THE MISADVENTURES OF A GRAVEYARD GIRL

Breathing deeply, my mouth opened wide, yearning to receive his essence, feeling him in my very core. This…thing we had together went on at least twice a week and lasted for years, from the late 1970’s to the mid 1990’s. It wasn’t a booty call; it was a ritual.

 Around midnight, I’d steal through the always-unlocked gates in of Hollywood Memorial Park, and head directly to Douglas Fairbanks’  monument. Bounding down the stairs and trotting  the length of the magnificent reflection pool, my anticipation grew, knowing I was about to commune with the star of  Robin Hood, The Thief of Baghdad, Zorro.

I needed his devil-may-care, swashbuckling, adventurous spirit… so I’d cram my entire face into the vents of his tomb, open my mouth as big as a Great White Shark,  and inhale deeply until I almost passed out. I was valiantly trying to absorb his silent movie star DNA, hoping  it would affect my genetic makeup by changing my chromosomes. Though I’d ingested copious amounts of controlled substances  in my life, none were as potent.

 The vents on Douglas Fairbank’s sarcophagus have been cemented shut  for decades, and the cemetery gates are  now padlocked at dusk, but in the ‘70’s, you could  just walk right in after dark- and several people did. Back then, not only were the main gates carelessly left open, the entire place was in such  dire disrepair it looked like a set from a mid-sixties Hammer Films  B-Movie Vampire flick. All that was missing was Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee.

 The baroque wrought iron doors on the Edwardian Era mausoleums were rusted and hanging from their hinges; some had been pried off and lay on the ground. A few of the mausoleums had visible-and  severely vandalized-  wooden coffins inside, surrounded with broken beer bottles and covered in “R13” spray paint tags from the local gang The Rebels. Pre-1920’s grave stones tilted at crazy angles due to the ground settling; weeds grew rampant; the grass was rarely mowed.  Bouquets of weather-worn cheap plastic flowers  and fading, shredded  miniature American flags stood forlornly on the markers. A few pieces of statuary were missing hands or the tips of their angelic wings, others were defaced with graffiti.

In those days, the cemetery was like an after-hours hot spot for juvenile delinquent punks like me: it was free to get in,  no one carded you, and you could make  all sorts of noise  cause the neighbors… weren’t alive! I spent more time, did more drugs and had more sex in the graveyard than I ever did  in my house. I actually  considered  Hollywood Memorial Park my bedroom. My favorite spot for dead-of-night (pun intended) erotic encounters was the island monument. I’d bring my leopard print flannel sleeping bag,  a handful of qualuudes,and a hot squeeze. Sometimes we’d actually pass out there, waking up as dawn broke.

 I had sex with humans with the dead as voyeurs: sprawling on the markers for Jayne Mansfield, Tyrone Power, Cecil B. DeMille and on the marble floor under Rudolph Valentino. Raised as a feminist, I avenged Fatty Arbuckle’s rape of Virginnia Rappe by copulating on her grave, leaving her a paper cupful of Cold Duck and an earring  as an offering. I hooked up with a cute goth guy I’d just met at a show on Mel Blank’s monument while we were both on acid. When he said “What’s Up Doc?” in a Bugs Bunny voice after we were done, I thought for sure we could build a long term meaningful relationship…but I never saw him again. THAT’S ALL, FOLKS!

The following  incident took place during the very rainy Spring of 1978. I’d just turned  nineteen and was  once again tripping my brains out on LSD. The Mumps were in town from New York City. Darlings of the Lower East Side CBGB punk scene, The Mumps were lead by the infamous Lance Loud, who’d come out on national television on  the PBS show “An American Family”. I’d interviewed  The Mumps for Slash Magazine, and they’d just been on the cover of Lobotomy: The Brainless Magazine a  Xerox fanzine I did with my buddy, photographer Theresa Kereakes. 

 She was one of the only people in our crowd  with a car-a little Honda that had recently transported a load of crazies up to San Francisco to see The Sex Pistols  at Winterland. One night, Theresa, my roommate Kid Congo of The Gun Club (and later,The Cramps, Nick Cave, etc.etc.)) and I too The Mumps bassist Kevin Kiley to get a whiff of Douglas Fairbanks.

 We cracked bottles of illegally purchased Mickey’s Big Mouth as we sloshed through the muddy overgrown grass, showing Kevin our favorite monuments. Though I was appalled so many graves had been vandalized, I thought nothing of plucking Easter Lilies from the bouquets the living had left  for their dearly departed. I loved fresh flowers and couldn’t  afford them…plus, the recipients were dead.   Kevin helped me gather up a big bouquet  as we chanted  over and over in a Katherine Hepburn voice,

 "THE CALLA LILLIES ARE IN BLOOM!"

 Somehow I fell behind the group, stopping at a life-sized statue of a weeping woman, her hands covering her face. I watched in  morbid fascination as  the collected water from the recent rain slowly dripped through her fingers like tears, splashing onto the granite pedestal. I  thought I heard a low whistle, but chalked it up to being freaked by  the spooky statue, until I heard bushes rustling…and then footsteps. Stiffening in fear, I went as alert and still as a hunted doe. I heard men’s  voices mumbling; they  seemed very close by, and  were definitely not wildlife, a ghost or a hallucination.  I felt their eyes on me and knew it wasn’t my imagination, so I walked away  swiftly, but as  casually as possible to find the others.

 “There’s  people here,” I said in a breathless  whisper,  “They’re hiding  and  I think they’ve been watching us…and…we should go…like now!”

 Kid rolled his eyes.  We’d taken acid together so many times, he knew I was prone to outre thoughts  and obsessive behavior. Once, at my insistence  we spent hours examining the entire contents of  a box of Ritz Crackers individually  to see if they really had SEX stamped onto them as a subliminal suggestion.

“ You’re just being  paranoid,” Kid said patiently.

 “ No, I swear!”, I gasped, trying  not to flip out. “We gotta get outta here!”

 There was a loud whistle- we all heard it and whirled around in unison.

A tall, heavy set man appeared from behind one of the mausoleums.  He had wild long black hair and crazy eyes and  was brandishing a long length of lead pipe. He ran towards us as a second man, also armed with a pipe, closed in,  coming from the area near the front gates.

 “Run!” Kevin yelled.

We  all took off, instinctively sprinting for the east wall of the cemetery,  the one bordering Van Ness, because Theresa had parked  there. Kid was already  on top of the wall, extending his hand  as I threw my Easter Lilies over before climbing up. Getting a boost from Kevin, I used the thick ivy to hold on but it was slippery with dew. Though Theresa was last to scale the wall, she  unlocked the car with  miraculous speed. As we pulled out, the first thug grabbed the door Kid was closing, and  with abnormal strength, kept  it open until Theresa  backed  the Honda  up abruptly, knocking him to the sidewalk.

  We sped south on Van Ness, the thug’s late model Impala in hot pursuit. For nearly thirty minutes, we darted in and out of small, quiet side streets  at high speed, trying to lose the men, but they followed so closely it was impossible.  

 Meanwhile, I was having a legit panic attack in the back seat because  there were giant slugs crawling all over the lilies I’d stolen.  As we lurched  around corners, I started screaming…not at the situation, but from Slug Panic. In a phobic fugue state, I  shoved every stalk that had a slug on it to Kevin, who, to humor me- and probably to make me shut the fuck up- started stuffing them out the small window vent. Non-stop lilies flew onto the  Impala’s windshield, like floral missiles. There were , nine or ten huge Calla lilies plastered on it, and  in hindsight, I’m reasonably sure that the lack of visibility they created  was the only  reason Theresa  was able to make it onto Melrose Avenue. She hung a left,  and with a squeal of tires, made a huge donut,  driving illegally on purpose  hoping to attract the attention of the cops. Finally, we lost the thugs  and jammed down the deserted street  going 90mph  all the way to La Brea.

  Completely shaken, we exited the car and gratefully entered her apartment. The Mumps’ drummer Paul Rutner, who’d opted out of the cemetery excursion in favor of rest, was shocked when he saw our faces.

“ What the hell  happened to you guys? “ he asked, adding without  a drop of irony,

“You’re as white as ghosts!”

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LOBOTOMY: A BRIEF HISTORY OF LA'S NOTORIOUS 1970'S PUNK FANZINE

 

  Some of the original  1978 cut 'n' paste layouts for the pages of Lobotomy Magazine; photo of Billy Idol by Theresa Kereakes,  collage art  with hand writing --and shitty typing-- by me

The early 1970’s punk scene was significantly different than it is today. In New York, London and San Francisco, but especially in LA, unless you actually lived through it, there’s almost no way to describe how electrifying-or how small and totally underground- it truly was.

 Punk wasn’t considered cool in those days, we were outsiders. Our look threatened “normal” people, and many of us actually got beaten up for our outlandish appearance. On the rare occasions that  I actually attended school, I’d walk through the cafeteria while tablefuls of jocks with feathered haircuts would chant the lyrics to Kool and The Gang’s  “Hollywood Swinging”, while throwing salads at me. Because they were football players, they had great aim, and I’d often wind up covered in Thousand Island dressing. At least it matched my  bright orange hair!

It’s pretty funny when I study my old punk old photos, because in hindsight, we didn’t really look scary. Even though we thought we appeared dangerous and outré in our solid-black getups, most of us were so young we looked like little pubescent kids, but we were also dressed exactly the way everyone does now!

Back then, we were underage and therefore too young to be tattooed…unless we did it at home, jail-style (which we all did) by melting a sewing needle into the handle of a toothbrush, dipping it in India ink and poking the needle into our skin by hand. There was also no Krazy Kolor on the market yet, so when we dyed our hair, we had a choice of only three shades: black, Lucille Ball red, or bleached white. Nobody (in the States, anyway) was making punk accessories, so we made due by wearing dog collars from the pet store and bought $4.00 studded leather cock rings from The Pleasure Chest to wear as wristbands!

In the spring of 1978, I founded my punk rock fanzine Lobotomy with my best friend from high school, the late Randy Kaye. Randy and I –and an assortment of friends -went out every single night, and cut school all the time to feed our rock ‘n’ roll obsession, usually going to Hollywood Boulevard to visit Peaches Record Store. Chris Ashford- who later founded What? Records and  released The Germs’ first single worked  there, and  would let us listen to the new British Import punk 45’s and give us posters and other swag that came with them.  Often, we’d all convene at the house of  someone whose parents weren’t home  to listen to music and get wasted on whatever substances we could scare up.

 

Randy Kaye and me in San Francisco, 1978. The entire Lobotomy staff went up to the Bay Area for a series of shows Blondie was doing in  SF and Berkeley. Photo by Theresa Kereakes

The main reason we wanted to start a fanzine was so we could get free records and get into shows. We took our title from The Ramones song “Teenage Lobotomy”. Because  the LA scene was close-knit,  there were also a few other  fanzines running concurrently, including Flipside , which had started in East LA in  1977, Generation X, published by sisters Jade and Zandra, and Phast Phreddie’s Back Door Man, which had started in the South Bay. Though it wasn’t strictly punk,  it  was definitely underground, and had been publishing since 1975. There were many  others, but none of them lasted as long as Lobotomy or the ones just mentioned.

 Though everybody on the scene referred to our fanzine simply Lobotomy, the real title was Lobotomy: The Brainless Magazine. Later, we amended it to Lobotomy: Where Glamour Is A Way Of Life, ironically stealing the phrase that was printed on the shopping bags from Frederick’s Of Hollywood. Lobotomy was published usually-but not always- monthly from 1978 to early in 1982.

 Looking back on it, Lobotomy was kind of patterned after those  old school slam books from Junior High, and it also functioned like today’s Social Media sites.

Randy and I immediately enlisted our friend Theresa Kereakes to take photos, and then drafted our pals Anna Statman and the late Herb Wrede to also be our photographers, since we wanted to write about our local Hollywood scene and no one who was “legit” was covering it. We knew it was important to have photos from the shows we reviewed and the interviews we did… although I also combed Sounds, NME, Melody Maker and Creem Magazine to appropriate- photos and make collages.

Kid Congo Powers and me in the Lobotomy "office", photo by Theresa Kereakes

Around the same time, I’d met a kid named Brian Tristan and we became fast friends. He looked like Maynard G. Krebbs by way of the Sharks in Westside Story. At the time, he was the President of the Ramones Fan Club, and started writing a lot for Lobotomy. He also wound up being my roommate for years, at a variety of different places… before his name to Kid Congo  Powers and joining the Gun Club and later, The Cramps.  

 Since punk was a totally underground subculture, when we were working on Lobotomy, we never had to deal with agents, managers or major record companies-we had access to everyone in the bands themselves. Our friends were in bands, or we’d meet bands who were friends of friends, or simply call a hotel where a band we liked was staying (usually the Tropicana Motel or The Continental Hyatt House on Sunset, which was known locally as “The Riot House”) We’d ask the band if they’d want to hang out, go record or thrift store shopping or take them to a gig, and interview them.  Most of the time, we became fast friends.

We were semi-delinquent teenagers who hung out with and interviewed artists  who later became known as the groundbreaking stars of the late 20^th Century. Just some of the interviews that we did for Lobotomy were with The Clash, The Damned, The Cramps, Blondie, X, The Go-Go’s, Billy Idol, Lydia Lunch, 999, The Germs, The Mumps, Black Randy, The Jam, James Chance, The Screamers and director David Lynch. And since no one was on guard and absolutely nothing was being filtered through a publicist, those interviews were extremely candid and totally wild. For example, Brian Tristan aka Kid Congo and I interviewed Lydia Lunch while she and her new husband Johnny O’Kane were in bed having sex; Theresa and I interviewed Blondie while crammed into the tiny bathroom in Theresa’s apartment during a raging party, while all of us were high on Quaaludes and beer. I probably don’t need to tell you that shit like that just doesn’t happen any more, right?

Randy, Brian aka Kid Congo and I did most of the writing, and we also all used several pen names so it would look like Lobotomy had a big staff. Nick Garrard who managed the British psychobilly band The Meteors was our London correspondent and Joe Katz of The Student Teachers was our New York correspondent. They’d snail mail us accounts of the recent goings-on in their cities. We’d also rope our roommates, houseguests and friends to write things- even if they hadn’t ever written!  We'd get them drunk and shove a piece of paper and a pen at them and literally force them to write a record review. Some of those contributors were Marcy Blaustein, Nancy Nitro aka Nancy Nagler, Dennis Crosby (grandson of Bing Crosby) and Ann McLean.  Randy got our pal Joan Jett to dictate an account of a 1978 Runaways UK tour to him which became  “Joan Jett’s Holiday In The Sun” in the second issue.

These magazine layout sessions were always done shit-faced drunk at “The Lobotomy Apartment”- as Theresa’s place off La Brea and my place on Palm Drive were both called… although in some issues of the issues, my place was referred to as “The Lobotomy Pig Stye”!  We’d stay up all night typing and gluing stuff to the pages… which weren’t even the same paper!  We’d use whatever was lying around: onion skin typing paper stolen from various office temp jobs, the backs of gig flyers, and once, even a bunch of    corporate stationary I’d stolen from the Los Angeles department store Bullock’s Wilshire.  Usually, I’d   draw the various fonts (which weren’t even called that back then) freehand, reproducing logos for The Cramps or the Clash by copying whatever was on the cover of their latest single.  Someone gave me a few sheets of Press Type rub-on letters and using it seemed so…professional. Insert the Crying With Laughter Emoji here.

 Lobotomy finally quit publication in 1982, because miraculously, all of us on the staff were getting real jobs by doing what we did for the fanzine!   Theresa was taking photos for all sorts of mainstream rock publications, I’d started writing for LA Weekly  - and many other magazines and papers-in 1978, and founded the popular “LA Dee Dah”  Hollywood scene gossip column, which ran for years.   Randy and Anna both became A&R execs at various record companies, and Kid Congo became a bonafide rock star in his own right.

Never in our wildest dreams did any of us consider that the loopy Xeroxed fanzine we started as a lark nearly forty years ago would be a turning point in our lives, let alone a significant piece of Los Angeles punk rock history.

 

A Lobotomy "staff meeting" at Joan Jett's apartment on San Vicente:  Left to Right: artist Brad Dunning, who created the Lobotomy logo, Joan Jett, Billy Idol and  the extremely underage Wendy Bowie. Photo by Theresa Kereakes

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 March 5, 2016, in Los Angeles, Theresa Kereakes and I are having an opening for our art show (Teenage) Lobotomy:  Fanzine Art And Photos From The 1970’s LA Punk Scene.  It will feature Theresa’s amazing   live and backstage photos from that time period, as well as the original paste up art I did for Lobotomy.

(Teenage) Lobotomy:  Fanzine Art And Photos From The 1970’s LA Punk Scene

Lethal Amounts Gallery

1226 West 7^th Street, LA

 8:00pm-11:00pm

 

Rhys Williams and John from LA band The Joneses hanging out with Belinda Carlisle backstage at The Whisky in 1978...photo by Theresa Kereakes, original  Lobotomy logo by Brad Dunning

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 Link to the (Teenage) Lobotomy Facebook event:

  https://www.facebook.com/events/566459213511914/

 To read more about my sordid punk rock past, or to order my memoir Showgirl Confidential visit my website: www.pleasantgehman.com 

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