Detroit Rock City (37 page)

How he got caught was really a fluke. This was in August of 1983 when the murder happened. There was an article that came out in the newspaper in early '88 about this drug dealer that went to federal prison in the fall of '83 from that area. It was found that he had buried a half a million dollars somewhere in the woods out there. So this hunter guy who lived out there, he reads this article in the paper and thinks about when he had seen this forsythia, and he thinks that's a marker that was put on the money. And of course what they find is a skeleton. She was
identified by her dental records, and her jewelry was all still on. I got to court, the prosecutor was saying, “She didn't tell for five years. That means she's just as guilty as he is.” I got fucked. I got totally fucked. He got found guilty of first degree but mentally ill. I got second-degree murder with a life sentence. I was in prison for twenty-one years.

Paul Zimmerman:
There was a point where Bookie's became a victim of its own popularity. They gutted it; they wanted more space. They also opened up this thing downstairs that used to be storage and made it a second bar. It wasn't Bookie's as much anymore.

Scott Campbell:
After two years Vince decided he wanted to run the place all by himself. Some drug dealer was financing his attempt at doing concert promotion. That dealer eventually got shot by some rival drug dealer. That was the guy that got killed in the parking lot in '80. I didn't want to deal with those people. I was doing everything except sitting there and drinking with the old man.

Vince Bannon:
I didn't know what I wanted to do, to be perfectly honest with you. Scott was really focused on his band, the Sillies. I'll give it to Scott—he was so focused on the band. I was a haphazard musician. The funny thing about it is that I ended up becoming, say, the more mature person out of all the kids around me. One day it just occurred to me that this putting on shows is working. We're getting people into this place. I'm making it where I can pay for an apartment and other things.

Bob Mulrooney:
Scott Campbell has his own version of the whole history of Bookie's, that's for sure. He started it with his money, but then Scott was incompetent in a lot of ways and Vince ended up firing him. I can see both sides, but Scott was just a really unusual person, and he doesn't really have a lot of common sense. He's just a weird person. I was the drummer in the Sillies, so I know.

Katy Hait:
I joined the Sillies as a singer after Sheila left to go to Los Angeles and join the Screamers. I'd never sung before in my life, but I knew everyone in the band, so there I was.

Chris Panackia:
There were more places because there were more bands finally. It was Bookie's. Now Monday and Tuesday at the Silverbird would do the same bands. The Dead Boys, Destroy All Monsters, Wayne Kramer played there—same bands that would play Bookie's. Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers at the Silverbird, they would have gone to Bookie's before. Wednesday you would go to the New Miami. All those bands would play there Wednesday and Thursdays. Now you could take six nights a week and find that music at that time.

Paul Zimmerman:
That's when the shift turned to places like Lili's and Paycheck's. The only problem with Lili's was you couldn't get far enough away from the band if you didn't like them; there was a little alley entrance, so you could go out there; that's no good, up front is no good, up front there was a pool table. But if you didn't like the band, you would still be too close.

Brian Mullan (
sound man, promoter
):
During the week Lili's was a regular bar, and you would walk in off the street and musicians would hang there. Almost everyone and a lot of the time bands from out of town would be directed there.

Paul Zimmerman:
After the Clash played at Masonic, they were directed to Lili's. We had already been introduced to the place by Art Lyzak; it was a cool little joint in Hamtramck. You go in and get a Stroh's and a Chrysler, which was a beer and a shot of Kessler's. We were hanging out there, and the Clash came walking in, Joe Strummer and Mikey Dread. We walked over and started talking to them, and I showed them the latest
White Noise
and said to Strummer: “Buy an issue of this magazine.” Dread goes, “Do you know who that is, man?” and I went, “Yeah, I know who it is, and I know he's got enough money to afford a dollar.” Strummer was very cool, and he said, “Oh, I want to pay” and whipped out some money. These guys were so polite. Somebody offered them some blow and Strummer said, “That's so nice, but no. We've got our own, thank you.”

Art Lyzak:
My mom started Lili's 21 in Hamtramck in 1975. My mom was Lili—she was twice divorced and had five sons. In the early seventies, late sixties, the second husband who fathered my four half-brothers wasn't giving her any dough. So she was a barmaid in a place called the New Dodge Bar in Hamtramck. She was a
beautiful chick, and she liked working the bar and found out about a bar called the Columbia Bar, which eventually she changed to Lili's. She got some dough from my dad, who she still got along with. It was a nice place, just as a shot-and-a-beer place. If I was doing a gig and or hanging out, I'd be like, “Hey, my mom's got this bar. Let's go over there.” When we started having bands, for a good eight or ten years my job was, like, the booking guy.

Jerry Vile:
I got banned from Lili's. It started because I had put Locker Room on their towel machine and was sniffing it and then I put my lighter on it to dry off the towel machine. When it caught fire, I ran out to the bar to get a glass of water to put it out. They were pissed, but I told Art, “I just saved the whole bar from burning down. You should be thanking me.” So he's mad about that, and weeks later I'm in there with Sailor Rick, who's Paul's brother-in-law. He's, like, six-foot seven, and we got our feet on the jukebox and we're, like, kickin' back, getting drunk, and they got pissed again, and it was, “All right, fuckers, you're out of here!” On our way out Rick takes a bottle, throws it through the window, smashes their Lili's neon sign. The fucking bar erupted, and everybody wanted to kill us. Rick was surrounded by, like, eight guys, and I was always getting into fights anyways, and I'm surrounded by a whole group of people. But Art cooled it down. That could have been life changing. I could have had no teeth—it was like thirty-five to two. A couple weeks later the opportunity to play a show at Lili's came up, and I started thinking about how fun it would be to do because I'm banned there. So I came up with the idea of doing it from the van. We were called Free Beer for the Boners that night, and we ran cables from the van into the club into a TV onstage and the mic cable into the van with a camera on me. I had a series of disguises in the van, so I had, like, a bag over my head, hand puppets, whatever.

Art Lyzak:
I thought, “Well, he may be banned, but not his image.”

DJ Dianna:
There was a cool place called Nunzios. I was already going to Bookie's, and I had been through the Grande and the Eastown. But Nunzio's was four blocks from where I lived in Lincoln Park. All I knew is that it had huge disco parties. So I go to this place, and the guy who was the DJ, who was buying these cool new records, was a guy we all called Twig, who liked to get high. So Nunzio, the owner, said “If you are going to hang, why not work the door?” It was inevitable—every evening Twig would start out the night fine and get higher and drunker, and by the end of the night he couldn't work. So one night he got drunk and Nunzio
said, “Okay, you're the DJ.” I said I didn't know how to do that, and he took me to the booth and showed me how, and it went from there. It turned into me and Twig cospinning records, and eventually it worked itself into me working. Nunzio's was picking off some of the bands from Bookie's. Twig eventually died.

Glenn Johnson (
Mr. Unique and the Leisure Suits, drummer
):
There were these weird shows all over the place even during Bookie's. We went to see Wild Man Fischer at the Latino Ballroom in Pontiac; it was this ballroom with plastic folding chairs and a stage like a church basement. The promoter bought Wild Man a bus ticket and had him come out. About forty people showed up, and I had just gotten out of the hospital from a car accident, and I had both my legs in casts. Fischer walked out and says, “Is there a drummer in the house?” So my pals carried me up in two leg casts and I played drums for him. They had a kit from the opening act, so I just came up and played the worst drums ever. He learned “Night Moves” by Bob Seger just before he got up there, figuring he was in Detroit and had to play something like that. There was this great network for bands starting about this time. Not just for people like Wild Man Fischer, but it was becoming more possible to do shows in other places.

Nikki Corvette:
Since I've been going to shows as a kid, I made friends with bands. Even before I was ever in a band I made friends with everybody. I was pen pals with bands from all over the world back in the days of letters, which is great because I have letters. When bands would come to town I would do what I could to help them out. “Okay, but when I'm coming to play your town, you help me out.” I'd meet people, and they'd hook me up with shows. We'd play the East Coast. We played down South a lot. We'd play the Midwest. Los Angeles. We played with the Ramones at the Second Chance in Ann Arbor at one point. A couple days later they we were doing a show in Toronto, and the opener canceled and the promoter called and said, “Do you want to open for the Ramones?” Yes, we did. After the show Johnny Ramone came up and introduced himself. And, well, he really pursued me after that. A year later, after
End of the Century
, Johnny called and said, “This is where we're playing. What shows do you want to open?” They were playing a venue on the west side, but I didn't really want to go because the promoter, Gail Parenteau, did not like me. She thought that I was going after all of the guys she was after. Johnny just said, “We'll put you on the guest list and make sure you get in.” And I'm, like, it's just going to be a hassle you know. And then he said, “We won't play if you don't get in.” “Oh, I am there.” You know I want to be
there for that conversation. After that Johnny used to call me every day from the road. It was really uncomfortable when I would go see Johnny on the road. Years later I realized that the reason everything was so uncomfortable was because he was going out with Linda. And not only was he going out with Linda, but he was having me come to shows and used my band to open shows.

When I saw
End of the Century
, I figured out the dates and I went, “Oh my god, like, okay. No wonder everybody hated me.” I still have letters and cards from him.

Don Was:
You know all I wanted out of life was to not have to go to work, get by playing music. I had to take this gig repairing copy machines; I didn't know anything about it. The first week on the gig they said, “Well, you know, when you're out on service calls, we want you to learn to sell toner and paper to the clients, so you have to take the Dale Carnegie sales course.” I really thought I had bottomed out. I went to the class; it was after-hours in some office building, and it was me and seven Willy Loman kind of characters. I wasn't quite suicidal, but I was depressed. I really thought my life was over. The first night of the class they said, “First thing we're gonna do is we're gonna make a list of your goals: where do you wanna be a year from now? Where do you wanna be five years from now? Where you wanna be ten years from now? What do you want to be doing?” I roll my eyes. It's actually quite a challenging thing, if you're gonna be honest and do it right; it's a little embarrassing to get up in front of a room of strangers. But I tried to take the proper attitude. I read mine to the class: “One year from now I don't wanna have this fucking job anymore.” That was my one-year goal. It got the big laugh of the night, because everyone was there in a last-ditch attempt to save their job. I went on: “Then five years from now I want a record to come out, and ten years from now I want a hit record with someone who's nationally established.” At the end of that first class I thought, “Wow, fuck that. If you just look at this list, how hard can this be?” I started applying the methods that they taught, and within a month we had a record deal for Was Not Was. David was living in LA as a freelance jazz critic for the now-defunct
Los Angeles Herald-Examiner
. He arranged an interview with Michael Zilkha, who owned a label called ZE Records in New York City, and they had the Waitresses, King Creole, the Coconuts, James White and the Blacks, Material with Bill Laswell—it's a very cool label, man. David interviewed him. He talked to him, and twenty seven minutes in he said, “By the way, there's this band out of Detroit you really gotta hear; they're perfect for what you're doing.” He said, “Oh, wonderful, have them call me.” So I called. We conned our way into our first deal. We sent him “Wheel Me Out.” Then I used my Dale Carnegie on
him: “If I could show you a way. . . .” What actually happened was that “Wheel Me Out” became a very big club hit in England and had nothing to do with the Dale Carnegie scam like that.