WHOoPLA Chapters 8 – 10

Chapter Eight: The Scene

Warning: This chapter describes the 1982 club scene. It contains raunchy graphic depictions of sex and drugs that may be offensive to some (if not all). If this might be you then skip it and move on to Chapter Nine. You won’t miss any of the “ledge” storyline.

A key component to the wild bar scene back then was the 18 year old drinking age (which was rescinded just a few years later). Milwaukee had at least twenty live music clubs with dozens of bands playing original music almost every night.

The Violent Femmes grew out of that Milwaukee time period playing first for the pre show outdoor lines that formed outside various venues. For a Pretenders show that I attended at the ornate, east side, Oriental Theatre, the Femmes were invited off the street by the band to play as the opening act. Without microphones, they rocked the fans in the first rows but got booed by the antsy balance of the crowd.

Brian Richie, of the Violent Femmes, described the period in a later 1986 interview with me on a call in style Sunday night talk show I hosted. He said:

“We’ve played in over 300 cities around the world and we’ve been able to check out a lot of the music scenes there and talk to other musicians and, in general, I would say that Milwaukee has really- and this is serious- has one of the best music scenes for live music in the country…or the world…because there’s so many bars per capita and just so many different styles of music playing in bars for free or $1, $2 or $3… and that’s an opportunity that you really don’t have in most other cities.”

Femmes drummer Victor DeLorenzo agreed,

“It was a very exciting time.”

Each jock had a club, bar or tavern that they were practically affixed to. Most of us made more money from those “appearances” than from the radio station. We were beyond accessible. We were the first ones to arrive and the last ones to leave. That stood in great contrast to the seasoned and spoiled LPX air staff who were doing fewer and fewer “drop in” gigs for bigger and bigger fees. That kind of connectedness put us all in touch with the pulse of the city and the feedback we’d get from being out there was invaluable.

Most nights were horribly boring with mediocre bands playing to half filled or empty rooms. But by being everywhere, if something did happen, we were always right in the middle of it. And every now and then, something would happen. It didn’t take a full moon for there to be nights that blew up and got completely out of control. It was the coke, the booze, the dope, the pre-aids free sex and the ear splittingly loud metal blasting in densely smoke filled cavernous dens packed wall to wall with factory assembly line escapees in desperate need of every kind of mass or individual release that could be had.

Everything you see typically now was bigger back then. Wet T-shirt contests that ended with not only the removal of their tops but flat out illegal groping of their nipples with a softball sized chunk of ice. One winner grabbed the half melted cold stone and shoved it down the front her unzipped hip hugging jeans and let out a scream that likely caused half the guys in the place to cum. And there were hundreds of local band groupies that were that perfect combination of classy, sexy and really fucking horney. One such “Crazy” band fuck vixen was legendary for her ability to let herself go completely and thoroughly enjoy the sex to the degree that she kept a respirator next to her bed to breathe into after her violent multiple orgasms. A popular NW side live rock club had a hot tub in the basement. It was often filled with leather banded, mascara dripping, half naked, drunken, coked up, barely legal teen rock chicks whose torn fishnets were soaking in a bubbling steamy soup of semen, beer and vomit. When I would pass by the hot tub on my way to see the owner and hopefully get paid, I remember that, due to the dim blue neon beer sign lighting and similar hair, make-up and accessory styles, I seldom could tell the 80’s band guys from their groupie girlie fans.

As the overnight guy, the clubs I would get to “appear” at were not the cream of the crop. Rock City in white hick suburban New Berlin, now torn down, was one of my regular haunts. Its décor could best be described as “early rec room.” Dark Walnut stained rough sawn wood barn beams lined the walls and a black low drop ceiling helped to enhance the heavy “what if there’s a fire” claustrophobia. I spun records there in a corner closet-like, cramped booth with The Stones “Miss You” being the memorable guaranteed dance floor filler. It was lined with foot wide floor to ceiling mirrors and featured a mirror ball that that you literally had to dance around or you’d hit your head on it. Summer or winter it would get wickedly hot and quickly filled with the sensual stench of sweaty caucasians.

Being the famous radio DJ in the place protected me from the many brawls that broke out amongst the football jocks, spoiled rich kid freaks and biker friends of the owner.

Two very drunk strapping farm boy brothers whose parents owned a local bowling alley were talking to me when suddenly one of them looked at the other and said,

“Hey! Let’s go kick the shit out of that fuckin’ freak.”

They then proceeded to walk over and begin to pound on him for what seemed to be no apparent reason. One held his long mane of brown straight hair as the other repeatedly mashed his fist into the dope lovers’ pretty boyish face. They were laughing to each other as they finally relented and let the poor soul fall to the floor. With similar long hair I thanked God that they saw me as a friend. A couple months later, I heard a rumor that the same two dudes were part of a horrific after closing mêlée that ended when the person fleeing the fight got in his car and backed up over an uninvolved man that he then dragged 100 yards down National Avenue and deposited dead almost directly in front of the New Berlin Memorial Hospital.

Full of shit young promoter that I was at the time, I suggested a Beer and Brat Night Special to Rock Cities’ owner. The short lived Wednesday night extravaganza featured a $5.00 cover charge that included all the beer you can drink coupled with $1.00 foot long bratwurst. This turned out to be heaven for the tightly packed mob of “Hey der!” Wisconsinites who attended the instantly successful but horribly trashy event. The demand for brats exceeded the cooks’ ability to grill them fast enough to satisfy the highly discriminating crowd so very few of the stuffed pig part sausages were fully cooked. By the end of the night the churning contents in nearly everybody’s stomach wanted out. In a drunken daze I tried to make it down the crowded narrow stairway to the basement bathroom stumbling hurriedly in the hopes of making the toilet before it all let loose. After waiting outside the packed john long enough to break into a cold sweat I entered to find a black leather halter topped amazon biker beast sitting on the floor with her back literally IN the center of three tall urinals. She was soaking wet and had a two fisted clenched grip on the ears and greasy black hair of her monster sized tattooed boyfriend. He was face down and making a valiant effort to eat her pussy but was coughing and choking after each dive attempt into the flab protected crevice. There were drunk and swaying flannel shirted dudes pissing into the stanchions on each side of them, the spray of which was splashing all over her but she was completely oblivious to. Her raspy, cigarette affected voice was belching “Fuck Ya! Fuck Ya!” to her determined paramour. I stepped over them both in an effort to make the stall but found the toilet to be clogged and overflowing the brim with bubbling, foamy, yellow vomit that had big gray meaty chunks. The sight and smell of that “B” movie prop-like vision provided great assistance in adding my quart of regurgitation as a topper that flowed over and out under the stall wall. As I exited I worked hard not to step in my own puke and instead stomped on the big dumb bikers fat pudgy hand causing him to let out a blood curdling yell. He rolled over onto his side revealing a bright red pock marked face and gray/white, piss soaked, full beard. He could have been Santa’s evil twin. He growled and threw his arm around and grabbed me by the ankle but stopped and said,

“Oh! Kid! It’s you!”

“Sorry man!”

He let me go and returned to his dubious duties.

Most of the rock clubs had adjacent apartments that were party pads. Rock City had a small two bedroom bungalow next door that was filled with black lights, Green Bay Packer green and yellow bean bag chairs and a loud but crappy old band PA system that blared Babe Ruth’s “Wells Fargo”, Nazareth’s “Hair of the Dog” and nearly endless Black Sabbath. There were a half dozen water bongs stoked with mostly the local “ditch weed” and blond hash. After the club closed, you had to carefully step over the dozens of sprawled out crashers who were smoking, fucking and sleeping to find a little empty space to curl up with a friend.

As my future wife and I struggled to find somewhere to set our weary asses, my bartender friend and house resident slid over and offered up a space in her full sized, golden oak, antique bed. She had a pretty, square, mischievous face that dimpled when she smiled, which was often. The balance of her hair and body was dead ringer Janis Joplin. The three of us barely fit so I wrapped myself around my partner like a Ramen noodle on a chopstick. The booze had me buzzed and awake as my best friend instantly crashed. Thinking we were asleep, the truck driving, chain smoking; free spirited barkeep decided it would be safe to pleasure herself. With my back to her I listened as the gentle hum of what I first thought was an electric razor began to buzz. It took a while before it crossed my mind what she was actually doing. She worked hard to quell her moans and not give away her secret action but lying next to her I could hear each seemingly amplified gasp and sigh. It bled through my ears directly to my cock. I wanted badly to simply roll over but knew that it would breach the trust that she had given when she offered to sacrifice her prime, soft real estate to a nearly dead couple. So I continued the charade and logged into memory one of the most erotic moments of my life.

It’s one of my subtle laments that I didn’t realize the importance of the new bands I was seeing at the time. I was having too much fun and taking the music for granted. But an old converted theatre called The Palms, as well as several other clubs, were welcoming the debut tours of U2, The Police, The Cars, Foreigner, Elvis Costello, The Ramones, Duran Duran, Metalica, The Dickies, Joe Jackson, Joan Jett, Missing Persons, REM, The Stray Cats, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, The English Beat, Wall of Voodoo, Iggy Pop, Squeeze, Nick Lowe and many others.

It didn’t matter if our station played a bands’ music or not, we were there in the clubs, amongst them all. Aside from the fact that we got most everything for free, there was absolutely no differentiation between our listeners and us. We weren’t on the scene or at the scene. We were deeply immersed in the scene.

Chapter Nine: Where is the Love?

Just because we owned the streets didn’t mean that LPX was going to just roll over. They were a well financed, formidable competitor. On one occasion, QFM’s Arnold was working valiantly to put together a promotion that would send a listener to Paris, France to see the Rolling Stones in concert and then meet them backstage after the show. LPX’s Harris caught wind of his effort from a sleazy record rep. As Arnold struggled to finagle it with no money, Harris, who had a $100,000 yearly promotional budget, had it on the air the next day. It would be one of his few memorable wins.

Arnold was tenacious in his harassment of Harris, in his face on a regular basis. One of his favorite tricks was to send fake telegrams- which had to be signed for- every time there was a foul up. Harris:

“He was a blowhard!”

Having said that, Harris admits he had received only one other actual telegram ever before, a simple thank you note from Charlie Daniels, and so he has kept the dozen or so of Arnold’s nasty vindictives tucked away in the bowels of a closet to this day. Arnold:

“I don’t go to work. I go to war!”

Chapter 10: The Thing.

Fall of ‘81, Arnold’s first ratings period, put QFM over LPX by a very narrow margin. By his second ratings, Spring of ‘82, LPX was once again beaten by a slightly larger margin but was by no means out of the running. Their strong debut and loyal following were not going to give up that easy. As the fall of ’82 ratings period approached, Arnold had heard a rumor that Hearst was about to dump a ton of extra money into promotions to shore up their flagging LPX franchise. (A rumor that may have been purposely planted by a friend of Harris as a way of getting Arnold to do something wild or stupid. Arnold remembers the rumored amount of the Hearst cash boost as being $1,000,000.). He knew he’d be getting nothing of the sort from Shamrock who was quite typically pocketing the extra cash they were starting to make.

“QFM’s people were really, really cheap. (Shamrock owner) Bill Lynett is the cheapest human being on the planet!”

In turn, Lynett saw Arnold as the precocious 3 year old who, “Wanted what he wanted when he wanted it” and had no concept of budgets, often demanding ten or twenty thousand dollars and being impatient about it’s distribution.

“It was easy for him because it wasn’t HIS money!”

Lee Arnold was also backed up against his “out of the format” promises he had originally made to Ralph Barnes and knew he wasn’t going to be given much longer to come through. Beyond that, he still had yet to kill the ghost of the better liked Brent Alberts and win the support of the majority of his staff. Arnold knew he had these next few important fall weeks to make something happen or he’d be blown out faster than a Spinal Tap drummer. Talented, persuasive talker that he was, the Arbitron ratings numbers spoke louder and he knew he wasn’t going to be able to bullshit his way out of not bringing everybody together and putting away LPX in this round. He viewed Shamrock’s finger as twitching on a hair trigger with the gun indented dead center into his forehead. He was desperate for a knockout, or he was gone. It was all or nothing with everything to lose.

Randy McElrath was a local concert promoter who knew Milwaukee. Just picture a typical tall, gentle, lumbering Irishman. He had come up the ranks starting in 1970 in a partnership with Alan Dulberger called Daydream Productions, then setting out on his own in 1976 to create Stardate Productions. He knew Milwaukee’s live music tastes because he had won and lost lots of money on it. With two rock stations in town, he played both sides while also having to compete with The David Joseph Agency who managed the shows for the Alpine Valley Music Amphitheater. LPX’s Harris admits his relationship with McElrath was more on a “business” level and he hadn’t cultivated it the way Arnold had. He had, once again, a life. Arnold and McElrath hung out. Both had sons that were the same age. They also shared other similar interests. They were friends.

Having just completed the mundane details of a co-promotion for yet another Rush concert, McElrath and Arnold began to shoot the shit. It was September 9th, 1982, two weeks before the start of the make or brake fall Arbitron ratings period.

There in his 21st story office, Arnold vented some of his dire situational circumstances to McElrath’s sympathetic ears. McElrath reciprocated with a few frustrations of his own. Among them was that he’d always loved The Who but never had an opportunity to bring them to Milwaukee. They had embarked on what was being called their “Farewell Tour” and, once again, were playing the Twin Cities and skipping over Milwaukee to play Chicago. The economics of the deal made it virtually impossible. The smallest venue they had booked held 15,000 people. Milwaukee’s MECCA Arena only held 11,300. Beyond that, the Arena was an expensive venue for its size because the Unions had it all tied up. He’d been told by Bernadette Balestreri that sometime around 1966-‘67, in their very early beginnings, The Who had played at her father Frank’s place just south of 4th and Wisconsin Avenue in downtown Milwaukee called “The Scene,” but had since never come back. (They had also played the Majestic Hills Ski Resort in Lake Geneva on March 8th, 1968- a show that was introduced by WLS DJ Larry Lujack.) They’d lost their wild and charismatic drummer Keith Moon who’d overdosed on his anti-alcohol meds two years before and Kenny Jones, his replacement, was well liked but just not able to fill the void. Ten fans had been crushed to death trying to get into a concert in Cincinnati just after that. Now, with band member Pete Townsend suffering from hearing problems, sexual identity issues and at his mercurial worst, the band’s troubles seemed very real. Roger Daltrey had expressed genuine guilt for his continuing to push Townsend to tour and felt responsible for Townsend’s mental upheaval. McElrath had accepted the fact that bringing them to Milwaukee was never gonna happen. But that was just a throwaway thought, small talk at the end of a long day. Or so he thought.

To Lee Arnold it was a lit wooden match looking for tinder and it was about to ignite a firestorm.

I picture the scene in the Ghostbusters movie when above the similarly structured Art Deco 1930’s sky scraper a massive dark cloud quickly forms and lightning strikes the tip of the masthead. Frankenstein’s mad scientist master throws his head back and screams,

“HE IS ALIVE!”

You want to attach that kind of over the top drama to the moment. But instead Arnold’s statement was firm and simple,

“I can make it happen.”

McElrath smiled the way one should smile when the person they’re talking to says something that is completely full of shit. It had to be an awkward moment. He knew that he’d made an offer to The Who and they had flatly turned him down. The tour had begun. They were literally setting up the stage for the first of two warm up shows that would begin the tour at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, UK… AS… THEY… SPOKE! In two weeks they’d be playing before 90,000 fans at Philadelphia’s JFK Stadium. Their two New York Shea Stadium shows had sold out 140,000 tickets in two hours. The tremendous amount of coordination and planning put into a tour couldn’t be easily adjusted to satisfy the whimsy of a wee little radio station in a 2ed rate town. And the “thug-like” culture of mega star rock band tour manager’s and business agents made them not the kind of people that could be easily persuaded to make a change. McElrath was in the business. He knew what Arnold was suggesting wasn’t just reckless, it bordered on delusional. Mc Elrath:

“It was wacky.”

It just couldn’t be done.

But he wasn’t going to say that. He knew by the look on Arnold’s face that he was deadly serious. To throw water on his fire now would violate a friendship. So he sat and watched Arnold begin to get energized. This was “THE THING” Arnold needed. It must have been fun to see the look on Arnold’s face as he quickly played out the dream in his head. One of the greatest rock n roll band’s in the world was playing on a small, humble Milwaukee stage for a select few lucky fans, QFM WINS! LPX DIES!

~ by Scott on December 10, 2007.