Bottle Rockets - A True Story
by Jesse Sublett
In 1979, it really did seem possible that a band like mine could go to New
York City, play a few gigs, and get discovered. Even a band called the Skunks
from Austin, Texas.
We had a plan. We’d go to New York, play our dates at CBGB’S, Max’s
Kansas City, and a few other clubs, and we’d kill ‘em.
Because of the high hopes and big stakes involved, it now seems odd that we’d
wait till a week before our grand adventure to buy a van, and when we did,
it was beat up ‘69 GMC Travelall, a sort of utilitarian station wagon,
for $600. But that’s what we did.
It was an old Texas Highway Department truck with a million miles on it. It
had the official bright yellow paint job, and a big blue steel brush guard
on the front, which gave it a sort of menacing appearance. But that effect
was ruined by the goofy image some clown before us had painted on the driver’s
door: an armadillo leaping in front of a Texas flag. It was embarrassing. We
were going to pull into Manhattan looking like the Beverly Hillbillies.
We were cheap. We lived on Top Ramen noodles and $1.25 Tamale House lunches.
$1,000 bought a lot of car in that little world, but this truck was still funky.
The engine ran, the wheels rolled, the lights lit. Other than that, only Fred
Flintstone’s car was more primitive. There was no radio. Nothing on the
dashboard worked. No heater. We used vise grips in place of missing window
cranks. The doors didn’t lock, so we “secured” them with
a stupid system of heavy chains and padlocks. Despite everything – or
the lack of it -- we had a perverse affection for the ugly yellow truck. We
thought it was cool. We even thought it might get us to New York.
We made it from Austin to New Orleans without incident. We played at a punk
club called - ironically -- Jed’s.
The truck had some play in the steering when we first bought it. The second
day on the road it went from barely tolerable to bad beyond belief. Even on
a straightaway the driver had to constantly correct the drift and it swerved
so much we got seasick anyway. We were pulled over by every state trooper between
New Orleans and New Jersey. They naturally assumed we were drunk. They were
often right, but somehow we always talked them out of it.
Just a few miles across the Alabama line, the wheel seized up completely. Manhattan
seemed like the other side of the world.
After getting towed to the next town, a mechanic told us the problem was the
steering gear: It was dry as a bone. Don’t you boys in Texas believe
in grease? He patched things back together and, after charging us a mere $10,
sent us on our way again, shaking his head sadly.
We seemed to make an odd impression on people wherever we went. The next morning
we bought a huge supply of fireworks from a gas station attendant in the hills
of rural Virginia. As we were walking back to the truck with our goodies, the
attendant shouted after us: “I don’t know about down in Texas,
but here in Virginia, MEN love WOMEN!”
The insult hung in the air like a dialogue balloon in a comic book. He thinks
we’re gay! We laughed our way out of that state.
Next to beer, which we drank like water, our favorite distraction was fireworks.
We shot off bottle rockets by the gross. Shot them at other cars on the road,
at each other. Smoke bombs, cigarette loads, M-80s, whatever. If it blew up,
smoked, flew or fizzed, we shot it off. We were fiendishly stupid.
Not all of our pranks involved explosives. Once our roadie, Richard Luckett,
made the mistake of falling asleep during a poker game, so we duct-taped him
to the bed. When we were done he looked like a silver mummy. The only part
of his body left free was his mouth, so he’d be able to scream when he
woke up.
And he did.
………
Our first gig in the New York area was in Dover, New Jersey.
The club was huge. Four people came. It was unnerving. The whole time we were
onstage, we fretted that those four people would get up and leave.
After the gig we consoled ourselves over many Budweisers, sitting on our ugly
truck, shooting bottle rockets at the moon.
………
We were a little three piece band from Texas on a no-budget tour,
in a city that ate people like us the way a whale feeds on plankton.
In the way that a good little Christian believes that praying and going to
church will get you to heaven, we believed that just having the guts to come
to New York and be ourselves would make something happen. We were shooting
bottle rockets at the moon, with guitars and guts and dreams instead of gunpowder.
We were young: I was 24, drummer Billy Blackmon was 26, guitarist Jon Dee Graham
was a tender 19. We were driven. We were also naïve-- despite how tough
and cynical we pretended to be. We had three and a half weeks’ worth
of gigs in the area, starting with Friday and Saturday night at CBGB’s—a
not too shabby way to kick things off .
We were brilliant. We timed our arrival so we pulled into mid-town Manhattan
at the beginning of rush hour. Assaulted by the city’s noise and smell
and vertical visual rush, I felt exhilarated and a little scared. My heartbeat
kicked up. My teeth showed when I smiled. Richard, the only one brave enough
to drive in Manhattan on our first day, pointed out landmarks when he wasn’t
shouting curses at traffic. Billy, the Rodney Dangerfield of the band, kept
saying things like, “I hope we don’t get robbed and killed on our
first day here.”
Forgetting the comic appearance of our vehicle, we tried to affect nonchalance
as people stared and pointed as we passed. Richard had been to New York before.
I’d been there only once, with Lois. Aside from border towns, that was
the only time I’d ever been out of the state in my 24 years on the planet,
the first 18 spent in a little redneck town called Johnson City. The other
two Skunks were small town boys, too.
Jon Dee was just another skinny, no-ass musician back then. At that moment
he was also pale and visibly shaken. After riding in silence for too long,
he said, “We don’t belong here. Let’s just go home.”
“Get real, man,” I said, trying to project confidence and assurance. “This
is gonna be fun. Don’t worry. What could go wrong?”
We were waiting at a red light. With perfect comic timing, the light turned
green and our Flintstone wagon refused to go. We’d been in Manhattan
precisely fifteen minutes and our truck had broken down. Honking and insults
immediately filled the air, coyotes smelling blood.
Luckily, the problem was with the clutch, and Richard was able to rig the disjoined
parts together again and get us back on our way. Our terror, however, had only
temporarily subsided.
………
Down in the Bowery section of Manhattan’s Lower East Side,
CBGB’s was the legendary matrix of the American underground, proto-punk
music scene. CBGB’s was the house of Blondie, the Ramones, Johnny Thunders,
and Talking Heads. It was the Los Alamos of rock ‘n roll.
Having a gig here certainly didn't mean we'd hit the big time, but it was a
giant step forward. If we never accomplished another thing, having a clipping
with our name in a CBGB’s ad to paste in my Skunks scrapbook would be
very cool.
………
By the time we take the stage that night, I'm speeding on adrenaline.
I've chugged three beers in the last hour and it's like drinking water. It’s
going right through me, I’ve pissed a hundred times in the last hour.
I plug in my bass and step up to the mic as the MC announces us: “Ladies
and gentlemen, from Austin, Texas, the Skunks!”
The room is full, front to back, with a mix of spiky hair, rock ‘n roll
shags, Lower East Side musicians and other slackers, bridge-and-tunnel-crowd,
tourists. Leather jackets on everyone, and you had to work to find one back
then, you couldn’t just buy one at the Gap or Banana Republic.
The applause they greet us with is polite in a tight-assed way -- nothing like
the whoops and whistles back home -- and it dies down quickly. No calls for "Cheap
Girl," our own equivalent to “Stairway to Heaven.” They want
us to know nothing’s free in this town, especially the things we’re
after.
I never get nervous before a crowd. I’m cool. But I am excited. I swig
my beer and thump my bass -- loud enough to rattle everything, even the hair
on my head. Good! Just loud enough. Test, mike test, one, two. The monitors
are nice and loud. Billy thraps on his snare, Jon Dee stabs a couple of licks,
then clangs a power chord chased by a swell of feedback. We’re ready.
I nod at Billy. He clicks his sticks for the count and we crash in -- tight,
loud and mean. The first song is a 90 mile-per-hour instrumental called "Wild
Rumpus" -- the Ventures meet the MC5, and it goes over OK. We bang out
the rest of the set – a mix of originals (my songs, that is) and cool
covers, mostly Stones and Velvet Underground, ending with our metallic underground
tribal stomp on “Sister Ray.” The crowd response has grown warmer
but we don’t get that orgasmic roar like people give us back in Texas.
Banner headlines trumpeting “THE SKUNKS TAKE MANHATTAN” are not
likely.
But what the hell. They’ve seen everything here. New Yorkers aren’t
just jaded, they have to be careful about being emotive. Sometimes you live
longer that way.
Suddenly, it’s over.
No encore. Thank you very much, we’re the Skunks from Austin, Texas,
good night. We wave good-bye and instead of feeling let down we backslap and
high-five each other all the way back to the dressing room.
Because it feels pretty good. Just to have come this far and survived, and
we did better than that. Tomorrow night, we’ll kill ‘em.
………
Besides our friends in the John Cale band, the audience included members of the RayBeats, 8-Eyed Spy, the dB’s, and some other bands, too. Our best friend in town was George Scott III, who played bass for John Cale, the RayBeats, and 8-Eyed Spy. We were even staying in George’s apartment, which was just around the corner from the club.
………
We didn’t kill ‘em Saturday night after all, but
we held our own again. No salivating rock critics or record company executives,
no encore. But it’s OK, it’s just the beginning. We’ve got
more gigs to play. Something exciting could still happen on this trip. After
all, this is New York City.
I’ve got faith.
………
George’s apartment, barely half a block away, was on the
fifth floor, a classic 19th century immigrant’s dump, with the bathtub
in the kitchen and one window facing the street. That window was important
to us. After the gig, we left our truck on the street, with all our gear in
back, even my black ’63 Fender Precision, my other black Fender Precision,
Jon Dee’s red Gretsch guitar, and a Fender Musicmaster that Lois had
loaned us. Normally, we never left guitars and amp heads in the truck, but
that night, the thought of carrying all that stuff up five flights of stairs,
drunk, inspired us allow a rare exception. One of us would stay by the window
at all times, keeping an eye on the street.
That way nothing could happen.
We stayed up all night, listening to records and drinking Budweiser.
We drank too many Budweisers. We eventually got sleepy. We got less diligent
about watching the truck. When the sun came up next morning, my Fender basses,
the two guitars, my wonderful Sunn bass amp head, and Billy’s snare drum
were gone. We called the police. They came. They took a report.
Did they think we’d get our gear back? Oh, sure, absolutely. Lotsa luck,
Tex. Go get yourself some breakfast. With a brain on the side.
We were devastated. I could have cried about losing those P-basses. Especially
the one with the ’63 neck, my first Fender, and my amp head that was
louder than God. Jon Dee did cry. He’d learned Chuck Berry on that Gretsch.
It was his first, his only electric guitar. “There’s not another
guitar like it,” he kept saying. “I’ll never find another
one, never.”
It was Sunday morning. We were supposed to play Boston Tuesday. George promised
he’d find guitars and amps for us to borrow. That was good enough for
me. We could still do it. No need to panic.
Creatively, and usually, when it came to business, the Skunks was my band.
But Billy and Jon Dee saw this as a matter of survival.
Jon Dee said: “No, let’s go home. We’re beat.”
Billy said: “We’re in over our heads. Let’s go now, before
something else happens.”
Richard was on my side. The roadie.
They didn’t give a shit.
They were pathetic. Just go. Now. Cut our losses.
I wanted to stay and slug it out with borrowed instruments. I knew we could
do it, that we’d prevail. We had a mission. Drive back to Texas with
our tails between our legs? It was unthinkable.
………
We left Manhattan on a cold, gray dawn, four guys stinking of
club grime and smoke and clammy desperation, gripped by our own personal miseries.
We’d been up the better part of 30 hours already, even before we left
NYC. I still had on my polka dot glitter stage socks, which went so well with
my pointy toed pimp shoes. They looked so sad now. The truck was swerving worse
than ever again, despite our best attempts to make it appear sober. An hour
outside of Manhattan a New Jersey trooper pulled us over. We told him our sorry
tale and asked if he wouldn’t just show some mercy and let us just go
on our miserable way. He said he’d like for us to step outside the van
anyway and asked for permission to search the van. After more pitiful pleading,
we finally acquiesced, feeling resigned to a long stretch in a dank New Jersey
dungeon.
The trooper found Richard’s stash of pot. I thought it would be useless
and maybe even counter-productive at this point to deny that I smoked the stuff.
We obviously had no credibility. Wrinkling his nose with distaste at the dark
green, parsley-like flakes, the trooper said, “This looks like homegrown,
Richard.”
“Yes, sir, it is homegrown,” said Richard, his head hanging quite
low. “It’s pretty bad stuff.”
The trooper shook his head, regarding us with the same piteous expression as
the mechanic who’d wondered if people in Texas believed in grease. He
sternly surveyed our downbeat little combo of moppy heads and bleary eyes and
said, “You have any more drugs in the van, Richard?”
“No, sir,” Richard answered firmly.
“Then why don’t you dump that baggie out on the road here and you
fellows try to be careful on your way back to Texas.”
Richard then shook his homegrown pot into the New Jersey ditch and we made
ourselves gone from that place.
It was a long trip. We were so hangdog we didn’t shoot off any fireworks
until we crossed the Texas state line.
New York had carved another notch on her belt, having crushed yet another band
of struggling rockers ‘neath her spiky boots. But as soon as we got another
vehicle and some dates, we’d be back. And this time, we’d kill ‘em.