chapter fifteen “CLICK, CLICK, CLICK”
After squealing up to the curb in a five-van cavalry, the NYPD stormed the theater. In the lobby, Rosemary Salducci, Bob Hize, and Howie Kelly were among those roughly shoved aside with shields and threatened over bullhorn with arrest. Helpless, the three of them were spat outside in the resulting surge toward the exits. So was Virgil LaFleur, who’d had a terrifying view of Opal falling on the stage before getting swept down from the balcony. Outside on the ruined red carpet was a full theater’s worth of people frantically searching for friends from whom they’d been separated. Screaming, shoving, punching.
ROSEMARY SALDUCCI:
I managed to find Bob, and we clutched each other’s hands and made our way to the corner so we could still see what was happening and try to account for all our people. He was whispering prayers, over and over. You gotta understand, we didn’t know who was gonna make it out. We didn’t know who had gone out the back alley, who was still trapped inside, who was hurt. We never even knew what happened to the Bonds till the next day when Chet, that coward, showed up at my desk asking for money to bail out some of their buddies.
Photographer Marion Jacobie was among those still in the theater. As soon as Opal Jewel had stepped onto the stage, Jacobie, anticipating more drama, had raced down toward the front of the auditorium; when the fight broke out, she recalls, one of the Fiends forced her to pull out the film she had in her camera and dump out the contents of her backpack. Jacobie, however, had kept a spare roll in her pocket, and as police stormed the premises she discreetly reloaded her Leica.
MARION JACOBIE:
They sent a bunch of them in riot gear—some genius among them had decided the best way to handle an already hectic situation was to toss tear gas, as if they were fumigating for roaches. It wasn’t a lot of it and, as I understand it, it was mild as those things go. But it doesn’t take much when you’re indoors, so those of us still in that theater were dying. Hacking our guts up, scattering to whatever exits we could for fresh air. I made it out the lobby doors and there were more cops lined up outside, pushing the crowd back with batons and waiting to make arrests. One moved toward me but I fumbled for the press credential around my neck and held it up and he left me alone after I promised to stay out of their way.
OPAL JEWEL:
Everyone else who had been on the stage had run out; it was only me and Nev. I could hear the sirens, the bullhorns. Nev was curled up next to me groaning and gasping—they had knocked the air out of him and banged up a couple of his ribs. I couldn’t catch my own breath to speak. I just knew we needed to get out; we needed to get Jimmy out. I nudged Nev with my good foot to get him up, and he rolled over to his hands and knees. I climbed up on his back, wrapped my arms and legs around him, and he half crawled, half dragged me toward that set of steps at the side of the stage. He grabbed onto a rail and stumbled up to his feet and I almost fell off. My ankle was screaming, but I managed to hold on long enough for him to get down the stairs, and then he clasped his arms around his back so that they were holding me up. He started staggering down a side aisle, heading for the front doors. I was trying to tell him, “Stop, stop, get Jimmy!” But either no sound was coming out my mouth or he just wasn’t paying me no mind. I was trying to stiffen my body, jerk him back to the place where I saw Jimmy slide down, but Nev just kept stumbling forward.
MARION JACOBIE:
When my vision got a little clearer I found a decent position around the cops that had a good view on the doors if I held my camera high enough, and I rooted myself there even though I probably should have gone to the hospital to get my lungs checked out. The lights of the marquee were still up, plus the lights from the squad cars and ambulances…. I kept one arm up, the one that held my camera, and I braced my elbow with my other hand to try to keep it steady. Almost everybody was out by then, and a lot of the time I was bent over in a coughing fit. But every time I saw feet coming out, I clicked the shutter. Click, click, click.
OPAL JEWEL:
Must have been seconds after she got her damn picture that Nev collapsed and we were both down on that carpet, gasping to get some air. I saw more hard shoes running toward us and by instinct I curled up in a ball right on top of Nev, but it was just the paramedics. I remember screaming for them to go back and get Jimmy, but nobody would listen. Nobody even seemed to know what I was screaming about. I threw a fit in the back of the ambulance. I didn’t want them to fix me till I knew how he was, but when we got to the hospital they just grabbed me up by the arms and wrestled me onto a gurney like a slab of meat, and they rolled me to some back area where I guess folks could be spared the sight of me. They pinned me down and Nurse Ratched came in and gave me a shot.
MARION JACOBIE:
I didn’t even know what gold I had. Wallace [Jopson] found me out front of the theater and offered to let me come to the Times newsroom with him. It wasn’t far, so we just hoofed it [to the Times Square office], but he had to lead me by the hand because I was still coughing and my vision wasn’t 100 percent.
We got there and he was making his pitch to the page-one editors, telling them I maybe had some art that could go with the story. I had never worked for the Times before, but they let me go into the darkroom with one of the photo guys, and while the roll was developing I could hear the guy say, “Holy shit.” Turns out most of it was bad, blurry shots you couldn’t make out—but then there was the one. A very good one. We brought the contact sheet to Wallace so he could peek through the loupe, and I said to him, “I’m sorry, my eyes still aren’t right, but aren’t these the ones who were up on the stage? Isn’t that the crazy girl?”
I hung around until the copy boys brought the first papers hot off the press up to the newsroom. At first I was disappointed that my picture hadn’t made page one, but it was hard to stay that way once I saw how giant they’d run it inside. So even though I’d been up all night, there was no way I was just gonna go home and go to sleep. I tucked my paper under my arm and walked all the way to Chelsea as the sun came up, and I felt a little surge every time I passed a newsstand and saw the stacks arriving. I stopped somewhere and treated myself to steak and eggs, and showed the waitress my teeny little credit line: “Marion Jacobie, Special to the New York Times.” When I finally climbed the stairs to my apartment, exhausted, I could already hear my phone ringing off the hook.
OPAL JEWEL, SHAKING HER HEAD WHEN ASKED WHAT SHE FEELS WHEN SHE SEES JACOBIE’S EVOCATIVE PHOTOGRAPH, WHICH I’D SET ON THE TABLE IN FRONT OF US:
Nice try, but nah. Go ahead and put that away.
I’d hoped that my personal ties to this history would give me a leg up on those who’ve gone before me in attempting to pierce Opal Jewel’s facade, but just as I’d feared while preparing for this interview, she initially refused to ruminate on The Photo or its significance to her career. She also maintained a remarkable stoniness when recounting the play-by-play of that night, and the repercussions of her choosing Nev over my father. “You’ve very politely asked me what happened, and I’ve very politely told you,” she said to me at one point, after I’d rephrased the same question a number of times, and I’d (very politely) backed off.
As for my other sources, many seemed eager to explore the topic of regrets. I asked every person who’d been a part of Rivington Showcase to tell me the single biggest one they carried.
MARY SHARP:
I regret that the world can be so unkind, so ungenerous. That people still haven’t learned how to love, in 1971 or 2016.
HOWIE KELLY:
That the venue turned out to be a turd wrapped in red velvet. This is what you get when you try to kiss the press’s ass with chichi shit, when what you need to do is put on a no-frills rock-and-roll show with people who know how to put it on right.
ROSEMARY SALDUCCI:
Maybe I should’ve asked to be on their little planning committee. [Rolling eyes] Sometimes men just aren’t good with the details, you know. I woulda thought to ask [the Smythe’s managers] about the security. I had four knucklehead brothers who woulda done the job for cheap.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
In those days I worked mostly on feeling and natural instinct, and I was boundlessly creative… but I can admit that I lacked the finer tuning to detect the line between provocation and recklessness. Of course I couldn’t have imagined what Mad was going to do up on that stage with the impromptu garment we’d made. In hindsight, I might not have been quite so playful. Fashion can be a serious thing.
Also, I would have carried a good pair of shears. For shredding the offending item, yes, before it could do harm. [Pause] For defensive purposes as well.
CHERRY ALLISON:
It sounds crazy now, but back then people tried to tell me we had riled up the guys because of the sexy way we were dressed—even a few women, those Phyllis Schlafly types, said we made them more crazy and aggressive. Can you believe it? Well, unfortunately, for a long time I did. Of course, it’s different today. People will read my story or the stories Rosemary and Mary Sharp probably told you, and they’ll say, My God, Cherry, that’s sexual assault! And they’d be absolutely right. So no, I don’t have any regrets. None of it was my fault.
MARION JACOBIE:
When I was going through a tough divorce in the eighties, I made a financial decision to sell the rights [surrounding The Photo] to a picture collection. I get a small royalty every time they license it for books and stuff, but I don’t have a say where it goes and I haven’t always been happy to see how it’s used.
JOHN SQUINE:
I can tell by the questions you’re asking that you think me and Sol should’ve gotten involved in that fight. So let me ask you a question in return, and I don’t mean anything offensive by it, but: Do you have any kids? No? Well, at the time I had two babies already, and Sol, he had three. So we backed away, man, and got out early on. But to tell you the truth, if I weren’t a dad? I probably would’ve been right in the mix with my bass in my hand, swinging away to help my buddy Jimmy.
What I really regret is being a chickenshit when it came to your mom. Jimmy was my friend, and I should have been there more for his wife. I should have paid her a visit after you were born, instead of sending along a gift like an asshole. But I was feeling guilty because I knew that he’d been fucking up, and I had my own family to protect, and it was just so easy to let things slip. When you talk to her, will you please tell her hello from me? And that I’m sorry?
BOB HIZE:
There are a great many regrets, but I suppose they all fall under the same umbrella: failing to act always from a place of integrity and love. I knew I never should have worked with the Bond Brothers in the first place, but I helped lead the charge, didn’t I? And from that one bad decision, all the others flowed.
NEV CHARLES:
I regret being redundant as I must tell you once again, and hopefully for the last, that I do not, cannot, remember much of anything about that window of time, or offer you anything more than the obvious wish that the night had been peaceful. A terrible moment, but I’m hoping we can move to the good that came out.
CHET BOND:
Well, I’ve been trying to give my apologies. Not everybody’s picked up the phone to accept them, so that’s part of the reason I decided to talk to you for this book. And I really do thank you for that opportunity. You’re the only person who’s bothered to meet me on my turf, to hear what Chet Bond had to say. So what I’ll tell you is this: The drugs are the regret of my life. I let ’em cook my eggs for almost thirty years, and I know that I caused a lot of pain, that I lost so much. My record deal, [a relationship with] my brother, sometimes even my freedom [following several arrests].
But you know what helped me? Years and years later, hearing how Nev Charles come up from that bottom he hit. Uppers, downers, it don’t matter—he and I both know they will fuck your life sideways. And one day I was in an emergency clinic right near where we’re sitting—I had knocked a couple teeth out after some addict bullshit in the middle of a Saturday—and they had some dusty old magazines spread out in the waiting room. Wouldn’t you know it, there was a copy of yours with Nev Charles on the cover. I picked it up and inside was that story of him after the rehab, talking ’bout his new direction. And I thought, Well, I’ll be a son of a gun. It still took me a while to get clean, but I figured if that pansy got another shot as a new man, maybe someday I’d get the monkey off my back too.
And it just makes me chuckle thinking ’bout how the Lord works, because I swear I never thought I’d listen to a word that guy had to say to me again. [Snorting when asked to clarify] That slick sonofabitch… He ain’t tell you ’bout how he stole his slot back? How he was the one give me the heads up that my flag was gone, and got me all worked up thinking your daddy had took it? If he’d kept his mouth shut, who knows? I probably wouldn’t have even missed it till later, till long after the Bond Brothers took the stage and kicked some ass. Musically speaking, I mean.