Detroit Rock City (25 page)

Bill Holdship (
journalist
, Creem
magazine
):
I was told they found him with a bag over his head and, you know, a band around the neck. So to me that sounds like suicide, you know, but I guess he was also way out of it at the end. You know Dave
told me stories of him, you know, thinking that there were, you know, the whole cocaine thing, where you think there are bugs under your skin.

Cathy Gisi:
As tragic as it was when he died, I thought he wouldn't have had it any other way. He died laughing. He had that nitrous tank in the hotel room and had a party.

Linda Barber:
He was loved by a lot of people, but I don't think he realized how much. It was a packed funeral. It wasn't standing room only, but being Jewish, he had to be buried right away. I got there after the casket was closed, and I'm glad of that. I want to remember him behind his desk.

Mark Norton:
I think people like Whitall say I didn't snort shitloads of coke and drink with Barry. Well I did. Fuck you all. Barry was really lonely. The bartender at the Lemon Peel was his psychiatrist.

Cathy Gisi:
When you got Barry by himself he was deeply emotional about people and the magazine and the world he grew up in. His allegiances to people never wavered even if they screwed him. He felt Lester had done that, but he never wavered from his devotion to Lester. When Connie wanted a divorce, he was so afraid he was going to lose this one stabilizing thing in his life. I think he partied one step too far between the coke and the nitrous. I don't think he intentionally took his own life.

Robin Sommers:
Barry was intense at all times. He had drugs that none of us could get. DMT, which is still the best drug I ever had; it looked like tree sap and you smoked it in a hash pipe, and as you inhaled, it took three seconds, and then you started to hallucinate. To take acid the first time I did, it was up over at Barry's. I looked at the wall and it looked like coral, then flowers, and everything modulated. Barry had connections all over the area with everybody. He had friends that would go to Europe all the time.

David Keeps, aka DB (
Destroy All Monsters, manager
):
In the midseventies there was jack shit going on around Detroit. The MC5 guys were in prison or trying some new projects with little success. Bands had scattered. A bunch of hippies. I was going to U of M in Ann Arbor, where it was a $5 pot fine, so there was a lot of weed. Christmas break in 1973 Alice Cooper played in Ann Arbor at Crisler Arena. I went with my childhood friends, Cary Loren and Bobby Epstein. We went to Berkeley High School, and Cary had drifted off in a more arty, drug experimentation thing. Bobby and I were more into drama and academics.

Cary Loren (
Destroy All Monsters, guitarist, artist
):
I started going out with Niagara when I was a senior in high school; she was a year older than me. We left Detroit to live in a commune that her sister and her sister's husband ran in Washington, DC. I was a bike messenger going around Washington, delivering all kinds of shit to people like Kissinger. I got hit by a bus, and my bicycle kind of crumbled up, and my glasses were broke. It was during a rainstorm, and the bus driver just picked me up and threw me on the sidewalk. At that point I just said, “I gotta get outta this place.” It was a good excuse to leave, and the commune really hated us. I think they were getting sick of Niagara and I. So right after the bus hit me, we got these Alice Cooper tickets and we moved back to Michigan, to Ann Arbor, where we decided to kind of stay.

David Keeps:
So lo and behold, the show happened. Cary shows up with Lynn Rovner, or Niagara, as she was calling herself by that time. We all went to high school together, so I was aware of who she was. But by this time, 1973, she was a completely different creature. She had a fire-engine red bob and wore sunglasses all the time and was completely obsessed with old movies and knew all the right
bands, like Lou Reed, New York Dolls—all that early proto punk. With drugs. I was just captivated by her. That was around the same era that
Pink Flamingos
came out, because Niagara did not look unlike, at least hair-wise, Connie Marvel. I had gone and seen
Pink Flamingos
at a midnight screening in Ann Arbor. We saw it and then walked out and turned around and got right back in line and saw it a second time. Because it was just like this life changer.

Niagara (
Destroy All Monsters, Dark Carnival, vocalist, artist
):
I started going to U of M art school, and the first person I met was Mike Kelley. He sat down next to me on the bus because I wasn't wearing overalls, which everyone else was at that time. It's hard for me to believe now, but that's what people were wearing: blue jeans and overalls and stuff. That was “in” for a short time. I was wearing a lot of eye makeup, as usual, and he thought I was kind of a transvestite type, like a Warhol superstar, and so he sat next to me and we got along.

David Keeps:
After the Alice Cooper show we all became tight. I really admired what Cary and Niagara were doing. So much so that I ended up conning my parents into sending me to England to go to art school. I thought that I wanted to be an artist or painter or something like that. I left in '74, and meanwhile Cary started in on all kinds of avant-garde stuff—mostly underground movies and Jack Smith.

Cary Loren:
Jack Smith did the film
Flaming Creatures
, one of the great artists and filmmakers. I was learning about La Monte Young and a lot of the composers of New York and the Velvet Underground and all that stuff of the sixties. I got to meet Jack and stay with him over a summer in New York. I brought his aesthetics back to Ann Arbor.

Niagara:
Cary and I were into music, and since he was a guitarist, we had to start a band. We were doing every kind of art there was, going in all directions, so the band was obvious. Mike Kelley was my friend, and I practically lived there after school, at this house he shared with Jim Shaw. They had this big sign there that said, “God's Oasis Drive-In Church.”

Sue Rynski (
photographer
):
I came back to Ann Arbor after a year in Paris and wanted to finish my art studies at University of Michigan. I wandered into the God's Oasis house where the band had its headquarters. It was next to my apartment building, and Niagara came up to me and said, “You're going to be in a movie.
Let me get you a costume.” They were filming something, and she was in a bridal dress. Niagara was nice and arty.

Niagara:
One day Mike said to me, “Do you sing?” I told him, “Well, we wanted to start a band.” Jim and Mike weren't musicians per se, and I became the front person. We practiced one day and then went to a party on New Year's Eve and told them we could play. We plugged in and we just did it. The guy at the house said, “Well, what's your name?” We had no idea. Jim just said, “Destroy All Monsters,” and it was like, fine, that's not bad. That night we just jammed on “Iron Man” for as long as we could until they unplugged us. We're banging on cans. “Is he alive or is he dead” is all that I said.

Cary Loren:
It was at a comic book warehouse where they had these meetings and sold comic books and distributed them. It was a party for mostly young kids and people that worked at the warehouse. We thought, “Well, we look like a band.” But we were just screwing around and doing our thing, playing noise, playing with records while we practiced. I think we started to play “Iron Man” or something like that.

David Keeps:
When Cary was twelve he was a classical guitarist. He could play like Segovia. I used to sit and watch him play guitar when we were in grade school. Mesmerizing, brilliant guitarist. Then you've heard Destroy All Monsters, that period of music, '73 or '74. It sounds like he can't play at all. Certainly not that he has any classical background. So Destroy All Monsters had that same sensibility as the Stooges when Iggy was pushing around a vacuum cleaner. When Mike Kelley and Jim Shaw went to California to continue their art education, Cary found the Miller brothers, Larry and Ben.

Sue Rynski:
With the Miller brothers, the music was spacey rock. Ben and Larry were trained musicians and added another dimension. Niagara had songs like “Bored.” Iggy ripped that song off. It was clear he gets a lot of material like that. I was listening to this song from Party and he says, “I wonder if you'll hear this song.” Then he mentions me in that song “Girls,” where he sings “Hanging down with Susie.” I get angry when I hear that.

Robert Matheu:
Iggy had done this little rap and he said, “She's got big boobs and she's got high-heeled shoes,” and he was singing about Sue. You know, because she was hanging out and he was watching her at sound check and making up this little
thing. I'm not necessarily saying the song was inspired by her, but definitely part of the lyrics.

Niagara:
Pretty soon after Jim and Mike left, Ronnie [Asheton] came back from LA after New Order didn't work out. I met Ronnie at the Second Chance in Ann Arbor at a Ramones show in '77. Joey Ramone was walking around backstage with a bag on his nose, and I was like, “You mean that glue thing is like true?” I know he did glue. You can't write about something that beautifully and not have done it. At least that night. Everyone that I've said that to has been surprised. John Holmstrom in New York was like, “What?” Listen, I saw it. If this was the only time he did it, I saw that time. Ronnie looked very dapper. He'd just come from LA, and he had on a white flight scarf with a couple rhinestones in it and a jacket and a vest and had a cigarette holder. His hair was perfect, Brian Jones–like. Aviator glasses. His jeans were pressed. He was really styling in a low-key way. We talked, and at the end of the night he was saying, “I can get you some German military women's jackets.” I thought, “This is a come on that I usually don't get.” Cary got his number and told him we have a band and we had the Miller brothers playing for us, these big psychedelic, twin, beautiful brothers. Cary was amazing after that; he didn't leave Ronnie alone.

Cary Loren:
It had come into my mind to get Ron Asheton into the group, and we had a concert coming up at the Underground; it was built into this hill. I got Ron to come out to see us; I gave him a six-pack to come.

David Keeps:
Which is odd. I don't know what Cary was expecting because his vision of what the band was going to be, or at least his vision of the band as it had expressed itself on stage prior to Ron and Mike coming to the group, would be baffling to those guys, who were in bands that had record label deals and wrote their own songs. They came from a place. They had seen the big time. Ron was fairly fresh from the big time, because this was '77. Ron must have looked at this and said, “What the fuck?!”

Niagara:
Ronnie was pretty laid back. He didn't know what his next step was, and Cary just kept after him and said, “Well, come to a practice. Just practice one day.” Cary finally got him to do it. Ronnie said, “At least I'll get a free six-pack of beer.” You know, he didn't have any money. So he came to practice. We hit it off pretty much.

Cary Loren:
He saw we had a scene; it was a freak scene. And we all looked up to Ron. He was a superstar of the area. He was living with his mom. I would pick him up and drive him to our practice.

Niagara:
I was freaked because I was singing. I was a nervous wreck. I took a nice pill and I felt better. I never had stage fright because I knew I'd be high enough that I wouldn't care, so I never really got stage fright. In the beginning I had Tuinal. They were called rainbows; they were turquoise and red and in the middle they were purple. They were real pretty. I was into these beautiful pills. I also had Seconals that were bright red, and I got them at the free clinic where this beautiful doctor was. He looked like a gnome with the little glasses, but he was real big, and he was so slow and sweet. I'd say, “I have trouble sleeping.” He'd go, “Have you ever tried the old-fashioned remedy, Tuinal?” I said, “No, but would it help?” So he was giving me all these great pills. There was nothing wrong with that. After a while that wasn't going on, and I started drinking some like everybody else.

Sue Rynski:
Ron joined and brought in Michael Davis, who was just out of Lexington prison. Ron was important, but none of those guys took themselves for anything special. They'd done their thing and failed, and they were humbled and serious.

Niagara:
At that time Ron was living with Ann. Ann, my Ann. That was one of my first questions to Ronnie when I found out his mother's name. I said, “Ann, my Ann?” He said, “Yeah, Iggy was trying to be funny and put that name in.” Scott and Ron were both living there, and I had an apartment. Then when Ronnie and I got together, we were staying at people's places that were gone or something. I had a little job somewhere for a couple months, and I got food stamps. I didn't get money, but I got food stamps. After that I couldn't imagine spending money for food. We started to hang out with some of the MC5 guys along with Michael. Fred Smith was really fascinating, and he was a real trickster. He wanted to take people and just mess with their minds. He would do that with Cary when Cary was on the verge of losing his mind, and it was terrible. Fred would go, “I just had sex with Niagara in the back room.” Cary would be like, “Is that really true? Did that just happen?” Fred was trying to pull all this horrible stuff. He didn't know that Cary was losing his mind.