Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon (43 page)

Read Rock Bottom: Dark Moments In Music Babylon Online

Authors: Pamela Des Barres

When Margaret came back, she called an ambulance and Gram was taken to the Hi-Desert Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 12:15 A.M.
Dale said she was the last to see Gram alive. Margaret insisted
she
had been alone with Gram and given him mouth-to-mouth but it was too late. She told the San Bernardino County coroner that she left Gram at about eight P.M. to get something to eat, stating that he “did not look well.” When she called “some friends” to check on Gram at eleven o’clock and couldn’t reach anybody, she hurried back to the Joshua Tree Inn and found that Gram wasn’t breathing. To add to the mystery, the son of the motel owners, Alan Barbary, had his own version of what happened. He and Gram drank tequila all day long, smoked some pot, and when Alan left for a swap meet, he believes Gram scored some morphine. When Alan returned at ten P.M., he says he found
Gram in bed with one of the girls on her knees masturbating him, calling his name, pleading for him to wake up.
Phil Kaufman was called and he arrived in Joshua Tree an hour and a half later, scooping up the women and taking them back to L.A. They were never questioned by the police.
The official cause of death: “drug toxicity, days, due to multiple drug use, weeks.” Weeks, months, and years, actually. Years and years. The autopsy report described puncture wounds on the back of Gram’s left hand, along with other scars in the left elbow. Cocaine, amphetamines, and morphine were found in his system.
Acting fast, Bob Parsons arrived in L.A. to claim Gram’s body. By burying him in New Orleans, Bob hoped to establish that Gram was a resident, and glom on to his estate. Without discussing it with Gretchen or anyone else, Bob planned the funeral, telling Gram’s friends it would be a family affair.
Phil Kaufman, remembering his promise to Gram at Clarence White’s funeral, decided to try and help out his old buddy. After finding out which airline was shipping Gram’s body to New Orleans, Phil and roadie Michael Martin borrowed Dale’s funky old hearse, claiming they were to collect “the Parsons remains” because the family had decided to use a private plane. They loaded Gram’s coffin into the hearse and took off for Joshua Tree. When the two bombed-out thieves reached Cap Rock, they somehow got the coffin out of the hearse and lifted the lid. “It squeaked open and there was Gram lying there naked,” Phil reported. “As a matter of fact, later on the police tried charging us with stealing jewelry and clothing off the body. I told them he was naked. All he had was surgical tape on his chest where they had done the autopsy … .” Phil poured gasoline all over Gram and set him on fire. “We watched the body burn. It was bubbling … you could see it melting … . His ashes were actually going up into the air, into the desert night. The moon was shining, the stars were shining, and Gram’s wish was coming true … .”
Gram got more press for being scorched in the desert than for his heart-boggling musical legacy. When I told people I had just lost a dear friend, Gram Parsons, they would say, “Oh, wasn’t he that guy who was burned up in the desert in some sort of weird ritual?”
Phil and Michael were arrested for grand theft of a coffin, since there were no laws against stealing a body (Phil later called it “Gram Theft Parsons”). The day before the arrest, what was left of Gram was buried in a simple New Orleans cemetery, the Garden of Memories, under a gravestone that reads “God’s Own Singer,” the title of a Byrds song that Gram had nothing to do with. Bob Parsons never got any of Gram’s coveted inheritance and died a year later from alcohol abuse.
On November 5, Phil and Michael pleaded guilty to misdemeanor theft and were each given a thirty-day suspended jail sentence and fined three hundred dollars. It would have been Gram’s twenty-seventh birthday. To help pay
legal costs Phil had a truly tacky event called “The Gram Parsons Funeral Party,” charging five dollars to watch Bobby “Boris” Pickett mince between papier-mâché tombstones, singing “Monster Mash.” Phil sold G.P. T-shirts and bottles of beer labeled “Gram Pilsner—A Good Stiff Drink for What Ales You.” Tasteless and crass items, but I still have both of them.
A couple of weeks after Gram died I went to the Joshua Tree Inn and spent the night in room number eight, sending him love and praying for light on his long white ride.
“Gram was special,” said Keith Richards. “If he was in a room, everyone else became sweet. Anything that Gram was involved in had a touch of magic to it.”
“He cut straight through the middle with no compromises,” Emmylou Harris said. “He was never afraid to write from the heart, and perhaps that’s why he was never really accepted. It’s like the light was too strong and bright, and people just had to turn away … because it was all too painful. It could rip you up. Not many people can take music that real.”
Nancy, his ex-wife, says, “There has never been anyone I’ve ever known who had such archangelic charisma.” “When Gram was fully present and in his full power, you would have walked off a cliff for him. Early in our relationship, he told me, ‘Do you understand what a fallen angel is? It’s an angel from the divine realms who comes to earth, loves a mortal woman, is wronged by her, and sullies his grace—thereby falling from grace.’” It sounds like what happened in real life, doesn’t it? I ask gently. “Mickey was just a pawn in the game,” she insists. It’s a shame about the depth of Gram’s pain, I say. “You’ve heard Gram say this: ‘How can you write a country song unless you go through pain?’ You say Gram was in such horrible pain, but that’s all part of it. He was loyal and true in his younger years, would come to the aid of his friends, had the most pristine, clear vision—he knew there could be heaven on earth, that we could all be in harmony and love one another—and when he saw his visions, one by one, crumbling, he wasn’t strong enough. The great, heavy Southern sorrow was part of the act and then it became a reality. When you play Jesus Christ, you walk across swimming pools. You act the part! For Gram it became the real thing. It caught him.” When I tell Nancy that I’m calling Gram’s chapter “Fallen Angel,” she says, “Good. He called it. He became it. He lived it. He did his mission and he left.”
G.P.’s amazingly long fingers—“Sometimes I wonder,” Gram told me, “where these hands came from.” (ANDEE COHEN)
JOHNNY THUNDERS
“O
kay. You got it. I’m gonna die tonight,” Johnny Thunders would announce from the stage. “I’m gonna die up here.” But Johnny’s fans wouldn’t get that twisted privilege. On April 23, 1991, the New York Doll / Heartbreaker guitarist died alone in a New Orleans hotel room under bizarre circumstances that are still being investigated.
Johnny’s older sister, Marion, tells me there is a lot of mystery surrounding her brother’s death. “I spoke to him that evening and he sounded fantastic,” she recalls. “I believe there was foul play. I’ve been to New Orleans and nobody wants to talk to me. I went to the police department and the coroner’s office and when I mentioned Johnny’s name, everybody shut up. Nothing corresponds—the time on the death certificate, the time we were called.” With obvious frustration she said that by the time she went to New Orleans, there was a different coroner. I ask Marion if she got a look at the police report. “Conveniently enough, there’s only half the police report; the other half they can’t seem to find.”
Born in Queens, New York, in July 1952, John Anthony Genzale was raised by his mother, who was a supermarket cashier, and older sister, Marion, to be an altar boy, but at eight years old Johnny was following his earliest dream—to become a baseball player like his hero, Mickey Mantle. An average student, Johnny excelled in his favorite sport until his high-school teacher demanded he cut his thick mop of hair to get on the team. Johnny impolitely refused.
His second salvation was music. Seven years older than Johnny, Marion was into the sixties girl groups, turning young Johnny on to the Shangri-Las and the Crystals, which inspired his own musical discoveries—Howlin’ Wolf, Gene Vincent, Eddie Cochran, the Stones, MC5. “He started when he was three,” Marion tells me. “He was already imitating Elvis Presley!” At sixteen he formed his own band, Johnny and the Jaywalkers. At seventeen he spent months prowling the streets of London, seeing a different band every night for inspiration.
Back in New York, Johnny quickly fell into the tumultuous 1969 rock scene, hanging in bars like Max’s Kansas City and Nobody’s, where he met the cocky David Johansen, an expelled Catholic school student from Staten Island who was busy forming a band called “Actress” with Arthur Kane, Sylvain Sylvain, and drummer Billy Murcia. Johnny joined the foursome, briefly becoming Johnny Volume before settling on Johnny Thunders. Actress soon became the fabulous New York Dolls.
A junkie in the bathtub—Johnny’s big dreams were always on hold. (MARCIA RESNICK)
They rehearsed in Rusty Beanie’s Cycle Shop, playing seedy joints before landing a regular Tuesday-night gig at the Mercer Oscar Wilde Room and finally becoming the semipermanent house band at Max’s Kansas City. Velvet Underground’s Lou Reed proclaimed the Dolls “cute,” and Max’s was soon chockablock with fawning rock stars and decked-out Dolls devotees, who imitated the band’s fishnet-stocking androgyny, wearing plastic pop beads, teetering on eight-inch platforms, their mascara thick and lip gloss gooey. “Before going onstage,” claimed
Rolling Stone
magazine, “the Dolls pass around a Max Factor lipstick the way some bands pass around a joint.” Jerry Nolan, who joined the Dolls a bit later, told the
Village Voice
that you could spot Johnny Thunders and his girlfriend Janis “from ten miles away.” “Janis got Johnny into his look. He was wearing high heels, and you remember that teased hair look? That Rod Stewart look? Johnny’s was like that, but even more dimensionalized and exaggerated, teased all the way up like in a crown. It was so long. He would have a platinum blond streak down the back … a girl’s blouse on, and on top of that, a sparkling girl’s vest. And then maybe a cowboy scarf. Mixing in cowboy stuff with glamorous forties girl stuff was something the Dolls liked to do. And he wore makeup, which really set him off.”
Former promotions man Marty Thau pulled in Steve Lieber and David Krebs as financial managers and took on the formidable task of trying to get the Dolls a record deal. He set up some gigs in London and demo recording time at Escape Studios in Kent, but after only a couple of sessions and before the Dolls’ first scheduled date at Manchester’s Hardrock club, Billy Murcia became a tragic rock statistic. The drummer had gone to a party in Chelsea, soon found himself in the usual state of alcoholic obliteration, and passed out cold. It seems that Billy’s new companions feared for his life and tossed him into a full bathtub, hoping to bring him around. The verdict: misadventure—death by drowning. Johnny and the rest of the band were shook up, but Dolls momentum was building, and Billy Murcia was quickly replaced with a well-respected New York drummer, Jerry Nolan. Jerry believes that “real abuse” caused Billy’s death. “He went to a party with a lot of highbrow, stuck-up, rich teenage kids. They had these pills called Mandys. They were a heavy barbiturate down. All day long kids kept giving him these pills … . When Billy fell asleep everybody fucking panics … . They throw him in the goddamn fuckin’ bathtub to try to shake him out of it. They fucking drowned him!
They drowned the kid! These fucking rich kids freaked out and ran away. They all split on the guy. What a fucking waste.”
Jerry slotted right into the Dolls lineup and almost no time was lost. Record companies came in droves to gigs but were too afraid to sign the “obscene” band until rock critic Paul Nelson convinced Mercury to give them a deal. But there was internal conflict right away in the choice of producer. Despite fevered protests from Johnny and Jerry, David Johansen chose Todd Rundgren to helm the first record, and he didn’t really do the band justice. Said Johnny, “He fucked up the mix really bad. Every time we go on the radio to do interviews, we always dedicate ‘Your Mama Don’t Dance and Your Daddy Don’t Rock and Roll’—know that song?—to Todd.” Although some of the Dolls’ trashy magic was muffled in the mix, their 1973 debut album still managed to sell 110,000 copies. Mercury’s clever catchphrase—”The New York Dolls: a band you’re gonna like whether you like it or not!“—helped propel the first single, “Trash,” onto the
Cash Box
charts and secure a tour with Iggy Pop. The tour was a raging success, ending with all the Dolls being arrested in Memphis for “profane language.” Johnny was handcuffed right onstage. Said Jerry Nolan, “We once got off a plane in Paris or someplace, and we were walking through the lobby, and there was some press there, cameras and reporters. Johnny had been really sick on the plane, just not feeling well, and when he got off he really barfed out, right in front of the press.” It got to where people expected the Dolls to do something disruptive and/or disgusting. And Johnny was more than willing to accommodate. That night at the Paris gig, he didn’t appreciate being spit on and bashed his guitar over the offending fan’s head.
The New York Dolls, in the band’s trashy transvestite drag, “passing around a Max Factor lipstick the way some bands pass around a joint.” (MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/VENICE, CALIF.)
Notorious British journalist Nick Kent, writing for
New Musical Express,
said:
Johnny Thunders, for one, looks about as well as his guitar is in tune. He staggers around the stage in obvious discomfort, attempting to motivate himself and the band simultaneously and succeeding only in
beating his instrument into an ever-more horrendous state of tune-lessness. The sound reaches its nadir on “Vietnamese Baby,” when the guitar interplay is so drastically off-balanced that it becomes quite grotesque to listen to. On the next number Thunders stops half-way through, puts down his guitar and moves behind the amplifiers to throw up for five minutes. “Y’know, in some ways Johnny is just a child,” Marty Thau will state later, with a dewy-eyed paternal concern.
There was another disagreement about who would produce the Dolls’ second album. David wanted nostalgia and won out with the legendary George “Shadow” Morton, who had written “Leader of the Pack” and produced the Shangri-Las. But Morton had given up teen-girl angst for the Tibetan Book of the Dead. The album,
Too Much Too Soon,
was critically panned. It sold enough for another U.S. tour, however, and since the Dolls were always broke back home, the road was full of excess. “While we were touring, at least we were going to live it up,” said Jerry. “Musicians always get chicks, but not like the Dolls. The Dolls took chicks from any other musician, any other band, anybody! If the Dolls were in town, we owned it! I mean we owned it!! Many times there were violent scenes, and I’ll tell you why. The way the women felt about us, the men felt the opposite. We totally offended them. We totally put their sexuality at risk. They hated our guts. You see, we threatened guys in two different ways. To lose your girlfriend to a musician was one thing. But to lose your girlfriend to a faggot musician was another thing entirely”
“The Dolls were the most obnoxious creatures ever to enter this country,” stated a news editor in Germany after a particularly appalling interview.
PRESS:
Did you do much sightseeing?
JOHNNY:
Naw.
PRESS:
What did you think of our famous beer?
JOHNNY:
Tasted like … eh … it’s like junkie’s piss or something … .
PRESS:
I don’t have to listen to these pathetic, childish insults.
JERRY:
Sure you don’t. Fuck off.
SYLVAIN:
Why are all Krauts so fuckin’ fat?
JOHNNY:
It’s all them Jew-meat sausages.
Shock value aside, the Dolls’ gloss and glam was fading. Arthur Kane had become such a severe alcoholic that one of the roadies hid behind an amp, playing his bass lines, and Jerry and Johnny were dabbling dangerously with hard-core drugs. Marty Thau was desperate and hooked up with Malcolm McLaren (pre–Sex Pistols), who deposited two of the Dolls in rehab before dressing them up in red leather suits and putting them onstage with a communist flag. Johnny and Jerry hated Malcolm and his absurd interference, so when David said, “Anyone in this band can be replaced,” the disgruntled musicians got on the first plane back to New York.
True to his threat, David replaced Johnny and Jerry and headed to Japan for a bogus Dolls tour. When the realization hit, Johnny was devastated. “At first Johnny couldn’t comprehend the Dolls ending,” said Jerry. “I accepted it, though I took it hard. Real fuckin’ hard. Johnny just couldn’t believe it.”
The fake Dolls fell apart while Johnny and Jerry were busy putting together a new band, the Heartbreakers, with Walter Lure and Richard Hell from Television. Gigs came easy with two ex-Dolls in the group, despite some early friction between Johnny and Richard Hell, who wanted to be the front man. Billy Rath soon replaced him.
Posters showed the Heartbreakers covered in blood, clutching bullet-holed chests: “The Heartbreakers—Catch Them While They’re Still Alive!” Johnny cut his mad mane into a doo-wop do, trading his Dolls’ cross-dressing for
West Side Story’s
leader-of-the-Sharks look. They hired the flamboyant Leee Black Childers as their manager and drew capacity crowds, but record companies balked. When the offer came from Malcolm McLaren to open for the notorious Sex Pistols, the Heartbreakers couldn’t resist going to London smack in the middle of Britain’s punkmania rage.
“When we hit London we turned it inside out and upside down,” said Jerry. “Not only did we bring a lot of excitement, we brought a lot of danger, and well, some tragedy, too. We brought drugs with us—heroin. The groups there didn’t know that from nothing. When Johnny and I got to England, everybody became junkies, almost overnight. We partied hard and tough and rough.”

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