Lips Unsealed: A Memoir Part 2

It was then that I quit beauty school and signed up for secretarial cla.s.ses, where I learned to type and take shorthand. With graduation coming up, I was going to need a way to support myself. I had no idea what I wanted to do and figured I better have some skills.

four.

LUXURY LIVING.

AFTER GRADUATION, I went straight to the Roxy to see one of the guys from Heart play in a side project. I didn't care as much about the show inside as I did the one outside. I flitted around the parking lot with my crazy girlfriends, feeling like I was finally out of school and free to do whatever I wanted.

I wanted to go to Rome and ride around on scooters with cute Italian boys and smoke cigarettes on the Via Veneto. I had recently seen Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita and left the theater imagining myself as Anita Ekberg, who had played a Swedish-American movie star pursued through Rome by a journalist (Marcello Mastroianni) on a search for meaning in life amid the city's wealth and decadence.

Inspired, I had saved money for months and just had to sell my car to put me over the top. But my plans were derailed when I lost control of my car on the freeway while switching radio stations and smashed into the back of a truck. My Thrash Datsun actually flipped over. Just to show how focused I was on getting to Rome, as I was in midair, instead of thinking I was about to die or be seriously injured, I thought, Oh s.h.i.+t, now I'm not going to be able to sell my car.

Miraculously I wasn't hurt. But my car was irreparably damaged, along with my travel plans and immediate future. It was summer 1976, and I figured I might as well have a good time in Hollywood. Without school, I stayed out later and partied harder. My parents, who were still raising five other children ranging in age from sixteen to two, charged me $60 a month to live at home. I a.s.sumed that meant I could come and go as I pleased.

Wrong. A short time after my eighteenth birthday, I returned home from the Rainbow at three A.M. to grab some alb.u.ms and clothes, maybe some other things, too, before going to my boyfriend's place. Stacey, who was actually more of a friend than a boyfriend, was in my car as I pulled into the driveway. In his satin pants and platform shoes, he looked as if he had stepped off of a New York Dolls alb.u.m cover.

I had him wait outside while I grabbed my stuff. But as I hurried back through the house my mom intercepted me in the living room and said I wasn't going anywhere.

"Sorry, I have to go," I said, and pushed through the door, leaving her in her nightgown to watch from the window as I backed out and drove away.

My parents were more upset when I didn't return until early the next evening. We had it out, and soon after, Theresa and I got a small, very cheap one-bedroom apartment in Hollywood. Other than our beds, we didn't have any furniture. We didn't have food either. I ate instant oatmeal with margarine and Sweet'N Low three times a day. I didn't care. Along with cool clothes and shoes, all that mattered was location--and our place was within walking distance of all the clubs.

Our arrival was perfectly timed. In fall 1976, Rodney Bingenheimer, also known as the "Mayor of the Sunset Strip," began hosting a Sunday-night program on KROQ, a tiny Pasadena-based radio station with an underground sensibility. It was a hub for new music, and Rodney's show, Rodney on the ROQ, was at the leading edge of all that was new, different, punk, and straight from England.

Rodney's background prepared him to be ahead of music's curve. He had been Sonny and Cher's publicist, a stand-in for Davy Jones on the hit series The Monkees, and more recently proprietor of his eponymously named club, Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco, which was so hip the Stooges and David Bowie went there when they were in town. As Bowie once said, Rodney knew more cool, cutting-edge music than anyone.

I thought of Hollywood as one great big outdoor club with its own soundtrack. Theresa and I began our nights at the Rainbow and as soon as we heard about a party, we sped through the Hollywood Hills, looking for the address. As young, attractive girls, doors opened easily for us. Once inside, I needed a couple drinks to get loose enough to enjoy myself. A quaalude also helped. At the time, my drug use was strictly recreational.

But still, a girl had to be careful. The city was full of predators. There were old letches like "What's Happening" Bob, a guy in his sixties known for laying his slimy hands on girls as he drilled his smile uncomfortably close and asked, "What's happening?" And there was Paul with the purple Excalibur, who had a similarly sleazy act.

I learned my lessons like everyone else. I remember flitting through a club one night when a good-looking guy pulled me aside and within minutes had me telling him my life story. A cla.s.sic Hollywood smoothie, he put his hand on my shoulder as if to balance himself, stepped back, and said I had a beauty that was unlike any he had ever seen. He said I could be in Playboy magazine if I wanted.

At that point, he had my head spinning. I had never been flattered like that before.

"Really?" I said. "You think so?"

He nodded. "Why don't you come to my place and let me take pictures of you?" he asked.

Moments later, I was following him to his house. Halfway through the photo session, as some of my clothes came off, he came on to me. I cringe as I think back on how stupidly and predictably that scene unfolded. I was so ignorant. Luckily for me, I sobered up in time to realize the whole thing was bulls.h.i.+t and I got the h.e.l.l out of there, scolding myself for being so gullible and naive.

I supported myself with secretarial work that I got through temporary agencies. I started out at Home Savings and Loan and typically moved on to another job after a ninety-day probation period. The cash was good, it was convenient, and I never got attached enough to feel guilty about coming in at nine with my eyes still half-closed and my head not yet cleared from the previous night.

By afternoon, I was sneaking personal phone calls, making plans for later that night. As always, though, my evening centered around the Rainbow's parking lot. I had a feeling that rock stars and Hollywood A-listers went through the same thing during the day, calling around to find out where the parties were going to be, who was playing in which club, and eventually ending up at the Rainbow, too.

Inevitably, I saw everyone who was anyone, including Robert Plant, Ron Wood, Rod Stewart, Alice Cooper, and Linda Ronstadt. The difference was they got out of fancy cars while I had walked down Sunset and hung out with other kids, smoking, whiffing amyl nitrate, gossiping, laughing, and fantasizing about being a star myself.

I was at work one day in early 1977 when Theresa called me with breaking news. Queen was in town. She was breathless from the excitement. They were staying at the Beverly Hilton hotel, she said, and she asked if I wanted to go there with her and try to meet the band. Of course I did, I said. I didn't even have to think about it.

That night, we dressed up and went to the hotel. Theresa had found out what Freddie Mercury's room number was, and we headed straight for it after making it through the lobby and into the elevator without getting stopped. We laughed nervously and wondered what we would say if Freddie actually answered the door and invited us in.

Outside his room, we encountered two other freaks on a similar mission to meet Freddie. They told us their names, Bobby Breahm and Georg Ruthenberg. They were our age and from West Los Angeles. They immediately pegged us as a couple of girls from the Valley. It didn't matter.

"Is this Freddie's room?" I asked.

They nodded and added that they had been camped there for a while and hadn't seen him come or go.

"Or heard anything going on inside," one of them added.

Theresa and I turned toward the door and knocked. We waited and then hit it again. We probably knocked about a dozen times without anyone ever coming to the door. In retrospect, I know from personal experience that this didn't mean he wasn't in there. I've been in plenty of hotel rooms over the course of my career and heard fans in the hallway debating whether or not to knock on my door, and then knock over and over again. I never open the door.

So for all we knew, Freddie could have been inside the room and just didn't want to be bothered by four fanatical kids. Eventually we sat down in the hallway and forgot all about Freddie. Instead we got to know one another. We talked for hours about music and emerged at the end of night as friends. Bobby and Georg said they were going to start a band and asked if we wanted to be in it. Theresa and I said yes.

At the time, L.A.'s punk scene was barely a blip in the city's more commercially oriented music world. Disco was the fad of the day and although I saw a Bee Gees show that is still the best concert I've ever seen, the music and the silk-jacket scene didn't resonate with me. Nor did it grab anyone in my immediate crowd.

We were different from even most of the kids at the Rainbow. I'd say 99.9 percent of them wanted to be rock stars. Only a handful of freaks and misfits thought of themselves as punks. I'd say there were only fifty people in all of L.A. like us who were paying attention to the s.e.x Pistols in London, the bands at New York's CBGB, and the new era that dawned when Rodney played the Ramones' first alb.u.m.

We read NME and Melody Maker, not Rolling Stone. We knew that Malcolm McLaren had spotted Johnny Rotten, aka Johnny Lydon, on Kings Road wearing a Pink Floyd T-s.h.i.+rt over which he had written "I HATE," and so we wrote on our T-s.h.i.+rts. When Rodney declared he was "anti-the Eagles," we nodded in agreement and ventured out of the shadows, realizing we were part of the same intense tribe--a tribe that would soon ignite a full-fledged revolution.

We stayed in touch with Bobby and Georg and eventually got around to making good on the idea of forming a band. We jammed in Georg's garage and started messing around with lyrics. It was fun. Georg was the only one who played an instrument, but actual proficiency was not a requirement in a punk band. Theresa, who dyed her hair platinum blond, picked up the ba.s.s. I sat down on drums, and Bobby, as we a.s.sumed he would, stepped to the front as the lead singer.

We went at it with a noisy recklessness and disregard that was so much fun we didn't care what we sounded like, though we thought we sounded pretty good, or at least good enough. In the spirit of Johnny Rotten, we adopted noms de punk. Bobby became Darby Crash. Georg became Pat Smear. Theresa came up with Lorna Doom. And I chose Dottie Danger.

Why Dottie Danger? It sounded cute and angry at the same time.

Darby and Pat had been down this road before. They'd started a band after being kicked out of high school. They called it Sophistif.u.c.k and the Revlon Spam Queens--a great name. But when they couldn't get all those letters on a T-s.h.i.+rt, they renamed themselves the Germs.

We got really into the band as we practiced, picked up some steam, and set our sights on doing something Darby and Pat hadn't done in their previous incarnation as the Germs--perform a show, a real show at a club.

We didn't possess anything close to the skill and polish of bands that were headlining clubs in L.A., bands like the Ramones, Blondie, Television, the Quick, and Joan Jett. But we still got booked at the Orpheum Theatre in April 1977. We printed flyers and posted them around town.

However, as the date drew near, I got very sick and was diagnosed with mononucleosis. I had to drop out of the band and move back home with my parents for three months. Becky Barton, another girl from my high school art cla.s.s, took my place. She called herself Donna Rhia. Hilarious.

I still attended the show. I wouldn't have missed it even if I had been hospitalized. As I think about it, wearing a hospital gown might have been very punk. Anyway, as I recall, about eight people showed up to hear the band, which was typical of hard-core punk shows at the time. They drew fans who were early adapters and very plugged in or friends of the band. People didn't just casually go check out a punk band, not one like the Germs.

You had to want to see Darby.

Among all his screaming and histrionics, he stuck the microphone in a jar of peanut b.u.t.ter and covered his body in red licorice. As Pat recalled, they were thrown off the stage after five minutes.

But we thought that was a huge success. The band had played in public! We felt validated and real. The Germs were considered legit and later on were regarded as L.A.'s first homegrown punk band. I had been disappointed that I wasn't able to partic.i.p.ate as originally planned. I was also b.u.mmed about living at home again. I seemed to have regressed.

Little did I know I was about to rev up.

After recovering from mono, I stayed connected to the Germs as their publicist, which meant I put flyers up in record stores. I also announced the band before shows and stood off to the side of the stage, handing Darby his peanut b.u.t.ter, licorice, and salad dressing. I wished there had been a place for me, but another opportunity arose when my friend Connie Clarksville called and asked if I wanted to sing backup for Black Randy and the Metrosquad.

Someone had dropped out and they needed a fill-in. I was glad to help, and even happier when I found out I could take my place onstage wearing a das.h.i.+ki and a beehive wig. It was the best dress-up party I'd ever been invited to. Black Randy's show was like a circus, and part of the performance was the a.s.semblage of this crazy horde of musicians, singers, and dancers, all of whom contributed in some way to his reworking of James Brown's "Say It Loud (I'm Black and I'm Proud)," as well as funny and funky originals he wrote about drugs, prost.i.tutes, and whatever else crossed his mind. He had one song about Ugandan dictator Idi Amin.

Randy was an acquired taste, both brilliant and self-destructive. Like Darby, he did heroin, which I didn't like being around. Drugs, like the geographical divides that made for Hollywood punks, beach punks, and South Bay punks, created their own culture, look, and rituals. From what I experienced, there were two basic groups: those who did heroin and those who were into dropping acid and partying. The junkies were dark, violent, and scary. Those who preferred acid, like me, were more sociable, fun, and interested in a good time.

And I had a good time. Once I was healthy again, I moved out of my parents' house and went back to Hollywood. Without my own place, I relied on friends letting me crash on their couches or in most cases, their floors. I didn't care where I slept as much as I did about getting into hot shows featuring the Plugz, the Deadbeats, and the Screamers. In July, Devo played at the Starwood, and the Ohio art school grads were so good they subsequently ended up being the house band at the Whisky.

The Masque emerged as the center of L.A.'s punk scene. It was literally an underground club--a hole-in-the-wall bas.e.m.e.nt located beneath the p.u.s.s.ycat adult theater. By the time it closed in 1979, the little stage featured X, the Weirdos, the Germs, the Dils, and almost every other local punk band of note. Equally famous were its concrete walls, which were covered in graffiti that many considered made it one of the great, if not sacred, shrines to the origins of the punk movement.

The Roxy and Whisky were still popular, as was the Starwood, but the bands that played those clubs were by and large big, or on their way up. The Masque was a big cold room filled with weirdos, misfits, and iconoclasts. If you were a punk, you fit into one of those categories, or you simply checked "all of the above." I was one of the regulars and notable for the way my close-cropped hair changed colors almost as often as the club changed bands.

Part of the fun I had was being able to dress up in whatever kind of outfit I thought about putting together. I preferred avant garde designers like Kenzo, but if I managed to splurge occasionally at Fred Segal or Neo 80, one of the few punk stores, it usually left me flat broke, and then I relied on my mom to make me clothes for work or I scrounged through thrift stores. I had an eye, though, so everything worked for me--or so I thought. I remember wearing a paisley dress and two-toned cowboy boots to work and then changing into a fifties-style prom dress with torn stockings and stilettos. I famously showed up once at a party wearing a Hefty trash bag.

I often topped off my getup with a faux-diamond-encrusted tiara. Why not step into the role of punk princess? I thought.

No sooner did I do that than a prince came into my life--Karlos Kaballeros. Karlos was the drummer for the d.i.c.kies, a band whose music I loved. He was also my type--dark, handsome, and Latin. I knew of him and the band before, but we actually met one night at a party in the Hollywood Hills. He thought he was laying a cool line on me (and he was) when he said I reminded him of a punk Kim Novak. Hearing that, I immediately acted out the sultry scene from the movie Picnic when Kim clapped her hands and swiveled her hips in a slow dance that put William Holden under her spell.

It had the same effect on Karlos. He became my first real boyfriend, my first romantic boyfriend, too. He was also my first rock star. The d.i.c.kies were on the verge of being signed to a major record label, and that made them hot stuff around town. Despite the buzz, though, they were still as broke as everyone else. Karlos was like me in that he didn't have a place of his own. After the parties were over the two of us would curl up together on friends' floor s.p.a.ces or couches.

We had a pretty bohemian romance. We were broke, rarely sober, and always on the go. Our lives were about music. We went to shows, found parties, and made a few trips to San Francisco for concerts at Mabuhay Gardens, or the Fab Mab as everyone called it, in the city's rather skeezy North Beach district. We ate at Johnny's Steakhouse on Hollywood Boulevard, flicked our cigs as we walked down the Strip, and shared bottles of cheap wine along with our innermost dreams until we pa.s.sed out on each other.

After a couple months together, I sensed something strange going on with Karlos. It was a subtle change that made me think he wasn't being forthright with me about our relations.h.i.+p. I didn't say anything, but one night when we were meeting at the Whisky, I saw him walk in and got a sense that he was going to break up with me. And strangely enough, he did.

He found me in the club, gave me a kiss on the forehead, and started to make small talk. I asked if something was bothering him, and after stammering for a moment, he said something along the lines of "I'm not good enough for you." I understood where that was going and thought it was a pathetically weak way of telling me that he had found someone else. Regardless, I was crushed. When I asked what was behind his decision, if there was someone else or something else, he said there was nothing to discuss.

I saw him a few nights later at a club. He was with another guy and they were about to leave on their motorcycles. For a moment, I thought about going over to them and having some words with Karlos. But, as hard as it was, I decided to leave it. Whatever I said wouldn't make me feel better. He didn't want me anymore.

I had a hard time for months. Everyplace I went reminded me of him--or of us. I cried as I rode the bus to and from work; the city seemed so cold, empty, and lonely. I remember bursting into tears when I heard Rod Stewart's version of "The First Cut Is the Deepest."

Four or five years went by before I saw Karlos again. I was in the VIP balcony at the Starwood, checking out Motley Crue, when some guy began giving me a very hard time. We exchanged words and suddenly he c.o.c.ked his arm to hit me. I saw it happening in slow motion, the way I had years earlier when my car flipped over on the freeway. Then from out of nowhere Karlos appeared, blocked the guy's arm, and beat the c.r.a.p out of him in my defense.

I was extremely grateful, slightly embarra.s.sed, and pleased to see that he still cared.

five.

WE'RE HERE NOW.

MOOCHING A PLACE to sleep every night got old. I reconnected with Theresa, and we rented an apartment in the Canterbury, a large, run-down apartment building from the thirties on Cherokee. It was a terrible neighborhood, but only a block from the Masque, which was why, aside from it being cheap, it seemed like everyone we knew lived in the building.

If someone had blown up the Canterbury, and G.o.d knows someone might have tried, most of Hollywood's punk scene would have been destroyed. I heard rumors the Canterbury's landlord was also a pimp and oversaw a theft ring. True or not, he was a dodgy guy--but perfect as the ringmaster for the characters who called the Canterbury home.

All the punks had apartments throughout the building, including my friend Connie, who had gotten me into Black Randy. She was also a former beauty school student and sold drinks at the Masque. She had lived at the Canterbury for years and liked to say she predated the punks, having moved in when the renters were merely drag queens and pimps.

Connie gave haircuts to anyone who wanted one and boasted about having hundreds of clients. Clients? To me, they were weirdos like myself who wandered into her apartment. Later, she was a roadie for the Go-Go's. I always thought she was a riot. Once when we were bored, she pushed me down Sunset in a wheelchair while I pretended to be spastic. The more people we unnerved, the funnier we thought it was.

Alice Bag was another major force of feminine creativity and vision who also sang backup with Black Randy and went on to lead her own bodacious but short-lived group, the Bags. She was another one of those marvels who were incredibly smart, opinionated, and prescient. She knew of music before anyone else did and swore by the Ramones until she heard the Weirdos, who memorably and famously told Slash magazine, "We're not punks. We're weirdos."

Alice was among the most committed to music and life on the fringe of art and acceptance. In every era, including the punk era, there are those who get notoriety and those who are just as instrumental and inspiring, if not more so, but for some reason don't get the fame--Alice was one of those people. We were good friends. We got drunk together pretty frequently, shopped the thrift stores, talked endlessly, and hung out. I also remember making out with her on a bench as we waited for a bus on Vine Street. In those days making out with someone of your own s.e.x was fas.h.i.+onable.

The Canterbury was a great big interconnected stew of crazies devoted to two things, partying and music, though it was hard to tell where one ended and the other began. You could stand in the courtyard at almost any time of the day or night and hear different music blasting out of every window--and believe me, that was the least of it.

I was carried out or pa.s.sed out more times than I can recall. Others were way wilder. I don't even want to think about the strange bedfellows you would have found if you peeked inside those windows. It was insane, in a great way.

Theresa and I had a studio apartment with a kitchen. It came with a disgustingly dirty and worn plaid sofa--the piece that qualified it as "furnished." We also shared a Murphy bed. One day, in a burst of inspiration, I set out to paint the bathroom bloodred, but I ran out of steam halfway through and never finished.

I probably went out and never picked the brush up again. I expended more energy making sure I was at all the hot shows, whether the bill was the Screamers, the Ramones, and Blondie or the Weasels, the Bags, the Eyes, and the Quick.

The Germs were also busy and productive that summer and into the fall of 1977, their most notable gigs being at the Whisky in September with the Weirdos and the Bags and then the next month when they opened for Devo and Blondie. I can still be heard on a vintage piece of video on YouTube introducing the band.

The parties that followed the shows were as important to us insiders as the shows themselves. They gave everyone a chance to mingle, talk about the performances, compare what we'd seen and heard to every other band on the planet, and hook up. I was a huge fan of Devo, but I was always intimidated around Mark Mothersbaugh and the other guys. It wasn't for any reason other than that they were smart college graduates who had a well-thought-out vision, and I feared not understanding whatever it was they were talking about.

I also got a kick out of the Weirdos, especially the Denney brothers, John and Dix, who were fun on-and offstage. But I remember seeing the Stranglers when they rolled into town from the UK and getting a sense from their att.i.tude and apparent aggressiveness that they were probably too much for a carefree party girl like me.

I underestimated myself. One night I dropped some acid with Germs drummer Don Bolles and a group of friends. There were probably ten of us who decided to trip together that night. After ingesting the LSD, we walked en ma.s.se from the Canterbury to Hollywood Forever Cemetery, which was a decent walk when you were straight, but a flat-out adventure while tripping.

Once there, we crawled underneath the main gates and spent a couple hours exploring the grounds. We found the graves of Hollywood legends Rudolph Valentino and Tyrone Power as well as Virginia Rappe's plot. Rappe was the silent film actress Fatty Arbuckle was accused of killing, a dark tragedy that had intrigued me for many years. We also goofed around in one of the old mausoleums, shaking a couple urns as if they were maracas.

As several of us were sticking flowers in our hair and joking around, we heard a deep, stern voice on a loudspeaker cut through our laughter and say, "Everyone stop whatever you're doing and come out with your hands up." It was the cops. I looked out toward where I heard the voice and saw several squad cars with their lights flas.h.i.+ng just like on the old TV series Adam-12.

Oh c.r.a.p, I thought as I was. .h.i.t by a sick feeling I hadn't felt since I was caught shoplifting from Thrifty. As my friends slowly marched out to face the police, though, I decided I wasn't going with them. I didn't want to get arrested, not while still blazing on acid. Instead I hid behind a tombstone, not knowing how much of the fear I felt was because I was high and how much was because I was really scared.

After all the others were outside the gate and standing nervously in the glare of a spotlight from one of the black and white police cruisers, the cops issued several more orders to come out. I didn't know if someone had said I was still in there, but I didn't move--not even when they s.h.i.+ned a powerful spotlight from another car in my direction, panning it across the grounds, searching for me.

I don't think I breathed until they finally left. I guess they felt like they were hauling in enough weird-looking kids for the night and didn't need one more girl with short platinum-colored hair. I continued to sit in the dark for some time, waiting until I felt certain the coast was clear. Then I sprinted through the lightless night as fast as I could, running breathlessly across the tombstones toward the cemetery's other gate. I crawled under and walked back to the Canterbury.

On Santa Monica Boulevard, about halfway there, I b.u.mped into Don Bolles, who had escaped, too. We looked at each other and shook our heads in disbelief. All the others had been taken to jail. Later in the week, a couple of the girls told me that they had spent several days in Sybil Brand, the women's jail. They were p.i.s.sed, but they'd had no choice. No one had any money to bail them out.

The year wound down with shows at the Whisky from the Deadbeats, the Mumps, Elvis Costello, Talking Heads, the Ramones, the Screamers, and the d.i.c.kies (which I continued to see despite the heartache I felt watching Karlos). After one show, I met a guy who said he heard that Natalie Wood's sister, Lana Wood, was having a party at her house, and he suggested we crash it.

Why not? We found her house, bypa.s.sed the valet parking out front in favor of parking on our own up the street, and walked straight into the party, where we tried to keep our cool and look like we belonged while gawking at stars. I remember elbowing my friend and saying, "Look, there's Jack Haley Jr." He had no idea.

Cras.h.i.+ng fancy parties became something I did fairly often. It was cheap entertainment. I got dressed up, drank champagne, and tried to look posh. The Chateau Marmont hotel was my favorite place to crash events. One night I stumbled into a hoity-toity celebration for a famous New York artist. After a gla.s.s or two of champagne, I ran out and broke all the lightbulbs in the hallway as I pa.s.sed them.

Looking back, my life at that time stands out as surreal, colorful, vibrant, reckless, and irresponsible. I didn't have any money but felt like I owned the town. Occasionally I was onstage as a backup singer, other times I was in the audience, but I was living the dream all the time. It was wonderful. The humdrum monotony of temp jobs in the daytime was minor compared to the thrilling antic.i.p.ation of something wonderful happening at night.

I didn't want to miss anything. No one did.

Word spread that the s.e.x Pistols were going to play at the Winterland Ballroom on January 14 in San Francisco. Only seven months had pa.s.sed since "G.o.d Save the Queen" had been released like a firebomb across the airwaves. I had listened to it with Darby and Bobby; they had played it over and over, as if they were tattooing it in their brains. It provided our revolution with an anarchist anthem.

The Pistols' incendiary alb.u.m Never Mind the b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, Here's the s.e.x Pistols soon followed, and it was pretty obvious from those songs, along with what I'd read, that Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, and the boys were like a fast-moving cyclone and I'd better do everything I could to see them before they blew apart.

A bunch of us felt the same way, like we needed to do whatever we could to get up to San Francisco. I went up with Theresa and a group that included Connie and others. She recalls us checking into a Chinatown hotel, tras.h.i.+ng the room, and then being unable to find another place to stay, all of which is likely true. I just don't remember any of it. I was probably on acid.

My memory of this trip kicks in right before the show, when I ran into other L.A. punks, such as photographer Jenny Lens, h.e.l.lin Killer, Margot Olaverra, and Jane Wiedlin, then known as Jane Drano, a cute, outgoing girl who was around the Masque and Canterbury from the beginning. All of us were excited to be there, and the show more than lived up to any expectations we had of the world's greatest punk band.