THE BEAT GOES ON

THE BEAT GOES ON

It's The Quiet Ones You Have to Watch

CHICAGO—The presence of a motley bunch of fools passing for journalists was requested recently by Warner Brothers prez Mo Ostin, to meet new Warner Brothers artiste and ex-Fab George Harrison. George, you'll recall, has had a lousy year; besides being sued for plagiarism by the writers of "He's So Fine", who thought he'd duplicated one too many riffs in "My Sweet Lord" (the judge finally ruled that he had "subconsciously" plagiarized the old Chiffons hit), A&M Records slapped him with a ten million dollar lawsuit, claiming non-delivery of an albu m. George asserts that they actually regretted giving him such a generous deal and that it was just a ploy to get rid of him. It worked; he bought out his contract and switched distribution for his Dark Horse Records to Warner Brothers wheri he made the jump to Mr. Ostin's company himself.

At the press reception in a Chicago hotel a healthylooking Harrison answered questions serenely—nay, earnestly. One writer barked to another: "Did you ask him about...it?" "Nah," the other one replied. "He brought up the reunion himself." And indeed he did; in this reporter's presence he offered: "I think we might do it, in a couple of years. But not ,for the money."

As the likes of columnists Irv Kupcinet and Aaron Gold inched closer (Bruno Stein was elegant and warm in a full length fur), George was unexpectedly garrulous: "They [A&M] didn't have faith in me. Warner Brothers does, and that's given me new energy." He admitted that the promotional trip he was in the midst of was very uncharacteristic, but that he felt newly confident after coming

out of a long period of bad times, and he wanted people to know about it. Besides the legal hassles, he'd pushed his already frail health to the limit with long hours completing the disputed album (331/3, his age at the time of recording), and excessive drinking. Whaat, you say—

drinking? That's right; George came clean and admitted that although he's still heavily involved in Eastern religions, his has not been an unhedonistic existence. (But you'll recall that in Fab Four days, it was George who wrote "Cars and Girls" under his "hobbies" on all of those

FUN FAX sheets). But he assured us that things were under control, and that his youthful sheen could indeed be attributed to healthful living (apart from the cigarettes) 1 I

Then he moved to an open window, outside of which a handful of loony girls

were wiggling and jumping around. This caused a plethora of wiggling and jumping around. In fact, some writers discovered that even'they, by opening the curtains a crack, could cause a veritable riot of wiggling and jumping around.

Then the eats: "I'm totally vegetarian," a girl at our table declared. "I won't eat the shrimp." Everybody gawked to see what George ate.

Next came a puff speech by Mo (Good choice of clothes, weak on patter; A for projection), in which he actually said the words "truly great human being" in reference to the guest of honor, who had not left the room. Uh oh: Looked to be a spiritually up-lifting evening, until George took the floor and made with the patter. And managed to jolt the stuffed, belligerent scribes into giggles with lines like "having had a few ups and downs, loop-de-loops in my time"—not laff riot stuff, you understand, but after all this is Beatle George. Then the music from 33V3 boomed out of the speakers. "This is a real jitterbug number," George flashes the teeth. And it was, though you could hear the patented Hari mournful guitar plunking away. Indeed, the tunes we heard sounded like a very loose Harrison; whether it was cheap muscatel or the company he's been keeping with Monty Python's Eric Idle, we hope he keeps it up.

Quacking Quims K-Oed In Big Quash

A funny thing happanad to Biondia on her way to a Talking Heads gig; she was swerving to avoid a drunken octoroon who was reeling across Eighth Avenue, when a Volvo crossed her Chevy up and flipped it over. The members of New York's latest Best (and late) New Punk Band, Quacking Quims, were inside, and alas; nothing remains of them now but a pointed-toe Cuban heel boot and a Rastafarian t-shirt. Nonetheless, e post-humous triple elpee Quacking Quims Live At The Toilet is on its way. As for Blondle, she's not taking the loss of her right leg very well, (after her incredible bout with elephantosis, tool) but Totie Fields is flying in to administer extensive therapy. Whatta trouper...

THE BEAT GOES ON

(Eyewitness TV news reporter: "How do you rock critics feel, having all that power, to sway people's minds..." Writer for the Illinois Entertainer: "Funny you should ask; I've thought a lot about that—" Peals of laugh-? ter from the other rock writers at the table rudely cut him off. He looks at them sternly. "It's amusing for me to see these third generation rock critics...I WAS THERE IN '66!" The sound of mashed potatoes exploding in throats...)

Then Hari introduced two promo films (you've seen them on Saturday Night by now) written and directed by his pal Eric Idle. The first was OK: George and a sweetie cruising down a river, George in boater and striped jacket, singing "True Love" ("Yes, the old Grace KellyBing Crosby song," he confides. "It's meant to be humorous—though there's a bit of seriousness to it, too." "Like you, George?" someone yelped.) Then the good stuff; a film set to the cut "Crackerbox Palace". George explained that he got the title from George Grife, who had been the manager of English comedian Lord Buckley—it was the name of one of Lord Buckley's abodes.

"I wrote the name down on a cigarette package— 'There's a song there', I thought. I'm always lifting ideas," he quipped wickedly. Boom! the crowd eats it up.

Slaughter on Any Avenue

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALike Ian Hunter almost said, violence is the only thing that can make you see cents.

The latest entrepreneurs to cash in on America's many intestines - on - the - highway fans are Exidy, Inc., whose new electronic game, Death Race, is supposedly already one of the top three new screen screams in the country.

For a mere two bits, you can step up to the wheel and-

But to the movies; an old lady is wheeling a pram when out jumps George, who proceeds to do a manic lip-synch of the song at different places around the "palace", while assorted colorfully dressed folk pop in and out. Very Sgt. Pepper-ish murmured the crowd. Bravo, Bravo— Hari take a bow!

"Thanks, folks." George is at the microphone again! This guy doesn't need any prodding. Then he introduces a really cooking (no sitars tonight, folks) number, even faster.than the others, and starts to walk back to his seat—hold on! He grabs "I Was There In '66" 's girlfriend (the total vegetarian) , whirls her onto the dance floor, and daddy-o, cuts a real mean jitterbug, bouncing that veggie all over the place; twirling her under his arm, nipping and tucking like

mercilessly nail as many pedestrians as time allows while they waddle innocently across the screen. After each hit, a -solid-state scream erupts and a tiny tombstone appears.

Marketing director Paul Jacombs doesn't feel the game caters to the mungy underside of the players, claiming that "all successful games have elements of violence in them." Yeah, like crazy eights and Yahtz^ Stay tuned for' their next project, Cancer Ward.

Rick Johnson

some greasy dance floor Romeo...whatta fox, huh? Then it's over, and George chats with us some more. He observed that the appeal in the New York Times for a Beatles reunion on New Year's Day or Easter, "to make the world smile again", with proceeds going to different charitable organizations was "sick". That thinking that getting the Beatles together again had something to do with feeding and clothing the poor of the world was wacky. Then bam—out into the dark Chicago streets he fled—a genuine Beatles r'ush-thedoor exit. Authentic enough to satisfy the soul of someone who'd been in the twentieth row of Detroit's foul Olympia as a young sprite of twelve. I know, sweet face, cause I was there in '64.

Susan Whitall

Hookers' Night Out

SAN FRANCISCO - Tsk, tsk, such decadence—all the well-hung spud with the Glad Bag carrying two potatoes beneath his crotch could do was glare at the human bag of McDonald's french fries, and moan "Oh, what a fool I yam. Idaho what got into me."

It all happened at the Third Annual Hooker's Masquerade Ball put on by COYOTE (Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics) , a civil rights organization for prostitute?. R. Crumb and his Cheap Suit Serenades entertained the navelto-navel crowd who listened to the music (oh wo wo). Drag queens in jock straps and mondo women with exposed mammaries cavorted, their fleshy flanks quivering like coagulated consomme. People brought their bodies out of the closets and their privates out of their pants. Even the feminist Berkeley Women's Health Collective had a table where they sold speculums, gave free pelvic exams, and charged men a buck to watch. Slobbering was extra. Through this orgiastic scene squeezed leisure suits from Bakersfield, wandering bleary eyed among the menagerie of free-spirited jubilants— 6,000 in the Hilton's 2,000 capacity Continental Ballroom.

"Can I lick your fingers?" asked one gay blade of a Colonel Sanders look-alike, winking "Or anything else?"

"Keep your mitts off my drumsticks," riposted the Colonel. Ah, only in San Francisco *— Gomorrah the Merrier.

Clark Peterson

Would You Let Your Son Marry One?

THE BEAT GOES ON

NEW YORK—It's 1977 (or almost). Bruce Springsteen has a manager who probably won't let him near a studio for, say, the next three millenia. And Patti Smith has a new album of frank, hardhitting—yet not unsophisticated—rock poetry. Bob Marley has lots and lots of weed and the perceptions to go with it. And the Bay City Rollers are the nextBeatles— in Canada. Sounds hot, huh?

The fact is that we need new meat for rock in 1977 and we aren't getting it. I, for one, am not going to spend my new year thinking, it's heavy that Bob Dylan rhymes sandwich and language on the new Clapton album. Because it ain't. And what is, you ask? Well, I'll tell you that's why I'm here. Heavy is Helen Wheels, for one. Who you probably don't know (but you will).

The only way you might know Ms. Wheels is by knowing that her real name is Helen Robbins and that under that name she co-wrote two tunes for the last Blue Oyster Cult album, "Tattoo Vampire" and "Sinful Love". The only way you might forget Helen Wheels— once you know her, that is—would be if someone gave you a frontal lobotomy (for Christmas, perhaps?). Of course, that someone could very well be Helen herself. (If you will think back—I know this is hard—to the Rory Gallagher article several months ago in CREEM in which the author, one Peter Laughner, recounts having his lip split by a girl at CBGB's, and then guess who that was; you'll get my drift.) In other words, Helen is unforgettable. Case in fact: Helen Wheels lives in the lower depths of New York's once-vaunted East Village, where the locals, many of whom belong to severely low economic and high narcoticsintake sociological groups, don't mind grafting your big toe onto your forehead and dropping you off

the roof in a sink before dinner. And when Helen, who is all of 5'5", struts by in her black boots and spurs, her dog collar, jet black fright hair, and her cut-off denim jacket on the back of which is the legend, "sub-human," they shrink in fear. Says Helen: "I guess it's the spurs." Forget? Not me.

But the point is that after several years as a songwriter she has finally formed a band to back her substantially nasty vocal talents and, in her words, "will be coming out on the scene real heavy in January 1977, you little fuck." The stage set she has planned, according to one associate, will be simple in comparison with Kiss, consisting of just a streetlamp at stage center. The show will open, our source says, with the band in place in the shadows and Helen entering oh all fours at the end of a dog lead held by a blind girl, who will then tie her "dog" to the streetlamp and exit, fumblingly, while the dog begins to sing. And I think it's nice that Helen is hiring the

handicapped, (not since Silver Bullet and the Lone Rangers with their quadamputee) .

The day we went to meet her to talk and take pictures Helen was dressed conservatively—perhaps so as not to spook her date, a Doberman Pinscher. But she spoke out as always on the issues of our day and defined a cogent philosophy of life, art, Kiss and the American Way (if, indeed, the latter two are not inseparable), remarkable es-. pecially in light of the fact that she had not slept for three days.

On men: "Keep 'em at home. Young boys are all right, but experience sometimes pays."

On sex: "Personally, I jerk off a lot."

On jellybeans: "Pineapple." On the Hell's Angels (whom she lives around the corner from): "Casey. C-A-S-E-Y. New York Hell's Angels."

On the almost-late Peter Laughner: "Peter egged me on."

On women: "They need a new idol and that's definitely

me and I don' blame them." On Kiss: "A Kabuki group. I liked the cutouts in their old costumes showing thighs and hipbones. I like 'Black Diamond.' I met Paul Stanley without his makeup and he had a wet fish handshake."

On crime in the streets: "Plenty of it. I don't like crime but most of my friends are criminals."

On her spurs: "So they leave me alone/'

On humor: "I have no sense of humor. None whatsoever. I think humor sucks."

On her favorite group: "Maybe the Dictators—til my group."

On the media: "I don't have a TV, don't watch movies, don't read news and don't give a fuck."

Favorite drug: "Locker Room."

On death: "Not afraid."

On life and how to live: "Be true to yourself. Go to the Pleasure Chest (an S&M mart in NYC). Be tough. Be born brilliant. Work hard. Live hard. Do what you want to do and don't compromise and work some sucky job. And if you happen to snuff it on a bike...fuck it!"

On amphetamine (going into her fourth sleepless day): "Personally, it can cause health problems. But it's all right to suffer consequences."

Hey, Time, need a cover?

Robert Duncan

Ears Only

WASHINGTON D C.-The AMA has released figures which show that more than fourteen million Americans suffer from some form of hearing loss. Where does this leave you?

Mr. Know It All Johnson ONSTAGE, THE WORLDNobody knows for sure why rock bands like to kick the shit out of each other, but short of death and Jerry Lee Lewis, it doesn't seem to hurt them much. The Kinks gained much*of their initial notoriety when the sibling rivalry between the Davies brothers resulted in an onstage battle during which Dave received a multi-stitch slash in the forehead after Ray zeroed-in on him with a cymbal tossed like a dreadnought frisbee The fist and bass guitar fights during Byrds recording sessions are legendary, as are some of Lynyrd Skynyrd and Status Quo's canine warm-up exercises.

30 (0QOO -OQu) (XXH

Perry K.O.'s Tyler In Ten

Two new entries in the stomp sweepstakes are the Sweet and Aerosmit|i. The peat-appearing but internally vile Sweet were reportedly heard fighting it out in their dressing room before a recent show in Germany. Whether it was an inspira-

tional meeting or an earnest discussion over who got to do the spoken parts in "Ballroom Blitz" is unclear, mainly because the fearless reporter ran for it when the neck of a guitar came through the plasterboard wall. "Just tryin' to tune the fucker," explained friendly guitarist Andy Scott.

Aerosmith's internal disputes have been gossiped about for some time, but they never came out onstage until a recent Denver gig. Steven was in his usual playful mood, hopping around the stage like he had water beetles in his jock. Then he got the bright idea of fiddling with the dials on Joe Perry's amp. Joe was unamused and politely asked "Asshole Tyler" if he'd cool it. Always aiming to please, Steven came over and gave Joe a big hug, which Joe affectionately returned with a ram in the chops from his guitar neck, somewhat' reducing the width of Tyler's smile.

Did Peter, Paul and Mary ever carry on like that?

Rick Johnson

5 YEARS AGO

John & Yoko Join "Free John" Rally

Following their often trendy political convictions, John Lennon and Yoko Ono performed at the Ann Arbor, Michigan rally for the release of White Panther Leader John Sinclair, who was then serving ten years in prison for the possession of two marijuana joints.

Less than three days after the rally was held, Sinclair was released on appeal bond.

Pamper Your Kisser

Jeez, leave it to the Angloid masses to start fads like making your face into a living diaper. Helen Wheels would straighten this dude out In no time. Or is this how you get pinned in Llmeyland?

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

HOLLYWOOD — In the wake of Shawn Phillips'nearfatal boating accident comes an exciting turnaround that gives all of you fans of Old Stringcheese a chance to help him find a new image!

As you may remember, the yawn that is Shawn got his yard-long locks caught in the boat's propeller shaft while he was grovelling in the water for a strand of the rare Aroobian seaweed he uses for his guitar strings. All his hair was chewed off and now the poor folky looks pretty funny!

That's where you come in. Shawn is looking for a wig to keep his brain noodles warm until the real stuff grows back and he wants his fans to help. So he's announced the SHAWN PHILLIPS PICK A WIG GIG, a rush-inducing contest for one and all. Just decide what style rug you'd like to see on old Ochre Face, whether it's Afro, Flattop, Single's Bar Sweep, Mohican, Bowlhead or anything else you can dream up, scribble it on a post card, and mail it to Johnson Outboard Motors, Inc.

Grand prize is one slightly damp lock of Shawn's old hair! Three lucky runners-up will receive two locks! Third prize is a dream date with old nud nose himself on a slow * canoe to Angola! Enter soon before Shawn goes disco.

Rick Johnson