While I was in college getting my Master’s, I worked for Magic Mountain in their name talent theatre. It was excellent for getting gigs locally, piggy backed off the dates at the park. Many a relationship was cemented in the upstairs dressing room (not that kind, pervs!!).
**Useless factoid #2 all the concert footage for Spinal Tap was shot in that theatre...So win/win!
Any road, I digress.
One such cemented realtionship was with the Lords of the New Church. Stiv Bators (original member of punk band the Dead Boys) was their lead singer. The band scored 2 semi new wave dancy goth hits with Live for Today and Dance with Me. Most of the band hated Stiv, admittedly not without reason. He was extremely needy and very, very mopey. On this day, he looked extra emo as he approached me..
Now, Stiv had this leather jacket, it had bones sewed on the back to spell out LORDS OF THE NEW CHURCH. It was kind of cool in a gross way. When I asked Stiv what was wrong he showed me his jacket. Several of the bones had come loose.
"They won't stay," he said forlornly. "I heard you make jewelry, so maybe you can do something?"
It took a minute for me to see his reasoning. Then I had an idea. I told him that if he was ok with me poking tiny holes in the jacket I could wire them on. Even make it look a bit cooler.
He was excited, a foreign emotion for Stiv and a bit uncomfortable to watch. I ran home (l lived only about ten minutes away). I grabbed some sterling wire, a leather mallet and an awl and returned to get to work. Stiv handed me his jacket and the yuck factor went from zero to 100 in sixty seconds. Not only did the jacket stink, but those bones were CHICKEN BONES--not bleached bones either! Look out, KFC!
I proceeded to wire said bones onto the jacket adding spirals and wraps to hold those gross bones in. It looked pretty amazing when it was finished. That night during the concert I watched him repeatedly hit the stage with the jacket. Well, yeah, if you beat the jacket against the stage, those bones aren’t going to hold forever, dumbass. But it did hold that night and for subsequent other nights. I never really got paid or even thanked for fixing that jacket. All in a day's work, I suppose.
I was saddened years later to hear about Stiv's death. It didn't surprise me, though. He wasn't very good at paying attention to his surroundings, think gross nasty KFC chicken bones!! ( He was hit by a bus in San Francisco= correction I found out recently it was in Paris France..Thx Aleck)
Still he always did "live for today."
** if you scroll back up to the picture you will see the boney jacket on one of the other band members...then you will understand!
Hit by a car in Paris, but close enough. :) He didn't even know he was seriously injured, but he was bleeding internally. He went back to his flat (after waiting for hours to see a doctor to no avail), fell asleep, and died.
ReplyDeleteI've always had a soft spot for Stiv (as did, amazingly enough, MTV's Martha Quinn, whom he dated!), but that's probably mostly because I never got to see him up close 'n' personal, chicken bones and all. But yeah, he was obviously screwed up, even to a young punk like me (when I could still call myself that, anyway). Sad thing was that he always wanted to get out of his "Dead Boy" persona and become a "real" pop singer, and never did. And yeah, the rest of the Lords hated him, but given the choice between him and Brian "I'm an insufferable prick who'll advertise for your replacement behind your back" James (former founder/songwriter/control freak/guitarist of The Damned), I'm picking Stiv's side.
Plus, he was pals with Michael Monroe, and I'm a huge Hanoi Rocks fan, so I'm biased. :) This also explains why I've wanted to punch Vince Neil in the face since 1984...though really, do I need justification for that?