THE RITZ
The building was the old Webster Hall. It was built in 1886 and had a long history as a nightclub, entertainment and concert hall. In the thirties and forties, it had been a speakeasy of sorts, when prohibition was flatly ignored. In 1980, it was owned by Casa Galicia, a cultural organization representing the people of Galicia, Spain.
For me, it was The Wizard of Oz. The deco architecture of the main hall was intoxicating. When I entered, I was swept up by the grandeur of the space. Suddenly, I looked up. Standing in the ornate balcony surrounding the hall, a man was watching me. It turned out to be Jerry Brandt, the wizard himself.
Jerry was a true icon in the music world. Having started at the William Morris Agency, he discovered Carly Simon, The Voices of East Harlem, Jobriath, and helped bring the Rolling Stones to the United States. And, in 1980, he was at Webster Hall, planning to open the first rock club that had a twenty-foot screen, showcasing the hottest new videos. It would be called The Ritz.
I waved up to him.
“We’re not even open yet kid,” he said. “What can I help you with?”
“I want a job!” I said
“Do you have a résumé?”
“No,” I told him. “I work in a pharmacy and go to the School of Visual Arts.”
For some reason, he was amused and he asked me up to his office.
We immediately connected and started talking everything music—from the Great American Songbook to the popular music of the day. As we continued our conversation, Jerry realized how much I knew about the New York music scene and who were the hottest up-and-coming acts. Jerry said, along with my vast musical knowledge, I had a sparkle in my eye that he liked, and he hired me immediately.
“You’re going to get my coffee, open my mail, and screen all my phone calls.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. I was being hired to work in the music business. My dreams were starting to come true.
Every afternoon, after I finished at the pharmacy, I dashed over to The Ritz, brought Jerry his coffee, and assisted him with everything.
During that process, I was privy to all of his conversations with booking agents, reviewing the monthly schedule of bands, and going over the budget. I asked a ton of questions. I was a quick study and, very soon, I became the assistant booker.
I worked with Jerry in bringing in everyone from PiL to Divine to the Misfits, U2, Ray Charles, Jerry Lee Lewis, BB King, the historic return of Tina Turner, Prince, The Police, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and many others.
About 6 months after I started, tragedy hit the rock ’n’ roll world. On December 8, 1980, John Lennon was returning from a recording session with Yoko Ono for what would be the Double Fantasy album, when he was shot and killed outside of his home, The Dakota. It felt like a kick in the heart for everyone. I was numb, and so was the rest of the world. We really didn’t know how to process it—why anyone would want to kill such a gentle spirit, a true icon—it sucked the life out of all of us.
A few weeks after Lennon’s death, Jerry’s phone rang at The Ritz, and I picked it up.
“Jerry Brandt’s office, how may I help you?” I said.
“Hi, it’s Yoko Ono. I would like to speak with Mr. Brandt.”
“Of course,” I said, and I quickly transferred the call to Jerry.
Yoko was aware of The Ritz as a new, unique club and she wanted to premiere a video of her song “Walking on Thin Ice.”
We were certainly surprised to hear from her that soon and equally surprised that she had begun working on a promotional video so shortly after John’s death. The video included clips of their family life, intimate moments of them in bed, and powerful images of her walking defiantly down 72nd Street, near their home.
Being the emotional artist Yoko is, I believe she was using her creativity to work through her unimaginable grief. Not only was John carrying the tape of “Walking on Thin Ice” when he was murdered, but it was the first time since 1964 that he had used his Beatles Rickenbacker on a recording, and it was also the last song on which he ever played a guitar solo.
The Ritz had become known everywhere as a revolutionary nightclub because it was the first to feature a huge video screen in the front of the main hall. Yoko wanted to debut the video of John on that screen because she felt it would get the most attention there. It was an inspiring gift, and heartbreaking to watch. The video was so important because it kept John’s spirit alive for Yoko, their family, and all the rest of us—his loving fans.
A few months later, I booked Bow Wow Wow, a new band created by Malcolm McLaren, previously the manager of the Sex Pistols. He had pulled together a few members of Adam and the Ants to create the band, and added a young, spunky, unknown thirteen-year-old singer named Anabella Lwin. McLaren had discovered her when she was singing in a local laundry shop.
Bow Wow Wow was scheduled to headline at The Ritz, and it was going to be a huge weekend because it would be their U.S. debut. It was a sold-out event. I felt even more certain about what a great job I was doing at the club.
But a week before the band was scheduled to arrive, McLaren called and said they had to cancel. I was completely thrown. What the fuck? McLaren told me that Lwin’s mother objected to having her thirteen-year-old daughter travel overseas. I started to panic. I was becoming furious with him. I shouted over the phone that we would pay for her mother to accompany her to New York City. I promised to provide whatever she needed to make it happen—any accommodations, anything. But her mother wouldn’t budge—she wouldn’t give permission to allow Annabella to travel. They weren’t coming.
I totally freaked out—everybody in the office totally freaked out. We had sold three thousand tickets for a two-night event. How were we going to tell the owners of the club—the Leibowitz brothers—that we suddenly had no show and would have to return everyone’s money?
I wasn’t sure what to do. My brain started working overtime. We had a sold-out weekend with no entertainment. I had to think quickly, now that Bow Wow Wow had totally blown us off.
Then suddenly, I remembered Public Image Limited was in town on a press junket for their new album release, Flowers of Romance.
I called Liz Rosenberg, head of publicity at Warner Bros. The stars were definitely aligning for me, because the band just happened to be in her office at the moment I called. I made them aware of the Bow Wow Wow cancellation and that I thought it would be an awesome idea to have PiL perform in their place that weekend. I asked if I could send a car for them to have a meeting with Jerry and me to discuss how we could make the event happen.
After a few hours back and forth, we came to some kind of agreement with the band. Meanwhile, they had arrived in the U.S. with no instruments because they were only here to do press for their new album. We had to think fast because we only had forty-eight hours before the show. We talked about renting a Prophet 5 Synthesizer for Keith Levene, so he could program music into it. They knew about the twenty-foot white video screen, and they loved the experimental performance aspect of it all.
After we settled everything, and once word got out that PiL were appearing, it became the talk of the town. We got WLIR to promote ticket giveaways, and the excitement in the air was over the top. Both nights quickly sold out.
PiL intend to . . . be up on stage, but they plan to spend the show completely behind a twenty foot by twenty-foot video screen . . . Behind that screen the set up almost looks normal . . . There’s a drum kit, a synthesizer bank, a few guitars and basses, two video cameras and a record player . . . They could play records, play white noise, make shadow puppets, tell jokes, even, for all we know, play a set—but the key thing seems to be that from no vantage point out front will anyone be able to see any of PiL in the flesh.1
Little did we know, however, that the evening would turn into a violent free-for-all. At the start of the show, the song “Flowers of Romance” blasted through the speakers, but five minutes later, you could feel that something was not right.
John and the band refused to come out in front of the screen. PiL saw this event as a performance art piece, but the fans wanted to see a concert. They wanted to hear the band play and play furiously—basically, they wanted Johnny Rotten in action.
But they didn’t get that, and the audience went ballistic. They threw bottles at the huge video screen. Chairs flew everywhere. The crowd pulled on the screen, tearing it down, ripping holes in it and smashing bottles on the stage.
John still refused to come out front, because to him, this was not a gig. He periodically played improvised parts of PiL songs, which infuriated the crowd.
The agitated audience starting hissing and booing, giving PiL the middle finger, screaming: “Fucking rush the Stage!”
“Fuck you, Keith”
John kept aggressively teasing the audience: “Am I wonderful? Are you getting your money’s worth?”
He continued in an obnoxious tone: “It’s so nice to be in your wonderful city! You’re what I call a passive audience!”
The crowd screamed back: “Fuck you!”2
I was shocked as I watched from the balcony, and Jerry was livid. As the crowd completely trashed the place, Jerry furiously marched backstage; I followed him. Jerry insisted that John perform for the crowd, but he refused. Finally, Jerry closed down the show and the club for the whole weekend. In the end, it was a combination of John’s ego, sarcasm, and cynicism that created the mayhem. The local news went wild, as did the international music papers:
That anything came together at all was the mastermind of Michael Alago, a slight, pretty and effeminate man who books The Ritz. . . . Public Image Ltd . . . obliterated those boundaries between theater and real life, between the mock violence and the implied threat of the Dead Kennedys or the Sex Pistols and the real desire of an audience to destroy a band and everything they stood for, and the encouragement of the band for them to do so.3
After the show, a bunch of us, including photographer Laura Levine, gathered in the dressing room. Scott Rubinoff, a big PiL fan, whose head was bleeding from the crowd’s attack earlier, was there as well—he was so excited to meet John. We all drank up a storm, celebrating the chaos of the show. An unpredictable but lovely thing came out of it for me as well—a close, personal, and professional friendship with John Lydon—one that lasts to this day.
Public Image Ltd. is still remembered for a 1981 New York City show at The Ritz (now Webster Hall), where it performed behind a screen, with Mr. Lydon taunting the audience, until the crowd rioted, hurling beer bottles and pulling down the stage set. Band revivals are good box office, as Mr. Lydon knows from his Sex Pistols reunions. But this PiL is no joke.”4
The following fall, I went to the UK to scout out bands to perform at The Ritz. I was there for a few weeks and I saw Bauhaus, Altered Images, the Thompson Twins, Theater of Hate, The Cramps, and Echo and the Bunnymen at a Festival in Leeds, as well as Depeche Mode on Top of the Pops in London.
One night I went to the club Heaven, under Charing Cross Road, to see Divine perform, when I was joined by Stiv Bators.
We ended up standing at the bar, having a long talk. Stiv was pretty depressed. He didn’t know what he should do as a performer outside of the Dead Boys. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to return to the States or stay in Europe and continue playing with his new band, Lords of the New Church. He was involved with a woman in London and complained that women were always his downfall.
Suddenly, we felt the presence of a bunch of skinheads circling us. They started calling us “poofs”—British slang for faggots. Being from Brooklyn, I wasn’t going to take any of their shit. Glaring at them, I said, “There’s no problem here, guys.”
Stiv and I finished our beers and I whispered to him, “Let’s piss in our beer mugs!”
We quickly turned around, whipped out our cocks, and pissed in the mugs. Then we offered the two mugs to the skinheads as a peace offering. They took huge gulps of what they thought was beer and at that moment I said to Stiv:
“Get ready to run!”
We thought this was hilarious, but of course we didn’t want to get our asses kicked either. The skinheads spit out the piss and sneered at us. We immediately swung around and ran backstage into Divine’s dressing room, slammed the door, and locked it.
Divine was painting on his last eyebrow. He turned and looked at us. “What kind of trouble are you in now?”
We fell onto the ground, grabbing our stomachs, laughing until it hurt.