56. danger boy

Nip Kicks: I think one of the turning points with the violence in the scene was when one of the Blake Street Boys, Tony, was murdered. He was stabbed seventeen times. Although it didn’t happen at a punk gig it struck some of us home, because the guy was eighteen years old. One of the nicest guys on Blake Street; one of the most innocent guys. The kind of guy who would never pick a fight, but would finish it.

Steven Leckie: We had two real hotshot London roadies, Gary Vortex and Scratch, and they were real, for real fighters, Scratch especially. There’d be these brawls that looked like scenes out of Raging Bull with Scratch taking on, I swear to God, like three of the Blake Street Boys. You could see Scratch, with like … He should get his nose fixed. I got mine broken then, too; you can sometimes see it. He got his smashed in; never got it fixed, though.

Steve Koch: It was almost typical that there would be a fight at a Turning Point gig. Big fights; sometimes the whole bar would erupt.

There was a bunch of Millie brothers, a whole bunch of them, east-end Irish kids: Relatively poor, feisty, looking for trouble. I kind of befriended Tim Millie and I remember him telling me one time, “I’ll fight anybody. I’ll fight any two guys. I don’t care.” And I’m thinking, Fight any two guys? I don’t even want to fight one guy.

But fighting for him was a way of life, and it was just fine. He’d fight any two guys right now. I remember seeing Joe Millie walk by once in a full body cast from his belt line up to his neck, arms out like this with pins along his neck holding his head up.

Steven Leckie: Lots of them are dead now, like the Millies. For the most part, they were pretty good. And lastly, they were a certain kind of bodyguard system.

That was part of the thing. When you went to a punk show you could sort of smell the blood, literally. I mean it. It does have a certain odour, with an earthy thickness to it.

I’m really lucky I got to do all that. Like I got to feel what people write about. Really, really, there’s a loneliness to it, but it’s a magnificent quest that only leads in a circle, ultimately. Because for some reason I never gave a shit about money, and I guess I kind of knew what I would and wouldn’t get from this life. So Blake Street Boys are tied in with that. I understood these guys. I understood that you’re the ones that aren’t gonna get a lot of the stuff in life, but you can get this. So I think that’s what their attraction was – that it was a for real thing. We had things that they could relate to, that they were doing. Yeah, that’s what they were attracted to, just the truth of it. We got a payoff, too. Having them around was a good buffer.

Sam Ferrara: Those guys used to follow us around to every gig and start shit. Well, Steve would instigate it, too. There was a point where we couldn’t play anywhere, hardly, because the bar was just like, “No, those boys will show up.”

Captain Crash: It was scary then, Blake Street Boys and stuff, eh? They all went to jail for murder, every single one of them, over the course of about seven, eight years.

Captain Crash: They killed people on Pape Avenue, they killed people on the Danforth, they killed people in the projects. One at a time, they went to jail.

Barrie Farrell: I was at one of the big wahoos at the Turning Point one time and I’ll tell ya, the first two guys to run out of there were Steve Leckie and Tank. For all his bravado and eating glass, they were the first out the door, man, ha ha ha.

Anna Bourque: Steven was such a shit disturber. He’d go, “Fight! Fight!” He’d push people to it, and he’d sneak to the back and have a few drinks and never get involved.

Nip Kicks: It would be funny to hear Steve’s take on the Blake Street Boys because his intent, or much of it, was to use them as his thugs, and it didn’t work out. It didn’t work out at all, because they saw through him as much as everybody else did.

They didn’t like the idea of being used, either. He would try to sic them on people.

Steven Leckie: Blake Street’s way different now, the whole city is, but they grew up together since they were little kids and they totally loved the Viletones, and I totally loved them. Because they were the ones that never get lionized, they were the disenfranchised, they were the Bowery Boys, and I had a, still do, soft spot for that – “I’m going to be your band,” and they’d be like, wow …

My main focus is the kid I’ll never meet in the back that it was not easy coming up with the fifteen bucks, probably can’t buy a T-shirt and drinks. That’s where my heart lies. Not to the guy who’s got a Hummer and Rolex sitting over there with a pretty good table. I hate that. So Blake Street would have represented the antithesis to that. Something like the Dishes was a very moneyed, very homosexual, pro-business kind of crowd, and we weren’t that. So I wanted to take it even further and actually let them know they could really hang with us.

* * *

Nip Kicks: Scratch made the headlines a couple of times. The first time was at a soccer game.

Ross Taylor: Scratch was a guy from England, a huge Chelsea football fan who for whatever reason had to come over here; family something or other. He didn’t really want to be here but was, and started exploring the punk scene and hooked up with the Viletones and became their roadie.

His second day here he sees a poster advertising a football game. So he goes to Varsity Stadium to see a football game. Of course, “football” to him was soccer, right? He sees these guys lining up and goes, “What the hell is going on here?” He gets drunk and goes to the field and climbs up the goal post. His picture made it into the Sun, hanging from the top of the goal post. The next picture was of the cops carrying him away. Ha ha ha.

Nip Kicks: The other time he made the news was when Scratch was arrested for wearing a dog collar. It was funny because I gave him the dog collar, he got arrested for a prohibited weapon kind of thing, and he fought it.

“Punkjunk: Glitter vs Criminal Code,” by Lorrie Goldstein [Toronto Sun, April 4, 1979]: Nick “Scratch” Bartlett…is to appear in court May 14 on a charge of carrying a prohibited weapon – a $25 spiked dog collar.

Margaret Barnes-DelColle: I think the law at the time was that it was illegal to have a spiked collar on your dog. They didn’t perceive that people were going to put it on their own necks or their own wrists.

At one point the police came in to New Rose and said I couldn’t sell that stuff because there was a law against it. I got a couple radio interviews and I got a write-up in the paper. But I still sold them.

The sales did increase, but I had to keep them behind the counter. They became kind of like contraband.

I’m sure there were fights where people got hit across the head with a bracelet, but they were truly a fashion thing.

Lucasta Ross: Lots of people got ripped to shreds with those pointy, pointy studs. They did use them as weapons, and sometimes not even on purpose. But you’re getting passionate with somebody and suddenly it’s like, “You’ve just gored me.” People would stick pins and things in themselves and if there was a fight or they were just dancing crazy they got ripped out of people’s faces. It was disgusting.

Freddy Pompeii: Certain kinds of spikes were illegal. We wore the highly illegal ones. We had to be real careful wearing them on the street because the cops would take them away from you. So in order not to be hassled all the time, there was certain stuff we could wear for show and then there’s certain stuff we would wear as the legal version on the street. But that was one of the things the cops jumped on right away.

It was sort of like a porcupine’s defense mechanism. Most punk rockers weren’t tough guys. They were mostly kids that were rejected in their neighbourhoods and their towns.

There would be one or two or three in each town and they would gather in Toronto, and they wore all this stuff to single themselves out so they could make friends of like character. They didn’t start wearing that stuff for violent intentions, but it sort of got that way after a while. A small guy could be a little bit more dangerous if he had studs around his neck. If a guy grabbed him by his dog collar, he was gonna get a two-inch spike in his hand. All a little guy would have to do was start swinging his arms around and if you got near him, you were gonna get cut. So they became a symbol of “don’t touch me.”

In the beginning they were wearing them because they didn’t want to wear turquoise bracelets or whatever else we were wearing in the ’60s anymore.

Nip Kicks: And it was Scratch who made it basically legal to wear a dog collar. They tried to have him arrested as it being a spiked wristband, but he fought it in court and he won. It was a little victory, because that’s when people could start wearing things that were not offensively spiked and get away with it. I remember that was kind of funny.

Paul Robinson: People used to just scream, “Hey Elvis!” at us all the time. We thought that was funny. Nobody had really seen people wearing black leather jackets and kind of looking rock ’n’ roll. All the other bands were hippies, so you’d walk down the street and they’d scream, “Hey, Elvis!” Or we’d be driving in the middle of the night up in the Rockies or something, and people would undo their pickup windows and point their shotgun at us. It was very strange. We were not normal by their standards.

I think I’d be more scared of it now than I was when I was twenty, though.

Michael Dent: It was pretty scary back then until it became safe, thanks to bands like the Police and Elvis Costello, and FM radio. People looked at you and they just didn’t understand, and because they didn’t understand they wanted to beat the fuck out of you.

Mark Gane: You’d walk up Spadina and guys from Scarborough would go, “Fag!” And you’d go, “What?” If you were dressing a certain way, you were automatically some sort of fag. And they would throw that word like you were supposed to get into some fight with them. They were inviting you to get pounded out.

That was supposed to be really insulting, to be gay. And you’d go, “Who cares? Go back to Scarborough.”

Suzanne Naughton: I had things happen to me that were so weird. I was standing at the corner of College and Yonge, waiting for the streetcar, and this guy threw a beer can in my face. I got spit on all the time because I was wearing a leather jacket.

Nip Kicks: It’s so funny when you think about the persecution the punks had at the time. Some days it was scary to walk down the street. That’s when the headbangers and the disco folks, before they co-opted our clothing, beat us up for it, or they’d try. So even walking down Yonge Street was a risk. They’d attack almost anybody, even our girlfriends.

Suzanne Naughton: One time a guy threatened he was going to bash my head in with a brick. We were wearing leather and stuff and these two guys were backing out of a parking lot and didn’t check behind them. So I smacked my hand down on the back of his car and said, “Watch where you’re going.” And he got out and he said, “Don’t you hit my fucking car,” and I said, “Oh grow up,” and walked away.

So they followed us in their car and cornered us where Dundas Square is now. They pulled up on the sidewalk, came out, one had a tire iron, the other one picked up a brick and said, “Fuckin’ dykes, we’ll kill you. We’ll bash your fuckin’ head in.” They were so stupid. It was ridiculous.

I talked him out of it. There were a few times like that. A lot of ugly things like that happened. People got punched in the face for no reason; girls, guys, whatever. You had to learn to run on stiletto heels.

Wayne Brown: We had a big blowout at the Turning Point one night when the Viletones were playing. These kids from a dance club down the street all came to the show with baseball bats and they did some serious harm.

Nip Kicks: Johnny Garbagecan and maybe Ruby T’s had gotten in a confrontation with a couple of the guys from the King Cole Room, which was one door over, ha ha ha. I think one of the disco guys had gotten cut, I heard with his own knife, and this whole scene had started.

One poor guy came running into the Turning Point where the Viletones were playing, all bruised up, and said, “There’s a hundred people out there!” And there were. They had come back with their uncles, nephews, cousins; there was like three hundred disco people out there and they just filled the whole of Bloor Street.

Suzanne Naughton: I forget who came up to me; it might have been Tank. He said, “Don’t say anything, just get up and follow me. There’s a hundred Italian guys waiting outside with baseball bats.” So we followed him and went out the back entrance.

Of course Steven hears this and he’s right down the stairs.

Punk March / photo by Ross Taylor

Nip Kicks: In the club Steve rallied all the troops – “Danger Boy” – and he went down the back, ha ha ha, and everybody else went down the front. Maybe a hundred and fifty or so, whoever was in the club that could fight, went out front and there was a huge brawl all the way up and down Bloor Street from Philosopher’s Walk from Avenue Road to Bedford.

Wayne Brown: They hurt quite a few of us, enough that a few of us went to the hospital. That was a pretty scary scene. I always escaped, ha ha ha. I always escaped. I’m not a fighter. I will fight, but I’m not a fighter.

But it’s funny, because who did I escape with? Steven Leckie, ha ha ha, who started it all. He wasn’t much of a fighter either. He was an instigator. Yeah, I escaped with him in a cab. All I can remember is looking through the back window and there were people swinging bats on Bloor Street, and people going down. It was just like a small mob scene outside of the Turning Point. It was such a mess.

Ross Taylor: When they were doing the Turning Point shows, there was a gang of Italians that dominated that neighbourhood that would hassle them all the time. Leckie and the Viletones and a bunch of other people, they decide they’re gonna have this Punk March down Bloor Street, right through the heart of this neighbourhood, to proclaim their rights.

James Bredin: It was this anemic march down Yonge Street with about five cops. They actually weren’t sure what was going to happen so a whole bunch of cops showed up at first, and they sort of sized it up and most of them left.

John Kancer: Everybody was giving punks a hard time, and this march turned out to be a bloody mess.

Punk March / photo by Ross Taylor

Sam Ferrara: I think Scratch is the one that started it. He mouthed off to one of the Portuguese or Italian guys and hit them or something, and all of a sudden all these people came. The whole neighbourhood attacked us. But the whole march was about, “Can’t I just walk down the street?” Just because you looked a bit different you’d get hassled. I was gonna get a T-shirt that said “I’m Italian Too,” ha ha ha.

Ross Taylor: They had a banner with them, and in no time flat they’re descended upon by this bunch of Italians and get in this huge fight.

Sam Ferrara: I had this big motorcycle belt thing, and there were five guys on me and I was swinging it around. Nip got his head punched in, and Scratch did, and a few other people did, too. But we made it, ha ha ha.

Nip Kicks: It was interesting how much prejudice was imposed upon us, and yet we’re one of the most open, welcoming groups around and quite self-policing. We didn’t like bullies and bullies soon found themselves taken care of, ha ha ha.

It’s funny to see how that worked. There was that diversity where you would be able to have long hair, short hair, no hair, blue hair, green hair. Every sexual orientation, every colour; I thought that was such a cool thing, and yet how close-knit a community it could be because of that.

Suzanne Naughton: We were iconoclasts. That’s basically it. When you are, you have to expect the consequences of your actions and we were quite prepared for that. I don’t ever remember backing down from a fight.

Nip Kicks: Again, it doesn’t really matter who’s getting hurt, you’ve got to do something. Part of the whole punk scene thing is you don’t stand by and watch.

All those incidents, though, they brought people closer together. They bonded people in some ways, just like anything else. Like a tough hardship. It was a lot of fun – crazy, but fun.