45s: “For Your Love,” “Shapes of Things,” “Over Under Sideways Down.” That’s what I cut my teeth on—not that I was in any shape in 1964 to take all that stuff and run with it. I’d take speed and listen to the Yardbirds, the Pretty Things, the Stones. We were what—sixteen? You couldn’t drink till you were eighteen, so all we could do was grass and pills . . . red crosses, white crosses, Christmas trees, Dexedrine, Benzedrine. I’d go up to Sunapee in the winter and sit in the barn—four feet of snow outside—light a fire, and snort speed until I was vibrating at the same frequency as the fucking records.
The Strangers slowly began to get gigs. We played a lot of weird places at the beginning, like Banana Fish Park on Long Island. We even had a slogan: “THE STRANGERS—ENGLISH SOUNDS, AMERICAN R&B.” At Easter my mom drove the Strangers up to Sunapee to perform. We played stuff like “She’s a Woman” and the Dave Clark Five’s “Bits and Pieces.”
My life four years before Aerosmith . . .
with The Strangers.
My motto has always been: “FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT.” If you wanna be a rock ’n’ roll star (like Keith Richards says) you gotta get your moves off in the mirror first. The look. Pick up a copy of Rave magazine, see what the cool cats are wearing in Swinging London this month. Rave was the midsixties Brit mag of immaculate Mod haberdashery. Check out Mick’s houndstooth pants. And green shoes. Where’d Keith Relf get those wraparound shades, man? You gotta stay on top of this stuff, you know, if you wanna be a rock star. Gotta be properly attired in the latest Mod gear when the moment arises and the fickle finger of Billboard’s Top Ten touches you.
I scoured the pseudo–Carnaby Street boutiques of Greenwich Village for the genuine article. Collarless shirts, leather vests, and checkered pants at Paul Sargent’s on Eighth Street. Beatle boots with Cuban heels from Bloom’s Shoe Gallery in the West Village or Florsheim Shoes on Forty-second Street. They had the fuckin’ greatest boots, high heels, tight around the ankles—those were the ones I wore onstage. Then there were the Mod shoes, brightly colored Capezio ballet shoes, flowered shirts, and satin scarves—well, okay, the scarves came later (inspired by Janis Joplin). Those I got along with my incense from Sindori (is that what the place was called?), an import store across the street from the Fillmore East.
In the early days, I would put incense all over the amps and in front of the stage to mark my territory. I thought by burning exotic scents like myrrh they’d remember me by my smell, like God in their church. I wanted something other than our bad tuning and my ugly fucking Mick Jagger face to remember us by. It’s like if I were a dog, I would go out to the tip of the stage, lift my leg, pee, and say, “I’d like to leave a little something for you to remember me by.” Dogs piss on trees to mark their territory, so I marked mine with incense and banners—like old Scottish tartans that I found, the ones that held special family colors and crests.
It’s so funny, the obsessive Limey mimicking that went on. Back in 1966, down on Delancey Street, where the blacks got their stuff, you could get a beautiful leather jacket for twenty-six bucks . . . but who had twenty-six bucks back then? I’d hang around Bloom’s Shoe Gallery just waiting to see who would go in. I bought all my shit there, you know, because they did. The Stones, the Byrds, Dylan. Mike Clark, the drummer for the Byrds, turned me on to this place in Estes Park, Colorado, where he got his moccasins, the ones he wore on an album cover. I asked him, “How could I get a pair of those?” He gave me the address and I got me a pair, which I later on brought into the studio where we were recording our first album. I got the rubber-stamp holder with all the different rubber stamps they used to mark the two-inch master reels. The rubber stamps would say “DOLBY OUTTAKES,” “REMIX VERSION. SLAVE, MASTER”—all things that could be done to tapes. I rubber-stamped my moccasins, which I chose to call my recording boots, all over and I wore them till the soles fell off.
Bloom’s Shoe Gallery was where I ran into Bob Dylan. Okay, he was coming out of there and I was walking in. I’d love to have a great story where I told him I was in a band (I wasn’t). I wish I could’ve told him I loved his voice (I did). I used to go down and walk around Greenwich Village, all the time hoping to bump into the Stones, which of course never happened. I never got a chance to speak to Dylan or Keith or Mick to ask them how the fuck they wrote their songs. I assumed they had to get their lyrics from their life experiences. I knew that drugs had something to do with it. I’d heard that Pete Townshend’s stutter in “My Generation” came from leapers, some weirdass British speed. Tuinals, acid, and grass . . . I knew about those. And there was this drug called “coke.”
I had been around the block and I’d done as much crank as anyone, but somewhere along the line I decided to do something else instead of using the speed to go and party in the Village. Fuck that, I think I’ll stay at home tonight and channel John Lennon. I’ll write a song based on my muddled understandings and my profound misunderstandings that’ll change the world. But it took a while to get to that place.
New York City was filled with very odd folk—which I loved. I’d take my mother’s car down to the city, park it on the street, get a parking ticket, throw it away, and drive home. I can’t imagine how many tickets I got. I know I never paid any of them. A rock ’n’ roll Dillinger in the making. Or I’d leave the car in the Bronx at the first train stop, which was past White Plains and Yonkers Raceway, get on the train, and get off at Fifty-ninth Street, Columbus Circle. The Fifty-ninth Street subway stop wasn’t that far from where Moondog would stand with his spear and Viking helmet. He lived on the street, wore only homemade clothes, and thought of himself as the incarnation of the Norse God Thor. He was so noble and mysterious, like a character from mythology come to life on Sixth Avenue.
Clyde and his ride (Honkin’), 2010. (Keren Pinkas)
Moondog wrote “All Is Loneliness” (that Janis sang on Big Brother and the Holding Company’s first album). He’d hang out with a bald-headed guy who would blow raspberries and yell “Fuck you!” at anyone who walked by. He had a ragged and gravelly street voice. Welcome to Freak City! There were freaks on the streets, in the clubs, on TV. There were magnificent misfits everywhere, and you had no idea what they were famous for but they were all famous for something. I loved them. Then I’d wander into Central Park, smoke weed, and catch a sweet Gotham buzz.
On Friday afternoons me, Ray Tabano, Debbie Benson, Rickie Holztman’s girlfriend, and Debbie’s friend Dia would head for Greenwich Village because that’s where the beatniks lived and we wanted to be beatniks. It was the summer of ’64. I was a white boy from Yonkers, trying to get high, trying to get hip. We’d sit in Washington Square Park drinking Southern Comfort or Seagrams 7 (or whatever else we could mooch off somebody) until we were completely shitfaced on booze, pills, and pot. Then we’d go check out the clubs! The Kettle of Fish, the Tin Angel, the Bitter End, the Night Owl, Trudy Heller’s, Café Wha? Those clubs in New York were my education. Later on we played all those joints. The smell of those bars was like a funky nostalgic patchouli. To this day I love the stale smell of cigarettes and beer that you got in those places.
Debbie Benson, 1968.
O, how I loved her. . . . RIP. (Ernie Tallarico)
One night we were wandering around the Village and saw a group advertising itself as the Strangers outside a club—they seemed to be a pretty established band and sounded better than us, so we decided to change our name to the mildly pretentious Strangeurs.
I’d go down there Friday night, come home Sunday. I loved it; I wanted that
