A Stray Cat Struts (8 page)

We decided to go to the Camden Palace. Roger had some other people to see in town, so he left us at the hotel, and it was just Britt and me. She had a tricked-out MINI Cooper from the 1960s and wanted to drive. I don't think I had ever known a woman who had a car before, and certainly not one like that, so the adventure was getting better all the time. The Camden Palace is a well-known old venue in Camden, London, NW1. It's been there for fifty years and has seen every type of event imaginable. I think it's still going as a dance club and occasional live venue. The neighborhood has become trendy, but back then, it was still a bit rough.

My friend and superstar scene maker Steve Strange promoted a club at Camden Palace, and when Steve did a night, it was always the best thing going on in town. Steve was a flamboyant, genuinely original character who just about single-handedly invented the new romantic movement. He was the singer in the band Visage and always looked fantastic—he took the hipster alien look as far as it could go. He ran legendary clubs—Blitz, Club for Heroes, and many others. His nights were always the place to be on any given week. I knew him very well from around club land, and he was thrilled to meet Britt. Steve Strange recently passed away, and there's been much outpouring from everyone who was around London in those years. I really cared for and tried to stay in touch with him. He really liked to party and had trouble getting away from certain behavior. He would become good friends with Britt, too, and we'd hang out every time we were back in London. Steve thought it was “fucking brilliant” that she and I were together, and it always helps a club promoter when famous people turn up together on their nights.

Another small-world part to this is that the Camden Palace was the first place that the Stray Cats had ever appeared on a stage in England. We had come to see a band called the Fabulous Poodles in June 1980. We had met them in New York City when they played CBGB and befriended them. They said, “If you're ever in England…” We actually turned up. They invited us to play a couple of numbers with them; it just so happened to be at this same place.

The night that Steve Strange put on this time at the Camden Palace was the best nightclub I ever remember going to. It took place right smack in the middle of the new romantic era; punk and rockabilly influence was still lingering, and this made for an eclectic mix of music and especially fashion. Everybody got dressed to the nines to come out to Steve's clubs. Some of them looked like they had been getting ready all day to come to the club that night. The girls were dressed up like a cross between Marie Antoinette and Anne Boleyn, with a little Debbie Harry thrown in for good measure. The boys were in full-on Beau Brummell–meets–Adam and the Ants gear. Again, rockabilly and especially the Stray Cats were accepted by all the different tribes. On one occasion, I remember standing in the top-floor bar with Joe Strummer, Simon Le Bon and Nick Rhodes of Duran Duran, and most of Spandau Ballet—everyone was tooled up all the way, respected each other, and was having fun. I was a little surprised to hear the Spandau guys with regular North London accents. In those new romantic outfits, I always expected to hear a posh, Oscar Wilde accent coming out of whoever was wearing it. We were all pretty friendly. I recall a girl walking by looking like Madame de Pompadour with punk rock–style makeup and Joe scoffing at her, which sent her away in quiet tears.

Steve treated us like royalty that night. There were a few paparazzi normally camped out there, and I think there are some early photos of us going in and out. We were wined with champagne and me with whiskey and beer. Everyone took turns going to the bathroom for powdered refreshment.

Sometime around closing, we decided to leave. I would get dropped off at my hotel, and Britt would carry on home to her house in Chelsea. There was never a feeling of a one-night stand here. It was more serious and felt like it was a buildup toward the inevitability of getting together. On the way back, we decided to try to find a place to eat something. While slowing down to look for a certain street address, we were pulled over by the police. The cops made us stand out in the pissy London rain while they searched the car and took us both in. Britt was in more trouble than I was because she was driving. We rode together in the back of the police van like a couple of prisoners. At the end of the day, Britt is actually very old world, and I'm sure she was mortified by this whole thing. It was happening quickly in that slow-motion way. She was led into the back of the station house in Camden; I waited in the lobby like Paul's grandfather in
A Hard Day's Night
. She was booked for driving under the influence. The car had been towed to the station by then. In an odd twist, the cops told me that I could drive her home. I had been holding a packet the whole time and was totally wasted, but they never searched my person, and I must have looked well enough to drive but couldn't imagine how. I was wearing fuzzy leopard-skin boots, a black bowling shirt with the sleeves cut, a red cowboy scarf around my neck, and a black leather jacket. I told the sergeant that I had left my international driver's license at the hotel. I of course didn't have one, but I had to say something.

In silence, Britt and I took a taxi back to my hotel. Britt had her girlfriend staying back at her house and didn't want to bring this whole scene back there at 4:30
A.M.
, so we each crashed out in one of the two tiny twin beds in my little room, off the lobby of the Portobello Hotel. That had been quite a first date.

The next day, we went back to retrieve the car from the Camden Town police station. On the way back to my hotel, we stopped off to have something to eat at the same place we had been looking for the previous night. Anyone who lived in and around Kensington or Chelsea at that time will remember Witchetty's on Kensington High Street, near the corner of Earls Court Road. It was a trendy restaurant that was missing the roof off the top floor. The roof garden part of the restaurant was built around the rubble. The story I had always been told was that it was bombed during World War II; I'm not sure if this was true, but the place was missing a roof. When it rained, they moved the tables inside, but when it was nice out, it was a fun place with a great atmosphere and good food. That day, my plate was too close to the edge of the table, and when I put my fork into the lamb chop, I springboarded the whole meal onto my lap. I just salvaged what I could off my pants and ate the rest of my lunch. There was no way to look cool after that. The situation was already way beyond that; we'd already been through a memorable, embarrassing adventure and had only known each other twenty-four hours. We spent the rest of the day walking around Kensington High Street and in Chelsea. She showed me her house in a cul-de-sac next to the Stamford Bridge soccer ground, where Chelsea played its home games. I was going to New York City the next day to meet the band and start the American conquest. We made some type of plan to see each other again, but I don't remember exactly how we left it. I didn't have a place to live, let alone a phone number. I think we both knew this wasn't the end of our association. I spent my last night at the Portobello alone, packed my extra pair of boots and hair grease, somehow got to the airport the next day, and went back home to the USA.

The next few weeks were very busy and hectic. We started on the East Coast and worked our way west. It was the first time we'd ever had a tour bus, and I loved every minute of the whole rolling circus of characters. We were all working for the same goal and truly thought we deserved all the success. I still do. We were playing every night; at one point, we did eleven straight overnighters with shows and partying every night. We were doing clubs, every show was beyond sold out, and it was the hottest ticket wherever we played. There was genuine excitement for the music and the band. I found the after-hours clubs and punk rock strongholds in every town. When it got too crazy in some places, I brought the party back to the hotel. We did interviews and visited all the independent-leaning radio stations that were playing us in the afternoons most days before the gigs. It was the first time I'd ever traveled in the USA with the exception of the 1981 trip to LA and the shows with the Stones the year before. I'd been to Paris but never Pittsburgh, Tokyo but never Topeka.

The real game changer had been MTV. The Stray Cats were tailor-made for it. Rockabilly and the Cats were still too weird for the FM stations of the day. No matter what they say now, most radio station program directors across America in the early '80s were still stuck in the lame parts of the 1970s and did not embrace punk or new-wave music until MTV made it safe. We had a couple of videos that we had made in England with genre-defining pioneer filmmaker and friend Julien Temple in the late part of 1980 and early 1981. The “Stray Cat Strut” video still stands up; there is a lot of charisma in that little film. Early videos were made for pop music–type programs and shown when the band couldn't make the appearance at the station. It was a way to be in a few different places at once. They had been around for years but never had a platform like MTV. I believe that Ricky Nelson had the first one with “Travelin' Man.” His father made it to be played at the end of their 1950s TV show. Believe it or not, in the early days MTV needed content. Luckily, we had two excellent videos in the can, ready to go. They got on heavy rotation, and it put us on the map. Music plus images really came together in the world of early MTV. We had had both since the beginning, and now the world was coming around to our way of thinking. We were perfect for MTV and it for us. Radio followed when it could no longer ignore the popularity of this new music. We would go to the studio and go on the air spontaneously. It was a fun time but changed very quickly. Everything at some point becomes political, and MTV was no exception. I'm very happy and proud to have been there at the start of it all.

We were socially friendly with every one of the original veejays—JJ Jackson and Martha Quinn, especially, but at the time, I considered Nina Blackwood, Alan Hunter, and Mark Goodman all to be friends. Martha's boyfriend was true tragic pal Stiv Bators, singer in the Dead Boys and Lords of the New Church. Punk legend Stiv had stayed a lot with Lee and me in our crazy punk rock flat on Gloucester Terrace in Bayswater, London, W2, in late 1980 into 1981. We were close friends.

Even small towns that didn't have national cable TV had local after-school video programs. We went to every one of these
Wayne's World
–style little shows to be interviewed and then to the local radio station.
Rock video
was now a household term, and the Cats are a part of that story. We worked it every day and then did a full-on rocking show every night. We were the hardest-working, best rockabilly band ever. Anyone who was at a show on that first Cats tour remembers it; I still hear it all the time. I know it was historic good and am not shy anymore about saying it.

By the time we hit LA, it was really taking off. We were extra popular there; the
Built for Speed
album would go gold in California. After the show in San Diego, I had the bus drop me off at the Roxy while the others went to the Sunset Marquis to check in. It was already late. I was stoked to be back in LA and wanted to see if there was any action on the Strip. We had a three-night, sold-out-in-advance engagement at the Hollywood Palladium starting the next night. I rang the buzzer for On the Rox, an intimate, very small, very private club located on top of the Roxy Theatre on Sunset and was let in. When I got to the top of stairs and looked in, I was a bit disappointed. On first glance, there was nobody there. After adjusting my eyes to the darkness, I focused in, and there she was, standing right there, talking to Louis the bartender. Our paths had crossed again. After a little small talk, we drove back to Britt's house on Stone Canyon Road, Bel-Air. My life was never quite the same again.

I woke up the next day in the later part of the afternoon. I was in a beautiful Victorian bedroom in a large brass bed with art nouveau paintings and furnishings. There was a deck that looked out over a yard and pool. I had never been in a place like this before. It was Lou Adler's house, where Britt lived in LA with their son, Nicholai. It's a historic rock-and-roll house: Lou's friend John Lennon lived there during his famous “lost weekend” year in LA until he had to move out to make room for Britt and Nicholai. She had split up with Rod Stewart and needed a place to live. I made my way downstairs and met a housekeeper and two large Norwegian elkhounds. Everyone got along. Britt was out, and I needed to get to the gig. Fortunately for me, the Cats rarely sound checked. All my luggage had gone to the hotel, and I had no clothes. Britt came back, and we quickly did my laundry so I had something to wear at the gig. It was late at that point, and I was starting to worry about the gig. The others had no idea where I was. We all partied, things were always kind of loose and anarchic with the Cats, but we always made it to the show, sometimes cutting it very close. All bands want to make every gig a special occasion and want to think each one is just as important as the next, but this one really was a very important one. As a rule, shows in LA, London, New York, Paris, and Tokyo have a little extra pressure; everybody feels it.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch in Stone Canyon, we couldn't wait for the dryer to finish, and my black Johnson's zipper jeans were still damp. So I sat in the front seat of Britt's 1977 Porsche Turbo Carrera with a towel around me while holding the pants out the sunroof to dry while we drove. I borrowed a shirt from Britt and, as always, had my punk rock, standard-issue trusty Schott Brothers Perfecto leather jacket. Britt knows how to drive a sports car, and we were speeding down Sunset Boulevard, then screeched up to the stage door, and I made it to the backstage of the Hollywood Palladium for the first time, with Britt Ekland in tow.

We had an amazing show and blew the roof off the place. It was the early stages of the brief time when rockabilly became a mainstream style. It would soon be possible to buy bowling shirts and creepers in your local shopping mall. The Stray Cats and all the hard work we put into it are responsible for that pop culture moment. This is our lasting contribution to rockabilly music and style.