Detroit Rock City (45 page)

Dan Kroha:
Rob and Becky Tyner started this thing called the Community Concert Series. He was still, at that time, pretty well involved with the Cass Corridor scene. For the first Gories show we went down there and signed up. I had never even heard the MC5, and as far as I was concerned Rob Tyner was just some old
fucking hippie with a gut and a huge afro. Rob at that time had this solo thing where he played autoharp and sang. He was singing songs about Vietnam and sixties stuff. We were just like, zzzz. He was just going on and on. Meanwhile we're just getting drunker. Mick and Peg were drinking Thunderbird. Peg had taken some mushrooms. They were getting fucked up. They were scared about getting on stage.

Peg O'Neill:
Doing mushrooms will make your stage fright disappear. It was this place that was really supportive of local bands, and they let bands play there who couldn't get a show anywhere else—like us.

Dan Kroha:
Finally he gets done and it's one o'clock in the morning. I think Rob probably introduced us. He was like, “Alright, we got a brand new band here. They're called the Gories,” as he's looking at a piece of paper. We played four songs and barely got through it. After that we'd get shows then, but no one would show up. We'd get like twenty people or so, you know. Hysteric Narcotics would get a good crowd, and they could draw like seventy-five or a hundred, so when we opened for those guys we would have a good crowd. But if we were headlining, not so good.

Dave Buick (
Italy Records, founder, the Go, bassist
):
As stupid as it sounds to say, you saw the Gories and you walked away thinking, “Anyone can do this,” or at least they made you feel something is possible. There was this fucked up innocence to the Gories.

Tim Warren (
Crypt Records, founder
):
Danny was sending me tapes starting around 1986. He wanted me to sign them. Later on, around 1989, they played in New York at the Knitting Factory with Alex Chilton, and I was going to go see and sign them, but I decided to do Billy Childish and Thee Headcoats. I gave them the $1,500 advance instead of the Gories.

Dan Kroha:
We recorded an album, did shows. Then Dan Rose, a friend and fan of ours, was a huge Alex Chilton fan. He went backstage one time after one of Chilton's shows and had a tape of the Gories' first album. Dan just put the tape on and didn't say anything. After a little while Alex was like, “Who is this?” Dan was like, “Well, there's this band who are friends of mine from Detroit.” Alex was like, “Do they have a record deal?” Dan's like, “Well, they put out a local album, but they don't really have the record going right now.” Alex was like, “Man, these
guys are doing like for R&B what the Cramps did for rockabilly. This is cool.” We drove down to Memphis to record with Chilton; he had gotten a $6,000 budget from New Rose. We were to stay at Tav Falco's house.

Mick Collins:
We're sitting on the porch just hanging out, and this car pulls up. And this girl gets out, and she's kinda walking to the door and said, “Hey, excuse me for just a moment.” And she busts the window and then reaches around and opens the door. We're like, “What the fuck?” Then she's in there and we're sitting there, like, “We're from Detroit, you know. It's not like we haven't seen this before.”

Dan Kroha:
So we drive up to Tav's, and the first thing we see is Tav's recently ex-girlfriend, Lorette Velvette, climbing out of the window of the house. She had broken into the house to get back some of her stuff. We said, “Hey, how's it going?” She's like, “Hi!” We were like, “What's going on?” She's said, “Oh, I'm Lorette.” She had a bag of potato chips. She goes, “You guys want some chips?” I said, “What are you doing?” She's like, “Well, you know, Tav and I just broke up, and I was just getting some of my stuff out of the house.”

John Szymanski:
We had all heard of the Gories but didn't know any of them, but I knew we were all inspired by the
Back from the Grave
compilations on Crypt. We had a ska band at the time. The ska band opened for the Gories at Finney's Pub. Then we saw them at an after-hours club, and it was nothing but technical difficulties. Maybe when we saw the Gories, we felt that we could do that too.

Margaret Dollrod:
I met Dan when he came to my dorm room at University of Detroit. I was supposed to room with his sister. I had left my dorm room open, and he was in it rummaging through my clothes basket, and I'm like, “Who are you and what are you doing in my dorm room looking at my clothes?” He's like, “Oh, well, you just have such nice clothes.” So I was like, “Well, I'm glad you like them.” He looked around and said, “Why do you have pictures of sixties
Playboy
chicks on your wall?” I said, “Well, you don't? Sixties
Playboy
chicks are hot, you know. I like having hot things on my wall.” Then I realize this guy is kinda wanting to be open and wild and stuff but was kinda like, “I don't know, I can't,” and I'm like, “Oh, I like this.”

Dan Kroha:
I peeked in the room and was like, “Wow! Sixties
Playboy
pictures in a girl's room?” I had broken up with Peggy shortly before we did that first show anyway, but it was tough.

Mick Collins:
There were many moments if I had the opportunity to walk away from the Gories, I would have. Sometime between our second breakup and the European tour, Dan started going out with Margaret. And that was bad.

Dan Kroha:
When Margaret first saw the Gories she fell in love with the Gories. She had a crush on Mick too. Not only did she think that me and Mick were cute, but she really genuinely loved the music. She would get up on stage and, like, run between our legs. She already went out just wearing a bra at that point. Like, she didn't have to take her clothes off. She was already half undressed. Peggy hated that. Hated it. It was stressful, but, I mean, my life was just drama. It was just nonstop drama.

Margaret Dollrod:
Yeah, I loved them. I traveled with them. I carried their equipment. I sold their T-shirts. I was the roadie. I was the hot roadie. I would travel with them, and I thought they were so great. So I wanted to dance. I wanted to dance, and the way that they played kind of freed me. I would be like, “Yeah, taking my clothes off!” You know, okay, so maybe some people do that for Guns ‘n' Roses, I understand. Peg hated it. She had a meeting in the middle of Europe and said to them, “If you don't send her home, then I'm gonna quit.” I'm like, even if they send me home, I'm not going home. I got money. I will rent a scooter and follow you, and you'll really hate it. Because I will dance.

Mick Collins:
When we did the Europe tour Margaret flew over there on her own. She got the tour schedule from Dan and got a Europass and followed us around on the tour. Which didn't bother me none—I mean it was Dan's girlfriend. Peg was really bugged about that, even though her boyfriend was with us at the time; he was our roadie.

Dan Kroha:
We did a show in Holland where Margaret was dancing crazy, and it was pissing Peggy off, and she just started playing really slow and then just barely hitting the drums. She ended up dropping her sticks and walking off stage in front of a packed house. Peg disappeared and we didn't know where she went. We sent her boyfriend to find her. She came back and she was okay. We did a few more shows, and we go to France and for a show. There weren't a lot of people at that show, but Margaret was dancing, and it was pissing Peg off. Peg throws her sticks down and leaves again. Walks out right in the middle. It was the worst feeling in the world—people are digging it and she walks out. Mick said he felt like bashing Peggy on the head with his guitar. He said, “I felt like hitting her on the head and
letting the little people out.” Finally we all decided that we could continue the tour. Margaret toned down the dancing a little bit. Peggy bit her lip and got through it.

Mick Collins:
We finally threw Peg out in France. We were obligated to do these last few shows, however many shows it was, but I said, “When this plane touches down in the US, don't call.”

Tim Caldwell:
The Gories had great out-of-control R&B, and no one cared. As much as Moe Tucker got beat up in the Velvets for primitive style, I don't believe Meg White would have gone over if not for Peg having laid down the basics in the Gories.

Troy Gregory (
Witches, Dirtbombs, bassist, guitarist, vocalist
):
With the Gories, it was typical Detroit. Not too many people got them, but all of a sudden when they found out that people in New York liked them or they were selling records in Europe, they like it. It was the industry people in Detroit who were the real fuckups because they had these bands around and didn't see it.

Karen Neal, aka Queen Bee (
Thrall, bassist, vocalist
):
The Gories opened the door to all kinds of new stuff in Detroit. We went to Europe, and the Gories were huge.

Andrew WK (
solo, the Pterodactyls, Mr. Velocity Hopkins, vocalist, drummer, keyboards
):
I didn't get into music beyond piano lessons and whatever records my mom would buy me until junior high school. I had no older brothers or friends, not even kids in my neighborhood. No scheme for me to learn about things except cable TV. It wasn't until I was thirteen and the friends that I had that we were able to branch out in music. To me at that point music didn't seem as exciting to me as a guy freaking out in front of me making sounds that I'd never heard ever before. First guy that did that was John Zorn. It was, “Oh, this is going on in New York.” But around the same time there was this local guy, James Johnson, who just blew my mind. He lived on his own while he was sixteen years old, and there was this scene. It was a cross between Ann Arbor radical tradition—very political, an anarchist movement—crossed with a crushed punk style, crossed with a colorful new-age hippy vibe. No Mohawks and spikes, but yarn and twenty different kinds of clothes at once, like a clown. The whole vibe was to be as crazy as possible, which often depended on the quality of drugs. It was all living on their own crime, not having jobs, insane vandalism, truly crazy people living together at these sort of flop houses. It was a big street scene, and these dudes that would hang out for years, drifters, would become local legends. I would go to these houses where people were crazy; they would do stuff like try to pee on you. And it was all about mushrooms and acid. I was terrified to do that stuff, seeing how these people lived. These were my idols in high school. The first show I saw was in the basement of the Unitarian Church in Ann Arbor. It was Scheme, and bands related to that scene, and everyone was in their underwear, and all the windows got broken out, and the cops came and shut it down. I thought, “This is what it's all about.”

Aaron Dilloway (
Wolf Eyes, Couch, Spine Scavenger vocalist, guitarist, tapes, electronics
):
That was the Nautical Almanac show, and my band at the time, Galen, played. Twig Harper had a rope or string tied around his dick, and he ran it under the handle of a little Peavey Bandit, and he was standing on a table lifting the amp up.

Andrew WK:
I'd go downtown and stand outside the Huron House. This place had mattresses nailed to the outside walls, a swimming pool dug in the front yard, and bicycles in the trees. The doors were pulled off of the rooms, and people would be playing music at all times. The smell was so god-awful, and there was a lot of darkness to it as well. It wasn't this cheerful happy place. It was like a haunted house crossed with a fun house. Through my friend Moralis, I finally had an older guy to show me stuff; he introduced me to new music. He took me to Schoolkids Records to see this guy Jim Magas from Couch, our favorite band, and we were too scared to talk to him. I had heard MTV, I liked a lot of other stuff, but nothing compared to Couch for me. To have your favorite band in the world be around and to see Jim on the street—I would have butterflies in my stomach every day hoping to see these guys.

Jim Magas:
I was working at Schoolkids when Couch had started, and everyone hated us. But we had played a couple of shows, and young kids started to get into us. No one our age was into it. I was twenty-six, and most of these basement shows, the kids were eighteen. These teenage kids came into the store and asked me questions about Couch, and they were like, “You have to meet Andrew.” The first time he came into the store he was real shy. His hair was bleached LA style, dirty blonde, and had a painted jacket. They had to pull him into the store. He was turning red.