One floor below me, my mother putters across brown-and-ivory shag, gossips into her lime-green rotary phone, watches Wheel of Fortune, mixes almonds with the green beans. In the evenings, we walk around the artificial pond and feed the ducks. On weekends, we go to Costco. I eat a hot dog. She buys detergent, toilet paper, tuna packed in water, garbage bags. Then home, always home, where the private airplanes flying into Palwaukee regional buzz overhead from 5 A.M. until sundown. On earth, there are few places less rock ’n’ roll than Wheeling, Illinois. Yet here I am, drying out with mother, seeing my book contract through.
Ruth doesn’t call. She doesn’t e-mail. No one does, anymore. My project is simultaneously losing steam and focus. Pollack’s been dead eight years now, but it seems like eighty. Writing about the 1970s feels like writing about the 1870s. It’s a vast, absurd gulf of time.
Still, the manuscript and memory summon me back.
It was Memorial Day weekend, 1973, and we’d all been invited to Memphis for the First Annual Association of Rock Writers Convention. One hundred and forty tickets paid by Ardent and Stax records to promote Black Oak Arkansas and Big Star. Neither of the bands had any commercial viability. I’d said so in the Voice. Still, I took the trip to support my old friend Greg Shaw, who was trying, against all hope, to unionize America’s rock critics. When he told me on the phone, I laughed.
“That’s like trying to lasso the wind,” I said.
“What a crummy metaphor,” he said.
The air in Memphis was thick and viscous. A mosquito flew up my nose. My linen shirt instantly soaked through with sweat.
Shaw met me at the gate and was nice enough to carry my typewriter.
“They’re all here,” he said. “Meltzer showed up, and Lenny Kaye.”
“What about Lester?” I said.
“Lester doesn’t miss a party,” Shaw said. “The whole staff of Creem drove down, in a stolen van.”
Then he was silent.
“What?” I said.
“I don’t know how to tell you this.”
“What?”
“Pollack got in this morning.”
My first reaction was shock, followed by surprise. It couldn’t be. Pollack was dead. I’d had him killed, by goons, two years earlier. Yet he wasn’t dead, or so Greg was telling me.
“Are you sure it’s Pollack,” I said, “and not an impostor?”
“Unmistakable,” Greg said.
Somehow I wasn’t angry. Barbara had been relentlessly unfaithful to me, according to the detective agency I’d hired. Her cineaste persona was a front; she’d slept with every half-baked Lothario in rock, including James Taylor, who gave her free cocaine. Over the course of two weeks, through relentless therapy, I’d come to blame Barbara for the incident, not Pollack. After all, I realized, he was driven by a relentless priapism beyond that of normal men. My second divorce hadn’t been his fault.
We got to the Holiday Inn. Pollack was atop a coffee table, slugging Jack Daniel’s, while the other rock critics gazed at him in awed rapture.
“A toast to Memphis, the city of my youth!” he said.
He belted the bottle.
Lester Bangs hopped onto the table next to him.
“Fuck you, Pollack!” Bangs said.
He took a great chug of cough syrup.
“I’m the King of Rock Critics!” Bangs said.
“No,” Pollack said. “It is I!”
“Me!” said Bangs.
“Me!”
“Me!”
“Me!”
Bangs saw me at the check-in desk and bounded over.
“Paul St. Pierre!” he said. “Oh, Paul! How I’ve longed to see you again, you sweaty bastard!”
He wriggled like a puppy and wrapped me in an obnoxious hug. His right hand slipped a joint into my breast pocket. His left hand patted my butt.
“Put in a good word for me at Fusion,” he said.
Behind us, Pollack hovered, like a one-headed Cerberus.
“Hey, Paul,” Pollack said.
“Hey.”
“I’m sorry I nailed your wife.”
“That’s OK,” I said. “I’m sorry I pushed you out a fourth-story window.”
“You gave me amnesia.”
“Sorry.”
We hugged. Pollack smelled worse than ever. He sobbed in my ear. But that moment passed, as all moments must, and I had the porter carry my bag upstairs.
Later, buses waited outside to take us to a show where Black Oak Arkansas was going to play nude by the Mississippi. The buses were appointed with buckets of free booze and fried chicken. They were monuments of payola on wheels.
In the front of the bus, Furry Lewis played acoustic.
“This is a song by an old friend of mine, Willie Jefferson,” he said.
Lester threw an empty plastic bottle of Romilar at him.
“Shut up, old man!” he said. “I hate the blues! Jim Dandy to the rescue!”
Furry Lewis looked genuinely sad, almost frightened.
“Naw,” Lester said. “I love the blues!”
Pollack stood in the aisle, bottle in each hand, and told stories.
“So Johnny Thunders and I were in the back room at Max’s, and I said to Bebe Buell, you can blow me, but only if we figure out a way to take heroin anally. Todd Rundgren was really pissed, and he threw his fur coat on the floor….”
I sat in the back, ignored and unrespected. Here I was, an increasingly wealthy and respected academic and a lover of some of the world’s best, most original music. I’d lived a life full of adventure, or at least in proximity to it. Of all the people who’d ever breathed, I counted myself among the top one percent in terms of income and comfortable circumstance. And there was Neal Pollack, a disgusting, poverty-drenched slob, a professional loser. This pretentious bloated nightmare of a man was despised by all but his small coterie of pasty disciples.
I was jealous of him.
The attempts to organize the critics went nowhere. Seventy-five of us showed up for a Saturday meeting, seeking air-conditioned shelter from a sticky wind, which was the first sign of an apocalyptic tornado bearing down on Memphis. Seventy-three of us, including me, were drunk. Meltzer stood on his chair and demanded that the liquor companies pay rock writers from now on. “We’re their best customers!” he said. You could never tell if he was joking or not.
In the end, we concluded that writers didn’t get paid enough.
“No shit,” Pollack said. “I’ve made ten dollars since 1970, and I’m the best writer in the room.”
But Pollack joined the union anyway. It immediately disbanded over an argument about David Bowie. An hour later, we re-formed, and he joined it again. Later, at a Big Star show, he leapt onstage, kicked over an amp, grabbed the microphone from Alex Chilton, and said, “This is useless! They’re taking advantage of us! We’re all a bunch of industry whores! But the music is pretty good!”
Next to me, a nineteen-year-old sophomore from Oberlin University gasped.
“My god,” the kid said. “I never thought of it that way before. Rock is an industry.”
“Didn’t you read my piece in Rolling Stone?” I said. “I figured that out two years ago.”
“Neal Pollack is brilliant,” said the kid.
Lester Bangs came up behind me, shirtless.
“Fuck this,” he said. “Let’s take some acid.”
Later, Lester, Meltzer, Stanley Booth and I got into a brand-new Cadillac the color of pea soup. Neal Pollack was in the driver’s seat.
“You can’t drive, Pollack!” said Lester.
We roared out of the parking lot.
“Where’d you get this thing?” Booth asked.
“My friend Sam Phillips lent it to me,” Pollack said.
“You don’t know Sam Phillips,” I said.
“Oh, yes, I do.”
About then, my acid kicked in. Pollack’s head grew to three times its normal size. His jaw unhinged, revealing cragged valleys of bug-strewn teeth and a flabby leechlike tongue. His words drew out long and deep.
“SAM PHILLIPS IS MY FRIEND,” he said.
Through the night, I imagined shiny gold records whipping toward the car, smashing into the windshield but not breaking it. Above us, on a flying motorcycle, a cackling figure, guitar strapped to his back, waved a six-foot scythe.
“Shit,” I said. “I’m trippin’.”
It was dawn. The car had stopped. No one else was inside. I wondered how long I’d been curled on the floor, behind the front seat, shivering, naked. I looked up.
Graceland.
Meltzer and Bangs, one hand on the gates, one hand each at their respective flies, were pissing through the bars onto the driveway. Stanley Booth was running around in circles. He had a Confederate flag wrapped around him like a cape. Pollack leaned against a tree, bottle of whiskey in one hand, bottle of gin in the other. At least he seemed to be in control.
“Mornin’, sleepy,” he said to me.
The ground rose up, my knees sank toward it. My mouth was desiccated.
“Need…clothes,” I said.
“You need a drink,” said Pollack.
I felt like someone had driven a steel spike into my back. But the whiskey was strong and the spike softened a bit. Pollack produced a joint, and that also helped a lot.
From down the road, we heard the clomping of hooves. Meltzer and Lester, who were still pissing, zipped their pants. Stanley dropped his flag. I picked it up because I was cold, and wrapped it around my shoulders. Pollack squatted by the tree, waiting.
Over the hill came a horse the color of cream. Its coat had a shine that could only have been created by a groom from Austria, or maybe Kentucky. The air was thick as butter, and full of flies. It was goddamn hot already.
Atop the horse sat a man, or what had once been a man, or, as I described him in my second book of Elvis criticism, The Man Who Was Once a Man, “once he was a man, but to us, he was now a god, or meat, to us, that is. He had multiple meanings, this Elvis, but no meaning to us meant as much as the meaninglessness of no meaning. He was decay and mystery, and because of that, he contained clues about our death. The Elvis we saw then is the Elvis we hear now.”
The King approached, on his white horse. Lester fell to the ground. Meltzer crossed his arms, skeptical. Stanley fainted. Pollack stayed against the tree. I took mental notes.
“Oh, my King!” Lester said.
“Rise, Lester Bangs,” said Elvis.
“You know my name!” said Lester.
“Of course,” Elvis said. “I read Creem.”
He clapped his hands. From the bushes came two stable boys. They helped him dismount. I rubbed my eyes.
“You aren’t hallucinating,” said Elvis. “The acid has left your system.”
Elvis knew everything, and it frightened me.
The sun began to cut through the haze. Neal Pollack stepped into the light.
“Hello, Elvis,” he said.
“Hello, Neal,” said Elvis. “It’s been a while.”
“Wha-wha-wha?” Bangs said.
“Yeah,” said Pollack. “Jesus, you look terrible.”
“So do you,” Elvis said.
Elvis put an arm around Pollack’s shoulders.
“Come in,” he said. “I’ll make you breakfast. You can bring one friend.”
Pollack turned around to see Lester’s pleading face. Meltzer had started walking down the road. He was already putting rock behind him. Under a maple, Booth babbled like an idiot about his deadlines.
Pollack pointed at me.
“St. Pierre,” he said. “Let’s go.”
The cape only covered my shoulders. Elvis looked down at my crotch. I felt stirring against my will.
“The South shall rise again,” he said.
The gates opened. Thanks to Pollack, I set foot on the sacred grounds. Behind us, Bangs held the bars, whimpering.
“Fucking Pollack,” he said.
Lester Bangs tried to urinate again. But he was all tapped. He would soil Graceland no more.
We sat in Elvis’s breakfast nook, eating eggs, slabs of Kentucky ham, and stacks of pancakes as big as my head.
“Damn, I was starving,” said Pollack. “Elvis, man. You can cook!”
“It’s all I have left,” Elvis said. “For what am I to America anymore? Just a celebrity slab onto which people can paint their own grief, fury, and desire.”
I took a heaping mouthful of okra.
“Don’t sell yourself short, Elvis,” I said. “You can still come back.”
“No,” he said.
He stuck a Quaalude into a bran muffin.
“My useful hours have ended.”
Elvis pressed a button on the wall. Next to the refrigerator, a panel opened into a secret room.
“My atelier,” he said.
I never really thought I’d have access to Elvis Presley’s work space. In my febrile imaginings, I figured it would contain some recording equipment, a few guitars, a keyboard, maybe evidence of songs attempted but abandoned in despair. Instead, it was nothing but records, thousands of them, alphabetized, and also categorized by genre.
“The only good thing about being Elvis Presley is that people send you their records,” he said.
The discography in that room was almost beyond imagining. Elvis had every record ever put out by Ernest Tubb, Rufus Thomas, Hank Snow, and Bobby Blue Bland. There were a thousand Okeh disc recordings alone. I spotted a Capitol album that I’d never seen before: Merle Haggard Sings the Songs of Other People Singing Merle Haggard Songs. And the soul music: the Orioles, the Flamingos, Ivory Joe Hunter, Little Willie John, and a rare copy of The Underappreciated Sam Cooke. Singles of Jackie Moore’s “Personally” and Eddie Floyd singing “Never Get Enough of Your Love.”
“My word,” I said. “Black people certainly make a lot of music! Why doesn’t this stuff get played on the radio?”
“It does down here,” Elvis said, sadly.
Pollack wasn’t paying attention. Hungrily, he flipped through a different stack of records.
“You have Alice Cooper’s first album!” he said.
“Derivative,” said Elvis.
“And the Velvet Underground’s Murder Mystery bootleg, recorded live in Cleveland in January 1969!”
“True.”
“And the complete Jonathan Richman sessions recorded at Fowley! How’d you get those?”
“I’m a huge Modern Lovers fan,” Elvis said.
In one corner of the room sat a desk, with typewriter, and sheet of paper, with words. I read them aloud: “Do you think White Light/White Heat is a revelation? Are you going to turn to salt if you look over your shoulder at Lou Reed? Have you ever stood knee-deep in the Delta at midnight, the devil’s green mud licking at your thighs?”
Elvis looked ashamed.
“Why,” Pollack said, “that’s rock criticism!”
We gazed upon the King. His eyes gained a life that they hadn’t seen in years, and never saw again. He said:
“Yes, I want to be a rock critic. I’ve often read the music press with awe and wonder. No matter what I’ve achieved in my life, I don’t feel that I’ve gained true artistic perfection. Alone above all the arts, rock criticism stands. At its best, criticism topples music, because, at its best, it’s music combined with literature. How I long to make people read, to make them understand. Would that I could discard my fame for a humble, yet consistent, byline!”
“It’s not too late,” said Pollack.
“For me, it is,” said Elvis. “My fate’s been written. But yours hasn’t. I beseech you, Neal Pollack, take care, for the music industry has become something voracious and codified. The true critic must stand above and seek the unknown bands that do not care about fame. He must go beyond. And he can make music himself, but it has to be godawful.”
“I understand,” Pollack said.
“What about me?” I asked.
“You don’t matter, Paul,” Elvis said. “Let’s get you some pants.”
We sat there for a while, listening to bootlegs, taking notes like true professionals. Inside the main house, a bell rang. Elvis looked at his watch.
“My doctor’s here,” he said. “It’s time for my injections.”
He walked us to the gate. Lester was still there, face pressed against the bars. We all took a good-bye ’lude. Elvis gave Pollack a hug. Lester rolled his eyes. The King drifted back toward his mansion shrine, a ghost ahead of his time.
“Stay the course,” Elvis said. “Don’t debase your noble calling.”
It was Sunday, and we had planes to catch. Halfway to the airport, Pollack stopped the car. A Dream Carnival was underway in W.C. Handy Park. Geeks wrestled in the street, half watched by their trainers, almost totally ignored by the indifferent, stoned crowd. Black transvestites pistol-whipped one another behind the Porta-Johns. Everywhere, you saw guns and whiskey waved with cavalier glee and total lack of regard for human dignity. The tornado lurked just miles away; the air swayed and whipped frenetically. Music screamed from every corner of the debased grounds, terrible and wonderful, rock and soul and blues and the last decay of folk. None of the other critics were there. We were the only ones who stood on the true hallowed lost plain of American music, and it was all because of Neal Pollack.
“Memphis, Tennessee,” he said, “is the greatest city in the world.”
Those were Neal Pollack’s golden years. They were the times when times were good. Punk had descended onto New York like a vampire bat on a possum, and Pollack felt a thrilling rush in his veins. The skies seemed to rearrange themselves nightly. Pollack published magazines no one read, and wrote poems no one published. And for once he made dimes off his criticism. He wrote for Creem and Punk and Melody Maker and Hit Parader, Rolling Stone, Fusion, and once, only once, for New York Rocker. They were stories, many of them made up, about his new friends with whom he often posed, sullenly, for group pictures. For three years, no one smiled, but they took a lot of drugs and fell down stairs. And they were all so happy. “We are everyone’s rejects and everyone’s nightmare,” he wrote. “We have no talent, but lots of ambition. We may have read a book or two. We’re gonna be stars, and you can’t stop us.”
He and Patti Smith fell in love after meeting at a poetry reading at the Mercer Arts Center. He was dressed like a woman, and she like a man. “You’re so transgressive,” she said. Like Baudelaire had in his time, Neal and Patti and Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine broke open the dress codes of genre, sometimes by wearing floppy hats, or by ripping their T-shirts in two separate places. “It got to the point,” Pollack wrote in his diaries, “where everyone wanted to hang out with us. And by everyone, I mean no one.”
He lived in a windowless room in a residential hotel on the Bowery, with wire mesh for a ceiling and no potable water. “All I ever wanted, needed, or cared for,” he wrote, “were a typewriter and three solid walls. It’s all a true man requires for happiness. That and drugs, of course.” There were definitely drugs. At night or by day, Pollack and Jim Carroll and sometimes Iggy if he was in town would stumble through the streets looking to score. Pollack called Lou Reed from time to time, looking to reconcile or mooch, but Lou was never home. The streetlamp across the street from Lou’s apartment reflected a thoughtful silhouette. Pollack stood for hours, shouting his name, but he knew that there was no home in Lou Reed’s mind or heart for him.
“Why, Lou, why?” he said.
By day, he would walk through a bankrupt, wasted city, among the contraband vendors selling their trinkets on reclaimed cardboard, past the sticky-fingered gold-chain-wearing con men, the bat-and-knife-wielding hooligans, the depressed and confused and insane. By night, he hung out at Max’s and Mother’s and a hundred other bars that didn’t get the same amount of press. His head nodded; his arms opened to the world. Boys made out with boys and girls with girls, and the in-betweens with whomever they wanted. The air scorched with pills and fellatio and poetry and music and the knowledge that it was all going to burn, burn, burn. Pollack, at the center of it all, would stand up on a table, any table, and shout, “Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!”
It was the battle cry of a generation without a name.
A great party was under way at Gerard Malanga’s apartment, largely involving beautiful young men making out in groups. Pollack burst through the door, clutching his beloved kittens, Max and Kansas City, who he’d recently rescued from a fire at the Mercer. He needed a fix.
“What’s rockin’, you sick fucks?” he said.
“Oh, no,” said Malanga.
The music stopped. So did the kissing. Lou Reed sprinted for the back door.
Pollack looked around: Lots of glitter, lots of platform shoes. Men were wearing lipstick and hair spray.
“GLAM IS DEAD!” he said.
Patti was there. She kissed him on the lips.
“Where’ve you been, baby?” she said.
“I was on deadline,” said Pollack.
“For two months?”
“It was a long piece.”
In a corner of the room, a slivery individual tied off alone. He was done up in full glam: ripped T-shirt, platform shoes, leather pants, sailor hat and all.
Pollack instantly wanted to be this guy’s friend. He leapt upon him. They cuddled all night, sometimes with Patti, sometimes without, while all about them New York in the ’70s swirled, a skanky paradise of strung-out negative possibility. At two A.M., Iggy appeared, and asked Malanga if he could take a bath. Pollack and the guy, who said his name was Dee Dee, got into the tub as well.
“Man, I’m sick of glam,” Pollack said. “All the good bands are in the Midwest, anyway. Fuck New York. Everyone’s trying to be Mick Jagger all the time. Just fun, fun, fun. Look around you. Are these people having fun?”
“I’m having fun,” Iggy said.
“You don’t count,” said Pollack.
Patti had curled into a ball by the toilet. She was writing poetry.
“I’m not having fun,” she said.
Dee Dee’s makeup leaked into the water. He was tired of the hustler’s life, he said, sick of going back to Queens Boulevard and throwing things at the old ladies. Where was the rock ’n’ roll he used to listen to on the radio?
“That’s a good question,” Pollack said.
Pollack launched from the tub and grabbed Patti’s notebook. He took a bottle off the sink, swallowed whatever was in it, and began writing an essay called “Where Is the Rock ’n’ Roll We Used to Listen to on the Radio?”
After a few minutes, he had ten or so usable pages, and he got back in the bath.
“I agree with you completely,” he said. “We need a raw, stripped-down music that takes rock out of the hands of the artists and brings it back to its amateur, working-class roots.”
Iggy belched.
“All you need are jeans, a T-shirt, and a guitar,” Pollack said. “Why didn’t I see it before?”
He later described that event as “the most important bath in the history of rock ’n’ roll.”
“Let’s go to Manny’s Guitar Shop,” said Dee Dee Ramone.
If you knew Joey Ramone, you were lucky. If you knew Dee Dee Ramone, you were a little less lucky, but still somewhat luckier than the average person. The other Ramones, as of this writing, are still alive. There’s still time to know them, but who has that kind of time, really? Neal Pollack, however, knew them all at the time we wish we’d known them. He knew them in the beginning, when the world was young.
Dee Dee had invited Pollack to a recording studio. Pollack didn’t want to go, but Dee Dee slipped some Tuinals into his gin-and-tonic, so Pollack would follow him anywhere. Dee Dee couldn’t play his guitar. The drummer, some skinny longhaired freak, was worse. He really didn’t know how to play at all. The bassist wasn’t much better.
“Stop this noise!” Pollack said.
And they stopped.
“You can do better,” he said. “Let’s hear you play together.”
They started doing a Bay City Rollers cover. It sounded like Max and Kansas City getting fed to a meat grinder. Pollack stopped them again.
“You’re not gonna get anywhere as a band unless you let me play bass,” he said.
“Who are you?” said the longhaired guy.
“I’m Neal Pollack.”
The longhaired guy kneeled and bowed his head.
“I’m sorry to have insulted you, great one,” said Joey Ramone.
“Ah, you’re all right,” said Pollack.
“You can be in the band, but you’ve gotta give us drugs,” Joey said.
“No problem.”
“And you have to have a Ramone name.”
It was just another stupid band gimmick, like a thousand others Pollack had seen. But they went through a list anyway, dumping Ritchie Ramone right away, even though it sounded cool and alliterative. There were lots of other possible Ramones: Archie, Spanky, Slinky, Go-Go, Mikey, Ziggy, Crunchy, Georgy, Frodo, Tinky, Winky, Petey, Kitschy, Henry. None of them seemed to suit Pollack.
They broke open a bottle of Boone’s Farm and tried some more.
Kinky, Willy, Dicky, Lachlan, Rupert, Junkie, Alkie, Nicky, Talky, Lumpy, Hedwig, Chalky, Horny, Wally, Kobe.
Nah.
“Grumpy?”
“That’s pretty good,” Pollack said, “but no. None of the Seven Dwarfs.”
“I kinda like Dopey Ramone.”
“Then take it yourself.”
They smoked and popped pills and drank until the sun came up. Joey nodded behind the drum set. Dee Dee and the other guy collapsed into heaps on the floor. It was 7 A.M. when Pollack’s brain sparked on.
“I’ve got it!” he said. “I know what my name should be!”
The other Ramones barely stirred. Pollack started kicking them. If they were going to make it in rock, they’d better start having some discipline.
“And my name shall be…” Pollack said.
“Mmmmm. Whuh?” said Joey.
“Smokey Ramone!”
Pollack went downstairs and got coffee. The Ramones had written a bunch of songs, with titles like “I Don’t Wanna Clean My Room This Weekend,” “I Don’t Wanna Go for a Ride in the Country, Stupid,” and “I Don’t Wanna Eat a Bag of Cheese.” Pollack tried to play them. He wasn’t sure if the other guys were trying or not. The songs got faster and faster, sludgier and sludgier. Joey fell off his stool, and they kept going. He just flailed stupidly at the drum set. They needed a real drummer, bad. But it was still the best band of all time.
Joey groaned. “I don’t wanna play the drums anymore,” he said. “Please let me sing, please.”
He threw a snare out the window. They started playing a song that they later named “I Don’t Wanna Play the Drums Anymore.” An amp blew up. The room filled with smoke but they all choked through it and kept on playing. It was a goddamn mess of dirt and noise.
“God, this is horrible!” Pollack said. “Isn’t it wonderful?”
The original Ramones—Joey, Marky, Dee Dee, Tommy, and Smokey, the elusive fifth Ramone—took the stage at CBGB for the first time on August 16, 1974.
“I figured that club had no chance,” Pollack later wrote for the newly formed Punk magazine, after it was newly formed. “No chance at all.”
They played the first note of the first song. A string broke on Pollack’s guitar. They played the second note. Another string broke.
“Fuck!” Pollack said.
“Man,” Joey said, “you’re messing up our gig.”
“Screw you!” said Pollack. “I quit.”
He stormed off the stage, and the music started again. Five seconds in, Dee Dee broke a string.
“I’ll kick your ass,” Joey said.
“Fuck you,” said Dee Dee.
They started swinging at each other. Pollack came running back to the stage, with fresh guitar strings. He handed them out and rejoined the band. They started again. An amp blew up. A drumstick flew out of Tommy’s hand.
They played a lost Ramones song, which Pollack later claimed that he’d written. No one argued with him, because it wasn’t very good.
Dee Dee said, “Onetwothreefour!”
Riding on the Cyclone
Seeing lots of Mermaids
Eating all the corndogs
Whack-A-Mole
Riding on the Carousel
Blow jobs on the boardwalk
Nearly reaching third base
By the pier
Coney Island is the place to be
Coney Island whitefish
Swimming up from the sea
Coney Island is the place to go
I’d rather visit Coney
Than spend a weekend at the Jersey Shore.
I will be with you
Whoa-oh-oh
On Coney Island!
Getting in a bar fight
Beating up the Irish
Drinking with the Russians
All night long.
Whistling at the hookers
Buying stolen furniture
Never ever wanting
To go home.
Coney Island is the place to be
Coney Island whitefish
Swimming up from the sea
Coney Island is the place to go
I’d rather visit Coney
Than spend a weekend at the Jersey Shore.
I will be with you
Whoa-oh-oh
On Coney Island!
One Two Three Four!
Going to the freakshow
Gazing at the Lizard Man
Heckling contortionists
For five bucks
Kiss the bearded lady
Kiss the tattooed lady
Kiss the lovely lady
Who breathes fire!
Coney Island is the place to be
Coney Island whitefish
Swimming up from the sea
Coney Island is the place to go
I’d rather visit Coney
Than spend a weekend at the Jersey Shore.
I will be with you
Whoa-oh-oh
On Coney Island!
After the show, as the Ramones packed up their gear, a bearded guy loped toward them. He was walking two dogs.
“I’m Hilly Kristal,” said the guy. “I own this bar.”
“Oh yeah?” Joey said.
“I thought you were good. But no one else is ever gonna like you. If you want, you can play here again.”
“Great!” Pollack said.
“On one condition,” said Kristal. “You’ve got to lose Smokey.”
Pollack raised his guitar over his head and said, “Fuck you, you shit-brained country-music-loving Jew-ass motherfucker….”
A bouncer flung Pollack onto the Bowery. His career in the Ramones was over. He pounded on the door.
“Let me in, goddamn it!” he shouted. “I made this band what it is today!”
A hand was on his shoulder. Pollack turned around to face me. There was a lovely young woman on my arm. I immediately saw that this wasn’t a good time for him. The Ramones incident had brought on another one of his long, slow declines. Two years of very hard living had suddenly taken effect.
“Hello, Neal,” I said.
“What do you want, Paul?” Pollack said.
“Just to say hello. That band was great!”
“Thanks!”
“Except for you.”
“Oh.”
Pollack stood there in the summer heat, shivering.
“This is my third wife, Ruth,” I said.
“So?” Pollack said.
“Ruth, this is the legendary rock critic Neal Pollack.”
“I’ve read your work,” said Ruth.
Pollack stopped twitching momentarily.
He kissed Ruth’s hand.
“My dear,” he said. “How do you do?”
For weeks, Pollack and Patti Smith had been living in the artist Arturo Vega’s loft on Bowery with the Ramones. Nights meant an endless wandering from avant-garde theater to poetry venue to rock club to bar and back home for something up the nose. Then they were back on the town until dawn and pancakes. Noon passed, and 2 P.M. When they woke, Patti would read Rimbaud aloud. Pollack pet his cats. He was getting bored.
Patti twirled about the room in her long skirts, stopping only to cross her arms. She gazed at Pollack dramatically.
“How I long to lose myself,” she said, “in a sea of possibility.”
“I long for a blow job,” Pollack said.
“How old are you?” she said. “Grow up.”
Pollack looked at his watch, which he’d stolen recently. He studied the minute and second hands very carefully. Maybe the answer to her question was embedded in the watch face somewhere. Then he remembered.
“I’m thirty-four,” he said. “I’m old. Very old.”
“I’m so young,” Patti improvised, twirling and twirling. “I’m so young. I’m so goddamn young. I’m so young. I’m so goddamn young. We created it: Let’s take it over.”
“Shut up,” Pollack said.
Patti flopped next to him. She pounded on her chest, and then his. “You shut up!” she said. “I hate you! I hate you!”
In a far corner of the loft, a hideous she-creature stirred beneath a great mound of black clothing. On either side of her, a Ramone snored. The creature raised herself, her face smeared with horrible multicolored goo. She was wearing the same dress she’d worn all week, had been asleep for two days, and she was hungry. Her blurry eyes saw two shapes entwined across the room. A little focus revealed that the shapes were wrestling, and not happy. She lurched toward them.
Pollack and Patti looked up at her.
“Oh, Nancy,” Patti said. “You’re awake.”
“I’m starving,” Nancy Spungen said.
“Go back to Philadelphia, you whore!” said Patti.
Patti resumed hitting Pollack.
“I hate you!” she said. “I hate you!”
Pollack’s erect penis protruded from his pants. Nancy leapt upon it like a jungle beast. She began sucking. Patti tugged at Nancy’s hair.
“Get off him, bitch!” she screamed.
Pollack moaned with pleasure. He slipped a finger into his ass, and then inserted his whole hand, as he was wont to do. Patti beat at him and Nancy simultaneously. In a distant corner of the loft, Arturo Vega was painting a Day-Glo swastika on the wall. Joey Ramone grabbed the spray can from him.
“Cut out that Nazi shit, you fascist!” he said.
Vega hit him in the head with the can. Two other Ramones were swinging guitars at each other for no reason. Iggy Pop burst out of the bathroom. He broke a window and started cutting himself with the glass. Two people who no one had ever seen before fucked under a blanket in the middle of the room. Nancy Spungen sucked harder and harder. Pollack felt himself soaring toward the brink of something.
Johnny Thunders burst through the door.
“Hey, everyone!” he said. “Guess what? I’ve got heroin!”
The fighting stopped. So did the sucking. Patti’s arms dropped to her side.
They all began licking their lips.
Two hours later, everyone lay on the floor of the loft, looking at the ceiling, except for Pollack. He sat on his mattress, staring coldly at the wall.
“Ohh,” he said. “I think I have an infection.”
No one paid him any mind. The world was for the young now. He was getting old.
On July 16, 1975, the Neal Pollack Invasion played its only show ever. Pollack had formed the band from castoffs from other bands that had never played live. It was the most authentic collection of working-class musicians ever assembled. His bassist worked as a security guard at the Fresh Kills landfill. His lead guitarist was a gravedigger, and his drummer a copy editor at Harper’s. They had no money, no identity, no talent, and no hope.
They got a gig at the Coventry, a club in Queens, opening for the Dictators, who Pollack described as “the greatest rock ’n’ roll band of all time,” a superlative he only handed out every two or three years.
At first, the Dictators had been reluctant to book the show.
“No,” said Andy Shernoff.
“Please please please please please?” Pollack said. “I’ll write about you….”
Unfortunately for Pollack, on that same night, Blondie, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads played a show in Manhattan for the opening of CBGB’s first summer music festival. In Queens, Pollack looked into his audience. There were seventeen people, all of them wearing cotton headbands. They’d obviously been lured in by the “Free Headbands” promotion.
“Let’s make some rock ’n’ roll!” Pollack said backstage. “Let’s give ’em a night they won’t forget!”
Handsome Dick Manitoba drank beer from a can.
“Let’s get this over with so we can go home and watch TV,” he said.
The Neal Pollack Invasion took the stage. The crowd booed, except for one girl, maybe fifteen, who moved her head to a music that hadn’t even started yet. Pollack knew then that he’d reached her, and that he’d done the right thing. Out there, he knew, were dozens like her, maybe hundreds, sad smart kids who needed him to express their unheard hopeless voices.
America was a desperate place, plagued by rising unemployment, decaying, bankrupt cities, and rapacious, impersonal corporate greed. The land careened toward imminent ecological catastrophe. Government was in the hands of buffoonish, plutocratic dinosaurs obsessed with power and self-preservation. Popular culture had become loud, clownish, distracting, hideous in its lack of meaning. People were afraid, and they expressed their anxieties through blind, stupid, meaningless patriotism. Unknown enemies seemed to lurk around every corner, waiting to wrench away the comforts of empire with unholy apocalyptic fire. There was fatality in the air, decay, oblivion, disintegration, and a secret longing to die.
It was nothing like today.
Pollack climbed atop a speaker. He said:
“Here’s our generational anthem!”
The band kicked in an incoherent grind, and Pollack moaned, shrieked, gurgled this:
New York City is a pile of shit!
New York City is a pile of shit!
New York City is a pile of shit!
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
New York City!
Andy Warhol is a pile of shit!
Andy Warhol is a pile of shit!
Andy Warhol is a pile of shit!
Ahhhhhhhhhhh!
Andy Warhol!
CBGB’s is a pile of shit!
CBGB’s is a pile of shit!
CBGB’s is a pile of shit!
Ahhhhhhhhhh!
CBGB’s!
Fidel Castro is a pile of shit!
Richard Nixon is a pile of shit!
Jalapeno bagels are a pile of shit!
Barbara Walters is a pile of shit!
The whole damn world is a pile of shit!
Fuck you, David Bowie
You’re a goddamn
Suck-up whore
Pile of shit!
Pile of shit is a pile of shit!
Pile of shit is a pile of shit!
Pile of shit is a pile of shit!
Ahhhhhhhhhh!
PILE! OF! SHIT!
Pile pile pile pile
Pile of shit!
Pile pile pile pile
Pile of shit!
Pile
Pile
Pile
Pile
Pile pile pile pile
Pile of shit!
Pollack stood center stage, arms extended, drenched in sweat and blood. The crowd silently moved toward him, emitting a low, sinister hiss. Their eyes were crazed and evil. The band dropped their instruments and ran like hell. The girl Pollack thought he’d touched opened her mouth wide, extended her right arm. She pointed toward Pollack.
“KILL!” she said.
They charged toward him, ready to tear him apart. He looked around. They were closing in on all sides. He dove, smacking a boot into some kid’s midsection. Arms flailing, he descended into the swarm. Then the cops came, batons flaring, and the crowd’s rage turned on them. Twenty people kicking the snot out of the cops, Pollack thought. Now that’s rock ’n’ roll.
Pollack squirted from the crowd and headed for the exit.
“My work here is done,” he said.
As they ran down the street in terror, the box office manager handed Neal his night’s take, ten dollars, and a telegram that had come to the theater during the show.
Pollack read it:
NEAL. NEW YORK IS DEAD. YOU’RE NEEDED IN
LONDON. COME IMMEDIATELY, AT YOUR OWN
EXPENSE. MALCOLM.
Pollack rubbed his chin thoughtfully. He pulled his cats Max and Kansas City out of his duffel bag, where they’d been suffocating. They panted feebly and scratched at him.
“Well, kitties,” he said. “London again! Won’t this be a delightful adventure?”
Neal Pollack sat atop a box, which was atop another box, which was atop another. The boxes were all painted black with the letters S-E-X in white going down their fronts. They were supposed to have spelled SEX, naturally, but someone had arranged them wrong, so they actually spelled out XSE. Still, for London, late 1975, that was pretty radical.
Pollack wore a black rubber vest, no shirt underneath. His eyes were ringed with black eyeliner, and he had a red clown nose on. At either side of him sat his cats, also wearing rubber. Their fetish suits were lined with fish oil to keep them from complaining.
Inside the shop at 430 King’s Road, Malcolm McLaren tapped a table loudly. In front of Pollack, in a circle, sat a dozen or so young men, middle-class or working-class, angry, desperate, malleable, and ready to party. They were all named John. Pollack looked down at them. I’ll be running this country within a month, he thought.
“Now, kids,” McLaren said. “We have a guest speaker today. He’s a great rock critic from the United States of America.”
“Ohhhhh!” said the boys.
“He knows David Bowie,” McLaren said.
“Ohhhhhhh!”
“And he has many important things to say to you about fashion and politics. Please welcome Neal Pollack.”
Pollack rubbed his chin thoughtfully.
“The Queen is a cunt,” he said.
The Johns gasped.
“And the world is lit by fascism. Your government is trying to destroy you. If you still have parents, they don’t understand you, and they’d rather see you dead. We are puppets, pawns, automatons, shivering fearfully in the shadow of the machine. The ground is poisoned, and the air is foul. The British empire has been revealed for the farce it always was, and we’ve been thrown the feeble scraps.”
Now the boys were sobbing.
“But there is an answer,” Pollack said.
“Hooray!” said the boys.
“It’s called rock ’n’ roll.”
“Ohhhhhh.”
“If the world becomes fucked up, only a raw protean yawp from youthful bowels can save it.”
One of the Johns raised his hand. He was wearing a white Pink Floyd T-shirt. Above the logo, he’d written “I HATE.”
“What are you talking about?” he said.
“You have to start a band,” said Pollack.
“Anger is an energy,” said John.
“Yes, yes,” Pollack said.
“I am an outcast and unwanted.”
“I know, I know.”
“Because my friends and I are all extremely ugly, our only recourse…”
The Johns began to buzz. Their innocent faces had taken on revolting sneers. Before Pollack’s eyes, they were transforming. They rose and began to pace the store restlessly. Malcolm McLaren rubbed his hands. His eyes took on the glint of an entrepreneur. Excellent, he thought to himself. They’re furious and they don’t know why. My master plan is working.
“Who wants benzedrine?” Pollack said.
A few months later, Pollack, by now an established columnist for New Music Express, was at the 100 Club, nodding off in the back with Chrissie Hynde. McLaren walked by him.
“Hey, Malcolm,” Pollack said.
McLaren ignored Pollack and moved away. A male ghost with bristly hair walked behind him. He kicked Pollack in the shins. The club was crowded, so Pollack figured it was an accident. The guy came back. He kicked Pollack again.
“Who’s that guy?” Pollack said. “And why does he keep kicking me?”
“That’s Sid,” said Hynde.
Pollack popped two bennies.
“Screw him,” he said.
Sid was following Lydon around like a shadow. Lydon came up to Pollack and pushed him in the chest. Pollack pushed back. Lydon pushed back in return.
“What’s all this shit you’ve been saying about us in the papers, then?” Lydon said. “You’re trying to get us banned, aren’t you?”
“It’s good to get banned,” said Pollack.
“Balls! I didn’t go to art school just to get banned!”
Pollack put a finger to Lydon’s lips.
“Shhh,” he said. “This is part of a plan.”
Johnny Rotten bit down on Pollack’s finger, hard. Pollack felt a little crunch of bone, and a snapped tendon. He dropped to his knees. Rotten and Sid squirted away, leaving behind a legacy of sneering, angry, macho violence.
That night the Sex Pistols performed a new song:
Never mind the Pollacks
Never mind them all
Kick them in the bollocks
Punch them in the balls
Neal Pollack!
Neal Pollack!
Neal Pollack’s dead!
We haven’t got a future
We haven’t got a past
We haven’t got a byline
Kick Pollack in the ass!
Neal Pollack!
Neal Pollack!
Neal Pollack’s dead!
Pollack heard from the back. He ripped toward the stage. Someone had written a song about him! Someone cared! He needed this! Sid stood directly in front of him. Pollack tapped him on the back.
“Excuse me,” Pollack said. “Could you move over?”
Johnny Rotten lobbed a gob from the stage. Sid ducked. It hit Pollack in the monobrow and dribbled down his nose.
Sid uncrouched. He faced Pollack, his breath like hell-air. He had a bike chain in one hand, a knife in the other.
“I don’t like your trousers,” he said.
Sid cracked Pollack on the left temple. Pollack felt a hot flash on his right cheek; he swung out blindly, but Sid was gone. Blood poured everywhere. Guitars screamed into the night. Johnny Rotten screamed back:
Neal Pollack is a junkie
He’s shacked up with the Queen
He mounts her like a monkey
He pissed in her canteen
Neal Pollack!
Neal Pollack!
Neal Pollack’s dead!
Pollack fell, awash in his own blood. He got up and dove in a bum’s rush for the stage, connecting with Johnny Rotten’s midsection. Someone tossed a burning cigarette onstage. Pollack stubbed it out on Rotten’s hand. Sid Vicious charged him, brandishing a crowbar. Pollack caught him with a leg sweep. Vicious sprawled, hitting himself in the face with the bar. He stood up, looked at the cheering crowd, and hit himself again. Fights were breaking out all over the room. The music couldn’t drown out the shouts of pain and fear. The police charged in, brandishing night-sticks. They started busting heads. Rotten looked at Pollack with nothing less than awe. This was the true essence of rock.
James Osterberg sat in his kitchen and gazed upon the ghost city of Berlin. Magnificent, decadent Berlin! Fading home of Weimar dreams! And, at last, a room of Iggy’s own. A tinpot stove, a bowl of cereal, a wooden table, stuffed parrot hanging above on a wooden swing, postwar wallpaper, prewar tile, a Kraftwerk album on the hi-fi, and a couple of chairs. These things made him happy, along with good-looking drag queens, which Berlin didn’t lack. Iggy Pop was breathing true freedom for the first time. Gone was the jail time in L.A., the 5 A.M. wanderings down Sunset Boulevard. Vanished were the ritual concert humiliations of a thousand tossed fruits and vegetables, the angry confrontations, the meaningless groupie sex. His mind was clear; a ten-minute walk in Berlin was as cleansing to him as any sauna. He was at home here. Nothing could tamper with his serenity anymore.
The doorbell rang. Iggy put down his copy of Christopher Isherwood’s Berlin Stories.
“Yes?” he said.
“Iggy,” said an unmistakable voice. “It’s me.”
“Shit,” Iggy said.
“Iggy! Iggy darling…I’m writing about you for Slash! Please let me in.”
“Go away, Pollack,” Iggy said.
“Oh, come on, Iggy. Please?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Iggy…I’ve got cocaine….”
No. He couldn’t let Pollack into his life. Not now. It would annihilate everything that he and Bowie had built there in Berlin, wipe out all shreds of joy, take him down that evil river of pestilence that he’d tried so hard to abandon. Not this time. No more tragic ballads. But he heard it anyway, in his mind’s ear.
From behind the door: “Iggy? Iggy. Let me in, Iggy.”
Iggy clutched his temples. “No!” he said. “Please, no!”
“Iggy…”
From deep within, Iggy felt a roar in his stomach. It wafted into his chest and blew up his windpipe, launched into his throat and emerged from his mouth full-throttle. He grabbed a cheap glass vase from a side table, threw open the door, and swung, hitting David Bowie smack in the jaw.
Bowie dropped to the ground.
“What’d you do that for?” he said.
Pollack stood next to prone Bowie.
“Hi, Iggy,” he said.
Then they were unleashed onto Berlin, Pollack and Iggy and Bowie. They pranced through deserted streets to the robotic drone of the Trans-European Music Express. They found themselves in a whorehouse cabaret called Long Tall Sally Bowles, lying faceup on an ermine rug while a six-foot drag queen, better looking than Jerry Hall, took turns grinding their nipples with her spiked heels.
“You are beautiful,” she said to Iggy.
“You are elegant,” she said to Bowie.
“You are disgusting,” she said to Pollack.
“Ah, yes,” Pollack said, “but I have the cocaine!”
“Then I am yours for the night!” she said.
During the days, Pollack sat in Iggy’s apartment, typing the letter “l” thousands of times on hundreds of sheets of paper, an experiment in what he called the New Literature. He drank copious quantities of Pernod, blew through kilos of cocaine. Iggy was trying to be responsible. He wrote songs that would later become commercials. Pollack would sneak up behind Iggy, put his hands over his Iggy eyes.
“Guess who?” he’d say.
“Neal Pollack,” Iggy would say.
“Do you want some coke?”
“Yes.”
Then it was off to the recording studio, and sex with transvestites. More cocaine. Iggy got two albums done. He and Bowie planned a tour. But he was frying now, living in perpetual confusion. Pollack was like a worm burrowed in his mind, his greatest fan but also his final destroyer. Iggy had been created, in some way, by Pollack. But like all creations, he longed to free himself from his master, to become a whole man, alone.
Pollack put on a? & the Mysterians album. He danced on Iggy’s breakfast table, naked, smoking a joint. Iggy moaned into his coffee.
“This is the greatest band of all time!” Pollack said. “Can’t you hear it? Can’t you feel it in your soul?”
No, Iggy wanted to scream, he didn’t.
“Will you please get the hell out of my life?” Iggy screamed.
Pollack looked at him strangely.
“OK,” he said.
He kissed Iggy on the forehead.
“But you’ll miss me.”
And just like that, he was out the door, disappeared into the rainy Berlin morning.
Bowie emerged from the bedroom, yawning, resplendent in a purple silk kimono. He also kissed Iggy’s forehead.
“Where’s Pollack?” he said.
“Gone,” said Iggy. “Gone forever.”
“Thank goodness,” Bowie said. “Now we can start planning our life together.”
Iggy said nothing. Instead, he had a drink. He did miss that stinky little rock critic, despite himself.
Tampa, Florida, sometime in 1977. Pollack was on tour with the Patti Smith Group. He’d gotten tangled in some wires backstage at the sports arena and was whining softly. A familiar tweeded figure, improbably handsome, appeared. He pulled Pollack out of the mess.
“Hey, Paul,” Pollack said. “What’s rockin’?”
“I’m here to do a profile of Patti,” I said. “A think piece for Rolling Stone.”
“About what?”
“Patti. Her significance.”
“Right,” Pollack said. “Is Ruth here?”
“She’s smoking in a dark corner of the parking lot all alone,” I said. “She’s completely unsupervised, which is fine, because I trust her.”
Pollack picked up his Black Russian and staggered toward the load-in dock. He hopped down, found a Dumpster, and puked. Man, that felt good. He puked again.
“Hello, Neal,” said a gilded voice.
Pollack turned to see Ruth in a burgundy knee-length skirt and leather boots. She wore a single carnation in her hair. A graduate student had never looked so beautiful to him. He wiped puke on his sleeve, stumbled over to her, and began to cry.
“Ruth, nobody understands me,” he said. “I’m a really sensitive guy, and everybody thinks I should be happy fucking all these chicks and being a rock critic. But I’m hurt and I’m lonely and I need someone stable in my life like you.”
She stroked his hair.
“There, there,” she said. “I understand.”
They held each other, for minutes that felt like hours, while Pollack sobbed out whatever miseries and lost hopes had lain buried in his soul all those years.
“If they don’t appreciate what I’ve written about them,” he said, “I’ll fucking kill them all.”
I wandered into the parking lot and saw them together.
“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t realize.”
“I was just consoling him,” said Ruth.
I picked up a two-by-four.
“Come inside, Ruth,” he said. “Bob Seger wants to meet you.”
The hug ended. Pollack’s face contorted with rage. He raised his arms and shouted into the humid night: “Rock doesn’t deserve me!”
“That’s enough, Neal,” said Ruth.
Pollack wept. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry for everything.”
Pollack was in the front row, glaring, as the Patti Smith Group began their set that night. She and her band performed their first song. The audience stood silently, no applause, no enthusiasm, not even hatred. Pollack grinned and pointed, and he knew Patti could see him. He wanted her to see him, because he hated her just like he hated all women, except for those who loved him, and Patti had never loved him. He’d been just another peg on which she’d hung her fur coat of stardom. This was the truth, this was what he knew, and this made him hurt all the more.
He said to himself, “I was just sleeping with you, Patti, to get into shows for free.”
They started playing their second song, “Ain’t It Strange.” Pollack had always hated that song. Midway through, Patti started twirling. “Come on, God, make a move!” she shouted. She whirled in broad swoops and the band played a wobbly beat.
One twirl took her to the lip of the stage, and the next right off the stage. Patti fell. Two guys in the pit tried to catch her, but they missed. Her head hit the floor with a loud crack. Blood pooled at the back of her head. She started twitching. Pollack pointed and laughed.
“Who’s the poet now?” he said. “Who’s the prophet now? Someone won’t be reading Rimbaud for a while.”
A roadie looked annoyed.
Pollack turned to face the crowd.
“Come on!” he shouted. “Let’s finish her off!”
The roadie looked at him with pity and disdain.
“Go away, old man,” he said.
The crowd didn’t seem to be lusting for blood. They were only concerned, and concern was not what Neal Pollack liked to see at a rock show. The wheeled stretcher came, and then the ambulance, and then it was the middle of 1977 and Pollack was tired. He loped backstage, where Ruth and I were both standing around looking as concerned as everyone else.
“Forget about her,” Pollack said. “Punk is dead.”
“I don’t know, Neal,” I said. “You might be wrong about this one.”
“I’m never wrong.”
Pollack heard the ringing. Did he have a phone? Well, he must if it was ringing. He reached above him to where the ringing was coming from. Yes. A phone.
“Hello,” he said.
“Neal,” said the voice.
“Who is this?”
“It’s me, Claude.”
“Who?”
“Claude. Claude Bessy.”
Oh, yes, Pollack thought. A lesser critic. From Los Angeles.
“What do you want, Frenchy?”
“Just thought I’d call.”
“Where am I?” said Pollack.
“I don’t know,” said Bessy.
“Mmm,” said Pollack. “Listen, Claude, I’m really sick and I’m going back to bed now.”
“No, you listen,” Claude said. “You need to move to L.A. immediately.”
Los Angeles!!!! Pollack thought. “You have got to be kidding! I’d rather die than move to L.A.!”
“There are bands here,” said Bessy. “Really good ones.”
“So?”
“Bands with chicks in them. Chicks that have their own chick groupies.”
“See you in two weeks,” Pollack said.
The next afternoon, Pollack held a sidewalk sale to get rid of his possessions. After a couple of hours, he had twenty-five bucks, and he was free. He shoved the cats, an ounce of weed, a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, one clean pair of underwear, and his sainted copy of Trout Mask Replica into a backpack, and went to the East Village looking for a motorcycle to hot-wire. It didn’t take long, and soon he was on the West Side Highway, leaving the bankrupt city behind him, hopefully forever.
New York is so dull and predictable, he thought. Out there, on the American road, there has to be a fresh approach. Somewhere, he just knew, culture was being created with no hope of making a profit. People were putting out records that corporations would never discover. He wanted to be there to chronicle those many births.
His motorcycle neared the Bronx now.
“No good music will ever come out of New York City again,” he said.
He turned his head toward the city one last time. In that moment, a barely discernible interstice that seemed to last forever, he heard a break, a beat, a pop. He saw everything, somehow. There, in an asphalt park, an island of beauty in a lake of decay, an old man wearing long African robes stood behind two turntables. A stack of records sat beside him on an overturned milk crate. Around him, a bunch of kids were doing a loose dance, more like a grind. The music revved and screeched. It sounded like the future.
“Freaky,” Pollack said.
Behind the turntables, the man, pretty hip considering how old he was, rhymed into a microphone. The words whipped from his mouth freely. For 1979, it was an astonishing verbal display that seemed completely unrehearsed. It went like this:
Hey, party people (are you ready to drop it?)
Hey party people (are you ready to pop it?)
Bop it (don’t stop it!)
Tip-tip. Top-hop. Don’t stop till your body pops
I wanna see your hips hop!
Rock the block
Do it in your socks
Rip. Slip. Clip-clop and knock your cocks.
Hop On Pop and a Fox in the Box
Slip. Slop. Get down on the long mop.
We’re gonna have a party
And we’re gonna do the body rock.
Just bust it, trust it, clean it up and dust it and say Ho!
The man stepped out from behind the turntables, removed his robe and dashiki, and Pollack gasped.
“Clambone,” he said.
At that moment, in 1979 or so, rapping debuted on the earth. As Clambone said:
Now I’m MC Clam and I’m twice as juicy
As Dick Van Dyke or I Love Lucy
Your brain is fried, your mind is blown
I’ll beat your ass with my microphone.
I birthed the blues, I invented the funk
I sold Charlie Parker his first hit of junk
If you stole my music, you best repent
Or give up plagiarism for Lent
Come on everybody and start to move
’Cause I’m the lord of eternal groove
Come on, everybody and start to dance
And hit me with your underpants
So let’s party!
And let’s party some more!
We may be in recession
But at least we ain’t at war!
Here we go! Here we go now
Here we go go go go go go go go now!
Was Pollack dreaming? Was Clambone creating yet another form of African-American musical expression, this time one that was so unique to the black experience that white people would never be able to co-opt it? He needed to rap himself, just to test. He tried:
Now I’m Neal Pollack, and I’m here to say
I’m the best rock critic in the USA
I like to write, and I take drugs
I have three dildos and four buttplugs.
God! He sounded like Tim Conway! This form of music was simply beyond him. Black people had done it, at last.
The world froze. Clambone hovered over the basketball court, bathed in a golden light. He gestured toward the highway.
“Pollack,” he said.
“Clambone,” said Pollack
“Rock is changing,” he said. “From now on, you must Do It Yourself.”
“Yes,” Pollack said. “Of course.”
“But beware She Who Shall Not Be Named for Fear of Lawsuit.”
“What do you mean?”
“Beware,” Clambone said. “And don’t stop ’til your body pops….”
The world unfroze. Clambone and his break beats were gone; Pollack was in the wrong lane. A truck bore down on his motorcycle. He swerved and smacked the median, then swerved the other way and smacked the other median. Shit, he thought. I should have worn a helmet. Inside his backpack, the cats howled. The bike smacked the median again and Pollack flipped over the handlebars.
“I’m free,” he said.
He broke an oncoming windshield with his face, and the world went dark.