By THIRSTY
Phil Marcade was not only a witness
to the Punk Revolution, he was a part of it as a musician, a friend and a
fellow traveler in an era that indelibly made its mark on rock n’ roll. Stay Thirsty Magazine visited long
distance with him from Bologna, Italy, for these Five Questions about his new
book and the Punk Rock movement.
STAY THIRSTY: In your book, Punk Avenue,
you chronicle your days during the birth of the punk rock revolution. You were
both the lead singer of a punk/blues band, The Senders, and a friend of many of
the greats of that era. Looking back, what do you miss most about that time?
And least?
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| Phil Marcade |
PHIL
MARCADE: I miss the freedom
most, and the desperation of heroin addiction least. Of course, I guess I miss
being young, in a cool young band that’s part of a cool young scene. But
regardless, I miss that sense of freedom that seems to have pretty much
vanished since the arrival of AIDS and terrorism. I miss the good/bad ol’ days
when the Twin Towers proudly stood high above Manhattan and the concept of
getting shot by a bunch of religious nuts with machine guns at a rock concert
didn’t occur to you. I miss the innocence of these fun times. That’s what
I tried to capture in my book, the sense of freedom of the late seventies, how
simple everything was before the internet, and the sexual freedom everybody
enjoyed in that short period of time when the pill already existed but AIDS
didn’t yet. There was just so much more freedom around. You could smoke
cigarettes at the movies. You could smoke cigarettes on a plane. Once the plane
had taken off, you could even smoke a joint in the bathroom, if you wanted. I
always did. Imagine that now? Mostly, I miss all my friends who have died. I
don’t really miss surviving on “Happy Hour” mini-hotdogs from Max’s Kansas
City, though.
STAY THIRSTY: Fueled by its raw, in-your-face music, drugs, sex and
violence, the New York City Punk Underground scene from 1972-1982 left an
indelible imprint on the history of contemporary music. Many of the icons of
that era died young. How did you manage to survive?
PHIL
MARCADE: I may be dead by the
time you publish this! But yes, so far, I’m still alive. I have no idea why,
though quitting drugs and getting on a better diet than just Max’s mini-hotdogs
probably helped. Apart from that, I’m just lucky, I guess. Sometimes I still
can’t believe all these friends have died, like Cookie Mueller and David
Armstrong, and Johnny Thunders, Willy DeVille, Lux Interior, Bryan Gregory,
Stiv Bators and all the Ramones. All these people I loved so much. But yes, the
New York City Punk Underground scene was fueled by danger and, perhaps, that’s
what made it so interesting, but, of course, some participants were going to
get hurt. Everybody was being very naive about heroin back then, and AIDS also
took a lot of lives before we all learn to protect ourselves. I shared needles
with friends who got AIDS, so, indeed, I was incredibly lucky not to get
infected myself. I also gave up on mountain climbing! But you’ll have to
read my book to understand what I’m talking about, here. Haha!
STAY THIRSTY: Your book has a Preface written by Debbie Harry and a
Foreword by Legs McNeil. Why did you choose each of them to introduce your
insider’s look into the history of the punk rock explosion? Why did you choose
quotes from Bob Dylan and Tom Waits for the epigraph?
PHIL
MARCADE: I chose Debbie’s
legs! Really, I chose Debbie and Legs because they were there at Max’s and CBGB
in ‘75, ‘76, and because I knew them both since then. They were incredibly nice
about my request and I was just so touched by what they wrote. I was floored,
actually. These two were so important in the story of the beginning of Punk in
New York, you know. With Punk Magazine,
Legs and his partner John Holmstron pretty much coined the term “Punk Rock.”
Debbie, Chris Stein and the rest of Blondie lived right there, on the Bowery,
in total poverty, a block away from Arturo Vega’s loft, where the Ramones
resided. Debbie was part of the New York Punk revolution right from the very
start and she led the way for all the Punk Rock girls that followed. She
was especially important because she stood her ground in this male dominated
“Macho-Rock” scene that was typical of the mid-seventies. And yes, I love these
two quotes, from Dylan and Tom Waits. I thought they really summed it up and
were funny as hell, so I wanted to throw in these two deep thoughts as an
appetizer.
STAY THIRSTY: In Punk Avenue,
you recount your relationships with Johnny Thunders and Nancy Spungen, to name
just two. If you could talk to them today, what would you want to know?
PHIL
MARCADE: “Where you been, all
these years?” Haha! If I could talk to them today and they’d answer me from the
beyond, of course I would ask them both what really happened on the night they
died. What did happen in that room at the Chelsea Hotel and in that room in New
Orleans? I would really like to know. Did Nancy commit suicide? Did Sid stab
her? Someone else? There seems to have been some foul play in that hotel room
where Johnny died too. He had just arrived in New Orleans, tried to score
heroin and crossed path with some real slimy characters. Neighbors at the hotel
heard some kind of argument, some kind of fight. Something happened in there
but, just like the New York police had handled Nancy’s death, the New Orleans
police didn’t care to investigate the death of “just another junky” either. Once
Johnny and Nancy would have filled me in on that, I would then probably ask
them both if they’d like to come over for dinner.
STAY THIRSTY: If you could tell the story of the advent of Punk
music in only one sentence, what would it be?
PHIL
MARCADE: You can’t, that’s
why I wrote Punk Avenue, you see. But
if I had to narrow it down to just one sentence, I’d say: “In 1972, a bunch of
cool kids in New York got real tired of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and started
to make there own brand of raw, basic rock n’ roll with short fast songs loaded
with rebellious and outrageous lyrics about the urban decay they lived
in.” Another way to sum it up with a much shorter sentence could be, “Fuck
Off!”
(Phil Marcade header photo credit: Eva Savini)
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