Blame It On Elvis
by Dee Meyer
I love rock ‘n roll. All kinds. And I like to play it. Loud. And I've been doing that since I was eight years old. Blame it on Elvis Presley and “Jailhouse Rock.” That song jumped out of the radio and got me hooked. I was a little too young to actually know what I was listening to the first time I heard it, but I knew Elvis’ music sounded and made me feel like no other music I’d heard before, and I thought it was cool—even if I probably didn’t know what cool meant back then. Anyway, My mom bought me “Jailhouse Rock.” She liked it too.
Keeping Up With The Adlers: My old man was never one to be outdone by his brother-in-law. When my cousins were taking violin and accordion lessons, my older brother Mark was given his orders, “You’re taking music lessons. What instrument do you want to play?” (At least my old man gave him a choice.) Mark chose the guitar—yay. Once a week, the music teacher came to our house, and while my brother strummed and plucked his way through a lesson, I stood outside our bedroom door and listened and learned. After each lesson, I would get my hands on Mark’s guitar and practice what I’d heard, and when he got a new guitar, I got his hand-me-down.
Life-Changing Television: Like millions of other kids my age I saw The Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” I’d heard their records before, but seeing the four of them play live was a whole new thing. It was my eureka moment. I thought, I could get into this and decided I was going to make music of my own. With a bunch of other nine-year-old guys, I started a band. We totally sucked, but other kids listened. In Junior High School, the first half-decent band I was in (name of which I can’t remember), got its big break—a paying gig. The Greek Orthodox Church hired us to play at a dance. On the bill that night: us and a traditional Greek band, switching back and forth. We each got paid $10. Yahoo!
And So It Begins: Church dances, temple dances, school dances, garages, basements, backyards, clubs, parties, weddings, bar mitzvahs, backing Elvis impersonators (I’m not kidding), birthday parties, studio sessions, barbecue joints, benefit concerts (among them the Straight From The Arts event immediately after 9/11), cross-country tours. You name it, I probably played there, always lead guitar, most of the times with guys and girls I liked, some of the times with guys who went on to be rock ‘n roll legends like Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson.
Memories, Like The Potholes of My Mind: (Interpret that anyway you like.) Coming up on the music scene, the bands I was in did what we now call classic rock and blues covers and original tunes. Then Punk happened. The Dead Boys, The Ramones, Johnny Thunder & The Heartbreakers were hot. Lido (don’t ask me what the name meant), the first punk band I played lead with, was big on the club circuit. That didn’t last long and neither did punk, at least for me. I wanted to do more complex music. While looking for a new gig, I answered an ad in The Village Voice (of all places) and found a great singer and rhythm section, formed The Billies and life was good. Max's Kansas City, CBGBs, Copperfield's, Trudy Heller's and Great Gildersleeves, The Factory—we played them all. There were typically two bands on every night and each played two sets. That’s how I got friendly with The Ramones, Television, Psychedelic Furs, Robert Gordon when he was with Tough Darts, Patti Smith’s keyboard player Richard Sohl. All of those guys were just hanging out in the city. We played some gigs with Blondie. My brother and his friend Becket were going to The School of Visual Arts (SVA) and met Chris Stein. He was going to SVA and in a band called The Stilettos. We had people we knew in common and would hang out, David Peal and The Lower East Side, Proud To Be A NYC hippie and David Jo from Staten Island.
The High and Low Lights:
Least Favorite Place to Play Back In The Day: CBGBs. Tillie let his dog walk over the place. You’d pick up your guitar case, and there would be dog poop inside. CBGBs was disgusting. That bathroom. It was horrible, worse than the one that’s supposed to be the CBGBs’ bathroom at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. That’s too clean. CBGBs had a good sound system, but the room sucked. The whole atmosphere. That club was legendary, but I was never crazy about it.
Favorite Place to Play With The Billies: The Emerald City in Cherry Hill, NJ. It was the old Latin Casino where Frank Sinatra gigged regularly. A booking agent out of Philly got us booked there. We were on the bill with The Psychedelic Furs. The place had a big stage. Great sound system. No limits on how loud we played. That was the best gig. It really was. That place is long gone. I think there’s a shopping mall there now.
On the Road in New Orleans: I was twenty-three and the band was wild. In NOLA, every other store front was a bar. A DJ from a local station brought us down there. He got us around Bourbon Street and got us to our gigs. Food came with free drinks. The more you ate. The more drank. We did gigs at the same club every night, then we continued up the road to Maryland. Our tour? We had a station wagon and a U-Haul trailer to cart our gear around.
Most trouble at a gig: Was with the Billies at The Factory on Staten Island. We were loud (as always). All of a sudden, I sensed something weird happening at the side of the stage. I turned. There was my roadie, wrestling with some muscle-bound guy. Bad got worse fast. They came flying across the stage. All of us in the band (cowards to a man) stopped playing and ran. The guys in the crowd were huge, and we were, “Oh, shit, let’s get out of here.”
A Billies by any other name: Max’s Kansas City, in 1979 or 1980, was naming drinks for the bands that played there. The Cherry Vanilla was Sloe Gin & Milk, and The Billie’s was Jack Daniels & Coke. It cost $3.50. If you ordered a Jack Daniels & Coke, without The Billie’s name, it was $2.50. We didn’t get the extra dollar. Go figure?
I still miss my black Les Paul Standard: Through decades of playing clubs and dives and hanging in rehearsal studios, I lost two guitars. Both stolen. Both recovered one time. Both stolen again, but my Les Paul Standard never made it home a second time.
Best musical advice: Don’t think you always know everything.
