Punk Rock Blitzkrieg Page 4

  What I did like about the San Francisco scene were the political beliefs. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between hippies going to concerts and hippies protesting the Vietnam War. With their freaky anti-military clothing and hairstyles, they were protesting the war just by going about their business even if they weren’t actually attending a rally or sit-in.

  I did agree the United States was on the wrong track getting involved in a bitter civil war halfway around the world while millions of people here at home lived in poverty. As my dad said, the Vietnam War was being fought by America’s poorest, who couldn’t avoid the draft by going to college or hiring a lawyer. When all was said and done, win or lose, those American soldiers lucky enough to come home would still face the same poverty, lack of education, and discrimination. Many thousands, of course, would never come home.

  The hippies out in San Francisco—and everywhere—were strong believers in the civil rights movement. But that movement was led for the most part by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., a Baptist minister who organized protest marches and spoke all over the country. The struggle for equal rights on behalf of black Americans dated back to the 1800s, and in some ways had little to do with the hippies. The fact was, there was so much unrest boiling over at one time that anyone taking a stand against the establishment seemed to be on the same side. The hippies’ love of freedom was pretty much about their own freedom.

  In Brooklyn, you could see changes in style, but that depended on who you were looking at. Miniskirts, bell-bottoms, and peace signs were everywhere, although definitely not on everyone. The greasers were dying out slowly but hanging on for dear life. In Brooklyn, they were known as hitters. They were tough-acting guys, some of them in gangs, who wore T-shirts and DA (“duck’s ass”) haircuts. They sometimes wore leather jackets and generally borrowed their style from Elvis or James Dean. In the summer of ’67, many of them held fast to that look while others gradually morphed, letting their hair grow a little longer, wearing sideburns, and adding a little color to their wardrobe. Musically, they might still be listening to Elvis, but they also might drift toward more modern, clean-cut bands like the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, Jay and the Americans, or the Righteous Brothers. Sometimes they would let a hippie word slip: groovy, far out, dig.

  I wasn’t a greaser. And I definitely wasn’t a hippie. I updated my own look in a way that felt comfortable. The Beatles suits were long gone. I started wearing a leather jacket and jeans. I grew my hair a little longer.

  In September of ’67, I entered Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush. Erasmus was originally a private school and one of the oldest high schools in the state of New York. The building, in fact, looked like it belonged to another age, with old-world Georgian architecture and a courtyard surrounded on four sides. Erasmus had more than its share of famous graduates: Barbra Streisand, Mae West, actor Eli Wallach, singer and songwriter Neil Diamond, and world chess champion Bobby Fischer, who actually dropped out in 1960.

  I didn’t want to drop out after having just dropped in, but it was a long haul to Erasmus from the Ditmas area. We lived in what was called a two-fare zone, which meant we took a bus, got off, and then caught another bus to the school. Then back home at the end of the day, day in day out. Some mornings I’d meet up with my friend and former Uncles bassist Kenny Aaronson, and we’d make the trek together. We always had things to talk about, not the least of which was music. The buses were usually crowded, and one morning one of them was so jammed that we rode on the rear bumper right down Flatbush Avenue. We used the fifteen cents each we saved on bus fare to go get a slice of pizza and decided that was worth doing again.

  Kenny seemed to hate going to school even more than I did; our aversion gave us one more big thing in common. He mentioned that he might eventually be homeschooled. That sounded great, but there was no way my parents would ever go for that.

  My problems were almost as old as Erasmus. My eyesight was never that good, and the outdated incandescent lights in the classrooms only made things worse. The letters spelled out in chalk on the blackboard never seemed really clear and bright, and it didn’t help that I usually sat in the back. I wasn’t looking to fail. I tried to pay attention in class, especially with a subject like Spanish that I could really use in a multilingual city like New York. But the teacher singled me out when she shared my most recent test score with the entire class. “Marc Bell. Muy estúpido. The lowest score in the class. The lowest score ever at Erasmus. Nada—a zero. Congratulations.”

  Before long, I was staying after school to make up work in the classes I was failing. I usually didn’t get to leave the campus until dark. School was like a vicious cycle. During the day, I was bored, and all I could think about was being somewhere else—either playing drums or hanging out with Alyson. The more I thought about being somewhere else, the longer I had to stay after school, and the longer I had to stay after school, the less time I could actually be anywhere else.

  Eventually, I started cutting out of school completely. I would usually leave at lunchtime and just not go back. My favorite destination was a local rehearsal studio. The guys playing there were a couple of grades ahead of me. It was a lot better than spending the afternoon bored under old lights, but it didn’t last. My parents found out. Even if they hadn’t, they would have known something wasn’t exactly right when my report card showed I was failing every class.

  On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated by a lone sniper in Memphis. Because Dr. King was loved by so many people and his approach to protest was always nonviolent, the moment he was gone, a lot of anger boiled over. For black people in America, it seemed that peaceful attempts at equality and freedom had failed and were doomed to fail again. Starting that night, riots broke out in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Chicago, Kansas City, and other major cities. In New York, Mayor John Lindsay spoke in Harlem and vowed to stay committed to fighting poverty and discrimination. That may have been the reason there were no major incidents in New York.

  The next morning at school, someone threw a smoke bomb into the ventilation system, and the fire alarm rang. As the entire school filed out, the black students stayed on the school side of Flatbush Avenue, while the whites and other groups gathered across the street. We held our breaths to see if any fighting would break out. After awhile, it seemed we were past the danger point. The black kids needed to show their solidarity, and they did. I thought, More power to them.

  While I wasn’t comfortable in the classroom, I was comfortable hanging out with black kids. The outcast in me could identify with them, even though I’d be kidding myself to think I understood what life was like for them. But on April 5, 1968, that circumstance of my life was an advantage. I was concerned with what was going on at Erasmus, but whatever went down, I wasn’t afraid.

  I had one friend named Bruce, who was a keyboard player. I wasn’t skipping school as much as I had been but was getting into Manhattan whenever I could. We had an older friend who drove a 1967 Oldsmobile Cutlass and gave us a ride sometimes. When we couldn’t get a ride, we took the D train, which cut right through Greenwich Village. We had a friend named Charlie who worked as an usher at the Fillmore East. The Fillmore East was rock promoter Bill Graham’s counterpart to the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. Graham had both major and upcoming acts play one place and then fly across the country to play the other. Both rooms were usually packed.

  We had an amazing thing going with Charlie. After the bands finished their sound checks in the late afternoon, he would sneak us through the back door. Getting to see Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin, Buddy Guy, and Jethro Tull for free—instead of paying $3 to $5—would have been more than enough for us. But a few times Charlie let us take it to the next level.

  “Are you sure?” we asked.

  “Yeah, what the fuck, go ahead.”

  So we walked out on the stage, took our spots, and played on the first band’s equipment. With no one in the Fillmore to hear us, we were like trees falling in
the forest. But we got to hear ourselves. We were loud. Not too loud, because we didn’t want to pay for a busted speaker cone or have a seasoned roadie with a Hells Angels tattoo come after us. But we were loud enough to feel the power of being onstage at a major venue. I thought, In a couple of hours, Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham is going to be sitting in this very same seat, pounding on the bass drum, doing monster rolls, and creating a huge wall of sound. I shouldn’t have been sitting there, but I was, and I loved it, and that was rock and roll.

  There was normally a show at eight o’clock and a second show at eleven. Both shows were two sets long. The performances were usually amazing. First, whether he was there or not, on any given night you were playing for Bill Graham, an influential businessman who could book you well beyond the clubs he owned. Second, audiences in New York knew music. They generally weren’t wearing love beads and dropping acid like the crowds in San Francisco, but they had grown up going to shows dating back to the beatnik coffee shops and the jazz clubs. Or they were kids who listened to the radio night and day and bought albums with whatever spare money they could pull together. If you could knock that audience off its feet, you could be proud of your band.

  One school day when I was actually in school, I was bored as usual and looked out the window. There, walking along Flatbush Avenue, was Bruce with Alyson. My first thought wasn’t a good one, but I let it go. A few days later, as I walked out of the building, I saw the two of them together again, this time arm in arm. I asked them point-blank what was going on, and he said, “She’s my girlfriend now.”

  I was shocked—both that it happened and at how matter-of-factly Bruce delivered the blow. For a moment I felt little sick inside. But a moment later, I was just flat-out pissed, so I punched Bruce in the mouth. He came back at me with a hard right, and we went at it right in front of Erasmus. There was a police precinct around the corner, and two cops assigned to the school broke up the fight, but not before I got in a couple of good shots.

  For whatever reason, the cops let Bruce go, but they dragged me into Dean Gallo’s office. One of the tough male gym teachers was there. I thought I was going to get a lecture on fighting and school policy, as if school policy was going to make any difference the moment your best friend stole your girlfriend. Whatever it was, I figured if I sat there and went along with the program, this would all be over in a few minutes, and I could go.

  I was wrong. The taller cop told me to stand up. I did. He told me to face him and drop my pants to my ankles. I hesitated, but I did that, too. Next, they had me drop my shorts. My shirt followed. It was like being naked in the middle of a packed auditorium. But this was worse. These guys were ex-navy and ex-marine. They were in their late thirties and were threatened by my generation: how we looked, how we acted, and how we didn’t buy into their program. The truth was, I had tried pot a few times, and that was it. Not only was I not on LSD, I couldn’t afford it. But they assumed that the longer your hair was, the more drugs you did; the more drugs you did, the more you were looking to bury them, their culture, their identities. I felt their glare all over my skin.

  The shorter cop went through my shoulder bag and then searched my shirt pockets. Nothing. He walked over to me, put his hand in my hair, and shook it. Nothing. He told me to open my mouth and then looked inside like a narc dentist. He knelt down and went through my pants pockets. His hand brushed the inside of my calf. I thought about punching him. But this wasn’t Maudie at the candy store, and that would have been the last thing I did for a very long time as a free man.

  I figured there was no place left to search, but I was wrong about that, too. The shorter cop ordered me to turn around and spread my cheeks. Yeah, those cheeks. I put one hand on each and pushed outward. I didn’t know when it would end or how far it would go. But nothing fell out of my ass, and I heard one of the cops say to pull up my pants.

  When I told my dad that night I had been strip-searched, he flipped out. I spared him some of the details because I didn’t want my father to serve time for manslaughter. The next day, I didn’t take the bus into school. I rode in by car with my father and his two brothers. My uncle Ronnie was eight years younger than my father. Uncle Johnny was a change-of-life baby and was only five years older than me. They were both rough working-class guys, especially Uncle Johnny. At one time, he was in a gang and was still a real greaser. The only thing he would have liked more than kicking the shit out of a teacher was kicking the shit out of a cop.

  My father did all the talking. Dean Gallo and the gym teacher stood in the same office where the day before they’d treated me worse than a lab rat, and now they looked like they wanted to hide somewhere. Their shoulders slumped. They could barely maintain eye contact with my dad, who wasn’t an angry or violent guy but saved it for the few times in life it was called for. My dad told them he would have trouble ever forgiving them for subjecting his son to that kind of degradation. That it was sick, immoral, and illegal to boot. And that if it ever happened again, he and his brothers would take both men outside in front of the school and make an example of them.

  I could see my uncle Johnny hoping for a wrong move or a wrong word, but the dean apologized. He explained they were being overrun with drug incidents and were trying to look out for the welfare of the entire school. The gym teacher added they were very wrong about Marc and that it would never happen again.

  “Hopefully not to him,” my father said. “Or to anyone.”

  I appreciated what they did, but having my dad and uncles come in to fight my battles didn’t exactly do wonders for my ego. Neither did losing my girlfriend, especially the way I had. I was devastated. Some part of me actually thought Alyson and I would be together forever, so it felt like the rest of my life was ruined. But another part of me said that now I would have more time for music. At least, I hoped.

  By tenth grade, I was going to night school to stay on track. If I didn’t do well enough at night school, I would have to go to summer school to make it to eleventh grade. I had less free time than before, and going to the Fillmore East was now out of the picture. That’s when I started hanging out at Parkside a lot.

  Parkside was a small plaza at the southeast entrance of Prospect Park in Brooklyn, at the intersection of Ocean and Parkside Avenues. The Parkside subway station entrance was across the street. At the entrance to the park was a sitting area with two large canopies and masonry columns. Over time it became a meeting place for musicians and music lovers. I had gone a few times in ninth grade.

  On warm weekend nights, it wasn’t unusual to have seventy, eighty, or even more people on hand. Some people brought their acoustic guitars and got into spontaneous jam sessions. Other people just talked music. Acoustic versions of songs from Jimi Hendrix, Cream, the Who, and Led Zeppelin filled the air. It was a free-form sing-along. Most kids wore tie-dyed shirts and bell-bottom jeans.

  Pot, beer, red wine, and LSD made their way around as if they had a mind of their own. If you were tripping more than just casually, it was a good idea to venture deeper into the park to avoid the cops on patrol. There was a lake about a hundred yards in. Some kids having a massive trip would just disappear into the night.

  By tenth grade, I was jamming regularly with two guys I met at Parkside. Scott Fine was about my age and a solid bass player. Scott dressed simple: jeans and a T-shirt. The other guy, a guitarist and vocalist, was Velvert Turner. Velvert dressed over the top: velvet pants, paisley shirts and vests, and a large hat with a colorful scarf wrapped around it. There was a buzz surrounding Velvert, but not because of his musicianship or even because of his wardrobe. Velvert was a friend and protégé of Jimi Hendrix.

  According to rumor, Hendrix was teaching Velvert everything he knew about playing guitar and music in general. Supposedly Velvert even got to hang out at Jimi’s apartment on West Twelfth Street in the Village. A tall, lanky black guy with a big Afro, Velvert looked the part. By being a little brother to the one guitarist we all really worshipped, Velvert was a god. You wo
uldn’t have known he was only about a year older than I was.

  At this point, Velvert wasn’t a great guitar player; Scott was actually better. The three of us would get together on and off at a rehearsal studio called Baggie’s off of Canal Street in Chinatown. Velvert showed up in full Hendrix regalia, including the white Fender Stratocaster. But the Strat didn’t sing like Hendrix’s. Probably no other Strat did, and Velvert seemed image-conscious above all, like he needed a full-length mirror in the rehearsal room. I locked in with Scott’s bass playing, freeing Velvert to do whatever he did over the rhythm section. We weren’t a real band. We didn’t have a name. It was all about drinking a little beer, smoking a little pot, and having a good time.

  One night the three of us went to a club called Salvation on Sheridan Square in the West Village. Hendrix had played there as a relative unknown a couple of years earlier. Now, as a celebrity, he hung out at the club and had invited Velvert to meet him there. Salvation had a reputation as a gay hot spot and was reportedly run by the Mob. So there was just about nothing you couldn’t find at Salvation.

  The inside was all red, like the eyes of most of the customers. The dance floor was circular, with seats surrounding it completely. Velvert led us over to a round table where three guys were drinking and smoking: Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Miles, and Jim Morrison. I had never sat down with a single celebrity before, and here I was with three of them.

  Jimi was in his element. The Experience had split up recently, and Buddy Miles was his new drummer. Miles, just twenty-three, was once a child prodigy whose aunt nicknamed him after his idol, Buddy Rich, maybe the best jazz drummer who ever walked the earth. Miles had met Hendrix in the early to mid-sixties when they were both sidemen for several blues and R&B legends. Hendrix still owed an album to the record company, and along with Miles and bassist Billy Cox was working on a live project called Band of Gypsys.