JUST A CRAZY LITTLE PLACE...MEMORIES OF THE SUGAR SHACK

 Sugar Shack coupon courtesy of Chuck Starr

 When most people think of their teenage years, they remember things like football games or the Senior Prom. Not me. The summer of 1975 was a highlight in my Peak Experience-filled teens.  And nothing is sweeter in my memory than the nights I spent at The Sugar Shack in North Hollywood.  The Shack, as we called it, was a refuge for  “adventurous” teenagers- oh,  wait, I really meant to say Juvenile Delinquents With Very Little Parental Supervision. If you imagine combining the degeneracy of the Weimar Berlin with an episode of Romper Room featuring  Jayne County as the hostess, and  a soundtrack by Suzi Quatro, you’ll get an idea of what an average night at The Sugar Shack was like.

I was Sweet Sixteen and had just moved to LA, a city that was in the throes of a strange musical limbo. The Hollywood club scene was in that  “no man’s land” between the end of Glitter Rock and the beginning of Punk; but let me assure you, there was plenty going on. While the rest of the world was grooving to the boss sounds of the latest Disco hits, there was a crowd of Tinseltown hipsters-although we would’ve abhorred being called that- going to see Toni Basil or The Tubes at The Roxy, Queen or Iggy at The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, or the Cycle Sluts, a theatrical drag queen troupe/ heavy metal band who were in residence at The Whisky A Go-Go. Since many of us were too young to drink legally, we’d prime ourselves for these gigs by scarfing handfuls of Quaaludes- the original Rorer 714 article- which could be purchased in The Rainbow’s  parking lot for a mere buck a pop.

Back then, rock music wasn’t the only thing that was caught in a gray area. My crowd and I were streetwise and sophisticated enough to be experimenting with drugs and sex, but hideously below the legal Age Of Consent. Since it was The Swingin’ Seventies, our nascent sexuality was also one big fat gray area…and it’s not like anyone was keepings tabs, either!  Our adventurous spirit fit in perfectly with the prevalent freewheeling attitude of the time. Mixed with the handfuls of pills we took combined with the Olde English 800 tallboys we guzzled in back alleys, it made any sort of sexual classification totally irrelevant.

We were a crowd of groupies, teenage hustlers, bisexual school girls and fringy sluts out, as the New York Dolls said, “Lookin’ For A Kiss”…or more, if we could get it…and usually, we could. Our favorite hangs were late-night coffee shops where trannie hookers turned tricks in the Ladies Room; places like Arthur J’s on Santa Monica Boulevard or   the two haunts on Hollywood Boulevard: Danielle’s and The Gold Cup which was immortalized in Black Randy’s song “Trouble At The Cup”.  Mostly we hung out at these establishments after hitting Westwood to see The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the millionth time.  None of these places served liquor, so of course they didn’t card anyone. You could be totally at home in your fishnets, heavy make up and Sally Bowles’ fierce Divinely Decadent attitude. After all, who was gonna to hassle you about your appearance…a stoned drag queen? Rodney’s English Disco had closed and The Masque wasn’t open yet, so these were our haunts…until The Sugar Shack opened.

Located in the depths of LA’s San Fernando Valley on Magnolia and Whitsett, The Sugar Shack was a juice bar where you had to show ID to prove that you were under twenty one…unless of course you were Kim Fowley or Rodney Bingenheimer or a visiting rock star. The place was tiny and wood paneled, with a long bar down the right side as you walked in. There was an upstairs lounge area that had a working fireplace,  clanging pinball machines, and couches were everyone eventually wound up  writhing around   with someone they’d just met.

 Main attraction was the dance floor, which took up at least a third of the club. Racks of colorful lights whirled around overhead, along with a Disco ball, a siren that sounded frequently, and strobe lights.  The notorious Chuck E Starr was the DJ playing Shack faves like Roxy Music’s “Do The Strand”, The Sweet’s “AC/DC” or “Fox On The Run” and   “Planet Queen” by T. Rex. He also favored hits from LA’s “grown up” (read: 21 and over) gay clubs, like The Andrea True Connection’s  “More, More, More” and  “Party Line” and Hot Chocolate’s  “You Sexy Thing”.    Ziggy Stardust look-alike Rick Ferris (aka Rick Bowie) would   jump up and lead an off-handed, infinitely hot Hustle.  Everyone in the whole place was in love with him, whether they’d admit to it or not.  But he big crowd pleaser was anything from The Rocky Horror Show – the entire dance floor would be filled with kids doing  “The Time Warp” in Busby Berkeley precision, and  “Cherry Bomb” by local gals and Shack regulars, The Runaways.  David Bowie was in a class by himself– “Rebel Rebel” and “Golden Years” were heard multiple times a night and no one ever got tired of them- everyone went insane. My late bestie Randy Kaye, (Co-editor of my punk fanzine Lobotomy and later an A&R man for Slash Records) remembers:

“No matter what Bowie song Chuck played, we’d all scream and run to the dance floor!”

 The main thing I remember about the dance floor- aside from making an ass of myself on numerous occasions by literally falling off my silver glitter platforms in a Quaalude stupor- were the mirrored panels that surrounded it on three sides. They were covered in a thick band of kiss marks in every conceivable shade of lip-gloss because everybody would   dance facing the mirrors and   kiss their own reflections. How very Seventies; we might’ve been messed up, but we sure didn’t lack self-esteem!

 

The Runaways

 “The Sugar Shack was a magical place,” sighed Cherie Currie, former Runaways lead singer, who, along with her twin sister Marie were the belles of the ball.

“Everyone would make a circle around Cherie and she’d…like…do her stage moves,” Randy said.

 Jane Wiedlin, who in the days before The  Go-Go’s was a Shack regular, remembers:

“ Me and my friends were all afraid of Cherie!  The Sugar Shack was fun, but it was full of teenagers.  I wanted to meet rock stars, so I liked Rodney’s and The Rainbow more.”

“The Sugar Shack was a great place to sort of…get over Rodney’s, where everyone was fucking three guys a night! ” said my former roommate Ann MacLean, who was in 11^th grade at the time.

“ You’d get there early, get really wasted in the parking lot, then hang out with gay guys and make out with your girlfriends. I remember a lot of chicks wearing those chubby rabbit fur jackets, which I thought were so cool! Money wasn’t important… everyone was running around screaming “GIRRRRL!” and “MISS THING!” and we’d all cram into the girl’s restroom to make out with each other.”

“There were a lot of bisexual girls,” recalls Rodney Bingenheimer, wistfully and with great relish,

 “I brought Roger Meadows-Taylor from Queen there and he loved it! When I brought all of Blondie there, they couldn’t believe what was going on- a club only for teenagers? They thought it was really wild!”

 Drama always ran high at The Sugar Shack. When the beautiful blonde bartender Vicki Ronald became the singer for Kim Fowley’s “punk” project, Venus And The Razorblades, everybody speculated in hushed whispers, wondering if it would cause a rift between her and Cherie.  They not only looked identical, they were best friends.  Date-stealing was common. If you lost sight of your paramour for even a few minutes, it was a safe bet you’d find them entangled with someone else in a parked car on one of the dark residential streets or in the alleys surrounding the place.

“God, I remember getting there really early to drink in the car,” Randy Kaye recalled, “…and then waking up on some side street, not knowing how I got there!”

 My close friend and bon vivant, the late Dennis Crosby (grandson of Bing) recalled:

“Sex in cars… sex on the couches upstairs… sex in the girl’s bathroom…French designer bell-bottom jeans that laced up the front and the back…Tuinals and Southern Comfort…  stumbling outside to puke across the street then going back inside to dance!”

 Because most of us were underage, the good stuff usually happened outside or after hours. The movie Foxes, which featured Cherie Currie, came close to what our secret teenage lives were like back then, but it didn’t quite cut it- outrageous as the film was for the time, it still whitewashed our real life experiences. We were rock n’ rollers adrift in suburbia, dealing with the adult-like harsh realities-and hardcore substance abuse as escapism-when most of us weren’t even old enough to drive! And as for driving: getting to the Shack was a nightmare that involved sneaking out of the house, and either hitch-hiking (which we all did then) or careening across Coldwater Canyon in a car with seven other people who weren’t old enough to drive yet either. 

Eventually, most of us stopped going to The Sugar Shack in favor of  a  gay club in Hollywood called Gino’s II…and then punk rock happened, dividing our crowd into two very distinct factions. Some of us saw it as the Second Coming;  the others preferred dance music, puka shells and feathered hair.

The Sugar Shack’s been closed for decades, but I still can feel the ecstatic sweat of the dance floor when Chuck Starr hit the siren and threw on “Suffragette City”; the enthusiastic and utterly wasted casual sex with someone whose name you didn’t know… and hoping all week long that you’d see them again the next Wednesday night. I remember my red heart-shaped Lolita sunglasses, kept on after dark and miraculously never lost.  I always wore my Carmen Miranda 1940’s style Kork- Eaze wedge platforms and “Drive-In” pants:  Chemin De Fer bell bottom jeans that  zippered all the way  from the front waistband to the back through your crotch so  they’d fall off you in two pieces. It was  such a rush to get out of the house on a warm, jasmine scented summer night…and watching Rick Bowie strutting  around in the strobes  on the dance floor like he owned the place.

I remember a lot about those Sugar Shack nights, and what it was like being a teenager in Los Angeles during the Seventies. To my own amazement, as these memories come flooding back to me in minute detail, I put on “The Timewarp”…and evidently  I didn’t kill too many brain cells  back in the day,  because my body remembered every move as though it  had been imprinted into my DNA.  Dancing in my living room , I take Just A  To The Left and  then  A Step To The Right  with  the sassy  flair I used to show off on the Sugar Shack’s dance floor.

 I’d gaze into the mirror looking myself directly into the eyes, slowly lower my lids, pucker up my Mary Quant Black Cherry glossed lips and   kiss my own reflection, just as the final chords of the song ran out.

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The   story you've just read is from my forthcoming memoir Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere , which will be published by Punk Hostage Press in early 2015.

 Saturday, September 27  I will be reading from  my book Showgirl Confidential: My Life Onstage, Backstage, And On The Road  with the women of Punk Hostage Press at Beyond Baroque,  681 Venice  Blvd, LA, 90291  at 7:00pm. Info is here:  https://www.facebook.com/events/345505825625345/

  Get a signed copy of Showgirl Confidential here:  http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.htm  

TIME FOR A PARADE

It burned in my soul like an evangelical obsession: I wanted to be a majorette.

 Oh, I wanted it so badly I could taste it; it was all I  ever thought about as I’d stand in my back yard throwing sticks and broom handles around, pretending I was a glamorous baton twirler.

The spangled, scanty costumes and the feathered, military-style busby thrilled me,  but really, it was all  about the boots. I was absolutely crazy for the boots, they were so unbelievably  hot.

I could clearly envision  my flesh-toned fishnet-sheathed rounded and strong  calves leading down to those  pert, high-stepping, sparkling white boots. Those darling, dangerous boots that came to a peak in the front  at mid-shin, accentuating  the curve of the leg.  Those delicious boots whose fat tassels swung to and fro in time with the marching band,  those tough-yet-feminine snowy white boots with  the no-nonsense black heels and metal taps hammered into the soles all the way around so that as they struck the pavement, they made sparks.

I  visualized myself in the misty November air, marching in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, my breath coming out in little clouds visible even on the television set.  The huge tethered balloons of Rocky Squirrel and Bullwinkle Moose, Bugs Bunny, Under Dog and even Borden’s Elsie The Cow floated benignly, huge and dumb over my head, just over the height my tossed baton would fly before I caught it. Then I’d go into a spectacularly executed back flip and land in a split that made even the at-home viewers of the parade gasp with wonder.

By the time I was actually old enough to be a majorette, I had long since discovered pot and Boone’s Farm Ripple wine, and had also discovered boys…and girls.

I was getting detention constantly at school for talking out of turn and the sarcastic wisecracks I’d make during filmstrips in biology class.  I was into yoga, Tarot Cards, and trying to contact spirits on my Ouija Board, and my (unwanted) nickname was “Witchypoo”. When the gangs of jocks who hung out in the cafeteria started singing Hollywood Swingin’ and throwing salads at me as I walked by, I started cutting school on a regular basis.  The only class I ever showed up for was art, and I’d paint and do pen and ink drawings of the dancers from Bob Fosse’s Cabaret and 1950’s dominatrices that I’d seen in the pages of the yellowed detective tabloids and men’s magazines that I’d purchased at thrift stores. Looking at my work with barely concealed concern,  my art teacher Mr. Sutter, tried to sound all enthusiastic and encouraging as he  ventured,

"Maybe you could do illustrations for the Frederick's Of Hollywood Catalogue..."

 I was highly adept at underage nightclubbing, getting in for free at rock concerts, sneaking backstage and hanging out with British Glam bands. I’d chain smoke nonchalantly while I worked as the ticket taker in the box office at the world famous Whisky A Go-Go, letting all my friends in  as guests.  I started writing about music , and even though I'd  never attended typing class in school cause it bored me to tears, I’d learned my own crazy version of hunt ‘n’ peck typing out of necessity and was getting published in multiple legit rock magazines.

 Heavily into politics, I was  involved in many a  boozy, late-night heated discussion about Communism and Anarchy. Like many of my new friends, I was fascinated by The Manson Family to the point of obsession.

 I was doing The Timewarp in gay bars, falling off my silver glitter wedge platforms and onto my ass,  laughing hysterically and making a huge, sloppy scene in the middle of the dance floor during my first Quaalude experience.

I was well-read, sarcastic, bored, pretty even though I didn’t think so, and somewhat  jaded… and the last thing I wanted to do was twirl a fucking baton.

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 The story you’ve just read is from my forthcoming memoir, Good Girls Go To Heaven, Bad Girls Go Everywhere, set for publication  on Punk Hostage Press  in January, 2015.

 On Friday, August 8, 2014, I’ll  be reading  from and signing my  memoir Showgirl Confidential: My Life Onstage, Backstage, And On The Road , in Atlanta, Georgia. Information on the event is  here:

https://www.facebook.com/events/652357024856616/

“Showgirl”   is available on Amazon , and you can get an autographed copy here:

http://www.princessfarhana.com/shop.htm

IN MEMORIUM: LEEE BLACK CHILDERS

Iggy Pop & Leee Childers, 1972

 The world lost a treasure when iconic rock ‘n’ roll photographer Leee Black Childers passed away at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles on the afternoon of April 6, 2014.

 Leee was in town for a huge retrospective of his work titled  Drag Queens, Rent Boys, Pick Pockets, Junkies, Rock Stars And Punks,  on March 22 at Lethal Amounts in downtown Los Angeles. The opening was spectacular and crowded. After this last overwhelming success, he fell ill that night, barely hanging on until he made his final exit yesterday.

Though the younger set would probably have to Google his name, they’d  undoubtedly recognize the extraordinary images he captured of   David Bowie, Blondie’s Deborah Harry, Iggy Pop, The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, The Sex Pistols, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol and the living-out-loud- Superstars of his Factory scene plus many, many more.

Debbie Harry by Lee Black Childers

 Leee was truly legendary; the incredible body of work he left behind is to the world of rock and roll  (and various other relevant subcultures) what the Time/Life images of Cecil Beaton, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Alfred Eisenstaedt were to the world at large.

Leee’s incredible shots of people who themselves would become legends- whether the onstage, in the studio, backstage or out at play in the wee hours-were equal parts Irving Penn and Diane Arbus. But unlike them, Lee wasn’t just a passive lens man or historical documentarian, he was an integral figure in the varied underground movements and scenes he actually helped to create, and was personally involved in the lives of his subjects.

 Though probably best known as a photographer, with his stunning images appearing on album covers and in publications such as Creem, Rock Scene, Circus, NME and Sounds, Leee’s reach was farther and wider.  It encompassed band management,  road tours, film (as an interview subject as well as filmmaker) writing, painting and sewing. He worked tirelessly and creatively in many mediums, not the least of which was human relations. An amazing raconteur, he knew everyone, from High Society matrons and minor royalty  to  Lower East Side street hustlers, from record company execs to rock stars, models and wannabes, to a high-school pal who'd become a  world-class con woman,  he was close friends  and confidants with them and knew all their inside secrets. 

Bowie  by Leee Black Childers

He knew all the dirt on  everyone who was anyone...  gossip which consistently involved copious amounts of drugs, sex, ludicrous incidents and fortuitous chance meetings. He’d dish it out judiciously and with cackling glee in the Southern drawl he never lost. He called everyone Darlin’, his sentences often ended in shrieking laughter, and were always peppered with his favorite word,
 “Fa-a-a-a-abulous!” which he drew out long and luxuriously.

 Born and raised in Kentucky, Leee arrived in New York City in 1966. By the next year, he’d become one of Andy Warhol’s assistants  at The Factory, and took to hanging out at the notorious Back Room of mythical Manhattan club Max’s Kansas City, which was the underground scene’s artistic   hub.

Warhol  Superstar Jackie Curtis by Leee

In August of 1971, Leee, Jayne County and Cherry Vanilla, along with other Factory denizens went to London to appear in Warhol’s stage play Pork at The Roundhouse.  It was there he met David and Angela Bowie, and Tony DeFries, whose MainMan company was managing the up –and- coming Bowie. In no time at all, Leee and Cherry began working for MainMan as Bowie’s road manager and publicist  on The Ziggy Stardust  tour. This lead to Leee’s  working with other artists like Iggy Pop and Mott The Hoople, whom he toured with. In fact, the Hoople song “All The Way From Memphis” was dedicated to Leee and his MainMan cohort Tony Zanetta.

 By 1974, Leee was a fixture at CBGB’s, the nascent hub of American punk rock, and home to bands like Ramones, The Deadboys, Television, The Cramps and Talking Heads.  Leee took many photos and worked  constantly. By  1975 Leee was managing Johnny Thunders’ post-Dolls band The Heartbreakers, whom he brought to London the next year, just in time to experience the raucous rise of English punk with The Sex Pistols, Buzzcocks, Clash, Damned, and Siouxie and the Banshees.

Levi Dexter & Leee, late '70's

He spent the next few years migrating between London, New York and Los Angeles, working with The Heartbreakers, Jayne County, and managing Levi Dexter and The Rockats, who singlehandedly spawned the Rockabilly Revival, which is still going strong decades later.

  After admiring Leee’s photos from afar for years in the rock ‘n’roll publications I devoured as an aspiring pre-teen  groupie, I finally met him 1978.  An errant seventeen-year-old,  I was on the loose in New York with my roommate and constant partner-in-crime Kid Congo, who was soon to become a member of The Gun Club and later the Cramps. We were living on The Bowery, in a gigantic loft that was a mere stone’s throw from CBGB’s, which belonged to Kristian Hoffman of The Mumps and his boyfriend, drummer Bradley Field of Teenage Jesus And The Jerks.   Kid and I were obsessed with punk, going crazy every time we spotted Sid Vicious on St. Mark’s Place. We’d panhandle on the streets on our way up to Max’s, so we could afford the Happy Hour drinks that came with hellish bar food- and guaranteed you a spot at their rock shows upstairs. After seeing Levi And The Rockats play there, I’d fallen in love with Levi Dexter, who would become my first husband.  The fact that Leee was managing Levi only made the romance sweeter.

I began to know the real Leee, the man behind the legend. Always intense and constantly on the go, Leee was a non-stop whirlwind of craziness.  He told stories so insane there were absolutely no doubt they’d actually occurred.  He was a walking catalogue of Old School Fag Knowledge; he knew about art, cinema, literature and would quote Talluhah Bankhead and Mae West, rolling his eyes and snickering at the irony of the raucous scenes of rock ‘n’ roll debauchery that were rampant in those days. 

In 1979, he moved The Rockats into room 100 A at The Tropicana Motel, Hollywood’s equivalent of The Chelsea in New York.  Party central, The Tropicana was home to Tom Waits, Chuck E. Weiss, Ricky Lee Jones, and for a time, The Mumps and The Cramps, as well as every other band from London or New York who happened to be passing through. Conveniently, I lived just down the street, and it was there that our friendship began in earnest.  Because I was headstrong and outspoken, we sometimes butted heads over Levi’s career, but that time period laid the groundwork for a friendship that lasted decades.

 I admired Leee’s style, it was magnificent. To me, he was a punk rock version of Sergei Diagelev of The Ballets Russes, and Levi was his Nijinsky. Leee orchestrated crazy schemes with finesse…and always managed to pull them off.  He’d be on two landline phones at the same time, playing record company executives against each other. He'd do business like this every morning, standing on the porch overlooking The Tropicana’s coffee shop Duke’s, dressed in a Fifties bathrobe and Ebenezer Scrooge stocking cap, clutching a vintage flask with “CATNIP” engraved on it, swigging gin. 

 He’d hold court and  describe  the  outrageous antics of  Candy Darling, Jackie Curtis and Holly Woodlawn  in minute detail, stuff that’d make all  the contestants on Ru Paul’s Drag Race pale in comparison.  He’d always find the best stuff at thriftstores and was an extremely natty dresser- loud Forties and Fifties shirts  were a  perennial favorite.

 Leee  would  host  wild midnight pool parties at The Trop, inviting everyone from super models, Ron and Russell Mael from Sparks, waitresses from Duke's, Ahmet Ertegun and Rodney Bingenheimer to the elderly bull dykes who hung out at The Palms bar directly across the street. At one of these parties, an extremely high Marianne Faithfull was trying to bum a cigarette. Leee egged me on as I offered her a smoke that I’d filled with cigarette loads that I’d purchased at a Hollywood Boulevard magic store, and we watched in silent hysterics and she lay nodding on chaise lounge, startling into consciousness as each pellet exploded.

Jayne County by Leee Childers

Leee once showed up at a garage sale  at Disgraceland, the  infamous punk crash I lived at with Iris Berry.  He had Jayne County and Angela Bowie in tow, and if it hadn't been  for the makeshift bar  we'd set up in the yard, offering our patrons  stiff margaritas made with Plain Wrap Tequila, Iris and I probably both would've  fainted  from  sheer disbelief.  Oblivious  to how starstruck we were,  Leee, Jayne and Angie just grabbed drinks and joined in the festivities.  As Jayne tried to cram her feet into my vintage gold Spring-O-Lators, Angie and I  

 drunkenly rolled on my bed in a pile of petticoats, and I finally made the slurred  confession that it had been my dream to meet her since I was twelve.

The next morning, Iris, who hadn't met Leee until he came to our sale, sighed and said,

"Leee is amazing! He's one of those people that you just fall in love with immediately, because he makes you feel as though you've known each other for ages..." 

The last time I actually saw Leee was in 2008  in New York. I was in town  doing Maragert Cho's Sensuous Woman show. When Leee came backstage  after a performance, he  enchanted the entire cast and invited us to a birthday party for   rock photographer Bob Gruen. At the party, Leee kept telling me I needed to meet Suzi,   wife of  late  incredible guitarist Mick Ronson. 

"You two will adore  each other!" Leee declared,     

Backstage at The Sensuous Woman

 "I can't wait for you to meet!"

The moment we walked into the party, I lost track of Leee, who was exclaiming "Darlin'!" across the room, seemingly to three quarters of the guests. At the bar, I met a lovely older woman, whom I clicked with immediately.  Next thing I knew, we were howling with laughter, swapping stories and  buying each other rounds. Over an hour later, Leee found me again, raised an eyebrow in his inimitable way and said,

"Oh  fa-a-a-abulous!   I see you and Suzi have already met!" 

I could continue with the Leee stories… they came back to me in waves last night, as my emotions swung wildly from with disbelief, grief, shock and waves of laughter.  I could tell or write so many stories about him, it would go on for pages. Leee’s life was so full, there are many people who could do the same. Of all his incredible talents, it was his social  skills that made him standout among those who knew him. He was a handful for sure... but his friendship was always worth it.

Leee lived life to the fullest, with imagination, creativity and panache. 

  He’s probably up in Heaven right now, having cocktails with  Mickey Rooney... and berating him mercilessly for attempting to steal his thunder.

 Rest in peace, my dear friend.

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Read more on Leee and  his amazing stories:

http://ffanzeen.blogspot.com/2010/02/portrait-leee-black-childers.html

http://www.thevinylfactory.com/vinyl-factory-films/extended-interview-with-leee-black-childers-on-warhol-bowie-the-summer-of-love/

 

Leee in recent years