The Replacements and Johnny Thunders in the late 1980s.

In the spring of 1989, Johnny Thunders opened a couple of shows for the Replacements. For those of you who don’t know, Thunders was a founding member of one the best glam bands, the New York Dolls, and when he and drummer Jerry Nolan quit the Dolls in 1975, they promptly formed the proto-punk unit, the Heartbreakers. Both groups influenced the Replacements, but it was the Heartbreakers’ rousing blend of energy, attitude, slop, and catchy tunes that impacted the ‘Mats’ early development the most—perhaps more than any other group. The Heartbreakers only released one studio album, the essential L.A.M.F., but it was another record of theirs that made the biggest impression on the young Replacements. When the Replacements were experiencing their first hint of mainstream success in the spring of 1989, it made sense they’d invite Johnny Thunders to be their opener and then bring him up on stage with them—but it nearly didn’t happen.

In late 1979, Paul Westerberg brought a handful of records to the first rehearsal of the band that would eventually be named the Replacements, including the New York Dolls’ debut and the recent Heartbreakers release, the rowdy and fiery Live at Max’s Kansas City ‘79. During this initial jam session, the new four-piece played “I Wanna Be Loved” and “All by Myself,” which they learned from the Heartbreakers live album. On July 2nd, 1980, the first Replacements gig took place; their eighteen-song set contained three Heartbreakers covers.

The young ‘Mats blazing through “I Wanna Be Loved” in 1981:
 

 
By the dawn of the 1980s, Johnny Thunders was already a legend, but not always for the right reasons. His loose guitar playing style had loads of character, and he wrote some good songs, but he was also a notorious drug addict, who frequently appeared out of it on stage. In late July 1980, Thunders came to Minneapolis for a couple of gigs with Gang War, the group he formed with Wayne Kramer from the MC5. The Replacements really wanted to open the shows, but the slots went to Hüsker Dü. The night of the first concert, Westerberg and ‘Mats drummer Chris Mars were in the audience. When, after a delay, Thunders finally came out, he was obviously a wreck, and Westerberg took notice.

[Westerberg:] “The moment he walked on . . . I saw it.”

The look on Thunders’s face—imperious and desperate all at once—struck Westerberg: “He was frightening and beautiful and mean at the same time,” he said. “Like a child.”

Physically struggling through the show, while battling an audience hurling brickbats, Thunders had been rendered a prisoner of his own addictions and cult infamy. “When Johnny was playing, it looked like he was walking dead,” recalled Westerberg. “It was pitiful, like watching a guy in a cage.”

That image of Thunders lingered with him. The following morning Westerberg sat at home with his guitar, rejiggered the chords to the Heartbreakers’ “Chinese Rocks,” and turned out a haunting ballad, a requiem called “Johnny’s Gonna Die.”  (taken from Bob Mehr’s Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements)

 
Much more after the jump…

 
Let it be said that I had this, at least, in common with Johnny Thunders: we both supported Jesse Jackson’s candidacy in 1988. I was just starting the fourth grade, and Johnny was getting ready to graduate from the planet Earth, but we were both willing to forgive Jackson’s offensive characterization of NYC as “Hymietown” and his prudish condemnations of “sex-rock.”

This video of Thunders’ impassioned plea to the American soul comes from September 4, 1988, the last day of the Hotpoint festival in Lausanne, Switzerland. The DNC had come and gone, with Bill Clinton’s windy nomination and Michael Dukakis’ narcotizing acceptance speech. No matter: Johnny Thunders still liked Jackson’s chances, and if he was discouraged by Dukakis’ nomination or Bush’s subsequent election, he gave no sign. He kept “Glory, Glory” in the set in 1989, and when he entered the studio in 1990, Thunders was still stumping for the Rev.

Here, weeks before the first broadcast of the Willie Horton ad, Johnny Thunders sounds like a schoolboy telling the Swiss festival crowd why he’s for Jesse Jackson. Then he “takes them to church”:

Okay! Well, I’m from America, and we’re having a presidental—presidential election. And I think, uh, the only person that I think is worthy of being a president of America is Jesse.

Oh, Jesse!

Oh, Jesse, Jesse Jackson!

Ooh, Jesse, Jesse, Jesse! etc.

More after the jump…

 
As much as any band could, the Heartbreakers both aesthetically and individually personified the bridge between proto-punk and punk rock. They coalesced in 1975, when New York Dolls Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan joined forces with Richard Hell, who’d just left Television. The quartet was completed a few months later with the addition of guitarist/vocalist Walter Lure.

The next year, their best-documented lineup was formed when Hell was replaced by Billy Rath (Hell would go on to form a namesake band, and it’s easy to wonder if he didn’t do that to make it difficult to oust him from a THIRD epochally crucial group), and this version of the Heartbreakers would record their lone album, L.A.M.F. (Like a Mother Fucker), which was one of punk’s great letdowns. A terrible mix buried confident performances of fine songs, and the shittiness of the record prompted Nolan to quit the band.

That album has been remixed and remastered a fair few times, and it contains some of punk’s earliest enduring anthems, like “Born to Lose” and “Chinese Rocks.” That latter song was eventually performed by the Ramones on their 1980 LP End of the Century under the title “Chinese Rock,” and the song is partly noteworthy for a years-long dispute over exactly who wrote it. It’s long been accepted that the song was a collaboration to some degree between Richard Hell and Dee Dee Ramone, a reality reflected in the End of the Century credits. But on the original pressing of L.A.M.F., Johnny Thunders and Jerry Nolan are credited as songwriters—a credit that’s absent from the many subsequent reissues. If that claimed writing credit was an attempted money-grab, karma for that larceny was pretty instant—L.A.M.F. didn’t really generate all that much money at first. According to Dee Dee Ramone in his memoir Lobotomy:

For a while dope was called “Chinese Rock” in New York. When you would walk around the Lower East Side people would smirk at one another on the sidewalk and let you know with hand signals that they have the Chinese Rock. It was supposed to be good luck if someone had rocks. I must’ve had a lot of luck.

Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders used to call me quite frequently. Jerry would come over to my place and pick me up and then we would go cop some dope. The Heartbreakers we’re just getting together with John, Jerry and Richard Hell. I guess those guys were all dope fiends then… Richard Hell had mentioned to me that he was going to write a song better than Lou Reed’s “Heroin,” so I took his idea and wrote Chinese rocks in Deborah Harry’s apartment that night.

I wrote the song about Jerry calling me up to come over and go cop. The line “My girlfriend’s crying in the shower stall” was about Connie, and the shower was at Arturo Vega’s loft. The intro to the song was the same kind of stuff I had put in songs like “Commando” and the chorus of “53rd and 3rd.” I wrote those songs before “Chinese Rocks” and the Ramones had already performed and recorded these tunes.

When Jerry was over at my place one day, we did some dope and then I played him my song, and he took it with him to a Heartbreakers rehearsal. When Leee Childers started managing them them and got them a record deal, “Chinese Rocks” was their first single off L.A.M.F. …but the credits are false. Johnny Thunders ranked on me for fourteen years, trying to make out like he wrote the song. What a low-life maneuver by those guys! By then, I was really too fucked up to care.

Much more after the jump…

Johnny Thunders as “Johnny Valentine.”
 
Mona et Moi directed by Patrick Grandperret in 1989 is mainly notable for Johnny Thunders’ performance as a character—clearly based on himself—named “Johnny Valentine.” The film’s storyline is bare bones: Valentine flies to Paris to headline a concert organized by some low-level rock promoters/fans who are in Valentines’ thrall. Nothing much happens but Thunders is given plenty of screen time and actually does a pretty good job of acting. But given that his character is described as “a beautiful loser, a junkie, busted but unbowed,” there’s not exactly a shitload of acting required of him.

There are some brief scenes with Heartbreakers Billy Rath and Jerry Nolan and some live performances of Heartbreaker tunes including “Born To Lose.” In addition to rock and roll, there’s a smattering of sex, drugs, existential angst and Thunders appearing now and then to keep things interesting.
 

 
Denis Lavant, the lead actor in Mona et Moi, should be recognizable to anyone who’s paid attention to French films of the past three decades, having starred in films by Leos Carax, Clair Denis and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. He doesn’t have much to do in Mona et Moi except to look forlorn while Thunders/Valentine steals his girlfriend Mona, the dramatic highlight of the film.

France has always been friendly turf for American rockers who struggled to make it back in America, including Thunders, Stiv Bators and Willy DeVille. Perhaps they were seen as later day Rimbauds and Artauds—Genet Vincents—vulnerable bad boys in black leather.

Video after the jump…

Steve Severin and Siouxsie Sioux, 1976
 
Photographer Ray Stevenson, the brother of former Sex Pistols’ road manager and early manager of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nils Stevenson (RIP), took some pretty remarkable photos of the punk rock movement back in the mid-70s. Many of his snapshots had punk players like Siouxsie Sioux, Johnny Thunders and fashion designer and icon Vivienne Westwood just hanging out being punks together.
 

Vivienne Westwood, John Lydon and model/muse Jordan, 1976
 
Thanks to some convincing from his brother, Stevenson and his camera often found themselves at parties held at the legendary Marquee Club and in Linda Ashby’s hotel room at the St. James Hotel. His images were among a few of the punk time capsules captured by the (then) young photographer showcased at the Michael Hoppen Gallery in London just last week. Some of Stevenson’s remarkable photos can be purchased, here. Super snotty and beautifully candid images taken by Stevenson follow.
 

Johnny Thunders, Nils Stevenson and photographer/manager Leee Black Childers (RIP)
 

Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon of The Clash on an elevator
 
More after the jump…

 
The New York Dolls essentially came to an end while touring Florida in 1975. A few months prior, the band was on their last legs when future Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren stepped into the picture. McLaren had some insane ideas, such as re-imagining the androgynous Dolls as tongue-in-check Maoists. Drummer Jerry Nolan later recalled McLaren’s vision of “dressing us up in matching red leather suits and playing in front of a giant communist flag. It was so stupid!”
 

New York Dolls: Better red than dead? (photo by Bob Gruen)
 
Nolan and guitarist Johnny Thunders quit the band and headed back to New York, forming the Heartbreakers. Their earliest gigs, with original bassist Richard Hell, were at the club that would eventually be known as the ground zero of punk: CBGB’s. As for the Dolls, vocalist David Johansen and guitarist Sylvain Sylvain recruited various musicians over the next couple of years, soldiering on until 1977 when they finally called it a day.
 

 
In the footage featured here, Johansen is seen conducting a mock-interview of sorts with Thunders in front of CBGB’s. Likely recorded in the fall of 1976, the two cover a lot of ground in the brief clip. Johansen asks about the Heartbreakers upcoming overseas tour, which turns out to be the ill-fated “Anarchy in the U.K.” tour with the Sex Pistols.
 

 
At the time, Thunders has no idea of the ultimate fate of the outing, in which nineteen shows are scheduled, though all but three are cancelled due to a backlash after the Pistols infamous appearance on Bill Grundy’s television program. Malcolm McLaren organized the tour, and when his name comes up the two have a few sardonic yucks aimed at their former manager (Thunders says he’s “the neatest”). They also talk about how the Heartbreakers might have to change their name, as there’s a new band making the rounds with a similar moniker: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
 

The Heartbreakers, with Richard Hell, at CBGB’s, 1975 (photo by Chris Stein)
 
The former band-mates are seen smoking and joking like the old friends they already were at that point. To be honest, I had no idea the pair were even on speaking terms during this period, so it’s nice to see them getting along so well (it’s worth noting that the reconstituted New York Dolls is one subject they don’t broach).

The encounter was shot with photographer Bob Gruen’s video camera and included on the New York Dolls DVD of Gruen footage, Lookin’ Fine On Television.
 

 

 
Stippes Bar, “Home of the Hungarian hot dog,” is something of an institution in Malmö, Sweden, a diverse, formerly industrial city known for its large immigrant population. Their affordable, delicious, spicy garlic sausages (often served to barhoppers in need of ballast) eventually became the joint’s signature dish, but when it opened in the 1970s, the owner had to offer free coffee to taxi drivers, just to get some patrons in the door—authentic Swedish cuisine is not exactly known for its “heat.” Johnny Thunders, however, was an Italian-American New Yorker, and I’m not surprised he made a stop at Stippes for the intense garlic flavors.

While his exploits in Sweden are pretty well documented—a child from a whirlwind romance, a now-infamous “banned performance.” I can’t find any context on the ad. Stippes is a local favorite, but it’s not exactly “famous.” The ad reads “I, too have gone over to Hungary”—maybe Johnny just really liked the dogs?

Below is some footage of Johnny playing Sweden in ‘82. It’s an engaging performance, but the crowd is seated at tables with actual tablecloths, and they don’t seem to know what to do with the spastic performance. Methinks the hot dog crowd was more his wheelhouse.
 

 
There are special moments in one’s life that take on mythic qualities. Most of mine have involved sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. One particularly mindfucking moment for me was the night I got shitfaced with Lester Bangs at The Village Gate while watching Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers and their opening act The Senders. Bangs and I agreed it was a mighty night and we celebrated it with reckless abandon, the kind of assault on my body that would probably kill me today. I learned to pace myself. Lester didn’t. He died a year or two later…

Phillipe Marcade, the frontman of The Senders, was a mad Frenchman who was drunk on Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters. And Thunders was firmly embraced but not strangled by the arms of Morpheus. That night at The Gate, the alchemy was like mystical napalm and we all went up in some kind of cosmic smoke. I will say here and now it was a great night of rock a’n’ roll and what I can remember of bullshitting with Bangs was pretty good too. In fact, it was splendid. Having a conversation with Lester Bangs was like trying to stand up in a row boat during a hurricane. The force coming off of Thunder’s guitar provided the ballast to keep me from capsizing.

So all of that is leading me up to prepare you for another fine moment in which The Heartbreakers roared heroically with Johnny’s knees only buckling occasionally under the blow of smack’s velvet blackjack. This footage of the band at Max’s Kansas City in 1979 captures some of the raw excitement of Johnny, Walter Lure (doing most of the heavy lifting), Jerry Nolan and Billy Rath grinding out their punk bliss with the kind of transcendent energy that only loud guitars and big ferocious beats can deliver. The audio is thin, but I can guarantee that being at this show was as breathtakingly intense as being crushed by a subway train. This is Johnny shortly before the dope turned him into a helpless headcase. Savor it.
 

 
Apropriatey walking onstage to Elmer Bernstein’s theme for The Man With the Golden Arm, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreaks perform a shambolic, but great, set at London’s Lyceum Ballroom in 1984.

I remember debating on whether or not to see this very gig before ultimately deciding not to for reasons I can no longer recall. Of course it became regarded as a legendary show, my bad! You can get a pretty good sense of what Walter Lure thought of the proceedings at approximately 18:12.

Back then a concert like this at a place like London’s Lyceum Ballroom would have cost you only about 4 pounds…
 

Hell of a tattoo.
 
Johnny Thunders hangs onto a cross while singing the Rolling Stones’ “I’d Much Rather Be With The Boys” (written by Andrew Loog Oldham). Shot by Paul Tschinkel at Irving Plaza in NYC, 1981.
 

 
Filmmaker and musician, Don Letts was working as a DJ at the Roxy club in London in 1977 when he filmed most of the punk bands that appeared there with his Super 8 camera. Letts captured a glorious moment of musical history and its ensuing social, political and cultural revolution.

Letts decided he was going to make a film with his footage, and had sold his belongings to ensure he had enough film stock to record the bands that appeared night-after-night over a 3 month period. Eventually, he collated all of the footage into The Punk Rock Movie, which contained performances by the Sex Pistols, The Clash, Wayne County & the Electric Chairs, Generation X, Slaughter and the Dogs, The Slits, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Eater, Subway Sect, X-Ray Spex, Alternative TV and Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers. There was also backstage footage of certain bands, and Sid Vicious’ first appearance with the Sex Pistols, at The Screen On The Green cinema, April 3rd, 1977.
 

 
I miss Tony Wilson. I miss the idea of Tony Wilson. Someone who had an enquiring mind and was full of intelligent enthusiasms, like Tony Wilson. And who also didn’t mind making a prat of himself when he got things wrong. Or, even right.

I met him in 2005 for a TV interview. He arrived on a summer’s day at a small studio in West London. He wore a linen suit, sandals, carried a briefcase, and his toenails were painted a rich plum color - his wife had painted them the night before, he said.

Wilson was clever, inspired and passionate about music. He talked about his latest signing, a rap band, and his plans for In the City music festival before we moved onto the Q&A in front of a camera. He could talk for England, but he was always interested in what other people were doing, what they thought, and was always always encouraging others to be their best. That’s what I miss.

You get more than an idea of that Tony Wilson in this compilation of the best of his regional tea-time TV series So It Goes. Wilson (along with Janet Street-Porter) championed Punk Rock on TV, and here he picks a Premier Division of talent:

Sex Pistols, Elvis Costello, Buzzcocks, John Cooper Clarke, Iggy Pop, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, Penetration, Blondie, Fall, Jam, Jordan, Devo, Tom Robinson Band, Johnny Thunder, Elvis Costello, XTC, Jonathan Richman, Nick Lowe, Siouxie & the Banshees, Cherry Vanilla & Magazine….. The tape fails there!

The uploader ConcreteBarge has left in the adverts “for historical reference” that include - “TSB, Once, Cluster, Coke is it, Roger Daltery in American Express, Ulay, Swan, Our Price, Gastrils, Cluster & Prestige”.

So, let’s get in the time machine and travel back for an hour of TV fun.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

The Best of ‘So It Goes’: Clash, Sex Pistols, Iggy The Fall, Joy Division and more

 
With thanks to Daniel Ceci
 

 
There’s an edge here you never see on TV anymore. Actually you couldn’t see this on television when it was first recorded - Johnny Thunders ‘banned’ performance from Swedish TV in 1982.  Even looking death-warmed-up,Thunders had that edge, an urgency that makes you sit up and take notice.
 

 
Bonus interview with Johnny Thunders plus performance, after the jump…
 

 
Johnny Thunders and Syl Sylvain on French TV in 1981.

Johnny is enjoying a cocktail while Syl miraculously makes a grand piano sound like an acoustic guitar.

Is it my imagination or is the French guy conducting the interview/interrogation acting like an arrogant prick? Johnny could care less, but I would have slapped the fucker for his snide remark about the NY Dolls and his “you drink too much” comment.
 

Lure, Thunders and Hell.
 
The Heartbreakers in their original incarnation - Johnny Thunders, Richard Hell, Jerry Nolan and Walter Lure - performing “Chinese Rocks” and “Pirate Love” at CBGB in 1975. The absolute essence of snarling New York gutter punk.

Hell left the group in 1976 before The Heartbreakers recorded their first and only album, L.A.M.F.. So, for those folks who are only with familiar with that album, it’s a bit strange hearing Hell singing lead on “Chinese Rocks.” But Hell’s distinct wail in tandem with Thunders’ is as urgent as rock and roll gets. The Unrighteous Brothers. Seeing this band on the Bowery in the mid-70s was a shock to the system.
 

 
Richard Hell explains it all after the jump…