SUICIDE 9781501355660, 9781501355691, 9781501355684

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SUICIDE Praise for the Series It was only a matter of time before a clever publisher realized that there is an audience for whom Exile on Main Street or Electric Ladyland are as significant and worthy of study as The Catcher in the Rye or Middlemarch … The series … is freewheeling and eclectic, ranging from minute rock-geek analysis to idiosyncratic personal celebration — The New York Times Book Review Ideal for the rock geek who thinks liner notes just aren’t enough — Rolling Stone One of the coolest publishing imprints on the planet — Bookslut These are for the insane collectors out there who appreciate fantastic design, well-executed thinking, and things that make your house look cool. Each volume in this series takes a seminal album and breaks it down in startling minutiae. We love these. We are huge nerds — Vice A brilliant series … each one a work of real love — NME (UK) Passionate, obsessive, and smart — Nylon Religious tracts for the rock ’n’ roll faithful — Boldtype [A] consistently excellent series — Uncut (UK) We … aren’t naive enough to think that we’re your only source for reading about music (but if we had our way … watch out). For those of you who really like to know everything there is to know about an album, you’d do well to check out Bloomsbury’s “33 1/3” series of books — Pitchfork For reviews of individual titles in the series, please visit our blog at 333sound.com and our website at http:​//www​.bloo​msbur​y.com​/musi​cands​ounds​tudie​s Follow us on Twitter: @333books Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/33.3books For a complete list of books in this series, see the back of this book.

Forthcoming in the Series Band of Gypsys by Michael E. Veal From Elvis in Memphis by Eric Wolfson Timeless by Martyn Deykers Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth by Zach Schonfeld Live at the Harlem Square Club, 1963 by Colin Fleming Murder Ballads by Santi Elijah Holley Once Upon a Time by Alex Jeffery Tapestry by Loren Glass Tin Drum by Agata Pyzik The Archandroid by Alyssa Favreau Avalon by Simon Morrison Rio by Annie Zaleski Vs. by Clint Brownlee xx by Jane Morgan and many more…

Suicide

Andi Coulter

BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC Bloomsbury Publishing Inc 1385 Broadway, New York, NY 10018, USA 50 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP, UK BLOOMSBURY, BLOOMSBURY ACADEMIC and the Diana logo are trademarks of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc First published in the United States of America 2020 Copyright © Andi Coulter, 2020 Illustrations by Dan Madden Design For legal purposes the Acknowledgments on p. ix constitute an extension of this copyright page. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers. Bloomsbury Publishing Inc does not have any control over, or responsibility for, any thirdparty websites referred to or in this book. All internet addresses given in this book were correct at the time of going to press. The author and publisher regret any inconvenience caused if addresses have changed or sites have ceased to exist, but can accept no responsibility for any such changes. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Coulter, Andi, author. Title: Suicide / Andi Coulter. Description: New York : Bloomsbury Academic, 2020. | Series: 33 1/3; 149 | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: “Tells the story behind one of the most influential bands of 1970s New York scene - but one that few would be able to name”–Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2020009188 | ISBN 9781501355660 (paperback) | ISBN 9781501355684 (pdf) | ISBN 9781501355677 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Suicide (Musical group). Suicide. | Punk rock music— United States–History and criticism. | Rock music–1971-1980–New York (State)–New York–History and criticism. Classification: LCC ML421.S835 C68 2020 | DDC 781.648–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/202000918 ISBN: PB: 978-1-5013-5566-0 ePDF: 978-1-5013-5568-4 eBook: 978-1-5013-5567-7 1

Series: 33 3

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To Alan & Marty Who taught us to all Dream Baby Dream

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Contents

Track Listing Acknowledgments

viii ix

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

1 17 37 51 59 71 107

Prelude to a Private Armageddon Two against Death Wheels on Fire A Specter Stalks the Soundstage A Legend Is Born The Hell-Bound Hero Resurrection

Notes Bibliography

129 132

Track Listing

1.  “Ghost Rider” (2:34) 2.  “Rocket USA” (4:16) 3.  “Cheree” (3:42) 4.  “Johnny” (2:11) 5.  “Girl” (4:05) 6.  “Frankie Teardrop” (10:26) 7.  “Che” (4:49)

Acknowledgments

I want to thank those who made it through Suicide’s story. Music fans who took a chance on historical fiction; others who took a chance on an unknown band. To those who never knew their noise and to those who still feel it reverberate decades later. We are all part of Suicide’s collective caterwaul. To Marty and Alan for the music. For your grit. I can write 120 pages on one of your albums, but it would take a lifetime to capture your artistic determination. In the face of adversity and axes, Suicide never wavered. You remained steadfast in your convictions, yet malleable and inspired in your sound. The strength of your vision remains my greatest inspiration. To Henry Rollins, who not only had the answer to my eleventh-hour clarification question but opened up the gates to Narnia. You graciously granted me access to a private musical coterie. Your passion as a Suicide fan is just as infectious. You are rock documentary’s clutch player. Don’t ever retire. To Catherine for believing I could tell a story without a scrap of evidence. To Sarah for tirelessly proofreading in Paris and too many late-night calls. To Brian for catching every one of my musical Easter eggs. And to Joe Gross for championing this band—and me. And to my parents. Sorry for the lack of grandchildren.

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The sky erupted in light, then turned entirely black. This is the story of a city in darkness. New York City in the 1970s, a cash-strapped metropolis on the edge of bankruptcy. With crime lurking around every corner, millions flee Manhattan’s squalor in search of suburban salvation. Only the strong or insane can stake claim in the dark streets of downtown. In an attempt to save itself from destitution, New York City waves its white flag at Washington, DC. Big government is in no mood to help the ailing Apple and refuses to aid.

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New York City soldiers on. If the government won’t save them, they will have to save themselves. Summer of 1977: Fear spreads like cancer as the Son of Sam stalks the streets. As the sun sets, the murder rate goes up. Couples killed in cold blood and still the killer evades captivity. Eight victims so far. The bloodlust was spilling over into print. Media’s killer appetite reached a feeding frenzy. Each incessant headline incited new panic. When would he strike next? No one was safe. July sets in. New York City is blanketed in oppressive heat. Skyscrapers seem to pluck the sun from the sky and redirect it like a laser onto the sidewalk. Unsuspecting pedestrians feel the fire from all sides. Trapped between overwhelming fear and unbreathable air, the city was on the verge of combustion. Every day was a test against the imminent danger lurking just outside your door. Those who walked the trash-laden streets of the Lower East Side felt lucky to be alive. They joked that Avenue D stood for “dead.” Attitude was the city’s only armor. Something had to give. On July 13, the skies opened and lightning filled the air. Then, as if a sign from Satan himself, the city was plunged into complete darkness. Confusion gave way to violence. New York City was about to face its greatest foe: a total blackout. While the city fought a desperate battle for survival, somewhere out among the seedy streets came a sound— harsh, angry, and apocalyptic. Outside there was only the faint light of the Statue of Liberty. The plight of the tired, the poor, and the huddled masses was illuminated through her power-generated light. 2

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Downtown, the only light came from the glow of two headlights. As if by an apparition, the vehicle rolled on amid the screams of the city. The car barreled toward the Bowery propelled by desperation and determination. The two ghost riders careened forward driving toward an unknown destination. Just as it reached the edge of the city, it seemed to tilt upward and disappear. * * * The phone rang. I looked up from this week’s Washington City Paper ad long enough to debate picking it up. It was 2003, an era before cell phones, and no way to screen incoming calls. Usually there only on weekdays, I needed to get in an early ad to the papers. I squinted through the grimy bulletproof glass of the box office out into a deserted V Street. It was probably someone looking for set times. I momentarily hesitated, then picked up the phone. “Hello?” I said tentatively. “I assume you’re coming to Suicide?” The voice on the other end of the line belonged to Bernie, one of the night managers at the city’s neighboring club the Black Cat. While the Black Cat was known as the edgier, more indie club than the larger not-quite-corporate 9:30 Club, the two clubs had a surprisingly friendly relationship. When the old 9:30 Club moved from its downtown F Street location over to the U Street corridor section of V Street and 9th, there was an initial competition between the now proximally close clubs. But over the years, the 9:30 Club’s owner Seth Hurwitz and the Black Cat’s owner Dante Ferrando had

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forged—while maybe not a friendship—at least a mutually agreed upon detente. While everyone who worked at the Black Cat looked like they themselves were in a cool indie band (and many were), their night manager, Bernie, was cut from a different cloth. While he’d once been a local band scenester, he was a good fifteen years older than most of his club charges. A Jesuslooking figure with long, straggly brown hair, frantically running around the club carrying a coffee in one hand and a hand-rolled cigarette in the other. To those who didn’t know him, one might have suspected Bernie’s demeanor to be chemical, but I knew he burned with the nervous energy of perpetual self-flagellation. I glanced up at the Black Cat schedule taped to the box-office computer screen. Suicide was scheduled for tonight; however, with an ad due to the paper, I wondered about the likelihood of getting to the show in time. 9:30 Club ads often found me in the uncomfortable position of having to offer up my future children to those working the late-night desk at Washington City Paper. It was the one night when I made no promises or plans, lest I tempt fate, as anything planned on ad night was certain to need canceling. “Wouldn’t miss it,” I promised, mentally making a note to bring Bernie homemade muffins in return for tickets. Partly because I felt guilty for relying on his generosity and partly because I was convinced he subsisted on a diet of exclusively caffeine, nicotine, and cynicism. I’d now been at the 9:30 Club for about six years. Most of the club’s “old school” referred to the space neighboring Howard University on V Street as the “new” club, having 4

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replaced the original small, punk, and view-challenging F Street location, and thus, I was part of the “new” staph—an in-joke name we gave everyone who worked at the club. Musically and culturally, 2003 was the rise of the electroclash scene, something I welcomed after the mostly rap-rock that had come to dominate the late 1990s. Last week we hosted Fischerspooner, The Faint, and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. It was a good time to own an entirely black-clad closet. Though my taste and humor ran dark, my blonde hair and bookish nature made me more akin to Marilyn from The Munsters than Marilyn Manson. Designed for lovers of Liquid Sky, New York’s music scene was exploding with a plethora of new, arty bands that seemed steeped in the sound of the city circa 1976. Each new band echoed ghosts of New York City’s musical past. Many even sounded like the city’s most dangerous duo, Suicide. I continue to be amazed at how many bands—and how vast in sound—continue to be influenced by the New York punk/No Wave/electronic pioneers Suicide. And yet, in all my decades of show-going, I’d never seen the original. I wondered if they could live up to their legacy. They were certainly one of the most musical cult bands around. Adnight fates be damned, nothing was going to keep me from going. * * * This is the story of the antihero. In 1970, Marvel comics was at a crossroads. Their standard heroes—Superman, Captain America, and Spiderman—

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were still selling, but their readership was shifting. By the end of the 1960s, American idealism was giving way to cynicism. Anything too black and white was viewed with suspicion. Marvel needed to contend with America’s growing grey areas. The Vietnam War, rising poverty, and race riots were leading Americans to reject escapist entertainment in favor of realism. Vietnam had taught Americans that it wasn’t so easy to tell the good guys from the bad. As more young men came back in body bags or addicted to heroin, Americans felt they could no longer trust those in charge. The country’s mounting disillusionment had a ripple effect within the comic book industry. In the 1950s, comics, borrowing from the Motion Picture Associations’ Hays Code, created its own moral code. The Comics Code Authority (CCA) was formed by the Comics Magazine Association of America as an alternative to government regulation. This allowed comic publishers to self-regulate the content of comic books. The code issued a “general standards” dictum stating that crime could not be presented in a positive light and that criminals must always be punished. Additionally, the police and government were always to be portrayed as heroes and comics should never question established authority. Basically, good shall triumph over evil, end of story. The resulting Comics Code of 1954 effectively censored comic’s portrayals of crime, law enforcement, and drugs. This was done ostensibly for the sake of the public welfare. But as the 1960s wore on, cultural tastes began to shift. Arts became more accepting of the portrayal of harsh reality in popular media, and the Comics Code began to lose some of its authority. 6

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By the 1970s, Marvel had begun to push back. Within a few years, Ghost Rider (1972), Blade (1973), Wolverine (1974), and The Punisher (1974) had each made an appearance in the Marvel universe. These characters were powerful, but flawed, often opting for their own code of ethics over a prescribed version of right and wrong. They were willing to kill or engage in evil if necessary. And they were exceedingly popular. It is unsurprising that some of Marvel’s biggest antiheroes were born in the early 1970s. The antihero provided a way to discuss social criticism. If our own government—the one who taught us to live by the rhetoric of the American Dream—is lying to us, who can we trust? The 1970s gave birth to a new American Dream, one in which the individual must forge their own path toward truth. A path that was never clean: often muddied by moral choices in order to protect the greater good. Out of this paradigm shift in comics came Ghost Rider. Suicide named one of their first songs “Ghost Rider,” a nod to the comic in which a young motorcycle stuntman named Johnny Blaze makes a Faustian deal with the devil in order to save the life of his adopted father. Realizing the trick too late, Johnny Blaze must resign to his fate. As soon as the sun goes down, he becomes the Ghost Rider. Saddled with superhero strength, impervious to pain or bodily consequence, Johnny’s flesh melts away to expose a skeletal frame surrounded in flames, making him the most feared and famous stuntman on the circuit. The story doesn’t end there. While Johnny must suffer the ultimate consequence of his devil’s deal, his Ghost Rider alter ego is not entirely evil. He learns to harness his 7

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power in an attempt to save the innocent. Over time Johnny even learns how to summon the Ghost Rider during the day. Realizing his only sin had been despair, Johnny Blaze comes to understand that eternal damnation is entirely within his control. Like all good comics, one needs a hard-hitting introduction to a new character. Maybe this character comes in through someone else’s story. Then, the character decides to strike out on his own. The reader is given bits of information about this person’s past, but it isn’t until we are fully vested in this new character do we get their full origin story. This is the blueprint for the Ghost Rider stories, and in many ways, it is also the template for the creation of Suicide. Two men who had protested against the atrocities of Vietnam, only to see returning vets as the real casualties of war. Two artists who had lived full artistic lives with families before embarking on their new mission: to create the world’s most dangerous and futuristic band. Both Martin “Marty” Rev and Alan Vega are the authors of their band’s narrative. When asked about the origins of their name, comic-lover Vega would often reply that the name “Suicide” came from an issue of the Ghost Rider series called “Satan Suicide.” This is often taken and repeated as fact, though research reveals that there is no such issue. In fact, the Ghost Rider character (as Johnny Blaze) only made his debut in 1972, a full year after Suicide had formed.1 Suicide has also hinted that their name came from the returning Vietnam vets who had become hooked on heroin, given to them to handle the horrors of war. Vega once quipped watching them was like “watching a slow suicide.” It 8

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is even possible that their name came from the opening song in M*A*S*H., “Suicide Is Painless.” Whether their name comes from the mythic motorcycle rider who steals souls or the drug that effectively destroyed millions of lives matters not. Suicide the band is driven out of the desire to save. Suicide gave the spectator a glimpse of the specter—to turn into the Hellrider at night, performing aural onslaughts on an unsuspecting audience in hopes of sonic salvation. Suicide aren’t harbingers of death but instead are possessed by the burning will to live. The way you tell the story can be as interesting as the story itself. Punk music and comics have always gone hand in hand. Both were often considered “juvenile” or a lesser art. But perhaps the most missed correlation is the humor in both punk and comics. Suicide—often described by music critics as “nihilist” or just plain noise—were funny. Suicide were the antihero with the great one-liner. Though their trademark black leather and threat of violence may have made them look like super villains, Suicide were closer to hero than foe, like Omar Little from The Wire whistling “Farmer in the Dell” through an amp turned up to eleven. And a non-superhero vigilante was exactly the sort of band to embody the cultural zeitgeist of New York City in the 1970s. * * * When I began writing this, I had just seen Bohemian Rhapsody and was very invested in the dialogue about the

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film’s accuracy. It seemed an impossible task—to try to capture a band’s full story. Too much emphasis is placed on authenticity by critics and audiences alike. There is no shortage of YouTube playlists dedicated to “The 10 Things the Film Got Wrong.” Did they play fast and loose with the facts? Did they capture the “real” band? All biography— even documentary—is a construction. And one that will inevitably fall short of its subject. There are books that are benchmarks of the form, but even some of my favorites have been recently coming under fire. One of my most beloved biographies was the 2001 Mӧtley Crüe tell-all which documented the band’s dirty deeds and 1980s escapades in the vein of Tom Jones. Twenty years later, for the making of their 2019 Netflix film, the band had to contend with their past in a very different political climate. They were taken to task for rewriting their sordid history. This is not a comment on the ways these bands were depicted. I mention both because I am tiring of the form. Tired of the rules of narrative in documentary. I picked up the book on my desk titled How to Write About Music and placed it back on the shelf. I started over. After all, what could be more in the spirit of Suicide than burning the playbook? This book is about invention in both story and style. Alan Vega and Martin Rev made a deal with the devil to save America’s soul. I had to do the same. Suicide’s sound has been described by critics in almost every way possible: the forefathers of techno, electronic, punk, post-punk, No Wave, industrial, and/or psychobilly. How, then, is a band that’s so important to the creation of so many styles of music so unknown? 10

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The answer lies in the premise of the question. Suicide belong only to Suicide. They belong to all constructed categories and to none. This book is not about correcting past perceptions or even artfully articulating an alternative argument. If anything, this book is a study in both antiheroes and the belief in a better world. We want to believe in heroes, even more so when they are flawed. These types of heroes help us see the potential in ourselves. They are mirrors of the possible, even if that future is imperfect. This belief in the possible—for a better way to engage their audience and ultimately us as a society—is what led Marty and Alan to form Suicide. Critics calling Suicide music for masochists miss the point. Their methods may have seemed dangerous but maybe that is how we make substantive change. Perhaps we all need to be momentarily shocked out of our seats in order to really hear. Certainly, Suicide’s music was intense—live performances were loud beyond language. The droning pulse of “Frankie Teardrop” becomes a collective heartbeat within the room. The sound becomes overwhelming, enveloping one’s body in vibration, prohibiting concentration on anything else. One could argue this kind of spectacle produces an intrinsic fight-or-flight response from the listener. Audience members were left with the choice of running for the door or hurling projectiles at the band. In many cases, this was the exact reaction of the audience to hearing Suicide. In fact, Alan Vega became adept at deftly blocking the exit as well as dodging oncoming chairs. Too often Suicide is discussed in terms of their “noise,” the logic being that the audience’s response to the band was 11

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a direct result of the dissonance and volume of their music. The common narrative surrounding these bands, as it was for their progenitors the Velvet Underground, was they wanted to empty the room. Music critics have convinced us that bands who frightened their audiences are somehow ahead of the curve, that there is nobility in alienating your audience. Contrary to the myth that the masses just didn’t understand their art, Suicide wanted—even expected—huge audiences. Even after unsuspecting listeners dove for the doors and promoters raised their fists in frustration, Suicide remained undeterred. Both Marty and Alan were steadfast in their belief of the appeal of their music. * * * Music biographies are littered with origin stories like this: band forms. Band decides to push the boundaries. Band is rebuffed by audiences. Band toils in obscurity for years. Band finally implodes. Band is discovered years later by other bands. Critics start citing the band as “hugely influential.” Band is added to the annals of rock history. Band finally reaches cult—but not commercial—status. But the obscure outsider artist tale is as old as time, and frankly, boring. This book refuses to be boring because Suicide is not boring. They may have had a litany of horrible adjectives hurled at them in the 1970s, but “boring” was never one. Nor was “cliché,” “trite,” or any myriad synonyms dominating music writing lately when it comes to rock ’n’ roll documentary. If one wants to read a definitive story of

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Suicide and the history of New York rock in the 1970s, one needs to look no further than Kris Needs’s well-researched Dream Baby Dream: Suicide, A New York Story. Or read any of the think pieces, copious interviews, and hipster cultural capital to get a sense of Alan and Marty’s musical story. This book is about allowing the reader to feel like they were there. Can we feel through what we hear? Certainly, many have mentioned that their infamous song “Frankie Teardrop” is frightening, but what specifically? Why is Suicide’s music so evocative—even today? Most of those that mention the frightening experience of listening to “Frankie Teardrop” have only ever heard the recording. What would this band sound like live? What would it feel like to have Alan Vega slide up next to you, brandishing a knife and shrieking like a banshee? And why did this experience move just as many to run out of the venue as it did those to turn and start a band? How does one capture the allure of fear and yet provoke thought? The oft-cited anecdotes about audience members throwing whatever wasn’t nailed down illustrate the affective power of Suicide’s live shows. Whether or not there was an axe at their ill-fated 1978 Glasgow show with Elvis Costello hardly matters. (Or was it Brussels? Or was it with the Clash?) The threat of danger was real, and the subsequent story only heightens the experience. Like Joy Division’s first performance, indie rockers swear they were there. They saw an axe. They want to be part of the myth. And that’s what Suicide were: mythic. There are two main reasons that I opted for what follows on the making of Suicide’s Suicide. 13

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First, while there are many interviews with Alan Vega, he is no longer with us. Thus, he no longer gets a say in his own story. This book could never be a complete retelling of their album without his voice. Second, part of the mythos surrounding Suicide lies in their live performance. It is one thing to describe the songs on their album, but it is another to bear witness to their affective power in person. Because it is hard to capture this in the written medium, I have taken the liberty of fictionalizing some of their oral history in order to make the reader’s experience more immersive. Because that’s what a Suicide show is about: the conversation between band and audience. The community that is born out of shared experience. The ability to hear a song like “Frankie Teardrop” and be equally terrified and mesmerized. This is the mythology of Suicide. Suicide is also a band that believed in tall tales. One need only read a handful of interviews with Alan Vega to be charmed by the darkly funny raconteur. Vega believed in myths—starting with himself. When he passed away on Saturday, July 16, 2016, it sent me reeling. News outlets were quick to mention his passing and write copy praising the original electronic punks. Henry Rollins, spokesman for Alan Vega’s family (a gig I need to look into), wrote a touching piece in the LA Weekly about his friend. Then, there was suddenly a question about Vega’s age. Only after his passing was it discovered that he’d been shaving ten years off his age and no one thought to check this out. Vega got the last laugh after all. Funny until the end, Vega’s power for invention and reinvention didn’t stop with his age. Even in the most well14

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reported accounts of the band, inconsistencies crop up. No journalist is safe from being hoodwinked. In an era before every move we make was documented, a band like Suicide could write their own story. They never followed any musical rules, so why would their history be any different? It is in Suicide’s spirit—and especially Alan’s love of story—that this was written. This is the origin tale of Suicide told through the lens of the Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider comic. A chronicling of two artists realizing their superpowers while making their debut album. This is the story of a band who strapped themselves into the motorcycle ride that was Suicide and blazed a brandnew path through the musical landscape.

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2 Two against Death

Our hero Ghost Rider meets Daredevil on the latter’s home turf. Daredevil finds himself engaging with old foes only to have Ghost Rider come in a blaze of fire and save the day. Daredevil is impressed. But as night ends, Ghost Rider once again returns to his mortal form of Johnny Blaze. Marty Rev was really in the groove tonight. He hadn’t had high hopes for this joint. He’d swung by the Project of Living Artists (PLA) once or twice before. The Museum of the Project of Living Artists had been formed in the early days of 1968 by some bizarre hippie types in Greenwich Village. The PLA was originally intended to be a communal artist space, and one of the first alternate spaces in the city.

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By 1970, the PLA was a decent place to play and exhibit. In addition to the regular collection of artists, Marty noticed there were also a lot of Vietnam vets hanging around the upstairs loft. They seemed tired. Back from the war only to have to endure the cold shoulder from a country that had willingly sent them off to fight. These vets faced both a lack of jobs and drug addiction—an addiction that their government had hooked them on to deal with the horrors of war. No one had given them a drug for the horrors back home. Without the constraints of set times or formal stage, Marty had put together a large impromptu free jazz group. The PLA’s large loft afforded space for two drummers as well as three saxes, a trumpet player, and even a clarinetist. Marty played the keyboard in his band Reverend B and thought about this past. He played with his left hand, overemphasizing the counter-rhyme of the bass as he looked out over the sea of vets and artists. Politics was a distant memory tonight. Tonight was about mind expansion, not oblivion. At first the keyboardist was worried that the communal space would not work for his sixteen-piece band, which already took up over half the room. Marty looked out at the audience moving in time to the music and began to nod his head. The crowd was giving way to a freedom few knew in New York City in 1970. A small dance collective had broken out on the right side of the stage, bodies swaying in time to the dueling drummers. Reverend B had been playing for the better part of an hour with more and more people ducking into the PLA for 18

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reprieve from January’s harsh winter and cold streets. People got up and left the room; new people entered the art space. The Reverend B kept right on playing. Their mix of jazz and experimental instrumentation was constantly unfurling, shifting, and feeding back in on itself. Marty closed his eyes as he played in response to a sax solo. This is what the country needs, he thought. Usher in the 1970s with an exchange of ideas, an interplay of instrumentation. Politics, like music, shouldn’t be a topdown reception. The music spilled out onto the audience, and their energy fed right back into the band. Marty saw his music like an ongoing conversation filled with fits and starts, places that peaked and curious moments of discord. The show wasn’t about presentation or expectation. The music was organic and immediate. Less of a dictum and more of a discussion. Marty “Rev” Reverby thought back to when he was living at home. His father, a self-taught musician and union rep, never shied away from politics at home. Marty remembered talking to his father early in the 1960s about Vietnam. His father told Marty what was wrong, what the war was really about, and the reasons why the American government wanted to get involved. His father never sugarcoated the truth or parroted back government talking points. The elder Reverby thought it important for his son to know the truth about war, government, and politics. At an early age this instilled in Marty the responsibility of people to constantly question their government, the need to be vigilant in self-education of current events, and the need to lean on 19

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one’s community for support. Marty was passionate about politics, but it was music that captured his spirit. * * * Fifteen-year-old Marty walked briskly to Hollis, Queens. If he didn’t hurry, he’d be late for the audition. He’d heard the teacher was notoriously selective when it came to his students. He couldn’t let anything hinder his chances of studying under the avant-garde pianist. Marty couldn’t believe he was even able to audition for the jazz legend. He’d only been going to jazz clubs within the past year as it wasn’t easy seeing live music at fifteen. Even notoriously lenient places like the 5 Spot on St. Mark’s Place frowned at underage regulars. Mostly Marty stuck to Sunday afternoon matinees where the attendance was sparse. Young Marty initially started playing piano due to the encouragement of his mother. As a child she’d been something of a piano prodigy herself, going as far as to study it in school before giving it up to start a family. For little Marty, this meant many a rueful afternoon was spent hunched over the keyboard indoors while his friends played outside. But now, almost a decade later, he was thankful for his mom’s dedication and tutelage. He remembered one night his father asking him to play the old piano that sat lifeless at most union meetings. As the men got ready to discuss the night’s business, Marty would imitate the musicians he’d seen the previous weekend by banging away as fast as he could on the keys. “Milton!” one of the workers suddenly exclaimed at Marty’s father. “You gotta

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get Lennie to hear your kid!” Milton Reverby didn’t know who Lennie Tristano was, but another union worker piped up, “Take him to Tristano!” This was how Marty now found himself hurrying up the front steps of Lennie’s brownstone. He rang the bell, hoping to slow down the rapid rate of his heartbeat. He pressed the doorbell again. No one came. He pressed a third time and heard it reverberate throughout the apartment. Again, no one seemed to stir. Marty slowly craned his neck to see if he could peer into the window. Suddenly a man appeared at the door. “Hello?” the man said rather softly. His gaze fell past Marty to the street. Marty could tell the man was blind. He cleared his throat. “Hello, Mr. Tristano,” Marty began. “I’m Martin Reverby. I’m here for the audition.” Without a word the older man turned around and shuffled inside. Marty followed him in. Once in the studio, Marty arranged himself at the piano. The older man stubbed out his cigarette and immediately lit another. Marty waited until the man exhaled the first puff of smoke and the teacher leaned back ever so slightly. Lennie Tristano had come up in New York’s Jazz scene in the 1940s. An accomplished pianist who was known for his improvisations, he’d played regularly with Charlie “Bird” Parker. Tristano made a name for himself as the thinking man’s jazz musician. While hot jazz and bebop ruled the scene, Tristano played thought-provoking counterharmonies and contrapuntal improvisations. His style would later be termed “cool jazz,” but a deeper investigation 21

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of his sound proved he was far more experimental with his later work than this term indicated, with his sound almost dipping into atonal jazz. While not commercially successful, Lennie Tristano was well regarded by his contemporaries. Even though he played regularly, by the 1950s he eschewed live gigs for teaching. By the 1960s, he was regarded as one of the premier jazz teachers in New York. Whether by fate or design (and it depends on whom you ask), he only played live sporadically, with his legacy equally measured by the accomplishments of his acolytes as it was his own virtuosity. Marty launched into a piece by Art Tatum. Tatum was also a famous blind pianist who had pre-dated Tristano. The Toledo, Ohio, keyman shared Tristano’s affinity for bitonality and foregrounding the bass by moving the traditional melody into the bass, thereby extending the abilities of his left hand. Marty started to move into his own interpretation of Tatum’s song. “No,” said the older man flatly. Marty looked up momentarily startled but kept his hands on the keys. He continued to play. “No,” said the man again, this time more firmly. Marty stopped playing. Was that it? Had his fate as a pupil been decided in mere minutes? He turned toward Mr. Tristano. “Why did you do that?” the teacher asked. “Play it the way Tatum played it.” Marty drew in a quick breath. He started again, this time finishing the piece without comment. After he was done, Mr. Tristano nodded and rose. 22

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“Thank you. I will see you again next Saturday at 1 p.m.” He started to walk toward the door. Marty gathered up his music sheets and scurried after him. He was going to study under the legendary Lennie Tristano. * * * Alan Vega walked back into the PLA. Freezing, he rubbed his hands together. Up on the second floor of the expansive loft space, he could hear the faint sounds of a band playing. Having first helped with a light show uptown at Columbia University before scrounging the city streets, Alan returned home to the PLA well past midnight. He dragged in part of a hanging light fixture he’d found down on Avenue C. He pulled it near an outlet to test what remained of its bulbs. Two lights came to life pulsating in almost opposite syncopation like ships signaling to each other in the night. Alan looked at the piece already envisioning his next light installation. He smiled as the bulbs winked at him. He liked the erratic nature of the light; there was something poetic in the way the bulbs refused to burn consistently. He’d spent the better half of the night ducking in and out of alleys looking for pieces he could use. The neighborhood, just south of Houston, had once been a thriving garment district after the Second World War. But by the 1960s, many of the businesses had gone under. Building after building stood empty and the streets were a mixture of garbage, alley cats, and the homeless. By the mid-1960s the city—not wanting the buildings to sit empty—had offered low-rent deals to local artists. Even with the smattering of artists in the area, the streets were a no-

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man’s-land. While this kept the bridge-and-tunnel crew at bay, Alan found it fertile ground for found art. The PLA was a twenty-four-hour exhibition space where anyone could drop in at any time. There was always a mixture of artists, spoken word performers, dope fiends looking for a quiet place to fix, forgotten war veterans, or just those who were looking for a respite from New York’s winter. Alan had heard about the space from a fellow artist friend when he was living back in Brooklyn. When the PLA entrusted him to be their janitor the year before, in 1969—a position that came with a set of keys—Alan left his old life for good. Alan knew how lucky he was to spend his days roaming the streets for trash. It had only been a few short years ago, right after he got out of college, that he’d settled down into domestic life in Brooklyn Heights. What was it that Truman Capote had said about Brooklyn in his essay “A House on the Heights”? That it was a good place to raise children. That’s what his wife had said too. That’s how by 1960 at the age of twenty-two Alan had found himself living in a one-bedroom apartment on Ocean Parkway chasing the American Dream. At first, Alan’s life seemed to be going according to plan. He had a good job as a social worker for the Welfare Department while his wife taught French at the local high school. Soon, they were able to upgrade to a larger place. Alan, who’d always been interested in art, set up a small studio in their new apartment. But by the mid-1960s, the government came calling. Alan was drafted for Vietnam. For the first time, he had to choose between what he’d been brought up to think and what he actually believed. Between serving his country

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for a war he didn’t believe in or serving oneself, he chose the latter. He tore up his first few notices. During his marriage, Alan had become increasingly involved in politics. He’d attended an anti-war march in Washington in 1966, but upon his return he once again was summoned for the draft. This time, instead of avoiding the notices, he walked into the draft office and screamed: “Give me a gun. I WANNA KILL.” The military intake officer took one look at him and turned him away. Alan was deemed insane. * * * Something in Alan had changed after that day in 1968. He knew there was no going back to his life in Brooklyn Heights. At first he rented a small art studio in Park Slope. He had been painting and drawing after-hours from work, but once he settled into the new space he began experimenting with large installation light sculptures. He’d even got a small show in Brooklyn. But as the country grew more divided, Alan felt he could no longer engage in this double life. Either he would remain in Brooklyn and start a family or he’d leave his life and become a full-time artist. He knew the financial security he’d be giving up. He knew he’d devastate his wife. Yet, he’d seen firsthand the police brutality against protestors. He knew that the war was wrong. He knew what he had to do. Late one night in 1969, he walked over the Williamsburg Bridge away from Brooklyn, down into the Lower East Side of Manhattan and headed toward Greene Street. He ascended that bridge out of Brooklyn as Alan Bermowitz

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and descended into Manhattan as Alan Vega. He never looked back. * * * Once inside the PLA, Alan again tinkered with the flashing light fixture. He could hear loud music coming from another room. He laid the fixture down on the floor and headed in the direction of the sound. He looked at the makeshift stage. He couldn’t believe how many band members there were— it looked like a small army. They seemed to be led by the cat on keyboard, a Bohemian-looking guy in a blue sweater with a giant Afro. Alan scanned the room. There were people swaying, nodding, and even dancing in the front. It had been a while since there were this many people packed into the PLA. He asked a young blonde girl in a prairie dress the name of the band. She shrugged and began twirling. They seemed like a jazz combo, but there was something in the rhythm that felt different—driving. Alan couldn’t quite put his finger on the sound. They appeared to be playing jazz rock on keyboards. It was wild. Man, they had not one but two drummers playing off each other. And three saxophonists. Alan watched enraptured for about ten minutes. He then turned and went back into the other room to tend to his lights. Last week he’d scored big with two discarded paintings; one of Jesus and the other of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He’d almost missed them as they had been lying in the back of an alley as if to give penance to those who sought refuge there. He’d been walking by the alley at night, and the light of the moon reflected off the circle of gold emanating around

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Guadalupe. Some people find religion inside the hallowed halls of a church. Alan found a higher power in the streets of New York. * * * Marty began to pack up the last of the band’s gear. For a show he hadn’t given much thought to, it had been nothing short of electrifying. Everyone had been firing on all cylinders. Usually when he got that deep into the groove, his mind went elsewhere—only sporadically aware of the audience. Mostly when shows were that intense, all Marty would remember was a feeling or an image. The gigs felt like a mind-bending acid trip where everything around you became both heightened and abstract. The sound would shape and shift, rocking like a tide going in and out. The band would get into a groove, then all of a sudden one of the drummers would switch to an up-tempo staccato. Marty’s keyboard would then drive the rhythm section with the drums playing off of his lead. It was almost 3 a.m. They had played for well over four hours, but Rev didn’t feel tired. In fact, he felt more awake than ever. The lofts and gallery spaces Rev had been playing recently with Reverend B had been a sharp contrast to his earlier jazz gigs. Marty had initially studied under Lennie Tristano beginning in 1963 at the age of fifteen. However, after two years Marty had decided to leave his lessons behind. It had been time to break out on his own. He remembered telling Lennie one Saturday that this would be his last lesson. He

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thought the normally curt teacher would scold him, but instead the elder musician just nodded his head signaling a silent approval. That had been early in 1965. Marty had attended Queens College Music School for two years before Manhattan’s jazz scene call proved too strong to resist. He left college in the spring of 1966, and by the summer he’d been searching for somewhere he could practice regularly. The obvious choice was the old piano that was in one of the halls in which his father held union meetings. Determined to improve his craft, Marty would dutifully go to the hall to practice, playing for the union guys and honing talent in front of his first full audience. After practicing for hours, Marty would then walk around Manhattan or duck into a jazz club to catch a set. At this point, he’d been a fixture on the scene since his teens that everyone at the clubs knew him. One day his buddy, double-bassist Steve Tintweiss, asked Marty to sit in on some gigs. Tintweiss had already been making a name for himself in jazz circles as a booker in Queens. Marty and Steve had grown up in the same neighborhood, and it seemed only natural that they would start playing together. Unlike the jazz gigs at places like the Village Vanguard or the 5 Spot, Tintweiss’s group mostly played lofts and galleries. Marty liked the eclectic audiences and free jazz nature of these shows. After about half a dozen shows with Tintweiss, Marty once again decided it was time to strike out on his own. This time with his own group which he named Reverend B. 28

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Marty’s new project was almost more of a collective than a proper group. At times the band would be four players, but could swell to twelve, including once with three drummers. The bigger band benefited from the loft scene where there was more space to spread out and play. In fact, his gig at the second-floor loft of the PLA was almost an accident—the space hadn’t really been on Marty’s radar. A friend asked the keyboardist if he would create a soundscape for a political slideshow he was putting on at the space. Marty agreed and afterward decided to see if he could get the Reverend B booked there. The mixture of politics and artists from all disciplines spoke to Marty. And sure enough, the space had exceeded even his expectations. Part of the appeal had been the energy of the audience. Piqued by the sound, people were continually walking into the loft to see the band. They stayed for a while listening intently, then would move on. There was also a mixture of those tuning in and dropping out, just swaying to the sound. Each iteration would cause the band to shift slightly, trying to engage the new listeners. Instead of playing a long set for an expectant audience in a club, the PLA allowed for more engagement between performer and public. * * * Marty snapped the last of the band’s cases shut and began to walk downstairs. As he was exiting, he heard this strange feedback coming from another one of the rooms. He paused momentarily and peered in.

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The room was awash in electronics. TV sets of all shapes and sizes were stacked upon one another. There were lights plugged in haphazardly all over the room blinking erratically. To the left stood a slim young guy holding a guitar, gingerly playing one chord at a time as if the combination might electrocute him on the spot. On the floor, as if conducting this electronic trash symphony, was a man with a mat of dark hair held down by a bandanna tied around his head. He had on a jean jacket cut off at the sleeves and was intensely staring at an amp. He appeared to be willing it to work via mind control. The dark-haired conductor picked at one of the wires on the floor, and there was suddenly a roar of feedback. Startled, Marty jumped back. The crouching figure got up, turned around to look at Marty and smiled. “Hey man,” he said enthusiastically. “Great set tonight!” Marty nodded and left the duo to their sonic sculpture. He made a mental note to return to this place. * * * It was September 6, 1969, and the sun cast a pink hue over the pavilion. It was one of those perfect New York September nights that is just warm enough to feel the last vestiges of summer with a cool breeze signaling the start of school, a last weekend fling. That’s how this Friday night felt to Alan: full of promise and expectation. He’d taken the subway from Greenwich Village all the way out to Flushing, Queens, in the middle of rush hour. Alan had crammed himself in the car next to

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suited city workers who looked defeated from the drudgery of day-to-day work. They were on their way home to safe suburban families far away from the crime and depression of downtown Manhattan. It had only been a year since Alan had been one of these workers, grinding out the nine-to-five with the promise of a bigger house and better schools. Now he felt like he had a higher purpose; he’d given up the mythical American Dream in order to create his own. Some of the businessmen cast disapproving glances at the artist’s unkempt appearance. A smile crept over Alan’s face as the suits clutched their briefcases closer to their chests and looked out the windows. * * * Alan leaned back in the stadium seat, eyeing the crowd. He was actively trying to drown out the opening act, a leftover hippie named David Peel who seemed out of place on the three-band bill. The singer had a modest hit with his album Have a Marijuana, but Alan had already forgotten his name, dubbing him “the Marijuana Man” all night. He seemed a relic even in the year 1969. This New York crowd was hungry for the future of music. No self-respecting New Yorker was buying into the bullshit of the promise of flower power in 1969. Christ, only a month ago Charles Manson and his band of loyal followers had slaughtered five people in the Hollywood Hills. The Manson murders were the death knell to flower power, proving peace love and understanding were no match for nut jobs and

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bloodshed. This crowd had come to hear the MC5, a Detroit group who understood the spirit of the streets. Alan wasn’t here to mellow out to some wannabe hippie; he wanted to feel the intense grit of guitars. He wanted real rock ’n’ roll. The night before Alan had been in his room tinkering with a TV set when a 2 a.m. phone call interrupted his concentration. “Turn on the Nightbird!” yelled the voice on the other end. Alan shifted around and tuned his radio to New York’s first FM station WNEW. Over the speakers came a loud distorted guitar and an almost pleading singer yelping, “I wanna be your dog.” The song was so intense Alan dropped the phone. Closing his eyes, he focused on the sound coming from the radio. As the song came to a close, DJ Alison “Nightbird” Steele’s voice returned announcing that the band she’d just played was opening for the MC5 tomorrow night in Queens. Alan had to go. Sitting among what appeared to be a Hell’s Angels convention, Alan was relieved to see the Marijuana Man had finished. He watched as the roadies prepped for changeover. The sky had finally given way to full darkness and the only light emanated from center stage. In the shadows a lanky Ron Asheton walked out and plugged in. There rose up a faint cheer of expectation. Maybe five minutes passed and Dave Alexander walked out with his bass as Scottie Asheton slipped in behind the kit. A hushed silence blanketed the stadium. The trio continued to tune endlessly while ever so faintly one could make out a shadowy figure behind an amp. 32

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All that was visible was a mousey-brown bowl cut adorned with a black studded collar around the neck. Suddenly Ron played three successive power chords in G-F#-E. The pavilion erupted with energy. The distortion— held almost to the point of feedback—finally let up as the drums kicked in. Ron repeated the phrasing, this time an octave higher. Then he let the E ring out into the night. Scottie hit the high hat and the shadowy figure finally appeared from side stage, shimmying backward and shaking his body as if it were being zapped by an electric current. The tanned, wiry figure finally turned around to face the crowd. Dancing right up to the lip of the stage, he suddenly bent over at the waist and scanned the audience. Alan had seen this move made famous by the lead singer of the Rolling Stones though Mick Jagger’s version was more peacock than pistol. This singer eschewed any sense of the flitty Brit; this was pure American animal. Shirtless and showcasing zero body fat, he wore blue jeans barely held up with a belt, the tip of which faced the audience like a leather phallus. Iggy Pop’s clear blue eyes widened as he glared out into the crowd. He may have been wearing the collar, but it’s clear who was the master of this show. Alan sat transfixed. Holy shit, this was it. He watched Iggy berate the audience and then jump offstage and plunge into the audience. The security guards dove in after him. Alan momentarily sensed this might be the end of the singer when suddenly his head buoyed to the surface. Like a diver who had discovered treasure, Iggy raised his left hand in the air triumphantly, still clutching the microphone. As the two 33

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security guards lifted him back to stage, the band launched into “1969.” Alan watched as the audience became increasingly frantic with each of Iggy’s antics. This is some serious Theatre of Cruelty shit, Alan thought to himself. Except Anton Artaud had never anticipated Iggy Pop. Iggy launched himself twice more into the audience before dropping the mic and leaving the stage. Ron let out a final ring of feedback and the rest of the band retreated backstage with their singer. In the span of twenty minutes, the Stooges had completely transformed the energy in the pavilion. Alan couldn’t believe it. His art had aimed at producing the same kind of reaction, but he’d never seen it done so quickly and on such a large scale. He didn’t even want to stay for the MC5’s headlining set. Nothing could top what he’d just witnessed. Within the space of five songs all of Alan’s life came into focus. Right then and there he decided he was going to make music. The stage transition from Pot to Pop was like witnessing the passing of the musical torch. Out went 1960s hippie idealism and roaring in came 1970s raw power. This spoke to Alan. In one night it seemed as though the country had shifted from the collective to the individual. Gone went the American Dream being chased down by businessmen on the subway. Gone went the countercultural myth of the flower children that free love would change the world. Gone went the myths passed down by others. What if one created their own myth? By bearing witness to Iggy, Alan saw the way to evoke change. One had to make 34

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oneself larger than life. One had to create the superhero from within. By day he was mild-mannered Midwesterner Jim Osterberg, and by night he transformed into the animalistic Iggy Pop. * * * Marty walked downtown to meet his friends for dinner. Having time to kill and realizing he wasn’t far from the PLA, he quickly changed course and headed for the arts space. As he entered the building, he peeked into one of the first-floor rooms. There were about a dozen men in the room arguing about Vietnam. Most wore fatigue jackets and he assumed them to be returning vets. A few were on the nod with only the wall keeping them upright. There came a deafening sound of white noise from upstairs. Marty went upstairs to the loft space to see if there was a show. As he got to the place where his band Reverend B had played, he noticed the same small guy decked out with a bandanna around his mop of black hair seated in the center. Once again, he was surrounded by wires and cables. He appeared to be trying to create the loudest form of feedback possible. A timid guitarist stood to his left. Marty recognized the guitarist this time as sculptor Paul Liebegott. He was looking worriedly at the figure on the floor feverishly squatting over the amps testing out a series of chords, a Dr. Frankenstein creating the perfect distortion monster. Without thinking Marty picked up a few of the industrial parts lying around the room and began to create

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a complementary percussion to the duo’s wall of noise. It reminded him of his youth. On Saturday mornings, when his mother was at the piano singing along to a melody, his father—who couldn’t read a lick of sheet music but could instantly pick up on a song and play along—would join in on acoustic guitar. His older brother would join in on his guitar along and little Marty, not wanting to be left out, would run into the kitchen. He’d return brandishing two blackened pots. He’d proudly put them on the floor and would carve out a beat. Much like the musical synergy with his family, Marty played with the other two musicians at the PLA for over an hour without uttering a word. The mad scientist in the middle looked up at the keyboardist and smiled. Marty forgot all about meeting his friends for dinner. Before he knew it, the light from the windows went dark. As the trio continued to explore a variation of sounds, Alan intensified the volume. At one point they heard yelling from outside. Alan momentarily paused and went over to the cracked window to see what was happening. Outside a collection of kids had gathered below the window looking up at the PLA. “What’s that noise you are playing?” one of the kids shouted up at Alan. “It’s the sound of the streets, man,” Alan shouted back.

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By day he is Johnny Blaze but by sundown he transforms into the Ghost Rider, a skeletal daredevil who rides a motorcycle engulfed in flames. While new to his nocturnal other, Johnny begins to harness his power. Concentrating hard enough with his mind as the Ghost Rider, Johnny can set any object on fire.

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After that first impromptu jam session, Marty started making daily trips to the PLA. Marty would come in and find Alan on the floor surrounded by speakers and his faithful—yet fearful—friend Paul playing guitar. The three musicians would hold jam sessions for hours and tape-record everything. Marty, who had a wife and four kids up in Harlem, one day brought his son’s drum kit down to the space. He found it liberating to switch to playing percussion. Another time, he came across a discarded trumpet on the street and gave it to Alan. Suddenly the squawking of the instrument found its way into the trio’s practice sessions. Early iterations of the band had Marty on drums, Paul on guitar, and Alan jumping between playing guitar, blowing on the trumpet, or just plain screaming. After about a month, Marty invited his wife, Mari, to play drums while he returned to electric keyboard. Mari had been part of the experimental arts and jazz scene prior to marrying Marty. But while playing together was fun, with four children the couple recognized this arrangement wasn’t feasible for their family. Rather than replace Mari, the band decided to discard the idea of a drummer altogether. Marty set up his keyboard positioned right with a cymbal on top and a single snare to his left. Soon the band would do away with even these. * * * Tuesday night and the place was packed. It was September 1972 and the New York Dolls were into their penultimate weekly performance of their six-week residency. Alan and Eric Emerson made their way over from the PLA to the

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newly developed Mercer Arts Center. Emerson had been a Warhol film star before joining the Los Angeles-based band the Magic Tramps. Due to recent earthquakes, the Magic Tramps relocated to New York and had already played the Mercer. Since then, Eric had been raving about the New York Dolls. Alan was excited to see this new band. The Mercer Arts Center, once an opulent hotel at the turn of the century, had by the 1960s fallen into disrepair. Too massive to sustain itself, the city hesitated to tear down such a historical landmark. Much like the PLA, arts opportunists had come to the rescue of the Mercer and taken over the second floor as a performance space. The building was rich with rooms for all types of performance. The spaces’ most consistent form of revenue came from the ongoing performance of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest starring Rip Torn and a young Danny DeVito. Over the summer, word of the New York Dolls shows had started to circulate throughout Manhattan. Whispers flew that not since the Velvet Underground had there been such a who’s who frequenting one performance. David and Angie Bowie were rumored to be regulars. Bette Midler had been to a few shows and even Jimi Hendrix had stopped in to catch a set. The Dolls were playing in the 200-capacity Oscar Wilde Room. The slightly larger Kitchen (the hotel’s actual former kitchen) held multiple bands while Louis St. Louis and his jazz combo played the cabaret room. Alan fancied the ornately designed Blue Room, named for its floor-to-ceiling decor of blue velvet complete with lavish chandeliers twinkling like stars in the sky. A tad over the top for his band, he thought, 39

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but playing in the room would make a jarring juxtaposition of decadence and dissonance. The two PLA artists arrived ten minutes into the Dolls’ set just as the band was diving into “Personality Crisis.” The band’s frontman wore a tight chiffon black-and-white blouse draped open with the shirt’s last button hanging on for dear life. He had a mop of curly brown hair that he pushed up on the sides as he sang. He wore black leather pants and 4-inch white platform boots which had the 6’3” frontman towering over his band mates. The resulting look was an amalgam of Warhol darling Gerard Malanga and the Doors’ Jim Morrison: the lizard king as drag queen. The chorus kicked in and the tiny lead guitarist jumped up to sing into the tall frontman’s mic. The two were a study in contrasts. While the lead singer, a charismatic, Oscar Wilde-esque dandy named David Johansen seemed overly theatrical—almost as if he was playing a musician—there was no mistaking the musical chops of the smaller, kinetic guitarist, one John Anthony Genzale, known by fans and local drug dealers as Johnny Thunders. There was definitely a Mick-and-Keith vibe to Johansen and Thunders. While Johansen would preen on stage, Thunders cranked out one Chuck Berry riff after another with the rhythm section trying hard to stay in time. He was decidedly the band’s piston and danger-factor, decked out with dyed black-spiked hair, a black leather jacket, and black chaps over jeans. The rest of the band all wore high heels and harshly applied makeup making them look like the Queens’ version of the Cockettes. Whatever their drag-damaged style, the 40

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New York Dolls played frenetic rock ’n’ roll like the Stooges. Yet, while the Stooges reeked of adrenaline and desperation, the New York Dolls emanated sex and swagger. With Iggy, there was always the threat of impending violence. With the New York Dolls, it was more of an impending orgy. Alan liked the band’s vibe. He especially enjoyed Johansen whose between-song banter showcased his whip-smart one liners. Plus, the towering frontman could jump high enough to almost clear Thunders’s head. (Somewhere a young David Lee Roth was taking notes.) The Dolls were theater and Alan saw the stage presence serving the sound. It didn’t matter that most of the band couldn’t play; it was all in the attitude. Alan understood the New York Dolls were eliciting the same sort of excitement from their audience as the Stooges. While their electric live performance seemed part of the future of music, the music itself seemed mired in the past. Alan preferred the raw, distorted sounds of the Stooges. Johansen sang about the dual identity, one who was both a ballerina and a werewolf; Alan’s only personality crisis was achieving onstage lycanthropy. The Dolls finished their set, and Alan looked around for Eric. Usually the Magic Tramp singer was easy to spot. He found him positioned in the back of the crowded room. Alan went over to engage him about the show. “They were great,” Eric said. “Too bad they won’t be playing again for a while.” “Why not?” asked Alan. “They’ve got some dates lined up in England in November. Apparently the British press is already salivating over their 41

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impending arrival once it was leaked that David Bowie and Lou Reed were regulars at their New York gigs.” Alan took in this information. He looked toward the door of the Oscar Wilde Room and spied the Mercer Arts Center manager Alan Lewis. He made his way over to the venue’s booker. “I hear the Dolls are headed across the pond,” he said off-handedly to Lewis. Lewis nodded. By the time the two were finished talking, Alan had secured his band a Wednesday night residency at the Mercer in October. Alan’s transformation was almost complete. Alan and Eric were just about to leave the Mercer when Alan Lewis grabbed Vega’s sleeve. “Hey! What’s your band’s name?” he asked. “Suicide,” replied Alan. Lewis’s mouth dropped open and looked as if he were about to reconsider his offer when Alan and Eric slipped out of the venue and into the night. * * * The previous spring in April of 1972, Marty had been walking around the streets of New York City. He loved walking the city and never tired. He lived all the way up in Harlem and regularly made the trek downtown for band practice. The green on the trees adorned the streets. Normally the walk downtown got progressively darker with the increasing number of vacant buildings and furtive figures lurking in the alleyways. But today even crime was on holiday. Marty was feeling inspired. He, Alan, and Paul had been practicing for eight months and had finally lined up 42

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a show at the PLA next month in May. The experimental noise they had been playing had felt like the next step after free jazz for Marty. This was the sound of the future. They didn’t need chord progressions or even soloing; heck, they didn’t even need a drummer. Still, there was something percolating in the back of his brain. Something he couldn’t quite access. Marty made a quick turn and headed in the direction of New York University in Washington Square. He needed to find a piano. He knew that the music department had a handful of Steinways for the students to practice on. Marty opened the door to music building and headed to the second floor. No university guard in sight and no one to question his motives. What a scam. Why didn’t more musicians do this? It was a Saturday morning and the place was deserted. Marty sat down at the piano and closed his eyes. He thought back to his lessons with Lennie out in Queens. He started playing with his left hand. The jazz great had taught him to emphasize the bass; strengthen the side that gets the least attention. He remembered a lesson Lennie often employed: he would turn on a metronome and start it at a slow speed. He’d ask the student to match the speed. Then, he’d gradually increase the metronome’s back-and-forth pacing and the student would have to mimic the machine. The trick taught students to quickly account for time. Yet, Marty was more interested in the method of the metronome—its cold, rhythmic pulse—than replicating its time signature. What if there was a way to take the bass and make it match not in time to the machine, but sound like the machine? 43

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It was as if he’d strapped himself into a self-driving car; all he had to do was watch the road in front of him, letting the muse do the rest. As Marty dove into the inner corners of his mind, Western images appeared. He thought further back. He was now in his bedroom as a child. He saw the cowboy posters above his bed. He remembered thinking about how they were heroes but also outlaws. Always on the run. He thought about the cowboy starts in film. Then he thought about cars in film. Driving. He thought about how the biggest freedom was driving around. James Dean and Marlon Brando on motorcycles were the new cowboys. Films about drag racing in which the hero rides off into the sunset. He thought about the war and how it was supposed to be noble to serve one’s country—like a cowboy forging the frontier and protecting his family. But Marty had grown up with activist parents who had spoken to him plainly about politics. His first memories were of his father taking him downtown and having him hold a union sign in the picket line. Marty thought about films of the 1950s, cars and blasting the radio late at night. He remembered listening to his brother’s radio under the covers, long after he was supposed to be asleep, picking out the musical patterns of the songs. He then thought about the vets at the PLA. The ones who had come back from war only to find the country for which they’d served discard them like yesterday’s garbage. He regularly saw these vets doing heroin—a drug given to them by the government to deal with the horrors of war. But where was the fix for the horrors of home? The only solution seemed to be on a permanent nod. Driving themselves into 44

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oblivion. Watching the vets night after night at the PLA, Alan had likened the addiction to a slow suicide. Satan Suicide. That’s what Alan had wanted to call the band. He thought it sounded like a comic book villain. He’d been reading Spider-Man and had told Marty that one of the characters was hooked on heroin, just like the lifeless junkies crashing at the PLA. Marty thought there was a way out of this slow decline. Alan had said maybe they could make “suicide” life-giving. What if the “Suicide” in their band meant a new lease on life? Marty couldn’t quite follow his frontman’s logic, but he liked the provocation of the name. And it matched their sound. Marty looked up excitedly. He could see a new direction for the band. As he sat at the piano, he’d worked out all of the music and the lyrics. The song would be called “Rocket U.S.A.,” about a TV star driving around high, oblivious to the impending crash. A metaphor for the country; a country consumed by its own TV image roaring down the highway not realizing that death was actually behind the wheel. Marty felt like he’d taken a hit of speed. He looked up assuming it must be night by now. He felt like he’d been working at the piano for hours. As he left the music building, he realized he could only have been playing for about thirty minutes. The muse had taken hold and wouldn’t let go. He suddenly saw Suicide’s music like the final frontier—a type of music that has not been discovered—that was out there as long as he has the mind to ride off into the distance and find it. He was so amped he almost ran the twenty blocks to the PLA. * * * 45

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In October 1972, Al Lewis agreed to let Suicide play the Blue Room on a Tuesday night, the same night as the New York Dolls. Alan figured that even though the Dolls were playing the bigger Oscar Wilde Room, if Suicide went on late enough they might get some of the audience runoff. Marty and Alan were ecstatic. Not only was the Mercer a significantly bigger space than their previous shows at the PLA, they would benefit from one of the hottest bands in the city. A few months back, guitarist Cool P (Paul’s performance moniker) exited right before Suicide’s Mercer show. During the summer Suicide shows had become increasingly confrontational events with the audience reviling against the band’s harsh, dissonant sound. The quiet sculptor could no longer handle the intensity. Marty and Alan briefly debated whether or not to fill his space. Suicide became a duo. At first the band didn’t have any songs opting instead to play an entire set with long droning songs bleeding into one another and no clear delineation. Without a live drummer, Marty stripped their kit down to a snare drums and a single cymbal. Their first live set up at the Mercer would feature Marty behind a keyboard with an amp on top. From there he could manipulate the dials to alternate the sound. Behind him loomed a large stereo cabinet using feedback as a replacement rhythm section. With the Mercer date on the horizon Marty and Alan took to practicing every day and honing their sound. Initially an almost exclusive noise band, Suicide was now developing proper songs in which Alan would create lyrics based around 46

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characters that he knew. Some of Suicide’s earliest songs included the speed-infused “Methedrine Mary” and the country’s clarion call “Rocket U.S.A.” Marty arrived late to rehearsal. If Alan was upset, he didn’t show it. In fact, when Marty arrived, he found the frontman sitting on the floor deep in the middle of an art project. Marty watched as Alan carefully glued silver studs onto a leather jacket. After about five minutes he finally looked up. “What is that?” Alan asked, looking at the piece of equipment Marty carried under his arm. “It’s an organ,” the keyboardist replied. Alan stared at the cheap organ and started to laugh out loud. “It looks like those keyboard contraptions they use at Bar mitzvahs!” he sang out. He laughed again. Marty set the instrument down and attempted to plug it in. Alan watched as Marty tried in vain to extract a chord from the organ. He pressed on the keys and a slow wheeze squeaked out of the amp. This sent Alan into more peals of laughter. He got up. “Hold on. I think I have something that will help.” He disappeared down into the basement of the PLA. When he returned, he was carrying a half dozen Electro-Harmonix pedals. Some appeared to be held together with electrical tape. Marty plugged in the pedals and tried again. A huge wall of sound enveloped the room almost knocking the keyboardist over. He turned toward Alan. Alan smiled and resumed working on his jacket. * * * 47

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The Dolls’ set was winding down. With their impending fall European tour, their last few residency shows had been packed. It felt like everyone from uptown to downtown Manhattan had all descended into the Mercer that night. While New York City began to cool in preparation for fall, the venue’s temperature continued to climb. The first round of people started defecting from the Dolls and began to walk through the Blue Room to exit. As the trickle of exiting people swelled into double digits, Marty and Alan began to plug in. A deafening wave of feedback shot out and shook the chandelier. Those attempting to leave started to cover their ears and pick up their pace. Alan took the mic and walked over to two unsuspecting women on their way out and shrieked at the top of his lungs. One of the women screamed in surprise. Alan pivoted on his foot and turned maniacally to another couple this time greeting them with a deep primal scream. The Dolls’ audience actively was running for the door. A few people stood frozen in fear. Panic passed across the faces of those that brushed by Suicide. Alan smiled. People started looking for an alternative exit, but the Blue Room was the only way out of the Mercer. Alan smiled again. Marty, who was hidden behind huge bug-like shades, gave no emotion at all. He just continued to pulsate a metronome beat out of the keyboard. By the time Suicide finished their first song, the mass exodus was almost complete. At the other end of the room was a bar where New York Dolls’ guitarist Sylvain Sylvain stood looking at the band on stage. One by one all of the Dolls made their way into the Blue Room curious about 48

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the commotion. David, wet with sweat, stood transfixed. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a harmonica and started to make his way to the stage. Sylvain watched his frontman with surprise. Arthur “Killer” Kane turned toward the guitarist, “Wanna place bets on how long it takes this band to clear the room?” “They’re fucking weird,” Sylvain said in way of a response. He watched the lead singer with an Elvis-like presence take pleasure in terrifying his audience. Sylvain shifted his gaze to the keyboard player who seemed almost robotic, barely moving. What was this? The frontman turned around to display the back of his jacket. Even in the darkened room there was no mistaking the words adorning the leather. In silver studs it spelled out SUICIDE. “They’re fucking weird,” Sylvain repeated to Kane. “And fantastic,” Syl thought to himself. * * * Even with the mass exodus, Suicide was able to secure an October residency at the Mercer. On Tuesdays the Dolls would play the Oscar Wilde Room and on Wednesdays Suicide would take over. Things seemed to be looking up. Marty and Alan continued to play the Mercer throughout the beginning of 1973, as well as a handful of jazz clubs. The duo was finally making a name for themselves despite their infamous image. Early on August 3, Alan was walking by the Mercer. From inside the club he could hear the Magic Tramps practicing.

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Alan hadn’t seen Eric in ages, and he decided to stop in. All of a sudden, a loud crash came from the club. Alan stared in disbelief. The building was crumbling right before his eyes. In what seemed like a matter of minutes, the entire back of the Mercer collapsed. Later, Alan learned the damage had killed four people with his friend Eric and the Magic Tramps being mercifully spared. The city condemned the 123-yearold building, and it was eventually demolished. It was the end of an era.

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4 A Specter Stalks the Soundstage

Now a full-fledged motorcycle stuntman, Johnny Blaze suddenly experiences the use of his powers during the day. Where danger lurks, the Ghost Rider appears. Blaze begins to realize his powers might not be the product of pure evil after all. With the demise of the Mercer, bands were scrambling to find places to play. Outside of the New York Dolls, one of the

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Mercer’s largest musical draws had been Wayne County1—a wild drag frontman who could easily have laid the foundation for John Waters’s film career. Wayne had recently graced the cover of the British music magazine Melody Maker. The Brits were always a bit more accepting of any sort of gender bending than their American counterparts. Wayne initially approached a little dingy dive bar known for hosting the Hell’s Angels to see if they would let his band play. In March 1974 the bar’s owner, Hilly Kristal, had closed his SoHo venue and taken up residency in the Bowery. Known as the resident hippie holdout who favored bluegrass over electric bass, Hilly was not keen on hosting rock ’n’ roll in his new space. Wayne was convinced that his band’s Mercer attendance record would quash any misgivings the bar owner had about hiring a frontman in fishnets and smeared lipstick. While local lore often tells the tale that it was Richard Lloyd and Richard Hell of Television who were responsible for finding the next scene of punk rock, Wayne County should really get most of the credit. Either way, by the summer of 1974 Hilly was hosting residencies by Patti Smith and Television at his little country, bluegrass, and blues bar, CBGB’s. Marty and Alan were familiar with CBGB’s, often going to the bar to shoot pool in the daytime. Usually local pool sharks Anya Phillips and Sylvia Morales were holding court at the table, challenging any takers. After the collapse of the Mercer, Suicide were back to playing regularly at the PLA, publicizing their shows as a “punk mass,” a word Alan had stumbled across when reading Lester Bangs’s review of the Stooges. 52

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The Dolls, now in their second iteration after the untimely overdose of their drummer Billy Murcia in England, were returning to venues uptown and booking gigs at Max’s Kansas City. Max’s had once laid claim to being the “scene-to-beseen” with its thirty-foot back room being the unofficial office for Warhol’s Factory denizens. In the late 1960s, the Velvet Underground would play upstairs complete with a scattering of tables and chairs all facing a small stage, while downstairs Max’s back room contained Warhol’s coterie. However, Max’s hadn’t drawn much of a crowd since the Velvets’ demise. With the loss of the Mercer by 1974, Max’s was once again on the radar of the elusive art crowd and bands began to flock uptown in an effort to find places to play. * * * Alan had a good feeling about this gig. Suicide had played a headlining show at Max’s in August, and he sensed that even though they had cleared the room, a solid buzz was building around the band. Plus, much like the ornate architecture of the Blue Room, there was a juxtaposition of space and sound at Max’s that appealed to the singer’s sense of chaos. With Max’s tables and chairs facing the stage, it led the audience to see the band as a source of “entertainment.” Sometimes bands were regarded as little more than background noise over dining couples enjoying their main course. Within seconds of cutting into their steak, Suicide’s intense sound would descend upon the unsuspecting crowd. Once they realized what they were in for, it would be too late. Like a roller coaster they couldn’t release themselves

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from, their fear would ascend the tracks with every increase in amplification. The band would then plunge their captives into terrifying sonic depths, reveling in the collective scream. Alan and Marty had agreed to open their set with their new song “Ghost Rider” and close with a weaponized horror piece tentatively titled “Frankie Teardrop Detective.” Alan decided to forgo his usual studded leather “Suicide” jacket uniform. He wanted something that would be more in line with Max’s crowd. After scouring the city’s dumpsters, he’d found the perfect leopard print suit jacket. He took time to exaggerate his pompadour. Let them believe he was an Elvis-like lounge singer. He’d happily play ringleader to the terrifying carnival into which they’d unwittingly entered. * * * Craig Leon settled into his chair at the back of the room. He was ready to leave Max’s. He’d seen all of the bands he needed to see for one night. “Just stay for the headliner,” his friend urged. “I’ve heard they are insane.” Craig shrugged noncommittally. Truth be told, he wished he could find such a band. Working at Sire was becoming rote and he yearned to do more. His friend had started up a new label called London, and Craig imagined that if he could just find the right band, he could convince the burgeoning label to give him a chance. Maybe even give him a job in A&R. He looked at his watch—it was well after midnight. What time had he agreed to meet the reps at London tomorrow? 9 a.m.?

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Just as Craig decided to pack it in, two figures appeared onstage. Craig looked to see if they were still setting up, but there was no more movement onstage. He squinted, trying to make out the rest of the band. He couldn’t even see reflecting light from the cymbal of a drum kit. Actually, he looked closer. He didn’t see a drum kit at all. The taller of the two figures onstage stood behind what appeared to be two keyboards and a drum snare. At first, Craig didn’t even notice him as he was wearing huge black shades and almost appeared to blend into the background. What is this? Craig thought to himself. Out loud he said, “I’m gonna head home,” to his friend. “I really need to find a good rock band, and tonight there’s been nothing. These guys look like some odd avant-garde act.” The tall figure then started to move and a huge sonic boom shot through the room—massive feedback fed through the band’s amp. It was as if a seismic quake had struck the venue. People around him looked up in surprise and held on to their tables to steady themselves. The keyboard player continued to knock out chords which sounded more akin to a percussive pulse. There was an almost rhythmic quality to his playing. Craig sat back down. * * * Alan paced back and forth on Max’s stage. He surveyed the club as Marty began his slow keyboard’s build. Alan knew he had only a few minutes before the aural onslaught commenced. He looked out at the floor, covered in tables and chairs, creating a distance between himself and his audience.

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They were all seated, eyes looking up expectantly. Bodies briefly turned away from each other positioning themselves toward the stage as if to say, “Entertain me.” Alan wanted the audience to be part of his art, not mere spectators to the sound. He noticed a couple deep in conversation at the corner table. They were barely aware there was a band onstage. Without warning Alan leaped from center stage over to the couple, thrusting his face inches from the startled woman. A wave of fear passed over her face. Leaning in, threateningly close, Vega screamed into the mic. The woman recoiled in horror. Alan took out a knife from his pocket, the room collectively gasped. Within seconds the woman’s date was on his feet ready to fight Alan. Sensing the room might turn on him, Alan quickly swiped the knife across his own face. Blood began to drip from his cheek onto the floor. Mixing with the sweat on his face, the ensanguined result looked truly terrifying. The woman’s date froze. He looked aghast at Alan. Realizing he couldn’t inflict more pain on the singer than he’d already done to himself, the man remained motionless. This singer was clearly crazy. The mob mentality had gone from impending violence to actively defused in a split second. The man sat down and tried to comfort the still-shaking woman to his right. The entire room sat transfixed. They wanted to leave or to hurl insults at the band, but they were trapped between horror and fascination. Alan had anticipated this. He’d seen Iggy Pop do something similar during that fateful show back in 1969. After the Stooges’ blistering set—and especially Iggy’s 56

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jumping off stage into the crowd—the audience was primed for violence. As the band had walked off stage, Alan had scanned the pavilion, waiting for the impending riot. Suddenly Bach blasted through the loudspeaker. The classical music momentarily mollified the mob and people just sat back down in anticipation of the next act. Alan remembered thinking this was utterly genius. If the Stooges had followed their set up with any loud rock interlude, a riot would have been imminent. Alan brought this to his performance at Max’s. He brought the audience to the tipping point of violence before shifting from anger to horror. He knew the sheer shock of masochism would momentarily paralyze any mob mentality. And it worked. Now the audience was officially part of the show. * * * The music was like a slow building volcano. Craig listened as the band played a singular pulsating chord which oozed up and down, the music sludge-like. Alan’s vocal shrieks would ride over the feedback, piercing through Marty’s rhythm machine, their musical lava pouring out onto an unsuspecting crowd. Then the frontman shifted, pulling back from his attack stance, and sang in almost hushed tones barely audible above the percussive keyboard. Craig could barely discern the lyrics—it seemed almost a perversion of the Johnny Cash classic “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” except Suicide’s version wasn’t about the souls of cowboys that needed saving. This song was trying to save the soul of America.

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Craig watched as the singer looked directly at one couple to stage right, before lunging at them and screaming, “America is killing its youth.” Something shone in his left hand. The couple at the table screamed. The man jumped to his feet, then in one quick movement the singer took the escalating violence and both literally and figuratively directed it upon himself. It appeared to Craig that the singer had slashed his face, but he was too far back to see if it was merely for effect. The “Ghost Rider” song ended and the keyboards and feedback slowly began to drain away, taking with it all of the chaotic charge in the room. The couple got up and quickly made their way to the door. Craig moved closer to the stage. The singer launched into the next song completely unfazed by the mass exodus. Craig was so transfixed he barely realized that he was now standing pressed up against the stage. He stared at the band’s setup: no guitars, no drums. And yet, they produced enough noise to deafen a room. He suddenly looked around as if coming to—the room was almost empty. Eight people had appeared to have passed the test of aural endurance. A figure Craig recognized from earlier iterations of the Mercer’s music scene was staring intently at Suicide. He appeared to be making mental notes. He looked reverently at the gear, seeming especially interested in the keyboardist’s inputs. Craig was surprised to see the notoriously caustic scenester taking such interest in another’s band. Suicide finished their set, and Craig turned to watch Lou Reed disappear into the night. Both Craig and Lou knew they’d seen the future of music. And it was noise. 58

5 A Legend Is Born

Johnny Blaze’s full origin story. Johnny makes a Faustian pact in which he offers up his soul to save his mentor. But Johnny soon realizes he has been tricked by the devil and every night he turns into the Ghost Rider, a servant of Satan. Night has become a living nightmare. Or has it? Perhaps in this hellscape, a legend is born. Marty Thau was early. He’d arrived before the bands went on to survey the crowd. He’d just come from a meeting over the business plan for his new label, Red Star Records. He felt like his entire career had been building to this moment. Starting at Billboard before moving to Cameo-Parkway Records, he’d

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been releasing albums from artists such as Van Morrison and Mama Cass. Then came prestigious positions and bigger labels which had provided him with a good salary and a house in Nyack, New York. But this was where he wanted to be—back in the darkened downtown clubs. Despite the din, he felt light. All of his past success had been leading him to this very moment. In 1972 Marty Thau—along with most of the city’s glitterati—had seen the New York Dolls at the Mercer Arts Center. He’d quit his job at Paramount the next day. As a savvy A&R man, he knew a star when he saw it. The New York Dolls wrote songs that were loud and hard about girls, sex, drugs, loneliness, heartbreak. All rites of teenage romance. And their live shows had every girl in the audience (and more than a few boys) ready to give themselves over to the band. They were gold. He approached the Dolls and asked to be their manager. After acquiring the band a two-album deal, they began to implode. While their debut album underwhelmed commercially, the title of their sophomore album, Too Much Too Soon, was an apt description of the band in 1974. After the failure of the second album, the label dropped them. The band then severed ties with Marty Thau. Accelerated by the misguided managing of Malcom McLaren, the Dolls began a disastrous rebranding campaign in which they all wore red and stood behind Communist flags. The Commie-shock didn’t play well in America; by 1975 the Dolls were done. But Marty Thau didn’t dwell on the past. New York’s music scene had gone through a seismic shift since the early Mercer days. Max’s and CBGBs had new-found energy. While the 60

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latter was the bottom of the Bowery barrel, out of the dirt was growing an exciting crop of new music. Spending time in the downtown New York music scene had steeled Marty Thau’s resolve. He’d been especially taken with Blondie, almost a mix of downtown rock with a 1960s girl group vibe. He could sense their potential, if not entirely musically, then at least in their lead singer’s looks. He’d have to forget about Blondie. In order to strike out on his own, he had to sever ties with his partner, Richard Gottehrer, at Instant Records. He’d given Richard first dibs on Blondie. Marty felt certain that there were enough bands in the downtown scene for Red Star to be successful. Surely Blondie, who lacked the musical sophistication of the other bands, wouldn’t be the breakout. “Remy neat,” Marty ordered from the bar. He looked around for something to read and noticed a paper behind the bartender. “Can I read that?” he asked. “It’s old,” the bartender replied before handing it over. It was the New York Daily News dated October 30, 1975. The cover read: “FORD TO CITY: DROP DEAD.” Marty sighed and put the paper down. He didn’t want to be reminded of the president’s refusal to bail out the city. He didn’t understand the rest of the country’s distaste for downtown Manhattan. While people on the outside bemoaned the seediness and rampant crime of the Big Apple, Marty continued to feel exhilarated by all that was happening. There was a certain amount of grittiness in the music that was a reflection of the streets, a sonic psychogeography of the city. 61

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And, honestly, should Washington really be casting stones when it came to money and corruption? Placing the paper aside, Marty tuned in to the song playing on the jukebox. It sounded familiar. He listened closer to the lyrics. Something about driving down the highway not sensing the impending danger ahead. “It’s doomsday, doomsday,” the singer repeated. Marty thought it sounded like the soundtrack for the current state of the country. “What is playing right now?” he asked Peter Crowley, the booking agent for Max’s. Peter looked up, a little surprised. “Marty,” he began, “that’s Suicide.” The record label exec couldn’t contain his astonishment. “Really? I didn’t realize they’d cut an album.” “Marty Rev just gave me the single,” Peter replied before ducking back into the stockroom. Having seen Suicide countless times at the Mercer in the room next to the Dolls, Marty Thau was more than familiar with the band. He’d actually booked them for the Mercer’s big St. Valentine’s Day show, the first time the Dolls had played with Jerry Nolan. He’d remembered thinking Suicide’s set was brilliant, but nearly impossible to capture on album. There was something magical about their live show that the seasoned industry executive thought would be like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. The jukebox switched to Blondie’s single “X-Factor” produced by Marty Thau’s former partner Richard Gottehrer and Craig Leon. The sting was lessened by Marty’s new-found interest in Suicide. He flipped the cards back in the jukebox before finding the band’s single “Rocket U.S.A.” He played 62

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the single again, this time paying attention to the production. It was crude but there was something compelling about the song. It was the fuzz of the beat. Had Suicide hired a drummer? Marty seemed to remember the band’s setup consisting only of Marty Rev behind a keyboard, a lot of amps, and a feral Alan terrorizing the audience. The song was oddly catchy—and frightening. As if the listener got too caught up in the car ride, they too might miss the approaching crash. Had Marty Rev used effects to create a phantom rhythm section? Marty Thau closed his eyes, imagining the recorded possibilities for the song. When he opened them, he looked at the band’s B-side: a song called “Keep Your Dreams.”1 The title seemed oddly prophetic. Peter was now staring at him. “You know they are headlining here next weekend, right?” * * * Marty Thau made his way through the folding tables upstairs and chose a seat toward stage right. He’d seen Suicide enough to know that Marty Rev set up his equipment on this side of the stage. Usually all eyes were on Alan, as he stalked the stage like a feral Marlon Brando in The Wild One. Marty Rev stood stoically in back with his trademark wrap-around shades, almost as if he were as robotically programmed as his rhythm machine. Marty Rev was the one Marty Thau wanted to watch. Was there a way to reproduce the band’s sound on record? If the keyboardist’s contraption could be replicated, then he’d be

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sure. It was certain that Suicide would be the first signing for his new label. The lights dimmed and the duo took the stage. * * * She glared around the room. She hated the tables and chairs. With her dark hair and deeply kohled eyes, she would have seemed menacing if it weren’t for the baby face that belied her inner demon. She was fine with this dichotomy; it served her well. Looking cute and innocent had its advantages. Unsuspecting marks would take pity on the young sixteenyear-old when she was out on the street hitting them up for a children’s charity. Soon enough they were opening their wallets while she mentally calculated how many days she could afford to eat off of their money. She refused to get a full-time job that paid for shit. She hadn’t escaped Rochester for New York City just to sit around some crappy job with a boss looking at her lecherously. She had art to create. And she never trusted anyone that put demands on her time. She couldn’t remember exactly when she’d met Alan and Marty. She’d definitely seen Suicide play the first week she was in town, that she knew. Fresh off the bus from upstate, she’d gone to Max’s in search of Wayne County. She’d read about the famous rocker in an issue of Melody Maker when she was fourteen and had written him a letter. Amazingly, the rock star wrote back. She spent the next two years saving up to get the hell out of town. Her future was only eight hours away. Upon arriving in the city, she beelined to Max’s. Suicide was headlining, and it only took one show for her to cast out

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her aspirations of becoming the next Patti Smith. Forget “Piss Factory,” that was merely the working man’s blues compared to Suicide. They were frightening. They were terrifying. People ran screaming from their shows. Unsuspecting couples could be found cowering in a corner. And they created all this fear through sound. She wanted to affect an audience like Suicide. She wanted to wield her art like a weapon. All those bands at CBGBs were a joke, she thought to herself. Playing three chords and acting all anti-authority. Audiences lapping it up and journalists hailing that these bands were changing the face of rock ’n’ roll. It was just like Legs McNeil’s new magazine Punk—dumbed-down writing for juvenile boys. It was a return to the 1950s with their Chuck Berry chords and matching leather jackets. Or the 1960s psychedelia with the guitar interplay of Television. She liked these bands, but they weren’t exciting. Not like Suicide. Suicide didn’t adhere to any past rules of rock ’n’ roll. Suicide seemed birthed in hell and sent down from space. Suicide was the future. * * * Suicide launched into “Cheree.” Marty Thau thought it was one of their most beautiful songs, if one could call it that. The song swam along in Rev’s keyboard feedback, with Alan taking on the character of a 1950s crooner. The lyrics were reminiscent of teen tragedy songs that were popular in the late 1950s and early 1960s. But instead of the clean guitar of the bubblegum pop era, Marty Rev’s keyboards gave the song a funereal quality in which the notes were played

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slower, one by one, as if walking in procession. Instead of his usual yelps and shrieks, Alan’s toned-down vocal was almost an ethereal whisper as he professed his love for Cheree, his “comic book fantasy.” Marty Thau listened intently. This could be a single. It didn’t have the edgier, more frightening quality of “Ghost Rider” or even “Rocket U.S.A.” Still, there was something beautiful and otherworldly about “Cheree.” Something that assured him this was the right band to sign. “Cheree” ended and the band paused momentarily. Marty Rev started playing one chord repeatedly. It was looping in on itself and creating a subtle wash of feedback. Marty Thau looked over the Rev’s setup. It looked as though he had plugged his keyboard into a series of Electro-Harmonix guitar distortion devices and fed it into the amp. This was creating the nervous electronic beat with the high end sounding like bugs getting zapped outside on a warm summer night. The low end was more like a fearful heartbeat. Marty Thau thought this would make an excellent opening score for a horror film. All the while Marty Rev droned on, Alan stayed still. He was almost more frightening in a state of repose. The audience seemed to hold their collective breath waiting for Alan to move. Having experienced the singer’s theatrics, the anticipation in the room began to build. Marty’s amplification intensified, sucking out any remaining sound. Alan still didn’t move. There was, however, movement coming from the back of the room. Marty Thau looked up and saw a small, cherubiclooking girl dressed in all black making her way to the front 66

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of the stage. She seemed unperturbed by the people sitting at the tables as she planted herself in front of the singer. Across the room was a girl he knew named Miriam standing by the speaker. Marty could barely make it out, but she appeared to be trembling. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Alan shrieked. A beer bottle fell to the floor, shattering everywhere and creating instant pandemonium in the room. People in the front row leaped from their seats and headed for the exit. Miriam began bashing her head into the speaker over and over. Marty Thau looked through the chaos and noticed the other girl in all black standing her ground in the middle of the floor. She was almost swaying to the beat, dancing to the apocalypse. Clutching a bicycle chain in his left hand, Alan moved over toward Miriam, now perched against the speaker. The back room gasped, as it appeared that he would do her harm. Marty Thau’s eyes darted over once again to the girl in all black, watching her track Alan’s movements. Then a wiry boy began to approach the black-clad girl from the left; she barely noticed. At the exact moment Alan reached Miriam at the speaker, she jumped up and rushed for the exit, blood streaming down her face. Marty Thau’s gaze returned to the dark-haired young girl at the front of the stage. He could have sworn he saw a smile creep across her lips. * * * This was her favorite song. She made her way down past the sea of obstruction to be closer to the stage. She wanted to

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be front and center for “Frankie Teardrop Detective.” She thought about the name. As a writer, she was always parsing words. She wasn’t sure if it was dark enough for the song. She stood right in front of a couple just to the left of the stage. Her withering glare indicated it would be in their best interest to let her stand. That was the beauty of being sixteen and whip smart. You could turn into the devil or into an angel at the drop of a hat. Besides, who sits at a Suicide show? Alan shrieked and started to gesture with his chain. He walked right up to her, but she remained motionless, utterly unafraid. She’d been watching Marty Rev and Alan practice for weeks. They’d let her come by and hang out, soak up what she could. Marty’s kids had even come by once; they weren’t much younger than she. She knew all their antics. When she’d finally positioned herself directly in front of Alan, she looked toward her right. There was a girl standing by the speaker trembling. She knew her as Miriam from other shows at Max’s and CBGB’s. The song intensified and she saw Miriam slamming her head into the speaker. Alan noticed it too and made a move toward her. There was an audible gasp from the back, as if he were about to unleash the unspeakable upon this unsuspecting prey. But she knew he was going over to the young girl out of concern. Alan never inflicted pain on anyone besides himself. Miriam then jumped up, ran toward the back, and exited the venue. She had what appeared to be blood on her face. Alan returned to singing about a detective at a racetrack. Again, she felt this was an odd choice of subject matter. Perhaps a nod to film noir, she mused, but it didn’t match the band’s horror soundtrack. 68

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Just then she noticed a small male figure to her left. He was the only other person who was standing in the front staring at the band. He seemed equally as captivated by Suicide’s performance as she was. As the music trailed off, he turned toward her. “Have you seen the band China?” he asked.2 She stared at him for a second. He looked innocent—like her—but there was something about him. Something darker than his outer appearance would indicate. There was almost a sneer curling around his lips. When one has a taste for blood, one often recognizes the same thirst in others. She turned her fangs toward him. “Are you in a band?” she asked without answering his initial question. “I play the saxophone,” he responded. That was unexpected, she thought. A sax player at a noise show downtown. Yet, he seemed to like Suicide and knew the experimental band China. He had good taste in music. Perhaps he had an apartment close by. She was, after all, between crash pads. “I’m James,” the saxophonist ventured. “Lydia Lunch,” she replied.

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Johnny accepts his plight, realizing that the sin of despair does not make him evil. Our hero learns to lean in to his fiery powers in order to help others. No longer regulated to dusk, Johnny can now harness the Ghost Rider whenever he senses danger. Johnny Blaze finally becomes one with the Ghost Rider, just as our heroes learn that we all can summon the fiery hellion from within when faced with peril.

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Alan sat back in the car. How long had it been since he’d ridden in a car? Months? Years? No one in New York owned a car. Heck, no one he knew even took cabs. But Marty Thau owned his own car. All that time spent at record labels meant he could drive in New York, a signifier of status in the city. Alan respected Marty Thau. After all, he’d worked with one of his favorite 1960s bands, Question Mark and the Mysterians. And Alan respected that he worked hard to acquire all of this money only to start his own label. Marty Thau wanted to make the music he wanted. And in 1977, he’d wanted Suicide. “How much longer?” Alan sassed from the backseat. Marty Thau shot him a look from the front but Marty Rev laughed. They had just signed a record deal with Marty Thau’s new label Red Star Records and were on their way to record. July was unbearably hot in the city, and Alan was thankful for the suburban respite. Marty Thau was driving them to 914 Sound Studio in some place Alan had never heard of called Blauvelt. The town was 20 miles north of the city, but it might as well have been 200. Anything off the island seemed like a foreign country. The “914” actually referred to the area code out in Rockland County and was near Marty Thau’s place in Nyack that bordered the Hudson River. Thau, the self-proclaimed “Chairman,” was trying to sell Alan and Marty on the place by telling them it was where Bruce Springsteen had cut his early albums. Alan wasn’t all that familiar with Springsteen beyond his single “Born to Run.” Marty Thau kept insisting that the Jersey native wrote about the forgotten American, the working man pining for a better life—just like Suicide. 72

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Marty Rev was less interested in Springsteen. Instead, he was ecstatically discussing the new Donna Summer song, “I Feel Love.” The single had been released earlier that week and Rev was taken by Giorgio Moroder’s production. Both Marty and Alan liked disco and weren’t like some CBGBs punk regulars who drew battle lines in the musical sand. Marty especially felt the connection to some of the jazz he grew up playing. He was excitingly talking about the futuristic sounds on the track that were like a bridge between the cool electronics of the German band Kraftwerk and the hot sound of Suicide. Craig Leon was in the front seat next to Marty Thau running through radio stations to see if he could find Summer’s song. Although the Billboard 100 had been dominated by the Eagles that spring, summer often brought more danceable music. Disco was hot in the clubs. Craig had been hearing about Studio 54 since its opening in April, and there were pictures of Bianca Jagger riding a white horse through the place in May. It sounded like another planet in contrast to the punk rock venues he frequented. Craig felt disconnected from New York. While he had a string of success producing bands from the burgeoning CBGB’s scene, he’d started to feel that it was time to leave downtown. He was familiar with 914 Sound Studio having produced the Ramones’ first album there. Craig had actually been an assistant at Sire to Marty’s later partner at Instant Records, Richard Gottehrer. The two had also worked together on Blondie’s debut after Marty Thau had given the band to Gottehrer when he dissolved their partnership to strike out on his own with Red Star. Craig never brought up Blondie. 73

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Craig was burned out. Earlier that year, he’d decided to take a break from the city and decamp to Vermont, only to be tracked down by Marty Thau months after arriving. Marty wanted Craig to produce Suicide’s first album. Had it been any other band, Craig might have turned him down. Still, Craig remembered their electric performance at the Mercer. He remembered Lou Reed watching the band. And he’d seen them dozens of times since and knew both Alan and Marty Rev had their set down. The trick was going to be how to capture the energy of their live performance on record. Craig was up for the challenge. Marty Thau pulled to a stop. “We’re here,” he announced. Alan got out of the car and peeked inside the building. He looked out at the beat-up looking exterior which would have easily been missed if one were just driving by. However, once inside he warmed to the place. The studio seemed not so much dirty, as it was gritty, tough. It seemed like the right place for Suicide. Of course, Alan reasoned, it was probably priced right for Suicide. Craig started to help Marty Rev set up his gear. As Craig was plugging in the second-hand Seeburg Rhythm Prince, Marty walked in carrying a beat-up organ. “Is that a Farfisa?” Craig asked surprised. “Isn’t it great?” Marty Rev beamed. “I found it in the classifieds for $10.” Craig looked down at the instrument’s multiple broken keys. Alan interjected, “We’ve been playing ‘96 Tears’ live, man!” And broke into a grin.

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Craig nodded his head still staring at the organ’s keys. Suicide were akin to “found art” musicians. He marveled at the power they could harness from patchwork instrumentation. Once Alan and Marty had finished setting up, Craig moved over to record. The band basically ran through their live set. Having played it for so long, they already had “Ghost Rider,” “Rocket U.S.A.,” “Cheree,” and “Frankie Teardrop Detective.” In May, they had debuted a song about the idolatry of Che Guevara simply called “Che.” They also recorded “Keep Your Dreams.” Alan was tinkering with a song called “Johnny” that fit within the loose concept of Marvel’s Johnny Blaze riding around looking for love. As he played it, Craig could see how the choice of “Johnny” could refer to “Johnny Blaze” or even “Johnny Strabler,” Marlon Brando’s character from The Wild One. Both characters acting tough but really just in need of love. Craig had Suicide run through their set a few times before letting them break. He thought about how Marty Rev ran all his gear through a bunch of distortion devices and fed them into the amp. While the result was an extremely thick sound, Craig wondered if he could take their extreme white noise and make it a little less ear-splitting and a little more haunting. Craig asked Marty if he’d be willing to plug his gear into the board instead of the amp. This would allow Craig to replicate the effects by essentially making the board an instrument. Craig had learned this “dub” technique while working with famed Jamaican producer Lee “Scratch” Perry. By mixing the

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sound as it was happening, Craig thought he might be able to capture some of the spontaneity that Suicide exhibited in their live show. While their sound was far from reggae, there were certainly overlaps in how Marty Rev approached bass and rhythm even if there were no actual guitars or drums. Additionally, Craig could cause an echo effect with Alan’s vocals thereby creating the haunting sound to juxtapose against Marty’s feedback and drone beats. They ran through a version of “Frankie Teardrop Detective” this way. 914 Sound Studio engineer Larry Alexander had been dubiously watching this electronic band. When they played “Frankie” through the board, he freaked out. “What is this?” he asked Craig. The producer looked over at his engineer. “The future of music,” he replied. * * * Suicide finished recording in about four hours. Marty Thau seemed satisfied with the result, and all four clambered back into his car to return to the city. Craig was leaving for LA the next morning. He would return to New York briefly to mix Suicide’s album. Then, their debut would be in the can. Marty Rev was once again looking for “I Feel Love” on the radio. He finally found it and lay back listening to Donna Summer cooing over the trance-like beat. Moroder’s chugging keyboard sounded like a car, propelling the listener forward into the future. The New York City skyline appeared in the distance. * * * 76

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While Craig was in LA, Marty Thau had made the decision to mix Suicide’s album. Never mind that he had no prior experience as a producer. Three days later he once again convinced Alan and Marty to trek out of the city and return to 914 Sound Studio. Always thinking one step ahead, Marty Thau had brought goods to transport Suicide’s music; he wanted to make their album more expansive. The first song they worked on was “Cheree.” Having never produced an album, most of Marty Thau’s “technique” was derived from trial and error as well as smoke-induced heightened judgment. He decided to add a phaser to the song, increasing the feedback and creating an otherworldly quality to the sweeping love song. He had initially thought that “Cheree” sounded like a tragic teen love song, lamenting the death of a loved one. Now, with Alan’s soft vocals buried under Marty Rev’s compressed rhythm, it almost sounded like the dead speaking back. Alan’s voice became the beloved from beyond the grave. While both Martys continued to tinker at the board, Alan was off writing in a corner. He’d been inspired by a story he read in the newspaper about a factory worker who couldn’t make ends meet and, in sheer despair, came home and shot his wife and young child before turning the gun on himself. Alan reworked both the lyrics and the vocal of “Frankie Teardrop,” excising the “Detective” from both the title and the narrative. Alan’s new delivery was more spoken than sung. After each verse, he would drop out his vocal for an extended period of time. He would finally return with the song’s only proximal “chorus” in which Alan’s repeated, “Let’s hear it for Frankie.” 77

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The first time Alan uttered the line, Marty Thau thought it sounded vaguely ironic, as if “Frankie” was the embodiment of the American Dream gone wrong. But when Alan’s vocal dropped out the second time, it becomes more chilling. When his voice finally returns, it is soft as a whisper, uttering of the unspeakable murders. Marty Thau worked the new song over in his head. At first listen the word “kill” is muffled, almost questioning the suggestion of violence. Then Alan returns with the distinctly heard “kill,” this time without ambiguity. Frankie takes a gun and shoots the six-month-old in his crib. Marty Thau encouraged Alan to use his piercing shriek for the sound of the gun, which was almost more terrifying than if Marty Rev had conjured it electronically. With every death, Marty Thau increased the volume of Alan’s shrieks making them more prominent in the mix. Finally, he built the distortion to an almost painful decibel level, allowing for feedback to be heard below the drum beat. After a minute of pure feedback and distortion, a faint keyboard scale can be heard. Alan shrieks and breathes heavily before fading out one more time. For the final two minutes, the distortion starts to sound like words spoken just beyond the edge of meaning or extreme glossolalia. Marty Thau thought this ending was epic. As for Marty Rev, Thau had him continue to build his insistent drone beat for ten solid minutes before devolving into chaotic catharsis. Alan’s penultimate vocal is a series of bodily sounds followed by realizing that Frankie was now alive in hell. Vega wailed, as if enveloped by fire, and finally utters, “We are all Frankies.” The recording was finished. 78

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Marty Thau listened to this version dumbfounded. It sounded like one of Yoko Ono’s primal scream performance pieces. This was worlds away from “Frankie Teardrop Detective.” “How did you come up with this?” he asked the frontman. Alan told him about the news article he’d read about the young vet and said he’d felt a connection to the young protagonist’s sense of despair. “I don’t want to be a person singing just someone else’s story,” he explained. “I want to become a human electronic tool creating this sort of buzzing, throbbing music.” Marty Thau thought about this. It was certainly Suicide’s most powerful song to date. He’d have to make “Frankie Teardrop” a deep cut as he was certain it would get no radio play. It might even dissuade people from purchasing the album. Marty felt the storyline to be suitably gruesome, but the real horror was not in the shrieks but in the silence. Alan was pleased. He’d finally found a way for Suicide to go further than the Stooges. While both bands shared a similar affective intent, their approach varied considerably. Each band wanted to wake their audiences from their passivity, but with Iggy there was always a combative role, as if taunting his audience with his 1,000-foot glare was enough. Iggy wanted to antagonize, but Alan wanted to engage. Scaring the audience was not enough for Alan. Suicide wanted a shared experience. We are all Frankies, he thought. Plus, mused Alan, the Stooges basically played a strippeddown variation of rock ’n’ roll based on the blues. The only real “threat” to the audience was from the feral antics of their self-inflicting lead singer. 79

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With Suicide everything appeared threatening to an audience. Beginning with the band’s lack of instrumentation to the sheer volume of their sonic dissonance and finally Alan’s onstage persona. Every detail was new, shocking, and designed to elicit reaction. While Alan felt the Stooges approach was almost a battle between their frontman and their audience, he wanted Suicide’s approach to overwhelm their audience. Both Marty and Alan listened to Marty Thau playback the new recorded version of “Frankie Teardrop.” They all looked at each other. No one said a word. * * * They’d made it to Boston. Even though it was only December, it was still early enough that the pure bone chill of New England winter hadn’t yet set in. Alan was excited. Suicide had never played outside the confines of Manhattan before. Marty Thau had booked them as a headlining act at Boston’s notorious punk club the Rathskeller. Or as the locals called it, “The Rat.” Marty’s label Red Star had recently signed The Real Kids, one of Boston’s rising bands. Their frontman had originally been part of the Modern Lovers when he was only fifteen, having grown up with their singer Jonathan Richman. The Modern Lovers were getting a fair amount of play in New York City, and Marty Thau had become friendly with Richman who recommended his friend’s band. Like Suicide in New York, The Real Kids had been on the Boston scene since the early 1970s; so much so that by the time they recorded their own debut album in 1977, they

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were a tight live act. The Real Kids were regulars at the Rat and had encouraged Marty Thau to book Suicide before the band’s official debut came out a few weeks later on December 28, 1977. The Chairman also felt that the Rat’s overall dingy atmosphere and uncompromising audience would be a good fit for the electronic duo’s abrasive set. Alan loved the look of the room straight away. Dark and underground, it had the basement feel of a secret club. The small stage was framed by metal piping that ran down from the ceiling, almost obscuring the top of a band’s heads. The look was like one of his art sculptures. The venue’s light was minimal at best and the room smelled of stale beer, cigarettes, and urine. It was basically a darker CBGBs, if Hilly had decided to go with a bunker aesthetic. Located in Kenmore Square minutes from Fenway Park, the Rat was just down the street from Boston’s other famed club the Paradise. That night Elvis Costello was playing the second of a two-night stint testing out songs from his upcoming album, This Year’s Model. Back in October, Costello had been in New York prepping for his first US tour set to start in November. He had gone out one night to see Max’s Kansas City and had been impressed by a band calling themselves “Suicide.” After the show, he’d struck up a conversation with Alan as they had a lot in common in terms of acerbic wit and interest in art. The two got to talking and realized they’d both be playing Boston on December 10. With Rat shows running notoriously late, Alan had agreed to put Elvis on the guest list, so the rising British star could catch their set. * * * 81

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Marty returned to the venue carrying a copy of The Boston Globe under his arm. He walked into the tiny room doubling as both a dressing room and storage closet, and flipped through the paper. He looked for an announcement of the show. No dice. Dammit, he thought to himself. He knew he should have called the promotions department at WBCN. He looked at the masthead for the arts editor. He made a mental note to get him a copy of Suicide’s album. Release date was set for the end of December, and he was hoping to have enough press to angle a European tour for the coming summer. If he could get Suicide out as an opener, they’d have a good shot at a full-scale US tour by the fall of 1978. The album’s UK release was in July, and with enough lead in US press plus NME they should be able to move a serious number of units that summer. Marty also figured that given the popularity of bands like Kraftwerk, Suicide might have an easier time in front of audiences across the pond. Many of the New York City bands fared better in front of European audiences. He was not so confident in how they’d go down in middle America. Best to stick to larger venues in major cities. Only an inexperienced manager or a complete fool would put a punk band on tour in places like the Deep South in 1978. Marty started running through his list of music writers. He was fairly certain Suicide could count on a good review from ZigZag’s Kris Needs who was doing double duty writing pieces for New York Rocker on Britain’s punk scene. This type of crossover would be perfect for a tour, Marty thought. Additionally, New York Rocker had always been supportive 82

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of Suicide having given the band their first feature back when Marty had originally heard “Rocket U.S.A.” in Max’s jukebox. Hell, one of their writers, Roy Trakin, was a Suicide fan, and Marty had hired him as a press agent for Red Star. Maybe he’d get him out on the European tour. Cranky Bob Christgau at The Village Voice would be a wild card. He often saw 14th Street as the dividing line between high and low culture. NME was always fickle, but loved to tout the new hot thing. Marty might be able to get a single into their magazine as a promotional tool. Then there was Melody Maker, Sounds, and Creem. And Bangs. Lester Bangs had been hanging around New York a lot lately, even threatening to start his own band. While Bangs was essentially freelancing, Marty knew the impact the reviewer had on a band’s reputation. He also had a surprising affinity for difficult music, having been an early champion of the Stooges and even writing a surprisingly glowing review of Lou Reed’s almost unlistenable noise album Metal Machine Music. It was this last review of Lou Reed that intrigued Marty. What had Bangs said about it? That it should be listened to every day like vitamins. He’d even called it “the best album in the history of the eardrum,” if Marty wasn’t mistaken.1 If anyone was going to understand the futuristic feedback of Suicide’s debut album, it was Bangs. Of course, the writer also articulated that Reed’s Metal Machine Music was a speed freak’s symphony or the aural equivalent of amphetamine. Having Bangs in Suicide’s corner could backfire. * * * 83

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Elvis Costello tapped his foot nervously. He looked over at the guitar cases. This was his third show in three days at Boston’s Paradise Rock Club. He glanced at his watch: almost midnight. Crew members scattered around him pushing cases and yelling at one another. The other Attractions had already left the venue, deciding to warm themselves in the hotel bar versus trying to find action in Boston’s brutal cold. Everyone was tired. It was the middle of December and they’d been on tour for almost nine months. They were all exhausted. Then, just yesterday, Elvis had just been informed by his manager that they might be needed as a fill-in spot on Saturday Night Live. The Sex Pistols, who were slated to be the musicial guest, were notoriously unreliable. He’d heard through the gossip at the label the band might have visa problems. Thus, the show wanted a back-up band just in case. The show would film the Saturday after the Attractions’ two Asbury Park shows. His manager, Jake Riviera, seemed quite pleased about the potential US TV debut, but Elvis had never seen the show. To him, playing in Bruce Springsteen’s hometown was the more impressive booking. The best part of touring America had been the record stores. The tour bus was filled with Elvis’s new acquisitions. Sure, the BBC DJ John Peel had played many of the new New York bands on his show, but there was nowhere in England to actually get these albums. Elvis had picked up Television’s Marquee Moon, Talking Heads: 77, and Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation. His manager Jake had actually given him a copy of Suicide’s Suicide as Stiff Records were considering becoming the band’s overseas distribution. 84

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Suicide on Stiff. They were certainly a far cry from the Attractions and Nick Lowe. Elvis listened to their album. Definitely harrowing but there was something in their sound that was captivating. Upon meeting the band that fall, Elvis had found Alan Vega quite funny—not at all how he’d pictured the signer of “Frankie Teardrop.” Elvis was excited to end their tour with some celebratory last gigs in New York City. He’d been to the city briefly laying down some early demo tracks for his upcoming album, This Year’s Model. He’d even got a chance to go to the famed Max’s. It was there that he’d run into Alan Vega. After chatting briefly, the two frontmen realized they were serendipitously both playing in Boston. Elvis and the Attractions were playing Friday and Saturday night at the Paradise, while Suicide were just down the street on Saturday at the Rat. Alan had kindly offered to put Elvis on the guest list so he could see Suicide. * * * Had this been New York, Elvis would have jumped the first cab. But this was Boston. He turned to one of the roadies. “What’s the weather like?” “Snow is starting to pick up.” Elvis tried his manager. “Any chance of finding a cab?” “At this time of night?” he responded incredulously. Elvis weighed his options. He could certainly get a ride after all the gear was loaded. However, that might take hours. He looked again at his watch: 12:15 a.m. Elvis knew his manager would prefer he went back with the others to drink in the hotel. After all, they had a show in New Haven tomorrow night.

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Elvis opened the Paradise’s backdoor. “Where are you going?” his tour manager called out. “To the Rat.” * * * The black-haired girl in the box office looked suspiciously at the singer. This skinny, Buddy Holly looking guy in tweed must be lost. Plus, he had an accent. “I’m here to see the headliner,” he said. Then whispered, “Suicide.” The way he said the band’s name in almost a reverential hushed tone seemed to her as if he were uttering a secret password to get into the club. She once again looked askance at the shivering figure. “Suicide has no guest list tonight,” she explained. “Just the opener DMZ. And they’ve used all of their spots.” Elvis shifted from one foot to another. He was already here, having walked from the Paradise. But he had no money. He doubted he could get past this girl on charm alone. Sensing no other option, he led with his only trump card. “I’m Elvis Costello. I just got through playing a sold-out show at the Paradise up the street. I’ve walked all the way down Commonwealth Avenue to get here in time to see my friend Alan Vega’s band Suicide.” Before he’d even finished his plea, the girl spun around on her stool momentarily disappeared inside the venue. Elvis blew into his freezing hands. Suddenly a beefy guy appeared behind the glass. “No one here seems to know who you are,” he said. “If you can’t pay to get in, I’d suggest you get back in your

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car,” he said with his “a” expanded out to a double syllable. Sensing futility, Elvis turned around and walked back down Commonwealth Avenue. In the distance, he could hear a faint whistle through the night as the winter winds blew the hanging street lights back and forth. A gaunt, spiky-haired singer saddled up to the box-office girl and looked out through her window into the night. “Any extra drink tickets?” he asked. Trying to hide her mounting crush on the Cars’ singer, she dug into her pocket and gave him her last two tickets. “What was with that guy?” he said. “Someone already asking for a refund for Suicide?” She smiled flirtatiously. “Some guy named Elvis, who is trying to get into the show for free.” “Elvis has left the building,” Ric Ocasek deadpanned. And then disappeared into the venue as the sound of “Ghost Rider” filled the room. * * * Alan leaned back in the dressing room chair. This was his first time in Europe. His first time outside of New York, man. They’d only released their album in the States six months ago, and now he was sitting in a dressing room in Belgium in the summer of 1978. They’d started their tour just south of France in Metz as the musical act for the Third Annual Science Fiction Festival. Dune’s Frank Herbert had been the keynote speaker, and Alan had caught the tail end of a film called Eraserhead by David Lynch that he thought was really trippy. 87

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“Alan,” Marty Thau said almost breathlessly. “You gotta hear what this guy from Sounds wrote about you.” Quoting the live review of their Metz performance Marty began: “The group (I still haven’t got used to calling two people a group—)” Alan snickered. Marty Thau continued, “played a malicious blend of drone and caterwaul. Alan Vega remains one of the most compelling performers I’ve seen in yonks. I think he’s right up there with Iggy and Rotten—there, said!” Alan smiled. He had never seen Johnny Rotten perform, but he appreciated being compared to his musical idol Iggy Pop. Maybe this was it. Maybe it was finally Suicide’s time. Alan had to hand it to Marty Thau. He really believed in Suicide’s potential. Last fall Marty Thau had the foresight to rerecord parts of Suicide despite having no production background; he’d got major news outlets to cover the band’s album despite all reservation; he’d even reached out to UK label owner Howard Thompson who had flown all the way to the United States to see the band perform at Max’s and agreed to support their European summer tour. And here they were opening for Elvis Costello. Then in another two weeks, Suicide would shift to supporting the Clash on their “Out on Parole” tour. Almost eight years to the date when he and Marty Rev had released their “Punk Music Mass” upon the PLA, success was finally within their grasp. Elvis came into their dressing room. “Good luck tonight,” he said. Alan looked up at the wiry creature with horn-rimmed glasses. 88

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“Hey man,” Alan replied. “Sorry again about Boston.” He still felt guilty that the British rocker had been turned away at the Rat. Elvis smiled crookedly and shrugged. As a peaceoffering, Alan got up and offered him a beer. Alan really liked Elvis, although the two frontmen couldn’t have been more different visually. Elvis always appeared like a schoolboy who had stumbled into a pub. Tonight he was dressed in an ill-fitting suit with the jacket a bit too small exposing the sleeves of a shirt beneath. With his mixture of tweed and plaid, Elvis appeared to Alan like a kid playing professor. Tonight, Alan had opted for New York-by-way-of-Vegas sartorial splendor. He’d fashioned his jet-black pompadour to double its usual height thanks to an old lady’s wig which he secured with his trademark black band. While he, too, was decked out in a suit, his was purple sharkskin. He capped off the outfit with an unbuttoned shirt exposing ample chest hair. Alan looked like Tony Manero if he belonged to a French street gang. Marty Rev came in and signaled that they were on. Elvis patted Alan on the back and disappeared to side stage to watch. The announcer came over the loudspeaker and uttered something Alan couldn’t quite understand and then bellowed “SUICIDE.” The audience fell silent as the 2,000-person packed house turned their collective gaze to the stage. The black curtain began to ascend exposing a futuristic-looking Marty Rev in profile standing still behind his audio fortress. Dressed in black pants, black leather jacket sans shirt, and bug-like black wrap-around shades with a white rim, Marty seemed like a punk alien. He opened with the rhythmic 89

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electronic pulse of “Ghost Rider.” With his left hand he began a slow scale on the keyboard. Instead of being the main melody, it almost sounded underneath the leading beat. Confusion set in among the audience. Where were the drums? Where was the guitar? Suddenly Alan appeared on stage. He let Marty’s synthlike sound continue for a full minute before moving. Alan began to stalk the stage looking out at the expectant faces. He finally approached the mic. When he began to sing it was quiet, almost like an echo from far away. After the first verse, he softly uttered “America’s killing its youth.” He repeated the phrase again and then a third time, only this time he punctuated it with a huge shriek at the end. Marty fed Alan’s vocal back into the amp, and the feedback only increased the sound of the shriek. A slow din had started at the back of the audience. They didn’t know what to make of this guitar-less band. Punks in the front started spitting and yelling at Alan. He looked down at them, utterly unfazed by the destruction to his suit. In a slightly louder tone, he repeated the phrase, “America, America is killing its youth” before his vocal devolved into a series of animalistic yelps. As the song tapered off, a wave of “boos” rose from the audience. People were rolling their programs and throwing them at the band. “Get off our stage!” angry Belgians yelled at the duo. Alan just stood there and looked out among the sea of angry punks and punters. The band launched into “Rocket U.S.A.,” but the crowd was already against them. The back row became audibly louder. People started running to order

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drinks at the bar with the sole intent of throwing them at the band. It was clear that nothing was going to quell this crowd. Marty increased the feedback and echo. Alan smiled internally and continued to shriek. The entire venue was descending into hell. This time, instead of cutting himself to temper the building violence, Alan leaned into the panic. As the song’s protagonist drives his car straight into oblivion, Alan sang “gonna crash, gonna die.” He paused. Then out of nowhere: “DIE DIE DIE.” This sent the audience over the edge. A brick flew through the air and landed on stage. People were apoplectic, attempting to pull their attached chairs from the floor and throw them at the stage. Alan just stood there in his spitsoaked suit. The more they taunted him, the more satisfied he became. Alan grinned like the Cheshire cat. Not even ten minutes into the set and he had made the entire audience insane. It was amazing. Did they think that hurling objects was going to stop Suicide? Silly Belgians. They were no match for the power of these ghost riders. The sun had set and Alan was metaphorically on fire. Eight years had given him plenty of time to learn how to harness his inner demons. Alan knew just what to do when faced with a hostile crowd; by now he almost thrived on it. His superpower was fearlessness. Marty shifted away from the feedback-laden opening songs and opted for the soft-pop offering of “Cheree.” This momentarily subdued the room. Yelling continued but the projectiles had abated. As Alan sang the last bar of the love song, there was a smattering of clapping.

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Alan looked over at Marty Thau standing side-stage with Elvis Costello. Alan could almost see his manager mentally calculating the crowd’s reaction and timing Suicide’s European release of “Cheree” as their first single. Tonight, Alan wasn’t interested in sales or placating the crowd. He was interested in action. A football chant broke out among the crowd in an attempt at silencing the band. Marty Rev launched into the discodriven “Dance” with his Farfisa front and center. It was a short song with a rising scale pattern. Yet, as Marty sped up the tempo, what was once a harmless dance number turned into a menacing dervish. Alan knew the effect would make the audience feel as though they were going mad, like a tilta-whirl you can’t get off. It was the perfect primer for their closing song. Alan turned around and looked at Marty who stood stoically behind his gear. The singer gave the keyboardist a quick nod and Marty’s Rhythm Prince spit out the rattlesnake beat of “Frankie Teardrop.” Alan looked out at the crowd. “This is a song about YOU. Every one of YOU.” He walked close to the edge of the stage as he launched into the tragic story of the factory worker and his family. He felt a tug on his arm and before he knew it the mic was gone. He looked down at the kerfuffle at the front of the stage. One of the punters had grabbed his mic! The young kid turned around triumphantly and waved the mic up over his head. Cheers went up from the crowd. Suicide silenced at last! Marty kept right on playing never missing a beat. Louder booing. Projectiles flying at Alan from all directions. “Elvis,” 92

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“Elvis,” “ELVIS!” chanted an impatient audience. Finally, a promoter for the venue stated, “Hand back the microphone otherwise there is no show.” The kid shook his head. Alan looked down at him. “Fuck you, man!” he shouted. And walked offstage. * * * Alan sat dejectedly in the dressing room. Marty was winding up cable. “Damn it,” he said out loud. “I shouldn’t have gotten that close to the front of the stage.” Marty turned toward him. “It was a good set. We really got them riled up. Eight years and that’s the first time they’ve gotten so heated they stole your mic!” He had a point. He looked over at Marty Thau for reassurance, but one look at the sweat building on the manager’s forehead told him all he needed to know. He was worried they’d be kicked off the tour. The door swung open. A Belgian promoter started screaming that the band had to leave. Marty Thau stood up. “Why? We are here as the opening slot. We played the show. It isn’t our fault that one of your attendees took the mic. We aren’t leaving until we get paid.” The manager stood firm. Almost as though he’d anticipated this fight. The promoter was becoming more insistent. “No, no, no!” he yelled. “You have to go now! The police are on their way.” Confusion set in among the room. Marty Thau went outside to see what was going on. He’d no sooner opened

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the dressing room door when Elvis and the Attractions barreled in. “We’ve got to go, mate,” he said to the Americans. Elvis had apparently cut his set short, and there was now a full-on riot ensuing outside. “The police are tear gassing the place,” he explained. The promoter once again tried gathering the motley crew into a car that was waiting backstage. Alan looked at Elvis. He was about to apologize when the Englishman turned to him and said, “Hey Al, do you think you can give us another riot tomorrow night?” Alan smiled. “Sure, man.” The singer peered through his glasses then deadpanned, “And I know a good drycleaner in Paris.” * * * Marty Thau, the self-proclaimed “Chairman” was smiling. He kept reading and rereading Lester Bangs’ review of Suicide in the SoHo Weekly. “The Joy of Suicide” it began. He knew that amphetamine-fueled lug would come through in the end. He’d championed Lou! Iggy! How could he not have loved Suicide’s debut? In fact, right before they’d embarked on their European tour, Bangs had made a special point to give Marty a few copies of the paper to take overseas. He’d regaled the Red Star owner with (a possibly tall) tale about how he’d been playing Suicide’s album for Ralf and Florian from Kraftwerk, and they’d insisted on taking his copy back to Germany. Bangs was never one to let facts get in the way of a good story, but this felt so far-fetched that it rang true. 94

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Bangs’s piece was only one in a series of good notices for the band’s debut album. Many of the critics in the British press were praising the album, which was a good sign for the tour. He knew this day would come. Even as far back as 1976, NME had predicted Suicide to be one of the bands to watch in 1977. Of course, the review that really tickled him had been from Washington, DC, of all places—a city they hadn’t even played. The district’s underground newspaper, something called Unicorn Times, had led with the headline “Suicide Outclasses Blondie.” The Chairman beamed. The band had got off to a rocky start in France and Belgium, but played a successful closing date with Elvis in Berlin. Germany seemed to get Suicide. Marty figured it was the mutual love of machinery. The band had included a cover of “96 Tears” in their Berlin set and even made it through “Frankie Teardrop” without a riot. But now they had the Clash shows to contend with. The Clash were the biggest punk band on the continent, and their fans were far rowdier than Elvis Costellos’s. Marty had timed Suicide’s UK album release with the first day they joined the Clash on tour in the hopes that some of the press would be as positive as Bangs. Maybe even gain a small pocket of the audience. John Peel had been an early supporter of the band, playing “Frankie Teardrop” on his Radio 1 show. Of course, Marty had also heard that Peel had received death threats every time he played “Frankie.” After seeing their set in Belgium, Marty had set “Cheree” to release as a single on July 14, two weeks into their Clash date. Marty had high hopes for the album. Now, four days into their “Out on Parole” tour, things seemed to be going swimmingly. All the guys were getting 95

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along and, despite the tour’s title, the police had been happily absent. Sitting in a chair in the corner Marty Thau looked over at Alan. He had to marvel at the frontman’s bravado. He went out night after night willing to take on the audience. He never wavered. In all the years Marty had watched the duo, he’d never seen Rev nor Alan despondent. They weren’t playing music to be only antagonistic—there was an underlying love there as well. It seemed like both men believed so deeply in what they were doing that they would wait out the storm until the masses came to them. He had to admit the tide was turning. When he’d first seen them in 1973, he’d thought they were powerful live but never marketable. Little by little, Suicide had won over the New York scene. Even as they left there seemed to be a whole new crop of bands breaking barriers all because of these guys. Marty Thau had seen threads of Suicide especially this past May at the Artists Festival. Bands like James Chances’ Contortions, Lydia Lunch’s Teenage Jesus, and the Jerks, Mars, and DNA all seemed to be spawned from the same sewer as Suicide. Marty had heard rumblings that Brian Eno—who was at the Artist’s Space show in May—was getting ready to record all of these dissonant New York bands. He’d of course never approached Suicide. No matter. They were out on tour with the Clash. What could go wrong? * * * Alan looked at his face in the mirror. They’d been on tour for a little over a week and his nose bruised, fully flecked 96

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with eggplant colors. Beaten, but not broken, he thought. His bruises usually went from black to blue to better. He took out silver face paint from his bag and began to camouflage the damage. They were playing Scotland’s biggest venue, the Apollo, an old theater that had been built in the 1920s and recently had been resurrected for rock concerts. Alan felt safe in the fact that the Apollo’s stage was exceedingly high, putting a sizable distance between himself and harm. Besides, the Apollo served no alcohol save for the very top level. This would certainly limit the number of beer bottles whizzing by his head. The Apollo’s audience had a reputation for being one of the toughest in the UK. Alan had taken one look at the majestically decorated Art Deco room and was immediately at ease. It reminded him of the opulence of the Mercer Arts Center’s Blue Room. He decided to ditch the motorcycle jacket and chains for a more inspired Weimar-period outfit. He looked at his silver-painted visage and smiled. He pulled a glitter jacket off the hanger and slid it over his shoulders. One arm glistened with the silver glitter while the other had been curiously removed. He’d actually lost the other sleeve in an onstage scuffle at Max’s years earlier, but he liked the asymmetry of the outfit. Finally, he fashioned a short, ragged blonde wig to his head. Marty, who was used to Alan’s theatrics, barely even looked up as his now-blonde frontman entered the green room. He looked as if Ziggy Stardust had been dragged behind a car for miles and then set on fire. Marty couldn’t tell if the tips of Alan’s wig were actually the result of 97

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flames or just residual dirt. Still he had to admit there was something slightly appealing about Alan’s outfit. Suicide couldn’t help dragging even glam through the mud; they blackened everything they touched. He wondered if Alan’s sartorial selection would incite the punks even more. The Apollo, or “The Appalling” as it was referred to, was known for their intense—often openly hostile—crowds. Or maybe Alan just wanted to look as decrepit as the old theater’s Art Deco decaying decor. Either way, Marty had to hand it to his singer: he was fearless. Marty could hear the Coventry Automatics2 closing their set. He picked up his sunglasses from the table and started to walk toward the stage. * * * Bobby walked right up to the burly looking bouncer taking tickets. He’d been sitting outside queued up to see the Clash since noon. He and Jimmy had shared a pint of vodka while they waited, as the venue didn’t serve any alcohol and he’d only turned sixteen last month. He felt buzzed but not nearly as belligerent as most of those now pushing their way into the venue. As he made his way to the front he glanced up at the bouncer. The Clash was his favorite band, and he’d heard from some punks in line that you could bribe the bouncers for space in the pit. For £2.50 they’d remove one of the chairs in front. Emboldened by alcohol he tried to catch the doorman’s eye. He handed his ticket with the bribe on top. Without looking up, the bouncer cocked his head to the

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right, gesturing just inside the double doors. Bobby looked up and saw another bouncer heading his way. Within seconds, Bobby and Jimmy were escorted down front. He couldn’t believe his luck. He wondered if anyone would think he had removed the two conspicuous missing chairs. He didn’t care. He was feet from the Clash. As the Coventry Specials finished their set, there came a polite smattering of claps from the audience. Bobby scanned the theater looking back to a sea of people. He could no longer see the soundboard. He glanced up to the balcony where people were peering over in anticipation of the Clash. Bobby knew there was some band named “Suicide” who still had to play before his punk rock heroes. The stage was still dark. Bobby saw a tall figure in buglike shades emerge from stage right. Even without the house lights Bobby could see that there was no drum riser. No series of guitars standing like soldiers prepared to play. The figure positioned himself behind what appeared to be a keyboard contraption. Suddenly, a lone note rang out over the crowd. Bobby looked at the figure on stage. Most of the audience seemed unaware the show had started. The note got continually louder, repeated back on itself. It started to sound threatening like an ominous signal alerting all that were listening that the enemy was approaching. The din of the audience began to die down. The apocalyptic note seemed to envelope the theater when suddenly a lone stage light went on revealing a second figure wearing a silver glitter dinner jacket with one sleeve ripped off. The blonde figure came to the front of the stage, looked out over the 99

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audience, and let out a blood-curdling scream. The shock sent Bobby reeling backward. * * * Alan shrieked into the mic. The opening lyrics of “Ghost Rider” echoed through the old theater. He strutted to the front of the stage and grinned—before letting out another scream. The theater was huge and from the height of the stage, Alan felt invincible. As he began “Rocket U.S.A.,” punks in the front began to spit up at him, but he was just out of their reach. He could hear the audience start to clap. He knew this was not meant as praise but, in fact, was the signal for the band’s exit. Elvis had warned him that his friend punk poet John Cooper Clarke had opened for the Attractions at the Apolloback in February. The skinny, black-haired poet only made four minutes into his set before the audience sent him cowering backstage. But Alan was accustomed to confrontation. Hell, he’d been doing this for almost a decade. What were a bunch of Scottish blokes going to do to him up here? He’d certainly faced far worse at home. The clapping began to get louder. Alan stopped singing and began to clap along, as if this was what the audience wanted. He smiled once again and perched on the edge of the stage. He placed one hand on his knee and held the mic tight with the other (he’d learned his lesson in Brussels). His eyes narrowed as he looked out over the crowd. He thought back to a decade ago when he’d seen Iggy Pop engage in the same stance against the mounting sea of violence. Even at this

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height, beer cans rained down around Alan. He picked one up and pretended to drink from it. The crowd went insane. He grinned like the Cheshire cat, with his lips forming a catenary. It was too late. They’d already entered Alan’s Wonderland. * * * Bobby couldn’t take his eyes off of the frontman. All around him people were screaming and throwing anything that wasn’t nailed down. Most of the punter’s projectiles fell short of the stage, only intensifying the audience’s anger. Beer cans came raining down from the balcony above. One landed near the singer and he picked it up and drank from it. Bobby’s eyes grew wide. The singer seemed to be smiling through the entire exchange. How long had this band been playing? The venue seemed to be on the verge of a full-blown riot. Bobby turned to Jimmy who was equally transfixed by the frontman. There was a commotion to Bobby’s left, and he turned just in time to see three punks wrestle one of the chairs loose and hurl it at the stage. Someone yelled, “They threw an axe!” Bobby looked on stage for the offending weapon and saw blood streaming down the singer’s face. Then silence. * * * Alan could feel the blood on his face. He had just launched into “Harlem” when he gestured to Marty to cut the song. He looked over at the axe lying on the stage glistening under the house lights. Silver paint mixed with blood ran into the 101

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corners of his mouth. Alan dropped the mic and walked off stage. Marty followed. Joe Strummer looked on with awe at Alan Vega. The singer wasn’t afraid of anything. He then looked out at the bedlam in the audience. He glanced back at Mick Jones who just shook his head. The curtain came down and the roadies scurried like insects around the beer-soaked stage trying to set up for the headliner. Joe knew that had at least half an hour before they took the stage. Surely the chaos would die down. The Apollo’s bouncers were notorious for “handling” these situations. * * * The Clash played a blistering set. Bobby loved every minute of it—even when Joe and Mick had yelled at the bouncers to stop fighting with the audience. He’d only heard the following day that the frontman and drummer Paul Simonon had been arrested after the gig. Fitting for a tour titled “Out on Parole.” He’d also heard that there had been so many arrests at the show that the venue was in danger of being shut down altogether. But it was Suicide who Bobby couldn’t get out of his mind. He’d gone out and bought their debut album. He listened to it over and over. Something was missing. As harrowing as “Frankie Teardrop” was on record, it didn’t come close to the impact of their live show. He remembered the feeling of seeing Suicide live. They looked and sounded like aliens from the future. Then they managed to rile up almost 3,000 Clash fans in a mere twenty

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minutes. As much as he loved the Clash, it was Suicide that changed him that night. If only he could form a band that could have that much effect on the audience. Although, he wasn’t sure he wanted to play in a venue where a casual axe slipped through security. * * * Marty Thau put down the phone. He’d been trying all morning to get a hold of Tom Wilson at Radio Telstar. Joe Strummer had mentioned Edinburgh’s new underground radio station in passing when they had been in Glasgow on July 4. Strummer had said Wilson had been trying to get the Clash in studio for an interview, but the hour drive from Glasgow to Edinburgh had been preventative. Strummer knew that after Suicide was done playing with the Clash, they had a handful of headlining gigs in the UK, one of which was Tiffany’s in Edinburg. Joe passed on Tom Wilson’s number to the Chairman. * * * Suicide had started their four headlining gigs in Manchester last night and Marty Thau was impressed at the reception. Or at least the lack of bloodshed. The gig had been well attended due in no small part to the local opener Joy Division. Broody lot, thought Thau. Except the bassist—he seemed to share Alan’s sense of humor. It was nice to see Alan having a good time at a gig. Lord knows he’d been through war on this tour. The price of fame seemed to really be a pound of flesh. 103

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“Cheree” had been released as a single in the UK last week on July 14, 1978. Marty Thau knew if he could just find an angle, he could capitalize on the band’s infamous Glasgow gig. Scotland’s Daily Record had run Strummer and Simonon’s picture after their arrest. The paper had gone into great detail about the “punk” audience destroying the venue. It was a journalistic stretch to say that they had wrestled the bolted chairs loose from the floor and thrown them at the stage, but it made for good copy. And with Suicide’s Tiffany’s date in Edinburgh only three weeks since the Glasgow debacle, curiosity alone should put bodies in the seats. He thought of the headline, “Suicide: The World’s Most Dangerous Band.” Marty Thau sighed and dialed the Daily Record. * * * Marty Rev looked out into the audience. Through his oversized shades it was hard enough to see his equipment, let alone the audience. They’d just played “Mr. Ray” and “Rocket U.S.A.” Marty kicked into the softer, almost church-like organ opening of “Cheree.” The love song usually momentarily quelled a hostile audience. He listened. Something still seemed off. Marty had been excited to play Tiffany’s. Marty loved playing these old European halls. They were a far cry from the small squats they frequented back in New York City. The European venues had history and character. During sound check, the manager had regaled them with the history of the venue, which had once been an old cinema that had been converted into a dancehall in the 1960s. Little Richard had

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opened the newly christened Tiffany’s with ten sold-out shows. They booked reggae as well. Marty had seen an old flyer that showed Culture had played here last week. It was nice to play a venue that catered to more than the standard rock fare. It reminded him of the early days when Suicide would play some of the jazz clubs in Midtown that he’d frequented as a kid. But something was amiss tonight. Marty looked around the floor of the stage. Usually soaked with a combination of blood and bodily fluids, it seemed surprisingly dry. He knew tonight’s show was near capacity. Shouldn’t there be “boos”? The audience jeering at Alan? As “Cheree” finished, Marty did something uncommon. He normally faced the keyboard, positioned sideways to the audience. He did this to keep the house lights from breaking his concentration, allowing him to reach all angles of his electronics and Farfisa while never having to look directly into the light. Tonight, Marty momentarily turned his body to face the audience. Through his shades, Marty caught the glint of a disco ball. The light reflected in the middle of the floor and shone around the packed house. Marty looked over at Alan who had lowered his mic to the side of his leg. Alan turned toward Marty, panic rising from his face. “What’s wrong?” Marty thought. “Was it worse than an axe?” He didn’t see anything onstage and even Alan looked remarkably unscathed for this point in their set. He looked once again at his frontman whose face had gone stark white. “Marty!” Alan yelled back at the keyboardist. “They’re dancing to us, man!” 105

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Marty looked out over the sea of people. He could see it now—bodies moving in time to the opening of “Ghost Rider.” Marty nodded and was about to smile when Alan yelled once more: “WE’RE FINISHED!” As if seeing the electronic dance future, Alan turned back to the audience, put the mic back to his mouth, and once more conjured up the motorcycle hero. The usually stoic Marty smiled from ear to ear.

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7 Resurrection

Once again, Satan, the king of false hope, tries to take advantage of our weary Johnny. Even through his weakness, our hero never gives up. He summons whatever strength he has left and resists the devil’s grip. His spirit cannot be broken. Johnny realizes that transforming into Ghost Rider isn’t a curse, but a power to harness against the unknown forces of

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evil. Once Johnny recognizes that Satan is only as strong as he believes him to be, the spell is broken. The hellish figure that was once meant to scare is now a powerful tool to use in the face of adversity. Antiheroes may not win the battle, but they will forever be remembered. Our musical Ghost Riders live on to ride another day. From the moment the BBC DJ John Peel played “Frankie Teardrop” on Radio 1 he began to receive death threats. As stories of their escapades in Brussels and Glasgow began to trickle back to the States, Suicide’s legend grew. After their tours with the Clash and Elvis Costello, Suicide had all but solidified their reputation as the world’s most dangerous band. The band’s infamy only increased by winter of 1978 when the recording of their Brussels show became a bootleg promotional giveaway in NME’s December issue. The recording titled “23 Minutes over Brussels” was then released by Red Star as a flexi-disc with the first reissue of Suicide in 1980, and again in 1998 by Mute and Blast First. Yet, fame and fortune didn’t follow Suicide. While many of their punk peers were out on tour and rising up the charts, Suicide’s album never translated to an audience outside of New York City. Buoyed up by their final headlining gigs overseas, their return stateside sunk the band’s upward momentum. As Marty Thau predicted, Lester Bangs loved the album. In fact, many of the reviews from the British press were equally enthusiastic with Melody Maker commenting that “Frankie Teardrop” was “a work fit to stand in the catalog of post-psychedelic classics alongside ‘Heroin’” and 108

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praising Marty Rev on creating fascinating minimalist landscapes. While Sounds Jon Savage equally admired the instrumentation of Suicide, he found the lyrics lacking. This sentiment was echoed by famed Village Voice critic Robert Christgau who wrote “there are little problems like lyrics that reduce serious politics to rhetoric, singing that makes rhetoric sound lurid, and the way the manic eccentricity of this duo’s live performance turns to silliness on record.”1 It is somehow unsurprising that Christgau missed the campy comic humor of Suicide. While Marty Thau’s gamble on trading in Blondie to produce Suicide may have not born out financially, it was not without success. The most immediate influence of Suicide rose up from the miasma from which they were birthed: downtown New York. Back home, noise defined the new musical taste of the Lower East Side. While Suicide had been dodging flying objects in Europe, downtown New York was spearheading a new scene called “No Wave.” Early Suicide admirers such as Lydia Lunch and James Chance saw the band as a blueprint for music without rules. Lunch’s band, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, used noise as a weapon, whereas Chance’s band, the Contortions, took a page out of Alan’s playbook by jumping from the stage into the fray and confronting their audiences. In the summer of 1978 Teenage Jesus, the Contortions, along with Mars and DNA, entered the studio under the direction of legendary musician/producer Brian Eno to create No New York. The fall of 1978, around the time Suicide returned to the States, should have been the tipping point for Marty and 109

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Alan. But their meteoric rise to fame did not come to pass. While their first album was admired by a chosen few critics, their most immediate impact was the legions of youth they inspired to start their own bands. Many of those that witnessed Suicide live in the 1970s describe seeing them as “the future” of music. Bobby Gillespie, of Primal Scream and Jesus and Mary Chain, was sixteen years old when he saw Suicide open for the Clash in Glasgow. “No one ‘got’ Suicide,” he explained when asked about the gig. “It was like music from another planet and the future to me. I was fascinated.”2 Scream guitarist Andrew Innes was also at the Glasgow show and sheepishly admitted, “I would love to say I loved [Suicide], but I was a 15 yearold kid who wanted to hear the Clash, not some band that sounded like they came from Mars. Funny, we’ve been trying to sound like we came from Mars ever since!”3 Even world-weary musicians like Dee Dee Ramone were unsure of what to make of Suicide. The Ramones’ bassist remembers, “When I first saw Alan Vega and Suicide, I pulled out my 007 knife and palmed it behind my wrist. To be frank, I was a little worried. I didn’t know what was going to happen.” Suicide went on to become the Ramones’ favorite opening act. Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth, recalls as a teenager driving into New York City from Connecticut to Max’s for the first time. He remembers there was a band on the bill called “Suicide” and assumed they were punk. He stated that he watched three-fourth of their pummeling set and had to leave for he feared Alan might kill him. After the show, he and his friend wordlessly got back into their car, looked at 110

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each other, and both proclaimed, “What the fuck was that?” Thurston went home and immediately tried to find the next Suicide show. The list of artists who have been influenced by Suicide is long and varied, although not all are as forthcoming as Moore. It has long been speculated that Lou Reed’s infamous 1975 double album, Metal Machine Music, was motivated by seeing Suicide live. Much like Suicide’s mass audience exodus, Reed’s aural assault sent fans back to the record store to return their album, certain their copy must have been defective. Undeterred, Suicide made a second album with the Cars’ frontman (and fan) Ric Ocasek, who had seen the band play Boston’s Rat. The second album, a complete turn from the first, featured soft synths that inspired future electronic bands such as Soft Cell, Depeche Mode, and Daft Punk. This album contained arguably their biggest “hit” with “Dream Baby Dream,” a song that had been part of Suicide’s live set since their inception. The album made NME’s best albums of 1980, and their shift from a song like “Frankie Suicide” to the opening track on their second album, “Diamonds, Fur Coats, Champagne,” is a metaphor for the shifting landscape of New York City between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s. In 1982 Alan’s friend played him the song “State Trooper” off of Bruce Springsteen’s new album Nebraska. Vega listened to the Frankie-esque “Woo!” and suddenly exclaimed, “Did I record this?” The friend assured him it was the Boss. In fact, Springsteen had been in the studio in 1977 when Suicide was cutting their first album. Both Suicide and 111

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Springsteen sing songs of the everyman, but instead of guitar and harmonica, Suicide uses keyboards and primal shrieks. Springsteen now covers “Dream Baby Dream” in almost all his live shows. * * * The City Paper ad was finally to bed and I had just enough time to change before the show. From outside my room I hear my roommate enter the apartment. “Where are you going?” she asks conversationally as she puts her stuff down. “Isn’t tonight ad night?” All of my friends know about ad night. Even my roommate who would be hard pressed to name the city’s free weekly knows about ad night. She’s also equally unimpressed by live music. In the three years we have been living together, she’s only graced the 9:30 club once. She came to see the band Len, the brother/sister combo responsible for the mildly creepy video but excessively catching single “Steal My Sunshine.” While she still talks about this set as if it were Dylan going electric, my attendance at such pop pap has become an endless source of ribbing by my coworkers. I debated what to tell her. “I’m going to see Suicide,” I say casually. “What?” she looks at me as if I said I was going to sacrifice kittens. “It’s a band,” I quickly explained. “They’re a seminal electronic/punk duo from the New York music scene in the 1970s.” In my head I run through all of the New York punk bands, trying to stumble on one that would register as the most palatable in pop culture.

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“They were around with Blondie and the Ramones,” I finally say. The fact that these two bands are perhaps the furthest from Suicide’s sound is not lost on me. Her eyes show signs of recognition, then squint again. She looks at me dubiously. This is her usual look when asking about my interests. She still hasn’t forgiven me for screening Kids in our sorority house in college. “Where are they playing?” she asks. “The Black Cat.” She brightens momentarily. While she has only made a single appearance at my place of work, she has regularly let me drag her to the Black Cat’s monthly Brit Pop night. She thinks the bouncers are cute. (They are. This is a fact scientifically proven by all the girls in the greater DC area who own both Blur and Pulp albums.) “It sounds like something you’d go to,” she says flatly before changing for bed. “Who names their band Suicide?” She walks away shaking her head. Funny, I think to myself. Alan Ginsberg one time asked Alan Vega the same question before screaming at the frontman for fifteen minutes about their name and finally kicking Vega out of his apartment. Howl, indeed. I pick up my keys and head for the door. I briefly glance at my roommate’s shirt. I smile at the instantly recognizable album cover: five guys in high heels and makeup all sitting haphazardly on a white leather couch. They look like a drag version of the Droogs from A Clockwork Orange. I’m momentarily impressed. “I didn’t know you liked the New York Dolls,” I say. She looks at me quizzically. I point to her shirt. 113

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“I like the lipstick,” she responds before telling me that it was on sale at Urban Outfitters. That’s the fickle thing about cultural history—an iconic album cover from a band like the New York Dolls is now being hawked to hipsters on M Street in DC’s affluent Georgetown while Suicide’s album art, arguably just as iconic, is nowhere to be found. Suicide somehow fell through the cracks of punk rock’s historical canonization while Blondie, Talking Heads, the Ramones, and possibly even Television are on T-shirts all over the country. (Although, I have a sneaking suspicion that none of these bands are getting royalties for their wares.) I praised her shirt once more and slipped out into the night. * * * “Black Cat, Black Cat. Little change for the homeless.” The ever-present call of the Black Cat’s local homeless man and Elvis impersonator greeted me upon my arrival. I smiled and asked him for “If I Can Dream” on my way out. It seemed a fitting song for a band that loved Elvis Presley. I gave my money to Chad America and saddled up next to Angie at the back of the bar. The room was not filled but not packed. I’d got there just in time as the stage was still dark, but in the distance I could make out Marty’s setup. As predicted, Bernie was managing that night. He scurried by me, stopped, pivoted, and quickly turned around. “Are you excited?” he asked breathlessly. Bernie was always breathless. Managing the Black Cat must be akin to continually running after children to keep them out of harm’s way.

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“Absolutely,” I replied. In truth, I was actually nervous. Nervous that when my musical heroes finally took the stage something would be missing. That in all the years since their scrappy days on the streets of New York that their blade might have blunted. Suddenly Suicide took the stage. A huge wall of noise blasted out. It was like beating beaten with discordant slabs of sound. Alan, clad in shades and a hooded sweatshirt, took the stage. He shrieked into the mic. Only his slightly older appearance gave any indication of the passing of time. They played punishingly for about an hour. In that moment they were no longer mythic. They were real. Any fears I had of Suicide losing their edge died that night. Along with my hearing. * * * Soon it seemed that all of the 1970s bands were reforming and making the rounds. A month later in March of 2003, Television put on a solid set at the 9:30 Club. Then in August the remaining members of the Sex Pistols regrouped for an obvious cash grab. The divide between Television and the Sex Pistols spoke to the root of the band resurgence problem: you never knew which version would show up onstage. I had been worried about the idea of seeing Suicide— concerned that they wouldn’t live up to their hype. Yet, the Black Cat show was electric. I saw them once more in 2008 when I lived in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. They played at Club Europa, an upstairs “venue” that most nights hosted a Polish dance club. When they did have live

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music, they had some of the best. (I also got to see Hawkwind there.) There was no real stage, which made the experience like seeing these bands play in a 1970s rec room. Somehow this setting was perfect for Suicide, even thirty years later. The tight quarters assured that everyone in attendance would be partially deaf the next day. In 1982 NME writer Richard Grabel joked that by the year 2000 “Cheree” would finally become a hit. He wasn’t far off. By the mid-aughts New York City was experiencing a musical renaissance with the rise of bands like the Strokes, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Interpol, all seemingly cut from the city’s 1970s punk past. Additionally, in print there was a renewed interest in New York City in the 1970s. While the city’s art scene during this time had long been romanticized, between 2004 and 2008 there was an onslaught of literature covering the smaller, less visible scenes, many of which included Suicide. With so many of the NYC indie bands from the early aughts finding inspiration in the earlier era, it made sense to dig deeper into the post-punk period. Even in 1978 uttering the name “Suicide” gave one a certain musical cachet. In a review of their first show at the Science Fiction Festival in Metz, NME writer Paul Rambali wrote that the good European press plus the scarcity of the album lifted the band to cult status in musical circles where “name-dropping Suicide became good for at least a dozen cultural points.” Little has changed in thirty years. LCD Soundsystem’s song “Losing My Edge” in 2005 even lamented “I was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practice” by a narrator 116

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that feels the threat of youth. Even today, they are seen as the ultimate cult band—the one your music will friend will trot out at parties. Much of this is because their story has somehow been regulated to a prolix to No Wave or ignored entirely from punk history. That the band was somehow cut out of the 1996 definitive oral history of punk rock, Please Kill Me, also helped erase them from the annals of rock history. These days Suicide’s music can be heard on everything from Marc Jacob’s perfume ads to the new Vivienne Westwood documentary. (I have to hope the latter was no accident and a slight jab at her former husband. It is interesting that Westwood opted for Suicide’s songs as more “punk” than the Pistols.) On some level, it does make sense: both Westwood and Suicide are survivors. Alan, of course, would have hated all of the cultural capital attributed to his band. Once, when asked about the renewed interest in his band he responded, “All of a sudden I’m finding Suicide snobs!” he yelled. “I want to kick them in their face because that’s not what Suicide was about.” This is a book for people who love Suicide, and maybe even more for those who don’t. I wanted to write an accessible text for a band that has historically been labeled “inaccessible.” As Alan would often quip, “They came in from the streets and we gave them the streets right back.” The band never made it easy for their audience, and they wouldn’t sugar coat their sound. But beyond their sonically rough exterior was always the desire to connect. * * * 117

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Alan Vega died on Saturday night, June 16, 2016. He is survived by his wife Liz Lamere and their son Dante. Henry Rollins, who was a close friend of Alan, issued a statement for the family in order to give the family time to grieve. In it he wrote, “One of the greatest aspects of Alan Vega was his unflinching adherence to the demands of his art. He only did what he wanted. Simply put, he lived to create. After decades of constant output, the world seemed to catch up with Alan and he was acknowledged as the groundbreaking creative individual he had been from the very start.” Perhaps no one has done more to lift the visibility of Suicide for future generations than Rollins. On his 2.13.61 label, Rollins’s first music release was Suicide/Alan Vega Anthology Number One. Rollins never sold the album, opting instead to give it away to anyone he thought would listen. He even went so far as to leave it on every seat at one of his spoken word shows. He was that passionate about Suicide. Later, on his Infinite Zero imprint, he resurrected many of Alan’s solo projects including 1981’s Collision Drive, 1991’s Power on to Zero Hour (a collaboration with his wife Liz Lamere), and 1993’s New Raceion. In his 2019 book, Stay Fanatic!!!: Hectic Observations for the Music Obsessive, Rollins (unsurprisingly) dedicates a section to Suicide. He recounts the first time he listened to Suicide in Ian MacKaye’s attic when they were kids in Washington, DC: We just put it on and listened to it. And then you hear “Frankie Teardrop” for the first time and nothing in your record collection or your life—outside of war— prepares you for the storyline. To this day, no record I

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own compares to that first Suicide album, and that song in particular. It remains the most intense thing I’d ever heard. The fact that there was no guitar, no drums, hardly anything. Ironically, the minimalist ethos of the band was a big idea for me. Suicide forced me to confront what I thought music was and had to be. Rollins isn’t alone in his praise for the band—or hopes that they would one day reach a larger audience. Writer Roy Trakin, who was along for the band’s first European tours, wrote in the New York Rocker, “It may seem hard to understand for the casual observer, but I consider Suicide one of the half-dozen most important acts in rock ’n’ roll. Suicide has always had the mark of musical greatness.” He went on to say that “I always felt like Suicide was this close to connecting to a mass public, but [Marty Thau’s] Red Star Records didn’t have the resources necessary to actualize that impossible dream [emphasis in original].” In 1980, Trakin predicted that Suicide would outlast all other musical trends. One listen to their debut album today proves him right. Vega may have said it most succinctly when asked about the band’s 1970s history: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. We were freezing our asses off, we were starving our asses off, but we all had the feeling that we were creating something that was affecting the world. To me, Suicide is rebirth, a life thing. Very often, you have to commit suicide in your own life to get to another place which is a better place than you were originally. 119

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Rollins admired Alan’s workman insistence on being an artist even until the end of his life: “I was over at their place a couple of years ago and there was so much Alan stuff. Paintings, sculptures, sketch pads full, notebooks full.” I said, “Liz! Did he ever sleep?!” She said that they had rented the apartment across the hall for the rest of it. He was working until the end.” “This is what I take from Alan. You never stop working. Never calm down. Never get comfortable. Stay mad, lose sleep and get things done. Finish them and start new things. Be relentless, honest and always ready to confront. That’s what I learned from Alan Vega and Suicide.” Alan one time admitted, “It’s not made easy for us. You gotta fight every day.” By stripping away convention, Suicide confronted listeners with what they feared the most: themselves. And maybe the biggest takeaway from their art is to continue to push forward, believe in your vision, and fight every day. * * * Even after Alan’s death, the outpouring for Suicide continued. In 2019, various musicians from Kid Congo Powers to Lydia Lunch along with Marty Rev congregated in New York City’s Bowery to play a “Tribute to Suicide.” That summer, Lunch, along with Tim Dahl, went on to play Suicide songs overseas. (Side note: Tim Dahl’s old band, Child Abuse, actually opened for Suicide at the Club Europa show I’d seen in 2008. Suicide’s musical grasp may be small, but it is tight.) Also in the summer of 2019, Mute/ BMG reissued Suicide’s Suicide on red vinyl.

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The ever enigmatic Marty Rev pops up from time to time, most recently in 2020 in Los Angeles at Club Zebulon where he played Suicide songs as well as an eclectic range of covers from “Gimme All Your Lovin’” by ZZ Top to “Oye Como Va” by Tito Puente to “Stand By Me” by Ben E. King. Suicide’s most terrifying and room-clearing song will always be their ten-minute opus, “Frankie Teardrop.” While Alan’s Elvis vibrato narrates the tragic desperation of Frankie, Rev’s unrelenting drum machine beat speeds up to double time making the frenetic pace akin to a racing heartbeat, putting the listener into a constant state of heightened anxiety. The pulse feels like a horror movie—the audience knows there’s danger ahead, but the real terror is in the anticipation. A ten-minute descent into the soul-crushing existence of a young factory worker, Rev’s tense, repetitive rhythms and Vega’s deadpan delivery and horrifying, almost inhuman screams make the song more political than the work of bands who wore their radical philosophies on their sleeves. “Frankie Teardrop’s” howling electronic assault sounded like nothing that came before. Anticipating new wave, No Wave, synth pop, industrial, electro, and noise, it was far more radical than the punk bands it preceded. Instead of cutting the channels of communication, “Frankie Teardrop” creates an intimacy within a proximal space. “Frankie Teardrop” is certainly frightening to listen to but even more so when experienced. Take for instance the difference in reception to the song from critics listening to it on an album to discussions of the show from audience members. In his 2002 book, 31 Songs, rock music critic Nick 121

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Hornby listed Suicide’s “Frankie Teardrop” at unlucky #13 (a choice that can’t be an authorial accident). While it made his list of all-time important songs, he did give the caveat that this is the kind of song “you can only listen to once.” He went on to add, “Me, I need no convincing that life is scary .  .  . please forgive me if I don’t want to hear ‘Frankie Teardrop’ right now.”4 But we do need “Frankie Teardrop” right now. Life is scary. The same fears that caused Martin Reverby and Alan Bermowitz to don the characters of Marty Rev and Alan Vega are palatable today. Christgau is wrong when he says that Suicide is making light of serious political issues or “reducing them to rhetoric” and guilty of “silliness” when recorded. Suicide encompasses serious political commentary, extremely intense music, and a healthy dose of gallows humor. Joan Hawkins points out in her edited collection of essays, Downtown Film & TV Culture, that musical “shock” “seemed to be situated in Peter Bürger’s avant-garde trajectory.”5 But where Bürger shows how all avant-garde artists initially shock audiences, he argues that even these “shock” artists eventually become subsumed back into the institutions which they initially criticized.6 Suicide was feared and reviled as a live act, yet none of their recorded product ever reached the point of a mass audience. This is not because Suicide is somehow permanently shocking, but that the real effect— and affect—of Suicide’s power is in their live shows. Consider Vega’s final plea in “Frankie Teardrop”: “We are all Frankies.” Rather than using Frankie’s plight as a cautionary tale, Vega is asking the audience to consider their 122

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own position. What is the state of America post-Vietnam? What is the state of New York City? We’ve all been pushed to the brink. We have all felt despair. We must come together. In 1976 New York City had declared bankruptcy. Their pleas to Washington were met with open disdain. Let the city rot. The streets of the Lower East Side were lined with trash, rats, and junkies. One music scenester stated that each lettered avenue got progressively more dangerous. “By the time you got to Avenue D, that basically stood for ‘dead.’”7 But while rock and noise critics point out the “noise” of bands like Suicide was sonic geography, this is far too simplistic for their live shows. This is not a band that wanted to merely inflict menace, but a band that used noise as a way of affecting the average American. Suicide’s goal was to create communication. Noise for them is not merely a shock tactic, but engagement. Noise is often categorized as the distraction, the production of sound that we actively seek to avoid. Noise is an unwanted sound. Today, there is no shortage of think pieces warning us of the dangers of constant noise as we become an ever-more distracted culture. Though it may sound counterintuitive, the same mindfulness that silence brings is exactly what listeners experience when engaging with Suicide’s noise. In an extreme noise show an audience becomes momentarily transfixed in the experience. If the sound is so punishing that all one can think about is relieving the pain, this leads to a kind of everpresentness within the sound. Instead of using music as an escape, this type of music specifically offers no back door to alleviation. 123

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Mostly what is classified as “noise” in rock music is the result of feedback or distortion. For Suicide, this was exceedingly true. Added to this was the sheer amplification of their sound. Audience members describe a Suicide show where their “ears bled,” or they were overwhelmed by sound. There’s no melody to the sound itself, yet conversely, Vega is singing standard blues songs. This type of jarring music combined with intense amplification causes audience members to feel uncomfortable. Add to this a frontman who leaped up off the stage and into your space. The initial response is flight; leave that which is causing the pain. If we burn our hand on a stove, we instinctively learn to no longer touch the burner. Yet, people still turned out for Suicide shows, despite being “burned” by the sound. While Christgau understands the power in the band’s performance, many other critics saw the band as attempting to be “shocking.” Something beyond the mere “shock” of hearing Suicide was happening. Audiences kept coming back. Despite historical claims that Suicide only played a handful of gigs in the 1970s, there is actually ample evidence to the contrary. What is the explanation for this? Surely there cannot be a couple hundred musical masochists itching for a fix. How could a band that polarized their audience between revulsion and fear continue to put bodies in the room? If Suicide were so terrifyingly awful sonically, what explains their longevity? Beyond their contrarian nature there remain two paradoxical facts about the band. First, they were not hack musicians. Audience members might erroneously quantify excess dissonance as “noise”; 124

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however, there was an actual method to the band’s musical madness. Second, the idea that this music “frightened” off the band’s entire audience is only partially true. Suicide were continually booked at local venues. Other musicians revered them. Heck, Max’s even named a drink after them. (Unsurprisingly, the “Suicide” was strong enough to knock you on your ass for an entire evening.) No promoter worth their salt would book a show time and time again that no one attends. How, then, can a band that was notorious for emptying a room continue to survive? Not only survive—but thrive. Musicians loved Suicide. The Clash handpicked them as the opener for their first world tour. Suicide, like the Velvet Underground and Vega’s beloved Stooges, certainly suffered from historical hindsight. Their popularity has grown considerably since the 1970s. But this is not the end of the explanation. * * * One audience member commented on an early Suicide show: “I was transfixed, but it was certainly true that they emptied the bar except for about five of us hardcore survivors and that included a couple of scary obsessive types who stood right next to the PA (which was totally impossible).”8 Sure, perhaps we could say that these hardcore Suicide fans believed that abject pain causes us pleasure. Yet, Suicide’s live punishing sound exemplifies something generative in the experience itself. One of their very first reviewers in 1972, Roy Hollingsworth, wrote this about his experience

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seeing Suicide: “The next number was so vicious that I put my hands over my ears. [The sound] clawed into the air with such malice. . . . Suicide were certainly the most awful sight ever—and yet, in the most bizarre way, it was therapy for the mind.” There is something alluring about being sonically overwhelmed. Without the fear of real danger, experiencing the potentiality of fear allows us to rethink the limits of possibility. Suicide’s danger was self-contained, and as such, they shattered both musical expectations and social boundaries. Before a note was played, audiences would be negatively primed seeing a “band” consisting of only two members and no guitar. Couple this with a sonic onslaught of distortion and sprinkle in a caged-animal frontman who decides the division between stage and spectator is irrelevant. It is the perfect storm for contained chaos. Suicide’s noise is a philosophy of aural alterity. Seeing Suicide momentarily allows for an evacuation of our societal identity. This live experience produces an impersonal intimacy—one that allows for a potentiality in powerlessness. Noise music isn’t so much about shock, as it is an experiment in thinking about “otherness.” Noise allows for a deeper understanding of one another as individuals. * * * In a 1978 review, a forward-thinking writer stated that soon legions of Suicide fans would be donning T-shirts that read “We are all Frankies.” The sentiment “We are all Frankies” is as true then as it is forty years later. Alan Vega always said

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that Suicide was about love, not death. Suicide is not about alienation but about hope. Not about perfection, but about heroic potential despite human fallibility. The Ghost Rider may have been conjured in hell but his mission was always to save the innocent. “I’ll never retire, it’s not in my blood. I’ll die dancing. I’ll die right on stage,” stated Alan Vega to the Guardian in 2015, a year before his death. As the world continues to question authority, we need a hero more than ever. Perhaps, like Suicide, we will just have to construct it ourselves. * * * The sky darkened. On the horizon there was a flickering of light. The outside world works in patterns; little is left to chance. The sky signaled them into action. The ground shook as if there were an impending earthquake. Then suddenly hundreds of horses came into view. The sky broke open and a lightning bolt shot down across the canyon. It appeared as if the lightning had been blown from the horse’s mouth. Then out of the fire in the sky one can see a faint outline of the rider. The one who learned to harness evil. The one who steered his horse up into the sky instead of letting it jump off the cliff to its impending death. Legend has it that the edge of the cliff is riddled with evil. When the rains start, horses turn toward the direction of the precipice. The rains break open and, like Mother Nature calling to them, the horses refuse the instruction of their riders and plunge off the cliff. Cowboys have avoided the area known as Stampede Mesa for years.

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But every now and again, a rider makes a pact with the devil—for better or worse—and is given strength to avoid the descent. This rider must be careful for the devil is known for his trickery. Just because the rider is spared sudden death does not mean his soul is free. He must learn to harness his power. Johnny Blaze found that the edge of the cliff does not always lead to a downward descent. In order to escape evil one must learn to break from the pack. One must possess the burning will to live. Only then can the edge be a launching pad. A place where one leaps off into the unknown and becomes the Ghost Rider in the sky.

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Notes

Chapter 1 1 Marvel first introduced the Ghost Rider character in 1949 as a cowboy based on Stan Jones’s popular 1948 song “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky: A Cowboy Legend.” The character ran through the Comic Code in the 1950s and was then reintroduced in 1967. Ultimately, Marvel changed the original Western Ghost Rider to Phantom Rider before bringing in the supernatural Ghost Rider in the Johnny Blaze series in 1972.

Chapter 4 1 Now Jayne County.

Chapter 5 1 Early iteration of Suicide’s single “Dream Baby Dream” found on their second album.

NOTES

2 China, an early No Wave band, would in June 1977 change their name to Mars, after learning about another band with the same name. One of the band’s guitarists would later adopt the name “China” Burg as a nod to the band’s original moniker. In 1976, they were still called China.

Chapter 6 1 Bangs, Lester, “The Greatest Album Ever Made,” Creem, March 1976. 2 Sometimes billed as “The Coventry Specials” in the 1970s, the ska band would later just go by the Specials.

Chapter 7 1 Robert Christgau, “Suicide’s Debut Album,” accessed January 3, 2018, www.robertchristgau.com. 2 Kris Needs, Dream Baby Dream: Suicide, a New York Story (London: Music Sales Limited, 2015), p. 208. 3 Ibid. 4 Nick Hornby et al., Songbook / Nick Hornby; Illustrated by Marcel Dzama of Canada (San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2002), p. 29. 5 Joan Hawkins, ed., Downtown Film & TV Culture 1975-2001 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015), p. xx. 6 Peter Bürger, Theory of the Avant-Garde / Peter Bürger; Translation from the German by Michael Shaw; Foreword by

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Jochen Schulte-Sasse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984). 7 Elizabeth Goodman, Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City, 2001–2011 / Lizzy Goodman (Dey St., an imprint of William Morrow, 2017), p. 114. 8 David Nobakht, Suicide: No Compromise (London: SAF Publishing Ltd., 2005), p. 69.

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Hell, Richard. I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp: An Autobiography. New York: Ecco, 2013. Hermes, Will. Love Goes to Buildings on Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever. New York: Faber and Faber, 2011. Heylin, Clinton. From the Velvets to the Voidoids: The Birth of American Punk Rock. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1993. Hornby, Nick, Dzama, Marcel, Westerberg, Paul, Mann, Aimee, Wainwright, Rufus, Stewart, Rod, Badly Drawn Boy, Mulcahy, Mark, and DiFranco, Ani. Songbook / Nick Hornby; Illustrated by Marcel Dzama of Canada. San Francisco: McSweeney’s Books, 2002. Masters, Marc. No Wave, London: Black Dog Publishing, 2007. McLeod, Kembrew. The Downtown Pop Underground: New York City and the Literary Punks, Renegade Artists, DIY Filmmakers, Mad Playwrights, and Rock ’n’ Roll Glitter Queens Who Revolutionized Culture. New York: Abrams Press, 2018. McNeil, Legs, and McCain, Gillian. Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. New York: Grove Press, 1996. Moore, Thurston and Coley, Byron. No Wave. Post-Punk. Underground. 1976–1980. New York: Abrams Books, 2008. Needs, Kris. Dream Baby Dream: Suicide, a New York Story. London: Omnibus Press, 2015. Nobakht, David. Suicide: No Compromise. London: SAF Publishing, 2005. Reynolds, Simon. Blissed Out: The Raptures of Rock. London: Serpent’s Tail, 1990. Reynolds, Simon. Rip It Up and Start Again: Postpunk 1978–1984. New York: Penguin Books, 2006. Reynolds, Simon. Totally Wired: Post-punk Interviews and Overviews. Berkley, CA: Soft Skull Press, 2010. Rollins, Henry. Stay Fanatic: Hectic Expectoration for the Music Obsessive Vol. 1. Los Angeles: 2.13.61, Inc. 133

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Stubbs, David. Future Sounds: The Story of Electronic Music from Stockhausen to Skrillex. London: Faber & Faber, 2018. Valentine, Gary. New York Rocker: My Life in the Blank Generation with Blondie, Iggy Pop and Others 1974–1981. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002.

Articles Dadomo, Giovanni. “The Suicide Club.” Sounds, June 24, 1978. Gluck, Jeremy. “The Marty Thau Interview.” Bucketful of Brains, March 2009. Goldstein, Toby. “Suicide: Hot Footing through Edge City.” Creem, April 1981. Irwin, Colin. “Bent on Suicide.” Melody Maker, March 11, 1978. Grabel, Richard. “Viva Alan Vega!” NME, March 13, 1982. Gumprecht, Blake. “Suicide: Martin Rev interviewed.” Alternative America, Winter 1983. Hollingworth, Roy. “In New York City, Rock Has Created Things That Reach from Obscenity to Musical Vomit (Suicide’s First Live Review).” Melody Maker, October 21, 1972. Hoskyns, Barney. “Alan Vega: ’77 Suicide Strip.” New Musical Express, September 10, 1983. Miles, Barry. “They Simper at Times: New York Dolls, Wayne County, (Alan Suicide) at the Mercer Arts Center, New York City (live review).” NME, 1972. Murray, Charles Shaar. “The Clash, Suicide: The Music Machine, London.” NME, August 5, 1978. Needs, Kris. “Suicide: Alan Vega and Martin Rev (review).” ZigZag, April 1980. Persky, Lisa Jane. “Suicide.” New York Rocker, May 1976.

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Pouncey, Edwin. “Alan Vega: Journey through America Part One.” Sounds, November 23, 1985. Reynolds, Simon. “Suicide Watch.” The Village Voice, January 29, 2002. Savage, Jon. “Suicide: Suicide (review).” Sounds, February 4, 1978. Uncut, May 1998. Sullivan, Jim. “Suicide: Ground Zero.” The Boston Globe, June 18, 1990. Sullivan, Jim. “Suicide’s Mission.” The Boston Globe, July 17, 1992. Tobler, John. “Suicide.” ZigZag, August 1978. Traitor, Ralph. “Suicide: Dingwalls, London.” Sounds, September 17, 1988. Trakin, Roy. “Alan Vega: Life after Suicide.” Creem, February 1984. Trakin, Roy. “Suicide Commits Itself.” New York Rocker, May 1980. Turner, Luke. “Suicide: Live 1977–1978 Box Set (review).” The Quietus, August 6, 2008. Williams, Richard. “Suicide: Suicide (review).” Melody Maker, January 28, 1978.

Film/Video Crary, S. A. Kill Your Idols, Palm Pictures, 2006.

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Also Available in the Series

1. Dusty Springfield’s Dusty in Memphis by Warren Zanes 2. Love’s Forever Changes by Andrew Hultkrans 3. Neil Young’s Harvest by Sam Inglis 4. The Kinks’ The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society by Andy Miller 5. The Smiths’ Meat Is Murder by Joe Pernice 6. Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn by John Cavanagh 7. ABBA’s ABBA Gold: Greatest Hits by Elisabeth Vincentelli 8. The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Electric Ladyland by John Perry 9. Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures by Chris Ott 10. Prince’s Sign “☮” the Times by Michaelangelo Matos

11. The Velvet Underground’s The Velvet Underground & Nico by Joe Harvard 12. The Beatles’ Let It Be by Steve Matteo 13. James Brown’s Live at the Apollo by Douglas Wolk 14. Jethro Tull’s Aqualung by Allan Moore 15. Radiohead’s OK Computer by Dai Griffiths 16. The Replacements’ Let It Be by Colin Meloy 17. Led Zeppelin’s Led Zeppelin IV by Erik Davis 18. The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. by Bill Janovitz 19. The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds by Jim Fusilli 20. Ramones’ Ramones by Nicholas Rombes 21. Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces by Franklin Bruno 22. R.E.M.’s Murmur by J. Niimi

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

23. Jeff Buckley’s Grace by Daphne Brooks 24. DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing….. by Eliot Wilder 25. MC5’s Kick Out the Jams by Don McLeese 26. David Bowie’s Low by Hugo Wilcken 27. Bruce Springsteen’s Born in the U.S.A. by Geoffrey Himes 28. The Band’s Music from Big Pink by John Niven 29. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea by Kim Cooper 30. Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique by Dan Le Roy 31. Pixies’ Doolittle by Ben Sisario 32. Sly and the Family Stone’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On by Miles Marshall Lewis 33. The Stone Roses’ The Stone Roses by Alex Green 34. Nirvana’s In Utero by Gillian G. Gaar 35. Bob Dylan’s Highway 61 Revisited by Mark Polizzotti 36. My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless by Mike McGonigal 37. The Who’s The Who Sell Out by John Dougan 38. Guided by Voices’ Bee Thousand by Marc Woodworth 39. Sonic Youth’s Daydream Nation by Matthew Stearns

40. Joni Mitchell’s Court and Spark by Sean Nelson 41. Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II by Eric Weisbard 42. Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life by Zeth Lundy 43. The Byrds’ The Notorious Byrd Brothers by Ric Menck 44. Captain Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica by Kevin Courrier 45. Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime by Michael T. Fournier 46. Steely Dan’s Aja by Don Breithaupt 47. A Tribe Called Quest’s People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm by Shawn Taylor 48. PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me by Kate Schatz 49. U2’s Achtung Baby by Stephen Catanzarite 50. Belle & Sebastian’s If You’re Feeling Sinister by Scott Plagenhoef 51. Nick Drake’s Pink Moon by Amanda Petrusich 52. Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love by Carl Wilson 53. Tom Waits’ Swordfishtrombones by David Smay 54. Throbbing Gristle’s 20 Jazz Funk Greats by Drew Daniel

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55. Patti Smith’s Horses by Philip Shaw 56. Black Sabbath’s Master of Reality by John Darnielle 57. Slayer’s Reign in Blood by D.X. Ferris 58. Richard and Linda Thompson’s Shoot Out the Lights by Hayden Childs 59. The Afghan Whigs’ Gentlemen by Bob Gendron 60. The Pogues’ Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash by Jeffery T. Roesgen 61. The Flying Burrito Brothers’ The Gilded Palace of Sin by Bob Proehl 62. Wire’s Pink Flag by Wilson Neate 63. Elliott Smith’s XO by Mathew Lemay 64. Nas’ Illmatic by Matthew Gasteier 65. Big Star’s Radio City by Bruce Eaton 66. Madness’ One Step Beyond… by Terry Edwards 67. Brian Eno’s Another Green World by Geeta Dayal 68. The Flaming Lips’ Zaireeka by Mark Richardson 69. The Magnetic Fields’ 69 Love Songs by LD Beghtol 70. Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s Facing Future by Dan Kois 71. Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold

72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87.

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Us Back by Christopher R. Weingarten Pavement’s Wowee Zowee by Bryan Charles AC/DC’s Highway to Hell by Joe Bonomo Van Dyke Parks’s Song Cycle by Richard Henderson Slint’s Spiderland by Scott Tennent Radiohead’s Kid A by Marvin Lin Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk by Rob Trucks Nine Inch Nails’ Pretty Hate Machine by Daphne Carr Ween’s Chocolate and Cheese by Hank Shteamer Johnny Cash’s American Recordings by Tony Tost The Rolling Stones’ Some Girls by Cyrus Patell Dinosaur Jr.’s You’re Living All Over Me by Nick Attfield Television’s Marquee Moon by Bryan Waterman Aretha Franklin’s Amazing Grace by Aaron Cohen Portishead’s Dummy by RJ Wheaton Talking Heads’ Fear of Music by Jonathan Lethem Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson by Darran Anderson

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

88. They Might Be Giants’ Flood by S. Alexander Reed and Elizabeth Sandifer 89. Andrew W.K.’s I Get Wet by Phillip Crandall 90. Aphex Twin’s Selected Ambient Works Volume II by Marc Weidenbaum 91. Gang of Four’s Entertainment by Kevin J.H. Dettmar 92. Richard Hell and the Voidoids’ Blank Generation by Pete Astor 93. J Dilla’s Donuts by Jordan Ferguson 94. The Beach Boys’ Smile by Luis Sanchez 95. Oasis’ Definitely Maybe by Alex Niven 96. Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville by Gina Arnold 97. Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kirk Walker Graves 98. Danger Mouse’s The Grey Album by Charles Fairchild 99. Sigur Rós’s () by Ethan Hayden 100. Michael Jackson’s Dangerous by Susan Fast 101. Can’s Tago Mago by Alan Warner 102. Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe by Tara Murtha 103. Hole’s Live Through This by Anwen Crawford

104. Devo’s Freedom of Choice by Evie Nagy 105. Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables by Michael Stewart Foley 106. Koji Kondo’s Super Mario Bros. by Andrew Schartmann 107. Beat Happening’s Beat Happening by Bryan C. Parker 108. Metallica’s Metallica by David Masciotra 109. Phish’s A Live One by Walter Holland 110. Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew by George Grella Jr. 111. Blondie’s Parallel Lines by Kembrew McLeod 112. Grateful Dead’s Workingman’s Dead by Buzz Poole 113. New Kids On The Block’s Hangin’ Tough by Rebecca Wallwork 114. The Geto Boys’ The Geto Boys by Rolf Potts 115. Sleater-Kinney’s Dig Me Out by Jovana Babovic 116. LCD Soundsystem’s Sound of Silver by Ryan Leas 117. Donny Hathaway’s Donny Hathaway Live by Emily J. Lordi 118. The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Psychocandy by Paula Mejia 119. The Modern Lovers’ The Modern Lovers by Sean L. Maloney

139

A L S O AVA I L A B L E I N T H E SE R I E S

120. Angelo Badalamenti’s Soundtrack from Twin Peaks by Clare Nina Norelli 121. Young Marble Giants’ Colossal Youth by Michael Blair and Joe Bucciero 122. The Pharcyde's Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde by Andrew Barker 123. Arcade Fire’s The Suburbs by Eric Eidelstein 124. Bob Mould’s Workbook by Walter Biggins and Daniel Couch 125. Camp Lo’s Uptown Saturday Night by Patrick Rivers and Will Fulton 126. The Raincoats’ The Raincoats by Jenn Pelly 127. Björk’s Homogenic by Emily Mackay 128. Merle Haggard’s Okie from Muskogee by Rachel Lee Rubin 129. Fugazi’s In on the Kill Taker by Joe Gross 130. Jawbreaker’s 24 Hour Revenge Therapy by Ronen Givony 131. Lou Reed’s Transformer by Ezra Furman 132. Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Peepshow by Samantha Bennett 133. Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera by Rien Fertel

134. dc Talk’s Jesus Freak by Will Stockton and D. Gilson 135. Tori Amos’s Boys for Pele by Amy Gentry 136. Odetta’s One Grain of Sand by Matthew Frye Jacobson 137. Manic Street Preachers’ The Holy Bible by David Evans 138. The Shangri-Las’ Golden Hits of the Shangri-Las by Ada Wolin 139. Tom Petty’s Southern Accents by Michael Washburn 140. Massive Attack’s Blue Lines by Ian Bourland 141. Wendy Carlos’s Switched-On Bach by Roshanak Kheshti 142. The Wild Tchoupitoulas’ The Wild Tchoupitoulas by Bryan Wagner 143. David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs by Glenn Hendler 144. D’Angelo’s Voodoo by Faith A. Pennick 145. Judy Garland’s Judy at Carnegie Hall by Manuel Betancourt 146. Elton John’s Blue Moves by Matthew Restall 147. Various Artists’ I’m Your Fan: The Songs of Leonard Cohen by Ray Padgett 148. Janet Jackson's The Velvet Rope by Ayanna Dozier

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