Does the Noise in My Head Bother You?: The Autobiography. Steven Tyler
York City was filled with very odd folk—which I loved. I’d take my mother’s car down to the city, park it on the street, get a parking ticket, throw it away, and drive home. I can’t imagine how many tickets I got. I know I never paid any of them. A rock ’n’ roll Dillinger in the making. Or I’d leave the car in the Bronx at the first train stop, which was past White Plains and Yonkers Raceway, get on the train, and get off at Fifty-ninth Street, Columbus Circle. The Fifty-ninth Street subway stop wasn’t that far from where Moondog would stand with his spear and Viking helmet. He lived on the street, wore only homemade clothes, and thought of himself as the incarnation of the Norse God Thor. He was so noble and mysterious, like a character from mythology come to life on Sixth Avenue.
Clyde and his ride (Honkin’), 2010. (Keren Pinkas)
Moondog wrote “All Is Loneliness” (that Janis sang on Big Brother and the Holding Company’s first album). He’d hang out with a bald-headed guy who would blow raspberries and yell “Fuck you!” at anyone who walked by. He had a ragged and gravelly street voice. Welcome to Freak City! There were freaks on the streets, in the clubs, on TV. There were magnificent misfits everywhere, and you had no idea what they were famous for but they were all famous for something. I loved them. Then I’d wander into Central Park, smoke weed, and catch a sweet Gotham buzz.
On Friday afternoons me, Ray Tabano, Debbie Benson, Rickie Holztman’s girlfriend, and Debbie’s friend Dia would head for Greenwich Village because that’s where the beatniks lived and we wanted to be beatniks. It was the summer of ’64. I was a white boy from Yonkers, trying to get high, trying to get hip. We’d sit in Washington Square Park drinking Southern Comfort or Seagrams 7 (or whatever else we could mooch off somebody) until we were completely shitfaced on booze, pills, and pot. Then we’d go check out the clubs! The Kettle of Fish, the Tin Angel, the Bitter End, the Night Owl, Trudy Heller’s, Café Wha? Those clubs in New York were my education. Later on we played all those joints. The smell of those bars was like a funky nostalgic patchouli. To this day I love the stale smell of cigarettes and beer that you got in those places.
Debbie Benson, 1968.
O, how I loved her. . . . RIP. (Ernie Tallarico)
One night we were wandering around the Village and saw a group advertising itself as the Strangers outside a club—they seemed to be a pretty established band and sounded better than us, so we decided to change our name to the mildly pretentious Strangeurs.
I’d go down there Friday night, come home Sunday. I loved it; I wanted that life so bad. I’d sit on a car in the West Village outside the Tin Angel with Zal Yanovsky from the Lovin’ Spoonful and talk. He wore culottes, a Bleecker Street Keith Richards. And Josie the She Demon—a transvestite who paraded around Greenwich Village with no particular mission save her own sense of eccentric expression. It was just such a trip. Then uptown there was Ondine’s, and Steve Paul’s club, the Scene. Teddy Slatus was the doorman at the Scene, a runty little guy. You’d go down the stairs into a cellar. It was like the beatnik grottoes from old movies. Low ceiling, small, cramped, but magical. Everybody looked like Andy Warhol. Steve Paul in his turtleneck, tall, talking in a beat lingo so fast and clipped you could barely grasp what he was saying, but you knew it was hip and one day you’d be able to understand it. Late at night, Jimi Hendrix, Paul McCartney, or Brian Jones would just show up and play—they’d be on a tiny stage about four feet away from you. I performed there early in ’68, with my second band, William Proud, with Tiny Tim singing and playing “Tiptoe Through the Tulips” on his ukulele, a tall skinny Lebanese freak with long greasy hair, a high voice, and bad teeth. But that was the great thing about the Scene: he wasn’t treated like a sideshow character—it was more like . . . this is the artist in residence. He belongs—you’ve gotta get in tune with him if you want to fit in.
I would go see bands like the Doors at the Scene, and I couldn’t believe the way the lead singer was acting. I thought, “Wow! What the fuck?” But maybe that’s the reason people loved the Doors—because they really thought Jim Morrison was possessed. That club was seriously in your face. I can’t tell you how close you were to the performers. You sat at a little table, and right there was the Lizard King three feet away from you.
I was Steve Tally, copying everything I saw, reading the poetry that Dylan was reading—Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso. There were readings at the Kettle of Fish, where Dylan would show up and recite his incredible shit. I’d sit there slack-jawed and hypnotized.
In ’65 the Stones had two monster hits: “Satisfaction” and “Get Off of My Cloud.” We heard that they were staying at the Lincoln Square Motor Inn, so we got our friend Henry Smith to drive us down there in his mother’s car with the excuse that we needed to go rehearse. I already had my mock Mick look down, and we got our bass player, Alan Stohmayer, who had blond bangs like Brian Jones, to come with us. When we got there, the streets around the hotel were mobbed with kids. Very cute, very hot girls—Stones fans. Well, how could I resist trying out my Mick impersonation on this crowd?
I leaned out the window and in a very loud, crude Cockney accent said, “I say, I see some smashing crumpets out there, mates. Wot you doin’, later then, darlin’?” They went wild. “Mick! Mick!” “Brian, I love you!” Tears streaming down their faces. Lovely—except that they wrecked Henry’s mother’s car, tore off the radio antenna and the windshield wipers. It turned into a big riot and got on TV on the evening news. When we got back, Henry’s mother was standing there with her arms crossed. “Have a good rehearsal, boys?”
Because we were too young to drink at clubs in the city, I took Tuinals and Seconals. I’d crush all that shit up and snort it. I was always fucked-up when we got into Manhattan. That same night we were at the Scene, we saw Monty Rock III! We all knew about him from watching the Johnny Carson Show on TV. On would come this very grand queen with a let’s-tell-it-like-it-is name. He was high camp, a flamboyantly gay hairdresser/rocker or something—you didn’t know what he did exactly. He was this outrageous person saying outrageous stuff. Who cared what he did?
He wore pseudomod clothes, and in person he was just as over-the-top as he was on TV. “Come on back to my house, darlings,” he said. “I really got some shit goin’ on there!” We get to his place and there’s two Great Danes, a chimpanzee, and a defanged cobra—but it still bit you. Oh, and never mind the fucking freak folks that were there. Here we are, pubescent punks coming down from Yonkers. We hadn’t a clue. Debbie Benson was gorgeous, we were cute kids, and here we were among these flaming queens. Someone starts passing around handfuls of Placidyls. “Here, have some of these!” They were fucking paralytic downers, sleeping pills. Monty had a hot tub in his living room. I ended up knocking the plug out of his tub. After the water drained out, I threw some pillows in and slept there.
“Jim’ll be here soon,” Monty said. Jim fucking Morrison was coming over? We all awaited his arrival like that of a god. He came late, and by the time he got there, we were so wasted we thought it was Van Morrison. We were in some place where words melted into sounds, and Jim was out there . . . even further! It scared the shit out of us. We were so terrified, we hid in the bedroom, then wound up getting under the sheets with a candle, just shaking because we were so fucking stoned. It was all so freaky; we were scared what the chimpanzee might do to the Great Danes, let alone what Monty had in mind for Morrison.
We were in no shape to walk or talk. We took more Placidyls and fell out around two in the morning . . . totally zonked. Around 5:00 A.M. we woke up. Debbie was crying. “These aren’t my clothes,” she said. “What do you mean,” I said. “You’re wearing the same dress you had on last night.” Her eyes were glassy. “But these aren’t my panties!” Omigod! I looked down and thought, what the fuck? “You know what? These aren’t my pants, either.” We were running down the stairs, Debbie crying, “I’ve been violated! I’ve been violated!” Shit, we’d all wanted to take a walk on the wild side, but this was a little bit more than we bargained for.
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