his band, “Wham!” Within a few months, I conceptualized and filmed a music video for “Shivers..,” which incidentally, a fan posted on YouTube. Oy. (In the video, I put on a turban and Raybans, flew around in a magic carpet, and the rest is up to you to find out!) This was back when MTV was a network that only played those things.) I was recording more songs, including a rendition of Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky,” for an album. I also got word that I was to be one of the openers on Numan’s multicity “Berserker Tour” across the UK. The deal was for me to perform to the backing tracks of my upcoming album, alone, and in front of the proscenium, which in many of the arenas, were only a few feet deep and wide.
On that tour, I had a lightbulb moment—another visualization—but this time, it didn’t include Rooney or Garland. It happened at a gig (I think it was in Wales), where the stage was at the same level as the mezzanine, so high up you couldn’t see those in the orchestra unless you looked way down. According to the venue, if the audience hated my performance, they would literally throw glass beer bottles at me—hence the reason why the stage was so high up. What the fuck?! Being hit by hurling glass in front of thousands wouldn’t be a nice welcome for an American (or anyone), I’d say, and seemed much worse than hearing that I was Fat Larry who wanted to marry Miss Vancheri. In fact, getting hit in the head by a glass beer bottle is, to me, the absolute most humiliating thing in public that could ever happen to anyone. My pop star dreams got a nasty wake-up call—but I can proudly say that I would never, ever, ever get a beer bottle thrown at me. From that day forward, I figured out a way to always dodge the glass beer bottle—on the stage, with my clients, and generally in life.
One day, I heard the news that Mike Read, a famous DJ at Radio One in London—the guy who started playing “Shivers...” across the airwaves, had wanted to interview me. (Apparently, the interview was predicated on Gary Numan joining in, but I heard he declined.) Hmmmm.
Just as if you’d turned off your radio, my music career in London abruptly came to a halt because of a stupid work permit debacle. I didn’t realize that when I was offered the chance to open for Numan’s tour and the label gave me the necessary paperwork to do so, I needed to leave the country for a few days and enter back in with said permit so that the officials at the airport could stamp a date on it. (What? Yeah, I was confused too.) Airport security said I was in breach of my original entry as a tourist: I took a job (as a pop recording artist) away from an English citizen. But I had the work permit, I just hadn’t reentered to get it stamped! What a shock. God help any Brit (whom I apparently “stole” a job from) who decides to write another single called, “Shivers Up My Spine!” Really? Apparently, it didn’t concern anyone at Numa because no one from the label, including Gary, showed up to bail me out of this mess. I was really heartbroken and totally frustrated. (Honestly, I think Numan was more interested in flying antique airplanes than running his record label, leaving the task at hand to his mum Beryl, and his dad, Tony—genuinely nice people who seemed to be a bit naïve—like me—when it came to working in the music business.) Who runs a record label, hears that one of their acts is stuck at customs at the airport, and doesn’t bother to simply show up—or send a rep. After being “denied entrance” from London (the police, though, gave me seven days to pack up and clear out—I felt like one of Donald Trump’s illegal Mexican aliens getting deported after jumping over a wall to make a dream come true),
Within seven days of the ordeal at Heathrow, I was flown back to the States with no place to live. Before leaving for the UK, I had sublet my apartment to the manager of Wayland Flowers and Madame, a famous and flamboyant ventriloquist and his puppet—and no way was that manager leaving my roost prematurely. (I’ll talk more about this towards the end of the book.) Not only did I lose my techno-pop recording career, but I was shut out of my apartment and was destined to sleep on my parents’ couch (my parents this time around consisted of my mom and my stepdad Tony who you’ll get to know later)—they were the only ones to open their doors to me. Hit hard by that fact, I was in a deep shock and depression.
#Devastating moments are just a test for you to decide whether or not your life choices are worth fighting for.
Six years after L’exit (short for Larry’s exit from Britain), I was now armed with two more dance record contracts in America—one with Vinylmania (where the famous dance music producer, the late Sergio Munzibai, remixed my song, “Those Words,” originally recorded in London), the other with Emergency Records (where renegade dance producer, Freddy Bastone, remixed my original, “Love Me or Leave Me”). According to my Emergency contract, I had the right to approve my mixes; however, at the time I was told when to show up at the studio, the fucker had mixed my record already, and in a few hours I apparently morphed from a techno-pop recording artist to a Latin Freestyle singer. Don’t get me wrong. If I could have pulled off the Latin vibe like Ricky Martin, you would not have heard me complain. What would you think if U2’s music was mixed into Country? I hope I rest my case. What a branding nightmare. Both singles permeated the New York dance clubs in the 80s. And that’s not quite all of the music drama: I later negotiated another recording contract, with music legend Sid Bernstein and his New York Music Company (Sid told me he brought The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, among others, to America)— that contract went by the wayside; and another contract with Buddy Allen Management (which represented The Spinners, Stacy Lattisaw, and Brenda K. Starr, the 80s dance recording artist who gave Mariah Carey her first break as a backup singer, plus more) proved another waste of time.
#Why is the music business
so complicated and dysfunctional?
With all the complications that surrounded the music business and me, none of them compare to what happened on the self-proclaimed “last night” of my music career—which literally ended with a bang. At my last gig, at a club called 1018 (later known as The Roxy) in NYC, someone shot a gun—not a cap gun—above the crowd. I came to realize that the gunshot was meant to be a spiritual “period” at the end of my music sentence—and by “sentence,” boy, I mean it felt like a prison sentence. It was time to blow the dust off my wounded lyrical soul and move onward (Another shift in gear.) I was absolutely done with record labels that screwed me and with snaky club owners who didn’t pay me. I had an urge to surround myself with supportive and trustworthy people who didn’t care about which bass drum sound supported my backing tracks. I finally turned off the music, at least for now, because none of these opportunities paid the landlord’s rent.
#When the work don’t pay, do not stay.
Even though that gunshot closed the door to my music, it opened the door to reinvention. As part of it, I was on a road to switching my middle name for my first (which I finally brought to unofficial fruition in 1990, when I hosted a “Just Say Justin” party for my friends and relatives).
While simultaneously recording music in the US, I needed cold, hard cash; for seven years, I landed at NYC’s MTA (Metropolitan Transportation Authority) Data Center, working as a temp who typed on a Wang word processor. During that period I was still taking a ton of dance classes, just as one of my buddies asked me to fill in for him as a go-go dancer at a club called Danceteria in NYC. That was the weirdest thing I ever did; however, not surprisingly, the nightly pay was more than I made in the music business. After my experience with the MTA, I spent fifteen years in the restaurant business, working my way up from host (at Tavern-on-the-Green, where my manager, the soon-to-be-legendary NYC restauranteur, Drew Nieporent, managed me), and waiting tables (at such places as The Duck Joint, where I served the ravishing, Catherine Deneuve), to general management at the now defunct Triplets Romanian Steakhouse in NYC, an old-time Jewish eatery. Triplets was run by a set of triplets who were separated at birth—two of whom ended up at the same college nonetheless, serving up dinner and dancing as a belly-dancer wiggled around for tips. It was a show put on by the waiters—and me. So the waiters sang show tunes, and I (awkwardly) sang my techno-British-ish pop tunes to my backing tracks, playing to an audience that included, on every Jewish holiday, none other than one of the great music mavens of all time, Clive Davis, who would bring his family. (For anyone who hasn’t
