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One dozen years later, a couple
of punks are still happily wed |
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originally published for The Monadnock Ledger, 1/23/2003 |
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Pictured left: Heartbreakers - Johnny
Thunders, Walter Lure, Edward X. Young and Ellen Young - Waldo's show,
Bond Street Cafe, NYC, July 6, 1990 photo by Janice Burke |
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When my then future wife, Ellen, and I first met in New
Jersey, many years ago, she was wearing an original Ramones T-shirt that was
nearly torn in half and loosely held together with safety pins. I was
wearing a T-shirt featuring an image of punk rock icon Johnny Thunders.
It was love at first sight. In the days before the widespread popularity of MTV, to wear the uniform meant that you knew the scene and that you had to have actually been there at one of the famous New York City clubs (CBGB, Max’s Kansas City, The Ritz, Irving Plaza, Peppermint Lounge, The Mud Club, etc.) to see the bands play live. Ellen and I recognized we shared a worldview. The lyrics of the punk rock songs (“I Wanna Be Sedated,” “Born To Lose,” “One Track Mind,” “People Who Died,” “Trash,” “Blank Generation,” etc.) were poetry that evoked the pain and joy of our generation that was raised in a post-Watergate and post-Vietnam America. The music was a catharsis that gave us freedom to still feel young and alive in an era of despair and moral confusion. Ellen and I recounted stories of legendary performances of the great punk bands (the Ramones, the New York Dolls, the Heartbreakers, the Waldos, the Dead Boys, Church Pills, Blondie, Jim Carroll Band, Richard Hell and the Voidoids, etc.) and realized we both saw the same shows at the same clubs. It seemed likely that many times, over the years, the two of us must have stood side-by-side next to the same ear-shattering amplifiers at the foot of the stage. Perhaps we once collided in the dark when the pogo dancing evolved into a frenzied mosh pit. Because our mutual physical attraction was powerful and our peculiar aesthetic tastes were so ideally matched, it seemed a cruel joke of fate that we’d never previously met. On our early dates, we made up for lost time. On Saturday nights, we dressed in black leather and sped off to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where we rocked and rolled until broad daylight. The first song Ellen and I danced to was “Personality Crisis” by the New York Dolls. I walked right up to her and gave her a great big kiss. I asked Ellen to marry me when we were in New York City at the Bond Street Café at a Waldos show on July 6, 1990. That same night, former New York Doll Johnny Thunders unexpectedly emerged from the audience to join Waldos’ front man, Walter Lure, on the stage. Thunders and Lure previously shared the spotlight as front men of the Heartbreakers, New York City’s most notorious punk band, which split up amid angry conflict following the completion of their one and only studio album, “L.A.M.F.” As the two erstwhile partners buried the hatchet and picked up their axes to carve a niche in Rock ‘n Roll History, Ellen threw her arms around me, looked in my eyes and screamed “Yes,” above the thundering riffs of “Chinese Rocks.” Sadly, Thunders never lived to see the wedding. Our friend Johnny died under mysterious circumstances in a New Orleans hotel room on April 23, 1991. One month before our wedding, in the summer of 1992, Ellen and I were invited to a special gig at the Continental Divide at St. Mark’s Place in the Bowery. On stage, Walter Lure announced, “I want to make a dedication to our friends, Ed and Ellen, who are getting married.” Lure gave Ellen a mischievous wink, then smiled and nodded to bassist Tony Coiro, who signaled the band. Lure, Coiro, guitarist Joey Pinter, drummer Charlie Sox, and saxophonist Jamey Heath, hammered out a punk rock rendition of Gary U.S. Bonds’ “Where Were You on Our Wedding Day?” Ellen and I found a minister who was hip to the scene and willing to perform a ceremony at a tavern. On Aug. 30, 1992, we booked Ron’s West End Pub in West Long Branch on the New Jersey Shore, where we had a rock ‘n’ roll wedding. The place was packed with our friends, most of whom were actors, musicians and artists. Jersey Shore rocker Karen Mansfield, who performed for free, coaxed me onstage to sing a rendition of the late Johnny Thunders’ “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory.” Almost everyone had a great time at the pub that night. Ellen and I were obligated to invite some hopelessly square relatives, who objected to our rejection of tradition and convention. They said it would never last. But true love, like rock ‘n’ roll, will never die.
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