My Johnny Thunders Story (Part 2)

Jerry Nolan, Johnny Thunders, Tony James, Steve New, Some night guys….

Learning 30 songs I Already Knew.

The New York Dolls were my favorite band ever since I read the first tiny piece about them in an American Rock magazine. I’d been into The Stones. Next culture shift I liked Sabbath for that Fifth Form angst. Sixth form at school it’s The Pink Fairies and then as I hit University its The Dolls. Saw them at Imperial Colledge in Kensington the night their drummer Billy Murcia died. Then there was Biba’s Rainbow Room.

I suppose me and Mj found each other because we both wanted to be in an English Dolls during that early spring of 1975. We had every album and bootleg. When they broke up, we were waiting and hoping for a Johnny Thunder’s band.  He couldn’t just disappear.  We heard a rumour one evening at the Marquee Club that a band called Johnny Thunders Demons were to play there and we felt the thrill of excitement that only a true fan can experience.  The band never materialised.  Fast forward to the pre-punk era and it was The Heartbreakers with Richard Hell, Mj and me saw them in London and I can’t for the life of me remember where.  Before you know it they were simply “The Heartbreakers” on the Anarchy Tour and the Clash are supporting.

Fast forward to early 1982 and I’m looking for a new band because Punks gone, Idols gone to America and I’m having visions of my next group, a sort of Ziggys Cosmic Dolls which will ultimately go on to become The Sputnik Monster.

One day there’s a knock on the door at Pindock Mews. An American whine, a voice I will come to love and dread in equal measure calls my name from the cobbled street below……

“Tooooooooooneeeeeeeeeee???” I recognise the whine instantly and smile.

“Its Jaaaaaaaaaaneeeeeeeeeee, lemmmeeeee uppp”

Johnny Thunders is in my sitting room playing a guitar.  To me he looks great, but really he looks terrible. The hair of course is a perfect Italian quiff but the skin on his face and hands have these big alopecia white blotches the size of saucers all over. He is dressed perfectly Keef Richard although the people who do his laundry need firing.  His playing however is faultless, his playing sounds like he is plugged in directly to Heaven.

He has a gig that night at “The Venue”, a thousand plus hall opposite Victoria station. It’s a venue based on New York’s Bottom Line club. I’ve seen everyone there, Grand Master Flash, James Brown….He wants to know if I could play bass guitar with them tonight. Them being Johnny, Jerry Nolan and crew no less.

Well what do YOU think my response was?

So all I have to do is learn the 30 songs that Johnny is writing down in his illegible, scraggly handwriting. Pipeline, You Can’t put your arms around a Memory, Personality Crisis, Chinese Rocks, Born to Loose, Sad Vacation…..it goes on. But I know all these tracks. Are you kidding? I have all these records. They are all worn out. And I am in.

The leathers dance out of the cupboard. The shirt hangs just so. The headband allowed. The hair just long enough. I am so ready to play Jet Boy legit with the man who wrote it. It’s a dream come true even for me after the recent highs of Generation X. There’s no soundcheck because Johnny’s so confident that everything is coooool. I am cool. I am early and waiting in the dressing room like a scholarship pupil on his first day at big school. Outside the Venue is crowded and there’s an expectant buzz with an air of.. of….. well crucifixion.

I should have heard warning bells when I was still the only one sitting there in the dressing room as showtime approached. But suddenly, like magic, Thunders was there in front of me.  Well not exactly in FRONT of me as four people had just carried him in and laid him out on the dressing room floor, but at least he was in the venue.   I was starting to understand why Thunders would have a large wooden cross on stage as if to taunt the crowd that they might just see a crucifixion, personally at this point I was hoping for a resurrection…. Then the others burst in in what seems like slow motion. All will be fine they assured me as I gestured frantically to Johnny’s prone, corpse like figure, there is nothing to worry about and all will be well once the man they know arrives carrying the secret of all great gigs…..

After another two hours the man with the secret turns up and I realize with a start that I am the only one here not shooting up heroin.  The others look at me indulgently as they go about their business and a short time later everyone is ready and we go on to do the gig.  Maybe we play great, I was too frazzled to tell.

And so this is the start of a long year of madness.  My introduction to the other real Rock and Roll, the Wild Side that is heroin addiction. The Rock and Roll of waiting for drugs, any drugs and of madness, all mixed together with a big dollop of genius and pain. Of soul and tragedy. They are all fantastic musicians. Why oh why can’t they be great and not do heroin I naively ask God but God just laughs. You need to speak to the man down below he tells me, you’ll find he’s managing this one.

Well reader it is way beyond the scope of this musician to understand or even attempt to explain and I should know better than most.  After all my girlfriend of five years, the one I was living with at Pindock Mews is doing heroin too. Sid Vicious lived at our house. Junkies died here. The building is steeped in it. I’m already living it, knowing it’s blackness and utter inability to hear any voice other than it’s own.  The world of heroin has been articulated in much better ways than I ever could but I will say that it is living hell.

But I love playing with these guys, so how do I manage to keep playing with them and not get sucked into taking some sort of drugs just to deal with the situation. I don’t want to moralize. I’ve done my time with drugs in the past and did get burnt, but I never graduated to heroin. I was always too scared, heroin is using the devils cards to play for the stakes of credibility and enlightenment.  I don’t believe the odds are that good.

I grew to love the company of Jerry Nolan who turns out to be the sweetest guy and is such a brilliant, solid drummer. Even better, I get to relive all the stories of the Dolls I’d only read about in the past. We spend hours talking into the night at Pindock Mews and we play lots more shows around London, gigs such as The Hope and Anchor and Dingwalls.

Looking back, it is a blur of madness but I do have some random memories of those days:

Playing a small show in London and driving there in my tiny Fiat 500. Me, Thunders, Nolan, Henri Paul and 3 guitars sticking out of the roof. The rock and Roll car. Surreal. There’s a photo somewhere.

Johnny nearly O.D.’ing one night at Pindock Mews and me and Magenta having to keep walking him around the flat to keep his heart moving.  We put ice cubes down his pants – I can’t believe I’m writing this but we’d heard it helped and this guy was dying on us, slipping away so we had to try everything.  He finally pulled through after hours of walking but believe me this is a nightmare you do not want to experience.

Tj and Magenta DeVine

Going to play a show in Gottenberg with Johnny. The plane was about to take off without him from Heathrow as he was so late when he suddenly came strolling, zig zagging along the tarmac. Getting on the plane and charming all the hostesses, he  then pulling a syringe from his hat. I nearly died myself at that point.  We arrive at the show and Johnny’s opening line is “You’re all whores and I fucked all your mothers.” At that point he slithered down the mike stand and collapsed into the crowd. This whole stressful journey, all the waiting and he never played a note and there was a riot. I came home by boat on my own as Johnny and Jerry stayed in Sweden hooking up with Swedish girlfriends. Also on the boat was Alan Hauser, Johnny’s long suffering record company guy from Jungle Records who looked just as frazzled as I was.  How do you do this stuff when you’re young? Easy. Without fear, that’s the secret of youth.

At one stage Johnny, Nolan and Steve Jones were all living at Pindock Mews. Steve New had become a sometime member of the band as well, upping the heroin users to 3:1. We did do a great photo session one night though (pictured) but my regular bedtime routine is definitely disturbed. Having said that, when I look back, I realise I shared a house with some of the greatest guitarist of my generation. Surely some of it must have rubbed off?  They all showed me how to play things, little secrets and ways but as in so many situations like that, I didn’t realise what I had until it was gone.

Then was woken in the middle of the night by Johnny dancing round the sitting room like a screaming E.T rearranging the stereo and TV systems for some reason that I couldn’t begin to comprehend but he was totally certain of. Jones is driving an old beat up BMW. It has no tax or insurance.  He assures me that he has never registered with normal society.  It’s the Best Way. One night he gets arrested for drunk driving with no tax or insurance, wakes up in prison, gets discharged and drives home. So that way seems to work for him.

And then early one morning (well early on “Johnny time” which means before noon so it must have been important) Johnny and Jerry insist I drive them to the freight depot at Heathrow. Someone from New York has sent them clothes and money in a package. Toooooneeee, its cool, Johnny assures me in that New York whine. We drive off in my tiny little Fiat 500, with them crammed, all limbs and hair in the back and get there in record time. Johnny staggers into the depot, fully dressed as a pirate, and arrives back minutes later with a huge cardboard box. Its taped up like Houdini.  I admire the solid packing thinking he must have some really responsible friends back home and from the way the box is protected I can’t help thinking these must be really valuable clothes….

As we drive along the raised section of the M4 motorway Johnny and Jerry are tearing at the packaging, then tearing at the stinking clothing that it contains. “Puts off the tracker dogs Toooooneeeee” Johnny explains to my confused glances in the driving mirror, as he begins throwing the clothes out of the window of the Fiat.  And there in the center of the carton is the biggest bag of grass I have ever seen. Just in case any passing police cars fail to notice this tiny car full of mad men, Johnny rolls a giant spliff and waves it out of the window. Visibility inside the Fiat is now zero due to all the smoke which is good for two reasons.  One the police camera’s won’t be able to pick me out of a line up and two, by then I’m so stoned from inhaling all the smoke that it doesn’t worry me in the slightest that on top of everything else going on in my house, I am now apparently a drug smuggler.

And still I loved the playing.