.” And he made a gesture if someone was sitting on his head. And Scott said to me, “Yeah the way I see it, Jack White is a pot of gold and we don’t want to be part of his pot of gold.”

What I said to the guys is, “Hey look, that is absolutely fine with me. But as the leader of the group,” which I finally did become in this century, “I gotta let you know that if you do it with Jack, you’re going to sell more and get more attention, but it’s also true, due to market forces, the result will emphasize Jack’s participation.” I told them, “I have no opinion at all, I could go either way.” And so we didn’t, we ended up not doing it, which was fine with Jack and we’re friendly.

The Stooges Were The Best Rock and Roll Band Ever

Since the June elease of my last book, Detroit Rock City, The Uncensored History of Rock ‘n Roll in America’s Loudest City, I’ve talked many times about the importance of the Stooges on the international musical landscape. It took that platform for me to realize and finally utter something unsettlingly ultimate: The Stooges were the best rock and roll band to ever exist.

These kinds of ultimate statements are generally ridiculous. In books, I may feel that Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography, Jack London’s White Fang and Robert Greenfield’s STP: A Journey Through America With the Rolling Stones, are among the best ever written. In film, I am sure that Down by Law, Angel Heart and Nebraska are among the top 20.

But never have I been so certain that in the field of music that a band measures so highly in terms of courage, which should be the metric of any expression. Not courage by being outrageous, but by being something and doing something that no one would dare do, without a concern for the consequences.

The passing of Scott Asheton over the weekend reminds me of the greatness of the band for the third time in a week for no apparent reason other than to ponder their fearlessness. All the band's music music - including the Fun House box, the extended versions of the first album, the Raw Power box with the DVD and the Easy Action outtakes package - are in constant rotation, part of the soundtrack of life.

I’m currently working in Tallahassee, Fla., on a 10-week assignment. I’m staying in a lower floor apartment in a three-building enclave in the south part of town, and about a week ago on a Saturday morning I was working and heard the muffled crescendo of “Ann” from the first Stooges record. drifting through my open window from up the stairs.

It was the extended version, which gave me time to walk up the stairs and find the source, a 30-something post college guy in his little cinderblock studio, getting schooled. I knocked and said simply, “the Stooges.” Instead of being puzzled or taken aback by a stranger knocking on his door, he just nodded and said “yes. Great.” I walked back down the stairs.

That’s all it takes to connect on that level.

I’m sorry for the family and friends of Asheton, who I’m sure are still stung by the sudden death of Scott’s brother Ron in 2009. Their loss has nothing to do with the Stooges, but with a loved family member. People tend to forget that when bemoaning the death of someone “important.”

From the book, Detroit Rock City:

Scott Asheton: If you think about what was going on at that time, in the early 70s, we were so far harder rock out there than anybody else out there at the time that why we didn’t fit in. When you think was going on was kinda glittery, kinda gayish, kind of going taking the edge off of it, other bands of that era were not even close to rockin’ like we were. I’d say the biggest reason that stuff didn’t do well is because we were rocking too hard.

Journalism - Always the Best Fallback

I’ve had a couple of journalism pieces hit in the past two weeks as I worked the promo for the book, Detroit Rock City, which has done much better than I expected. As I told someone before it came out, ‘I read it, liked it and maybe a couple dozen other people will.’  Appeal seems to be a little wider than that. I take that as a good sign, although I have no idea of what composes success in broad terms. Getting published is a success in some camps.  Acceptance has always dulled my senses, and staying in the outsider camp feels right at all times. It was a huge coup to me when I started work at the Dallas Morning News. It was as if the inmate was allowed to be part of the staff at the asylum.

The journalism I mentioned is a story I did out of Florida on the state House Speaker Will Weatherford, who didn’t disclose some business relationships because he didn’t have to. Now that sounds like a non-story, but it was prompted by a story earlier in the year I read about his finances, in which he was weirdly vague about what he did for a living, outside of his role in the part-time Florida legislature.

I began to dig about the same time another reporter did, as we both had a reader in our ear questioning Weatherford’s finances. His piece came first, in July.  It was good, but I read it several times and still didn’t think everything was out there.

Some close to the story think it was a tipster who steered me toward the story. But it was pure instinct after that second story that led me to search business filings in Texas – which is where Weatherford has some roots – and find he was connected to an insurance adjuster who did business with the state of Florida’s insurance company, Citizens Property Insurance.

Next was a story for the Fort Worth Weekly on the Tarrant Regional Water District, a government agency that gave me an amazingly hard time in spring 2012 when I asked to look over copies of the district’s campaign finance reports for the last few year. My suspicions were aroused and I filed an open records request for a number of items, including emails that indicated a lot of inside favor dealing among a power structure in Fort Worth. Much of those records formed the basis of this story.

For most readers, this is dull shop talk. But I dig it and there you go.  More books, I’m sure, will roll along and that’s what so many people are into. I enjoy writing the articles every bit as much as the books.

Detroit Rock City: I’ll Read it to You, Produced by Mike E Clark

Mike Clark in studio

 The audio book version of Detroit Rock City hits today, and it was a cool trip.

I spent a few days recording it with Mike E Clark at his Electric Lab Recordings – north and south.  We did a couple days at his place in Detroit, then moved north for a weekend to his compound/studio north of Saginaw.

Who the hell wrote this?

I narrated the thing, all ten-plus hours, even though people told me what an ordeal it was and how difficult it could be. What happened was my agency sold the audio rights to Audible.com, which does many of the books on CD you see in the store. When the contract arrived, I looked it over and thought I’d like to hear who would be reading it. Pretty standard. Then I thought, ‘well, I can read and this might be fun.’ So I had a clause put in the contract that I be allowed to audition.  A few weeks later, I made the grade, much to my surprise. It’s good, honest work, pays well, and I’m always up for work. It’s now here for download. Dig in.

Insider Comments on/from Detroit Rock City

This is the t-shirt. Why not?

Detroit Rock City is out and there are stories in there that my pal and fellow traveler Tim Caldwell has picked up on and carried away. He writes stories fed by experience and knowledge – which only occasionally are mutually exclusive – in a stream-of-brain feed fashion. All readable and filled with insight. Try this:

did jack/joker bob 'the knob/blob' madigan 

de-throne the king of shock rock alice cooper 

when he approached the rock star with a vial containing 

an aborted human fetus and asked him to autograph it?

{to his credit (!?) i believe ac did sign the dead baby jar}.

  would this mean the man known for inventing shock rock theatrics 

held onto the title or thereby passed it onto 
a hard core gg allin fan 
mainly known for hooking up folks to a hand crank generator 

& giving the chain of hand holding fools 
in audience a collective jolt,

his human ostrich side show talent of swallowing and regurgitating items,

and fronting bands (slaughterhouse/cum dumpster)
that made flipper sound like speed freaks

in comparison?

best,

t

   when one of madigan's hooligan 

band members let it be known

they were going to gift me 
with a fetus/embryo 

i responded while one one level 
i could appreciate

the inverse logic / symbolic gesture 
of an unborn 

gifted as a birthday present

i graciously had to decline the offer

as in good conscience 
could not accept the gift

unless the proud folks who conceived it 

were the givers...

In the book, the great band Slaughterhouse gets a mention – vocalist Bob Madigan’s love of pig porn, specifically – so that is the Bob that Tim refers to. The band was always surrounded by fringe players who should have all become famous in one way or another. More from Tim:

was thinking about madigan's band c.d. (appropriate acronym if i ever heard one) after re-reading drc. their second best show* i saw was at the red door after hours (former club house space). the band and a good portion of the audience were tripping. rachel nagy and cara lundgren (daughter of grande ballroom artist carl) were still like 17-19 yr old strippers (at silver cricket on mich by telegraph among other venues**). 
they both roomed at the monroe manor next to bronx bar.

the gals were 1/2 to nearly naked while the band cum dumpster 

played their heavy dirges (to my mind sounding like a slower version 

of that groaning/droning vanilla fudge beatles cover) .

they were psychedelic style body painting each other.
there was dim lighting, maybe a strobe and gelled can or two,
as one could thereby create moody atmosphere on the cheap.

the ladies also cavorted in the shower with a large glass door 
situated in the middle of the room.

that figured in their dance/grope fest perf ,too.

steve shaw and joe s. took photos.

 

Then he refers to chatter in the book from a couple of players.

nawara and livingstone were right in their assessments 
of the excruciating power of the band to instill fear n loathing.

their credo seemed to have been borrowed from flipper-

  we suffered for our art/

now it's your turn.

{max bummer stoner rock- the cheech & chong routine shtick
about playing black sabbath at 16 rpm.s on 'cid & seeing god
or satan in their case}

  rachel used to be a butcher so her mentioning the stiletto 

in a dudes crotch would've been a serious threat.

dress em out like a thanksgiving turkey

and stuff their giblets in maw.

have you ever witnessed up close that mischievous/

maniacal glint in her eyes?

  the cobras second performance was at the old miami

after a dally in the alley.

i showed a sound 16mm film clip of bessie smith 
before the band went on.

that would set the bar pretty high intimidating many people 
but not rachel & co.

when i complimented her on her performance she said

'yeah tim, you see i'm not just a whhhooooorrreee'

cracking me up.

she's a great performer,
a classic beauty,
sweetheart who'd as soon kiss ya 
as spit on ya 
&/or stick ya.***

   the timmy v. mention of her having mooned the audience and writing on cheeks

made me recall the post wedding reception (kev monroe) party 

of  at the euclid tavern in spudville,oh.

the cobras performed and she grabbed zoot's mgr. aaron anderson 
and jammed his face in her ass (with clothes on) whilst on all 4's onstage.

at the end of the night it was the detroiters dressed in wedding formal finery vs

the local yokels territorial stand off.

And finally, Tim refers to a point in the book in which John Brannon talks about living near Michael Davis from the MC5 in Ann Arbor.

 

that chick that lived with hyenas on platt road 
that went out with mike davis was real odd.

weird passive aggressive dead pan vibe.

she had blunt cut bangs a long ass dark mane 
and wore a bullet belt like her dishonorably discharged 
guitar army/ trans love beau. 
pretty sure she was in a band called dog soldier.

larissa and john were annoyed that she kept a dead pet parrot 
or parakeet in the freezer.
through winter ,spring and summer
refusing to plant it.

The best thing about getting anything from Tim is that it’s true, no need for embellishment. He’s part of Detroit Rock City with an eye for reality, and likely has more stories than anyone.

Dick Wagner's Own Tommy John Surgery, Comeback Player of the Year

Lou, busy being upstaged by Wagner

In January 2012 I flew to Phoenix to meet with Dick Wagner, the man who schooled a legion of guitarists with his licks on a massive piece of frettery, the intro to “Sweet Jane” on Lou Reed’s Rock and Roll Animal lp. Over and over, a teenaged me listened to Dick dueling with Steve Hunter before they kicked into the verse, Lou walking onstage to what was probably studio-added applause.  

Four years before my trip to Phoenix, Dick had suffered a stroke and a heart attack that left him a teetering man who looked much older than his 68 years. I was interviewing him for my book, Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Five Decades of Rock ‘n Roll in America’s Loudest City, which will begin hitting stores in May.

He was clearly struggling as we sat and talked, sometimes drifting off to a light sleep, other times trying to find words for experiences he knew so well, but could just not communicate. I felt badly for him, as it was clear he was a kind man who wanted to be part of this book and was frustrated by his frail condition. I wondered how long he would hang on as I helped him to his car that day.

He hung on and then some, today making appearances for his book, Not Only Women Bleed: Vignettes from the Heart of a Rock Musician and playing the guitar as well as he ever did. He’s like the Tommy John of rock, given that it was a diagnosis and the proper treatment that brought him back.

ABC last week did an excellent feature on Dick’s comeback, certainly worth checking out. He's touring in Europe and scheduled to be in his home region of the Midwest in June after doing some recording in Texas in February. 

Tom Waits Waxes Musicians Selling Music for Commercials

This is the car; Clone Defects provide the music for the ad

 I wrote in September about bands selling their music for commercials and it felt good. I said that I was amazed at the eager embrace by musicians at the use of their songs on commercials while writing Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Five Decades of Rock ‘n Roll in America’s Loudest City.

Today I see this note by Tom Waits in response to an article written by Doors drummer John Densmore in 2002.

Waits eloquently speaks of the practice, which he abhors:

   “Songs carry emotional information and some transport us back to a poignant time, place or event in our lives. It’s no wonder a corporation would want to hitch a ride on the spell these songs cast and encourage you to buy soft drinks, underwear or automobiles while you’re in the trance. Artists who take money for ads poison and pervert their songs. It reduces them to the level of a jingle, a word that describes the sound of change in your pocket, which is what your songs become. Remember, when you sell your songs for commercials, you are selling your audience as well.”

Well put. Then there is the case of Timmy Vulgar, the Detroit musician who told me about the time Mitsubishi wanted to use a Clone Defects song for a commercial. The car company called Larry Hardy, who runs In the Red Records, and asked about using a song. Vulgar tells the story better than I could:

“Larry called me and said, ‘Yeah, Mitsubishi wants to use one of your songs in a car commercial.’ I said ‘I don’t know if I want to do that corporate crap, you know? I don’t wanna deal with that shit.’ And I really didn’t want to do it at first, and then I asked Larry, ‘Man, I really need money and I’m really broke.’ So Larry says, ‘They’re gonna pay us $50,000, and we split it down the middle.’ He gets $25,000 and we get $25,000 to split four ways.  I think it was that much.  I’m pretty sure that’s how much it was.  So I thought, “Whoa, that’s a lot of money.  Holy shit.”  So then I asked, ‘what song?’ They wanted “Low Fashion Lovers,’ just the intro, basically; that’s it. Well, that’s kinda cool, it doesn’t really have any singing or anything on it.  I’m just doing some ooooo’s.  So I was like, ‘Yeah, all right.  I think we’ll do that.  Let me talk to the band.’  I didn’t really even have to talk to the band.  Of course we’ll do it."

And it came out good. Sometimes poverty has a funny way of subverting a stand that may not have much to back it up anyway. I heard the Fall’s “Blindness” in a Mitsu commercial.  Made me remember the already great song. 

Funk Brother/Royaltone Bob Babbitt - Outtakes From a Recent Conversation

This morning on Detroit’s WJR radio, there were several mentions of the passing of Funk Brother Bob Babbitt. It seemed a bit tardy that one of Detroit’s recently passed top studio musicians was being noted in Detroit eight days after his death.  Read a surprisingly complete obit here.

I spoke with Babbitt last year for the book I am now completing, Detroit Rock City: The Uncensored History of Five Decades of Rock ‘n Roll in America’s Loudest City.

He was a terrific interview, speaking of growing up in Pittsburgh, coming to Detroit and joining Dearborn rockabilly outfit the Royaltones in 1962, playing for the Mob and finally making it as a studio musician at Motown.

“All the stuff that happened to most of the guys in Detroit, in music overall, no one thought that it would have a lasting impression,” Babbitt said. “People weren’t thinking like that then. And it was easy to think that what was happening in Detroit was happening everywhere. But it wasn’t.”

Then there was his pro wrestling career, which he was surprised to hear in a question.

“I started wrestling wrestled in the minor leagues in Pittsburgh,” he said. “Before I left I heard about Killer Kowalski in Detroit. I got there and then I heard this Kowalski guy had bit someone’s ear off, and I said ‘no, I think I’ll play music.’

Babbitt had a lot more to tell me, and everyone – Hendrix at Motown?  -  that will make the cut for sure.