Damage fanzine, 1980
© 1980 Damage
/ Shoshana Wecheler
Public Image:
The Emperor's New Clothes
by Shoshana Wecheler
Another
Slow
Sowing the seeds of discontent
Running away from the albatross
Kill the spirit of sixty eight...
It
is 4:00 am, dear readers, and we are steering woozily through the slumbering
green suburbs of Marin heading back to San Francisco with what's left
of the Public Image entourage - and of yours truly, for that matter.
I had made a heroic attempt to keep pace with the malted beverage consumption
of these mad Britons, and nearly succeeded. Even Johnny the Rotten,
who began the return trip by squabbling with me over our seating order,
was well gone and sweetly sedated, and was now nodding into my shoulder
in the back seat.
We must have made a wrong
turn somewhere, maybe several. In fact, we seem to be going In ever
accelerating loops. "I think we're going in the wrong direction'',
I suggest to the navigating Tour manageress. She pointedly ignores me
and bears down on the gas pedal. Four miles farther down the road she
concedes the landscape is looking totally foreign and lets loose with
a stream of "Bloody Hell's", mostly aimed at the only
passenger who's a native of this godforsaken Californian limbo. Elm
trees for miles and a Peugeot in every driveway. "Mea non culpa".
I mutter to myself and attempt to press my eyes into the back of my
head the Cadillac, resplendent as one of Diana Doors white mink stoles
under the road lamps, noses into the opposite direction and churns full
steam ahead to San Francisco.
Wobble is enjoying himself immensely. "Is this anything like
your neighbourhood?" he leers. It's a rhetorical question.
Earlier, I'd been giving him the slow and lowdown on the Saturday night
splendour of the Mission District: Hundreds of chopped and lowered mauve
and vermilion and chartreuse iridescent high-sheen sedans circling in
a slow pase in the same eight block radius, all blaring the latest 12
inch sensation from their synchronised radios - BOUNCE ROCK SKATE ROLL!
A lone romantic cruising dark alleyways with the Flamingos, "I've
only got eyes for you", echoing in his wake, the last violin notes
falling into a spring night like a perfumed calling card. Wobble's keen
on seeing that you betcha.
"What's it like to be an American?" he asks with sudden
seriousness. "DIFFICULT! You have no idea how DIFFICULT"
I sputter, picking up with drunken intensity. "lt's just as
alien to us as it is to you... (Fill in your own blanks)... like a stone
around the neck... crushing... inhuman weight... The whole Babylonian
lament".
Wobble lets out with an exultant yelp. ''Bravo! That's the most optimistic
thing I've ever heard. That's fucking encouraging!" The neon
lights of the metropolis appear on the horizon. We end up at Clown Alley
on Lombard. John orders his meat rare with raw onions ("l
said RAW onions, GOT IT?"). Wobble orders two hamburgers that arrive
at the same time and which he devours with manic concentration. I occupy
myself with interesting things at the bottom of my coffee cup.
It is nearly 6:00 am as we near into the home stretch. I suggest meeting
at a later time ("later? how can it get any later?") for a
proper interview and John suggests to both my horror and delight that
we do it right now. Wobble, however, asks for a rain check and zombies
directly into the hotel elevator and straight up to his room. For this
uncharacteristic lag of energy, I can only blame the graveyard cuisine
at Clown Alley.
Lord have mercy. I can barely see straight, the dawn light is flooding
into Lydon's hotel room while the first pigeons start their morning
fluttering and cooing. Denise Hall stares catatonically through the
windows while I stare catatonically at the wall, and John places bottles
of beer in our hands, urges that I make myself comfortable, and curls
up on the bed with the telephone. He has a lengthy affectionate conversation
with his brother about music, the latest football matches, the tour
and the weather; by the time he rings off, he looks positively stricken
with homesickness.
"Remember those football rows on Essex Road?" he reminisces
with Denise, and he waxes nostalgic about the good old days. All of
his mates brawling together in the streets and ah, previous youth and
high hopes dashed to bits. This is not the way it was supposed to be.
It could have been so much more. I am overtaken with the strangest sense
of deja vu or is it that he reminds me of an old maudlin Wobblie I met
in the bars of Seattle lifting his glass to fallen comrades and the
construction of the ruins?
"Go ahead",
he says. "I haven't forgotten you. Ask away". "What
about Martin Atkins?" I begin. "Back at the station
he was saying that maybe you'd lose ten percent to a manager but that
you're all losing much more this way."
He shares a knowing smile with Denise. "Good old Martin. He
doesn't understand what we're trying lo do. Look, we don't care about
being successful we just want to do it on our own terms. The only people
in this world who are really worth anything are always the poor ones,
aren't they? And that's the sorry truth. I'll tell you one thing. I
came from nothing and I have no doubt that this isn't going to last
forever. I know I'm going to lose. You can't win in this game. I'll
probably go back to where I came from - which is nothing. So there's
nothing lo lose, is there?"
There is an old Katherine Hepburn movie on the box with Hepburn as the
frontier outcast dressed in plain calico, a Kentucky Joan of Arc living
alone in a poor pinewood shack, administering to the sick and dying
while the suspicious small town wags accuse her of sexual indecency
and opportunism. John is completely engrossed. The only critical remarks
he makes are about the cutting. By the next commercial break, he is
fast asleep.
Afternoon finds him napping during the soundcheck, while the Public
Image rhythm section shanks through a memorable jam. They could have
charged admission. But that evening Lydon is awake and going full barrel's
to an enthusiastic crowd of 3,000 people he delivers a knockout performance
that maintains its high intensity from the impassioned opening assault
of 'Careering' through ten lengthy songs. The characteristic "neaagh"
at the end of his lines conjures up an operatic coyote. Between attacks,
he saunters casually around the stage, engages the audience in pointed
dialogue and offers his mike to the front row of ecstatic, worshipping
fans. ("Who here wants to be a pop star".) Somebody
tosses him a plastic grenade which he grinningly pockets. He's almost
too mesmerising. As much as he disavows the role of pop star he clearly
feeds off it.
The trouble is (aside from the suffocating heat and over crowding),
the more vivid Mr. Lydon, the more his brilliant band recedes into the
visual background like a trio of reliable functionaries. Levene produces
sounds like erratic satellite transmissions or a barrage of plumbing
space junk. His eerie ascending and disappearing chromatic walls of
synthesiser lead the band into 'Memories', which perfectly showcases
Levene's demented classicism: He laces it with repeating guitar fragments
of 'Malaguena'. Meanwhile, Martin Atkins is beating out a series of
exploding land mines, and Wobble's anxious loping bass lines are so
deep and wide you could fall in and be swallowed up forever. That low,
rumbling bass is like the coming of the final earthquake.
In short, the band's everything it's cracked up to be. It's a pity that
only a small international audience has had the privilege of attending
any of their few live concerts. And it's a sure bet that their US experience
hasn't made their collective attitude about touring any more positive.
That they ended up in San Francisco, playing the South of Market Cultural
Centre, is nothing loss than a miraculous fluke.
Warner Bros. was never quite sure what to do with them. The record company
had seen fit to press only 50,000 units of 'Second Edition' for American
distribution. They were surprised when PiL's New York concert sold out
4,000 tickets in the first week of sales. Warners considered them a
club act, albeit a prestige one. Their counsel to the band was to do
a saturation tour of small US halls, and they devised an itinerary of
forty dates, which PiL flatly refused. The band insisted on the right
to book its own dates, play just two or three markets, and deal only
with the promoters they themselves chose to deal with directly.
A
large Warner Bros. investment went down the tubes when the Sex Pistols
disbanded, and the company was eager to recoup its losses with PiL.
However, the band's commercial potential was still untested, and the
record industry has recently fallen on hard times. Vinyl sales are way
down while touring costs are soaring, and company-subsidised tours are
dropping accordingly. Once, it was standard to sock anywhere from thirty
to forty thousand dollars into a tour. Now strategy is more cautious.
The bands who are hit hardest by this are those marginal acts that are
too big to play clubs and too small for arenas. If a band has no recent
product on the market and cannot be counted on to sell out a 3,000 seater,
it doesn't go out on the road at all.
While PiL and Warners squared off over the question of dates, the company
took the situation into its own hands by appointing Premier Talent as
the band's tour agent. Premier, which one industry veteran described
as, "the oldest established permanent floating crap game in
New York", is the largest and most powerful rock agency in
the US. (Record companies and agencies are traditionally very tight
because record companies subsidise the tours. Agencies act as the middleman
between the companies and the promoters.) Never mind that PiL had refused
any agency representation. Warners decided this was sheer folly and
instructed Premier Talent to go ahead and book forty dates. One insider
speculates that Warner knew they wouldn't be able to convince the band
to go along with them, so they "just didn't bother to tell them
certain things".
Premier had a contractual agreement with Malcolm McLaren during the
Sex Pistols' heyday. They didn't seem to realise that Public Image Ltd.
was not the Sex Pistols in new drag - or that the old Sex Pistols contracts
had been declared legally null and void in a British court of law in
January. Warners, on its part, was recommending that PiL sign an exclusive
three-year contract with Premier if they wanted to go on tour at all.
When Lydon and Levene balked at this suggestion, Warners made appropriate
noises about problems with immigration and tried to intimidate them
into backing down. Instead, they held their ground.
A ten-date compromise was reached. But PiL was still dead set on making
its own arrangements with small promoters, if any could be found. On
March 15, Billboard ran an item in which Public Image Ltd. brazenly
announced a ten city US tour and its intent to play dance halls and
"unusual venues", including the Olympic Auditorium in LA.
The Olympic Auditorium? Since 1942, it has been the home of boxing,
wrestling and roller derby. The only musical events staged there were
three punk shows in the fall of '79 featuring unsigned local LA bands,
and promoted by a small outfit called C D Presents. If Warners executives
received a nasty shock over their morning coffee and Billboard, the
news also came as a surprise to C D.
As C D's Dave Ferguson tells it, "They were giving interviews...
that they were going to play the Olympic before we ever met them face
to face or talked to them on the telephone". Joy Johnson,
who was C D's booker at the time, has weathered several years as an
independent concert promoter and band manager. She also spent fourteen
months sitting twenty-five feet away from Bill Graham while she worked
as a booker in his office. Her first Involvement with the business end
of music stems back to Country Joe and the Fish, and her sympathies
still lie with the anarchistic mavericks of the music world.
"The machine is the very thing the punk movement is in rebellion
against. It says, Fuck this commercial corporate trip, fuck these semi-mafioso
types of relationships. Let's go out and do it on our own terms. That's
exactly the stance we took. We decided to go to acts directly in England
and say, 'Sidestep this whole machine, come to LA, come to the heart
of the beast: basically, play to the real scene and the real community.'
We went directly to PiL and put in a standing offer to come to LA whenever
they wanted and play the Olympic Auditorium".
About a month after putting in the offer, Johnson heard through a friend
at Virgin Records that the band was interested. A two-concert West Coast
deal was signed with a handshake in the back of the limo that carried
Lydon and Levene to the airport after their San Francisco press conference.
"The word 'definite' was used, and it never wavered,"
says Ferguson. "They risked their whole career. They showed
great integrity throughout. It was pretty simple because their main
concern was making sure that security weren't beating people over the
head and that the hall was a place where, if only a few thousand people
showed up, it wouldn't be embarrassing to them and also fun for the
audience". Stewart adds that at this point, PiL wasn't really
sure of their draw because Warner Bros. "Had been giving them
all these downers that they should play clubs like the Whiskey... they
also wanted to bring the ticket prices down, so we did and they cut
some of the things out of their budget.''
It wasn't so simple, as it turned out. Firming up an LA date meant getting
one okay from the band and successive conflicts with Warners, which
had its own idea about scheduling. After C D had turned in an ad to
the LA Times for the Olympic Auditorium gig they set for April 17, they
received a warning call from Bob Regere, who is a vice president to
Artist Development at Warners. "You have until 5:00 today to
pull the ad", he told them. "Your date is May 6".
Johnson replied that she had already confirmed the April 27 date with
the band. "You shouldn't be talking with Keith and Johnny",
Johnson recalls him saying. "You should be dealing with Premier."
Warner Bros. had already placed an ad in the April issue of Slash
magazine for a Graham-promoted PiL show at San Francisco's Fox Warfield
theatre on May 2. In the meantime, Joy Johnson was attempting to reserve
the Oakland Auditorium for May 1 for C D. She gave the Auditorium's
supervisor, Bud Alexander, a check for $600 to hold that date. Alexander
explained that the Oakland Auditorium, which Is a city-owned facility,
has a master rental agreement with Bill Graham Presents, as it does
with several other promoters.
The agreement includes a ten-day protection on either side of an event
date, in order to protect the promoter from any potential conflict of
interest with another event of the same type or talent which might attract
essentially the same public market. Conversely, the agreement also commits
Bill Graham Presents to book twenty events a year on mutually agreeable
dates with the Auditorium. In the event of a show cancellation, Graham
(and other promoters with a master rental agreement) forfeits a flat
penalty of $1200.
Bud Alexander explained that the Graham organisation had booked a tentative
date for May 10 for Rick James, and that he would have to determine
whether there was any conflict between the two bands. He called Danny
Sheer, a booking agent for Bill Graham Presents, to discuss the situation,
only to be informed that Graham, working in co-operation with Premier
Talent, was presenting Public Image in San Francisco. Clearly Alexander
would need proof from C D that they actually had a valid agreement with
Public Image. He asked to see a signed talent contract between C D and
PiL.
Suddenly Johnson found herself caught in the midst of everything she
most hated about industry dealings. She bounced back and forth between
Warner Bros., Premier Talent and her former associates at Bill Graham
Presents while the respective parties alternately issued belligerent
threats and personal pleas for C D to step aside. What had happened
to her human one-to one agreement with the band? She made an emergency
call to Keith Levene and urged him to immediately telegram Bud Alexander
to straighten things out. An exchange of telexes is standard in the
industry and is considered good faith as confirmation of talent agreements.
Keith promised to send off a telex within twenty-four hours, but it
didn't arrive.
I was In the middle of everything I abhorred, Joy recalls. "All
I'd done was fight with people lately. I simply wanted to remove myself
from the middle". The next day she resigned because of a "personal
conflict of interests from C D" and packed up to the country.
"The fact that Keith didn't send the telegram was critical",
she says. "If we had had it, we would have gotten the Oakland
Auditorium". Bud Alexander and Danny Sheer confirm her opinion.
Minus
one booker and with the band now somewhere in transit between London
and New York, Steward and Ferguson still fought to maintain the Oakland
Auditorium date. The Rick James show had been cancelled, and Bill Graham
Presents maintained a tentative hold on May 10 for a new concert with
Greg Kihn, The Rubinoos and Earthquake, a show which never materialised.
Neither did the aligned contract between C D and PiL. On April 3, the
Oakland Auditorium officially turned down C D's request on the grounds
that, "a definite conflict would occur... within this ten day
period", and returned their deposit to them. What was really
at stake was the missing telex. Although there was no formal mention
of such a requirement in the Oakland Auditorium's rental agreements.
Bud Alexander explains that he's always based his decisions on his prior
experience with promoters. Formal proof of talent representation has
rarely been necessary.
David Ferguson fumes, "Since he wanted a talent contract, obviously
he needed the same thing from Bill Graham". The difference
between the promoters, however, is that Graham has a standing twenty-show-per-year
commitment with the Auditorium and any show cancellation cost him twice
as much as the rental fee. Ferguson sees it in a different light: "The
point Is that Bill Graham has an exclusions clause with a city facility.
That's never been tested before in court. If this country's devotion
to capitalism means anything, it means free trade". As this
magazine goes to press, C D is considering a law suit against Bill Graham
Presents.
There are other legal matters in the works. Witness Case Number C3210S3,
entitled Security National Band vs Public Image, Ltd., a corporation,
Public Image, a partnership, and John Lydon, Keith Levene, John Wardle
and Richard Nother, an action filed recently in the Los Angeles
Superior Court. Here, finally, is the updated version of the 'Great
Rock 'n' Roll Swindle' straight from the bank's mouth:
"This is an action to recover $15,788.92
paid by mistake to Public Image, Ltd. by the bank in October 1979 during
the course of a wire transfer of funds for another customer. Public
Image, Ltd. has no right to those funds but refused to return them to
the bank after a request by the bank to do so. The bank then filed this
action. Service of process was recently made on the defendants in the
Bay Area. As yet, no formal answer has been filed on behalf of the defendants
in this action."
As for the tempest this little service of process stirred up in San
Francisco, the repercussions are still being felt. Evidently,
the Finance Committee of the South of Market Cultural Centre had not
gone through the proper procedures whom it rented the facility to C
D for the Public Image show. C D paid $3000 cash upfront, for the SOMCC
rental. As the City Attorney explained to the promoters on that fateful
Friday, any rental under $499 doesn't have to go through the Municipal
Property Department. Three grand puts the ball in all together different
court. The day of the gig, PiL received their guarantee of $3,000 from
C D. The day after, an escort of uniformed cops opened the safe at the
Cultural Centre and recovered $3,000 in cash for the City of San Francisco.
Bernice Bing, the director of the Centre is now being hard pressed to
explain why she accepted illegal monies from CD.
As the song goes, "Public Image, you got what you wanted..."
In answer to Martin Atkins' question, all reports show the orange crop
is positively thriving this year. But the full harvest isn't in yet.
Atkins announced his resignation from PiL shortly after the band's return
to the UK.
|
LA,
Olympic Auditorium, |
Berkeley,
Greek Theater, |
San
Francisco, |
Street Art:The punk poster SF 1977-1982
© Street Art:The punk poster SF 1977-1982 / Shoshana Wechsler
Note: This short excerpt from the book Street Art:The punk poster SF 1977-1982 also features further info by Shoshana Wechsler…
PiLPeerless journalist Shoshana
Wechsler gave an illuminating behind-scenes account of how Public Image
Ltd. and its adversaries conducted themselves during their brief encounter
in May 1980:
John Lydon and Keith Levene came to town one afternoon for a press conference,
really more like a pair of stags being harried by a pack of yapping dogs.
Above the din Lydon reiterated only two essential points, "Public
Image defies any category and will continue to do so" and
"If you want our stuff, you're going to have to fight for it."
'"I still carry an image of his face from that afternoon's game
of Meet the Press, a face so purely white that it seemed to burn from
a hidden fanatic source within, and dark unblinking rat eyes that looked
out on the world with dilated intensity." Nevertheless, PiL afterwards
agreed to play Frisco, and arranged to do so under the slogan NO MANAGER
NO TOURING FOR NO REASON. This time, Lydon was determined to be self-managed
at any cost (self-management is all the rage among rebel workers in Europe).
But an outfit called Premier Talent, according to Wechsler, the oldest
permanent floating crap game in New York, was forced on PiL by Warner
Brothers, and proceeded to book them for forty US dates. The band refused.
Instead PiL sought out small local promoters and unusual venues, on its
own. In SF they connected with C D Presents, which, based on a verbal
understanding with Levene, went out and booked PiL into a series of halls
(see posters above), only to be squeezed out of each by predatory big
time promoters who wanted to snatch the show for themselves. In the end
that didn't happen, but the concert which was finally produced overcrowded,
cynical, lifeless on both sides of the stage lights was a rather pyrrhic
victory.
SW: "I spent the day postering for Saturday's concert in order
to earn a ticket for the show, as did the rest of the city's punk elite.
Never say the life of a new wave journalist isn't glamorous".
LYDON: ''I know I'm going to lose. You can't win in this game. I'll probably
go back to where I came from, which is nothing. So there's nothing to
lose, is there?
Live at San Francisco, South of Market Cultural Center, USA 10.5.8 © unknown
LA, Olympic Auditorium,USA 4.5.80
Berkeley, Greek Theater, USA 10.5.80 Flyer / Poster
San Francisco, South of Market Cultural Center, USA 10.5.80Flyer / Poster