Lucking Out - James Wolcott [68]
At CBGB’s, rough democracy reigned. There were no separate tables for press seating (unlike at the Bottom Line), no backstage VIP playpen, no caste system, no dress code, everything informally in flux, not even any strict restrictions on entering and reentering the club, which allowed everybody to circulate, spread their germs. The one checkpoint that had to be crossed was Roberta Bayley’s station at the front of the club. (It was probably she I was talking to in my mini-moment in Blank Generation.) Reddish haired, pale white, thin, beautiful, smart, quick, Roberta was (to put it in Mad Men terms) the Joan of CBGB’s, the goddess gatekeeper who had the authority of decree, the power to banish. I always marveled at how Roberta could accelerate in mid-sentence to spin someone around without touching him or her. “Joey was here earlier but I haven’t seen him [dopey-looking dude appears in doorway]—I told you you couldn’t walk in here with a bottle take it back to the street and if I have to tell you again—[dopey dude sheepishly disappears] so he might still be at Phoebe’s.” When the Runaways—that hotsy-twatsy jailbait band put together by the West Coast impresario Kim Fowley whose first hit, “Cherry Bomb,” established their truant image—played CBGB’s on a special-event night, there was more press frenzy than I’d ever seen at the place, proof of how the horniness of men drives news acreage, at least then. As I and a few others entered with expressions perhaps a trace too shiny and eager, I heard Roberta say as we trampled past, “You should all be ashamed of yourselves.”
I stopped and said, “Well, you know, I’m here strictly in my role as a reporter.”
“Well, try to remember to take notes while your tongue’s hanging out.”
Roberta was also a no-fuss photographer, her cover shot of the Ramones for their debut album one of the most representative debris-imbued images of the period. It was the Warhol Factory aesthetic, aiming the camera straight ahead and not dicking around with technique, pricey state-of-the-art equipment, masterpiece aspirations. Record the moment and never mind the mess. One of my favorite photos of Roberta’s, one of the most snapshot-y, caught the sweet incongruity of the Punk magazine mascot and interloper, Legs McNeil, wearing a Ramones T-shirt, chatting with Norman Mailer, who, after seeing the Ramones onstage disturbing the peace, had proclaimed, “They’re heroic!” This, from the man who thought the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” was overrated and anticlimactic, was no small endorsement.
In the beginning they were more Bowery Boys than Braveheart.
One night I was at CBGB’s to catch the Ramones, who were top-billed. I had seen them before but was laughing so hard the first time that much of their set blurred. Headlong blur was their objective. Their sets were blessedly, blazingly brief, setting land-speed records for most songs in the shortest span, each song launched with a 1!-2!-3!-4! count as if dropping the go flag on a Thunder Road drag race. At first the Ramones looked like a novelty act, as cartoonish as the Archies, but instead of gee-whiz varsity sweaters they were rigged out in matching monikers (Tommy Ramone, drums; Dee Dee Ramone, bass; Johnny Ramone, guitar; Joey Ramone, lead singer), leather jackets, hole-poked jeans, flat-soled sneakers (Keds they looked like, or Converse), mop-top haircuts, and, as if to complement the Beatlesque bangs, Joey’s lispy Liverpudlian accent, which resembled Ringo’s on the Saturday morning Beatles cartoon series rather than the real-life item. The arch enunciation of Joey’s vocals defused the belligerency of lyrics about beating on the brat or the clenched warning of “Loudmouth” (“You’re a loudmouth, baby/You betta shut it up/I’m gonna beat