chapter eleven “WE ASKED HIM, ‘ARE YOU MENTAL?’ ”
Despite whatever misgivings anyone in New York expressed about his marquee act, Howie Kelly was betting big on the Bonds. He planned tour dates for the band in the southern states, along the eastern seaboard, and in central California. And between those dates, at the special invitation of New Guard Pictures, he sent them to the Blue Ridge Mountains to film cameos for a biker B movie called Skulls in Their Wake. In the film, which remained unreleased until 1974, the Bonds provide background music for a bar fight and join a scene featuring dozens of extras riding through picturesque North Carolina towns.
CHET BOND:
The flick was shit, one of a thousand outlaw biker movies that they were churning out at that time, but the producers making it had brought in a script consultant for it, some local character who went by Howler and had been in and out of prison. His probation officer showed up to the bar where we were filming to check up on him, but Howler got the jump and slipped me some junk to hide in Beau’s guitar case. When he patted down clean and the PO left, Howler was very appreciative, so he offered to take us to an actual biker bar that sat deep in the woods, once the shoot was done. Our attitude was, Fuck the fake—let’s mix it up for real. We wanted more junk and more thrills, and the lovely ladies Howler promised they’d have on offer. A lot of it was legally sketchy, yeah. You might judge that, us wanting to have a firsthand experience, but ask yourself: How is that any different from Method acting?
We played the fight sequence, take after take after take, so goddamn boring I wanted to rip my hair out, but the studio had rented us chromed-out Harleys for the ride scenes and we borrowed them to get to this place. Well, technically we stole those bikes, I’ve gotta own that, but we brought them back eventually. We pulled up into a sea of choppers, some of them real beauties but none of them sweeter than the ones we had. We went inside and Howler vouched for us, but everybody got real cagey—they assumed we were pussies and poseurs, I guess; they didn’t know we’d come up hard-knocks just like them. So me and a couple of my brothers, we pulled out some cash and started settling tabs. Our good-faith show of respect to them. These guys, they didn’t really give much of a shit about the music, they weren’t easily impressed. But once they figured out we knew a little something about handling the equipment and that we had some cash we were willing to lay out, we were in real good with that chapter of the Danger Fiends. We were doing all kinds of crazy shit that night—God, I think we traded bikes with some of them and went on a midnight ride through the dark, playing chicken with the headlights off. I look back on that now and thank my Lord Jesus that he looks out for fools and babies—it was a miracle we didn’t kill our damn selves. Everything was about chasing a high.
We did talk about joining up as recruits, once the shit settled down. We partied with the Fiends chapter in Jacksonville, we gave them a nice donation to their clubhouse and a couple of their charities, we sampled some goods, and the word spread up and down the East Coast that we were bona fide.
Kelly maintains he was unaware of the increasingly blurred line between the Bonds’ persona and their real-life criminal associations. At the time, he says, he was focused on how he might best amplify their success, by using their fame to boost the label’s other, flailing artists—whether or not such creative attachments made any sense.
MARY SHARP, RIVINGTON ARTIST, 1968–72:
I was working on material for my second album when the Bond Brothers were making money. I had been doing all right—not charting like them, but I had a decent following in New York and was about to propose a move to LA, where the folkies on my vibe seemed to be evolving and gelling into something special.
Bob and I were in the studio, rehearsing and revising a couple things at the upright piano, when Howie brought in Chet Bond, who reeked of alcohol. It really bothered me that I couldn’t look him in the eyes; I could only see myself looking tiny and scared in the reflection of those obnoxious aviator sunglasses. And Howie says, “Mary, Mary, why don’t you come up with a duet, and Chet can help you out with it? This is my hit maker right here!” And I was thinking, Oh Christ, no! But I didn’t want to set off this lug of a man, so I tried to say, you know, “Well, I don’t think he’d like my music very much.” And Bob, bless his soul, tried to back me up by suggesting Nev Charles as a better fit if Howie wanted a duet. He could get Nev writing for me and for some of the other artists, he said, but Howie rejected that idea right away. I was trying to spout off another excuse when suddenly Chet picked me up—literally, he lifted me up off the piano bench. And he threw me across his shoulder and he started smacking me on the bottom and growling, “I like this one, Howie, I like this one!” I closed my eyes and prayed for it to end. When the two of them left I was hysterical, trembling, and Bob was trying to calm me down and saying he would fix it, he would fix it.
BOB HIZE:
Howie’s plan was to have a few of the other acts cut new records with the Bond Brothers as guests, the thinking being that the band was so hot in the moment they’d raise everyone up by association. I tried to keep that idea under wraps, but our dear Rosemary could be indiscreet—nearly all the artists got wind of it.
OPAL JEWEL, REGARDING HER FELLOW RIVINGTON ARTISTS:
Of course I told them that the Bonds shouldn’t be representing our label in the first damn place. When their album came out with that terrible cover, with the Confederate flag all over it, I went to a lot of these folks and asked them, Please, back me up in calling bull. Everybody was too scared to rock the boat. Once it looked like the Bonds were gonna gobble up space on their records, though? Suddenly these same people were up in arms. And that right there is very typical of white people—won’t do what’s right till they’re directly affected. I was willing to let them off the hook for that, though, if it meant we were finally gonna band together to say, Nah, we won’t participate in this Bond Brothers business.
BOB HIZE:
They were calling me up threatening a revolt, but I could feel Howie clamping down his jaw; he would drop every single one of them from the roster before he would drop the idea of these Bond Brothers cameos. A collaboration had to be done in some fashion in order to appease him, and it was on my shoulders to figure it out. My logic was, Let’s just do it in one go. One big show, nothing to be recorded for posterity, nobody’s work compromised, and it will be over. So the idea for Rivington Showcase, I’m ashamed to confess, was actually mine.
When I mentioned to Howie that a splashy showcase like this would probably attract the attention of the big boys, the Columbias and the RCAs, and that Rivington could even be acquired, he was sold. To be honest, I wanted something like an acquisition to happen, because even owning that small stake—some responsibility but not a lot of deciding power—was turning out to be a significant source of distress for me. I thought it might be best for Howie and me to cash out, if we could, and move on with our lives.
NEV CHARLES:
Hizey called in us talent—us dodgy leftovers, us losers with fuzzy mold round the edges—and we had this meeting where he floated the idea of a showcase headlined by the Bonds, and we asked him, Are you mental? I’d say we had a simultaneous panic attack about the Bonds leading some wretched singalong finale—sort of like they do at awards shows these days…. Artists who have no business being on a stage together made to sing some corny medley because somebody thought it was a game-changing idea, but really everyone is cringing out of their skin.
BOB HIZE:
I knew it would be a very hard sell, so I kept Howie at a distance during the negotiations. And I went into that meeting with an open mind and some concessions already decided—I promised them that we’d score a big venue for the showcase, that there’d be no duets, and that everyone would get their own short, separate set. One by one, they started to come around. Started to get excited, really.
OPAL JEWEL:
My mama was UAW [United Auto Workers]. So I should’ve known very well how to spot some scabs.
NEV CHARLES:
You have to understand that in a certain light, the Rivington Showcase was a stay of execution for me. I had just vowed, not three weeks earlier, that I was going to scrounge some under-the-table work to save up for a plane ticket home and maybe some cash besides. I had never had a real job and I wasn’t qualified for anything that would keep my hands in good strumming order, so I was preparing to prostrate myself before the gods of hard labor. I fully expected to be washing dishes, scrubbing toilets, laying traps for sewer rats—the bleakest of the bleak options, very dramatic. Ooh, that’s a good line, isn’t it? “Laying traps for sewer rats…”
Anyway, here was this last-ditch opportunity that was shaping up to be intriguing. And Bob was very open to negotiation, very open to making it what we needed it to be so it worked for us all.
OPAL JEWEL:
My good friend Nev Charles was sitting right next to me. And he was quiet while all the rest of them—Mary Sharp and [the Curlicutes’] Cherry Allison, et cetera—started cutting deals for more wardrobe money, extra time, stuff like that. I didn’t expect too much from them; I barely even knew them. But for those couple of minutes that Nev held the line, I can honestly say that I had never felt more like his partner. I was squeezing his hand under the table ’cause it was me and him in it together. We would never under any circumstances agree to play with those clowns. And then Bob offered him that [penultimate] time slot [considered the second-best in the lineup in terms of exposure, as invited press would likely all be in their seats], and I heard my friend Nev clear his throat and say, “Well…”
BOB HIZE:
I did manage to get Nev on board, but such a prominent slot wasn’t going to fly with him alone out there; at the time, he just couldn’t hold a crowd of that size. So of course I hoped Opal would perform, and that way Polychrome would be properly represented, properly promoted the way it always should have been. But I did give her the option of tapping out, if she felt that strongly opposed.
In the end, Opal Jewel, defeated, chose to make her own ask.
OPAL JEWEL:
I glared at Nev, who couldn’t even look me in the face, and I said, “If I’m going to sing, I want that baaaad motherfucker Jimmy Curtis on drums.”
Now, I could tell you I made that request because your daddy had played on the record and he knew all the songs already. I could tell you that if I was gonna play on the same bill as those dummies, I’d at least score a seriously fat fuck-you check for a Black man. It’s not as if those things would be untrue; it’s not as if I haven’t given those reasons before in every other interview I’ve done about why I chose to go along.
But the extra reason was that I was mad at Nev. And I asked for Jimmy, specifically, to mess with him.