THE BGAT GOGS On

THG BGAT GOGS On

Sex Pistols Squirt the Issue

THE MARQUEE, LONDON —"Hurry up, they're having an orgy on stage," said the bloke at the door as he tore the tickets up.

I waded to the front and straightway sighted a chair arcing gracefully through the air, skidding across the stage and thudding contentedly into the PA system, to the obvious nonchalance of the bass drums and guitar.

Well I didn't think they sounded that bad on first earful — then I saw it was the singer who'd done the throwing.

He was stalking round the front rows, apparently scuffing over the litter on the floor between baring his teeth at the audience and stopping to chat with members of the group's retinue. He's called Johnny Rotten and the monicker fits.

Sex Pistols? Seems I'd missed the cavortings with the two scantily clad (plastic thigh boots and bodices) pieces dancing up front. In

fact, I only caught the last few numbers; enough, as it happens, to get the idea. Which is...a quartet of spiky teenage misfits from the

.Joseph Stevens

wrong end of various London roads, playing 60's styled white punk rock as unselfconsciously as it's possible to play it these days i.e. selfconsciously.

Punks? Springsteen Bruce and the rest of "em would get shredded if they went up against these boys. They've played less than a dozen gigs as yet, have a small but fanatic following, and don't get asked back. Next month they play the Institute of Contem-

porary Arts if that's a clue. I'm told the Pistols repertoire includes lesser known Dave Berry and Small Faces numbers (check out early Kinks" B sides leads), besides an Iggy and the Stooges item and several self-penned numbers like the moronic "I'm Pretty Vacant," a meandering power-chord job that produced the chair-throwing incident.

No-one, asked for an encore but they did one anyway: "We're going to play "Substitute.""

"You can't play," heckled an irate French punter.

"So what?" countered the bassman, jutting his chin in the direction of the bewildered Frog.

That's how it is with the Pistols — a musical experience with the emphasis on Experience.

"Actually, we're not into music," one of the Pistols confided afterwards.

Wot then?

"We're into chaos." NEW YORK-One early spring evening at CBGB's Wayne County was wrapping up his parody of Patti Smith when a disturbance erupted. All that the participants will agree upon is that Handsome Dick Manitoba of the Dictators was at one time or another on the stage, that he.said "things" to Wayne, that some mention of "spit" was made, and that Wayne nailed him with a microphone stand. After that things erupted into a fullscale brawl; Manitoba's collarbone was broken and Wayne County was detained in the Tombs for a day. Says Wayne:

Neil Spencer (NME)

This Is Not A Picture Of The Andrews Sisters

Nor is it the International Snuff Movie Stars' Ten Year Reunion. It's LaBeile, shakin' their halfacres and makin' with thevoolayvoodoo for an appreciative audience of Long Island staple gunners at an Easter Sunday midnight-to-six bash in Anton Perich's loft. Why are they dressed this way? Well, there were three of them up there, right? And it's been a hell of a long time since they pinned 'em up there, right? And even shrouds used to be made of longer-lasting fabric than these days, right (if you don't believe us, call Women's Wear Dally)? Okay, the only questions left now are: which one of these bimbos is the big J, and has cross-dressing gone too far?

War of the Gargantuas

"They're taking me to court on assault charges — a felony. And he jumped onstage and started it! He did not have good intentions. He told Danny Fields before it happened that he was going to go up onstage and "smash that queer.' He went out of his way to pick a fight with me! And he lost the fight. And NOW he's sicced the cops on me. And I'm just disgusted, I had to go and throw up after the show.

"He'd been hassling all the other groups; he yelled things at'Johnny Thunders:, "You sucked with the Dolls and you still suck.' And with Talking Heads — the little girl that plays bass — he starts yelling at her: "Hey chick you can't play the guitar, you're just a dyke." And then he jumped onstage in the middle of my show, spat in my face, threw ice cubes, called me a homo — holding a beermug in his hand! For all I knew he was going to smash me with it — I just took that microphone stand and started swinging it.

I warned him several times, I told him "You'd better get off the stage and leave me alone or you're going to get it." I said "You're a disgusting fat pig; you're ugly, you can't get laid, so you come to CBGB's to hassle New York bands to get your rocks off."

"1 got him with the microphone stand in the arm — when he turned around I hit

WayneCounty, the brute, moullnfl Cherry Vanilla,

him in the collarbone and it broke it. Then he took the glass and clobbered me in the chest with it. So I hit him in the back of the head. And then he came at me again — we rolled on the floor, hitting each other with our fists and everything. Blood everywhere. Then somebody pulled me off and he jumped at me again while some other guy was holding me. Then my bass player wrestled him — not wrestled him but like in football — tackled him, and he fell into the tables, but he kept coming, he wouldn't go away. I mean, that's trespassing on private property. That happened with the Who and Pete Townshend clobbered the guy."

And in this corner. Handsome Dick Manitoba:

"Look, on one end of it I'd like to write my side of the story. On the other end

J&ftney Mr [Doesn't 5?v Swear, It Gurgles

pACOMB. ILL - If a billion one dollar bills were placed back-to-back around the world, three-quarters of them would sink.

Rick "Ask meanything"

Johnson

Manitoba's lost stand.

"Handsome Dick Manitoba Getting Destroyed by a Fag Queen" is not the best thing in the world for the Dictators" image."

Well, he's a pretty big guy, isn't he?

"Well. ..bones crack under the pressure of microphone stands. I mean, I think I could destroy him with my hands. I know I could. I was in CBGB's one night. I was going to the bathroom; it was real crowded in the aisle, so I stepped up on the corner of the stage and I was going to step down on the other side. I'd been drinking, but I wasn't terribly drunk. So I just turned around so that I was kind of parallel to him. And I said, "Hey Wayne, you wanna see my spit trick?" You know my spit trick, right? When my saliva gets really thick I let it drip down like a foot and a half and then suck it back in my mouth. I • thought it would be a fur. thing to do, you know; a cool scene at CBGB's, a little interaction. So he starts screaming "Get off my stage you fat ugly bastard" —

cursing at me. So I didn't say nothing to him. He says, "What are you, a frustrated little bitch, what are you, a wop or a Jew?" So then I started to get mad. So all I did was say "Fuck you, you homo. Fuck you, you queer." The next thing I remember — I wasn't facing him and I wasn't ready for it — I got smashed with the microphone stand. I remember going down, and then getting up. Next he's pointing at me to his guitar player, the guitar player's lifting the guitar over his head as if to hit me, 1 get smashed again and we rumble on the floor or somethin". I had to go to the hospital; in my head I had to have fifteen stitches, I had a broken collarbone — had to wear a sling for five, six weeks. I went up there to say something funny, and if they had wanted to throw me out, they could have."

He said you spat at himi

"I didn't spit at him. Maybe they heard me say I was going to do my spit trick. I ain't a really violent person so I had no intention of violence. Even if I had spat at him — which I didn't — that's no reason to smash someone over the head with a micrpphone stand. I should have been thrown out or assisted out by the bouncers.

"This guy who manages him — Peter Crowley — he wants to prove that I have a deep-rooted fear of and desire to destroy homosexuals. Do you know what I'm going to say? The first thing Wayne County said was "Get off the stage you fat ugly..." I'm going to say that he has a deep-rooted fear of fat people, that's why he attacked me. I mean what's the difference, one prejudice or another: fat, queer...? So listen,. I'm gonna, go eat supper and then I'm going to a party tonight."

Next: Forget the Hearst trial, Leopold & Loeb and all of the others in the annals of legal history. The trial of the whatever. The trial of the century: Handsome Dick Manitoba vs. Wayne County. And imagine the look on the judge's face. SAN FRANCISCO — The Dead Teeth Scrolls are dental records. More precisely, they are the Grateful Dead's dental records. Until now nothing has been written about musician's teeth in general and the Grateful Dead's teeth in particular, but with the publication of these documents we are finally able to examine the incisors of creativity and the molars of genius.

Susan Whitall

The Dead Teeth Scrolls

We already know a lot about the Dead. We know aabout the financial difficulties they experienced in the mid-Sixties, and we are familiar, with their musical

journey into unexplored territory on Anthem of The Sun and their return home on Workingman's Dead. Thousands of words have been written about the uniquely familial organization the Dead established, and their amazing self-sufficiency in the music business has been explored by financial analysts, social scientists and rock critics. (They own Dead and Round Grateful Records, companies based in Marin County, California.)

And we know that Jerry Garcia, the articulate, ninefingered Spanish-Irish guitarist who looks more like a Chicano Santa Claus than a rock guitarist, shaved off his beard in 1973 and grew it back almost exactly one year later.

But what about hiis teeth? Does he have any, and if so, what shape are they in? To what degree does his program of dental care affect his amazing eloquence, a trait foreign to all but a few rock musicians? Can his great guitar licks be attributed to the use of a soft-bristled toothbrush?

Does Jerry Garcia or any of the other members of the Grateful Dead wear braces, for God's sake? And how

Another Rock Thespian Sprouts

It was learned fust before presstime that Sam Peckinpah Is filming a sequel to Pat Garrett A Billy the Kid, in an arroyo just outside Gila Bend, Arizona. Since Bob Dylan was snagged by previous contractual commitments to appear in Seventh Son of the Godfather, his role in the original Garrett pic will be taken by Leslie West, who appears above in heavy makeup for his opening scene.

many gold crowns, pulp caps or cavities lurk in their mouths? The Dead Teeth Scrolls will provide some of the answers to these and other equally amphigoric questions.

Generally speaking, the Dead's teeth are their own, the single exception being lyricist Robert Hunter's #14 tooth which is artificial. Considering that the group has over 150 individual teeth among them both at home and on the road, this is not a bad percentage.

The Scrolls indicate that they have been strongly influenced by traditional dental hygiene, as seen by the absence of numerous cavities. Several members of the band experimented with electric toothbrushes for a time and there is a rumor that Phil Lesh tried a Water Pic recently. These devices were abandoned when less than satisfactory results were achieved and they eventually returned to acoustic brushin9v

The Scrolls further reveal that Garcia and Hunter, the source of most Grateful Dead material, have the

poorest choppers. From this we may conclude that songwriting is detrimental to healthy teeth. Rhythm guitarist Bob Weir owns a set of porcelain and enamel that could easily rank as number one in anyone's Top 40. He is, of course, five years younger than either Garcia or Hunter which might account for his dental superiority. It will be interesting to watch his teeth now that he is writing songs on a regular basis.

Mickey Hart, former Grateful Dead drummer who left the band several years ago and took his teeth with him, has average teeth as do bassist Phil Lesh and remaining drummer Bill Kreutzmann. .Unfortunately, the Dead Teeth Scrolls do not include the dental records of Ron McKernan, a.k.a. Pig Pen, the gifted bluesman who was a charter member of the Warlocks, the band that evolved into the Dead. Until he left the Dead and everyone else in 1973 Pig Pen was along on every trip except the one to the dentist. He enjoyed projecting the image of a hard-drinking biker and liked to pose with his guns, so it's not unreasonable to assume that he was not preoccupied with the relative merits of regular check ups, flouride, or dental floss.

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CONTINUED FROM PAGE 22.

But beneath his rugged exterior Pig Pen possessed an extremely sensitive nature. When the Grateful Dead were operating within the sphere of influence of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, he avoided acid and was made uncomfortable by Prankster antics. Perhaps he was getting off on novacaine somewhere. We'll probably never know for sure.

In late 1974 the Dead announced they were going to take a vacation from performing and hinted that the vacation might very well be a permanent one. Massive overhead and the logistic problems of transporting their monster sound system were given as reasons. Following their final concert in San Francisco, Jerry Garcia said, "We'll probably get back together sometime if it feels right. Who knows?"

Well, they did get back, together in March of last year to perform a 40minute set at a benefit concert for the San Francisco school district organized by Bill Graham.

Garcia was asked backstage about the rumor that the Grateful Dead has been chosen by President Ford to play "Happy Birthday" from the steps of the nation's capitol on July 4, 1976. "I don't know anything about it," he said. "Besides, I have a dentist appointment at two o'clock that day."

Greg Hoffman