Cherry Vanilla

Not only that she came with a certain kind of cachet from New York and associations with Bowie, Warhol, Max’s and the US punk scene. She also came with Wayne County and between them put on in your face shows of heavy sexual undertones your average punk rocker was unlikely to come across!!

Cherry’s trademark then was usually to introduce herself by baring her breasts and saying, ‘Hi – I’m the Pork from New York.’ and as if their notoriety from Pork wasn’t enough when the show transferred to the Roundhouse London she continued being outrageous outside of the show casually giving a blowjob to a stranger while being interviewed by a journalist from Rolling Stone.

Cherry Vanilla & Angie Bowie – Photo Credit?

Two visitors to Pork were a certain David and Angie Bowie who were captivated by what they saw and who returned again and again. It is suggested that Pork and its caravan of seamy underside characters were responsible for transforming Bowie from long-haired hippie to an androgynous cross-dressing superstar. Whether true or not Bowie loved it, especially the link to Warhol, and took the unusual step of hiring Vanilla and others from the show to run his PR and signed Wayne County to Mainman his company.

“I screwed disc jockeys across America to get David Bowie’s records played on the radio.” Zigzag 71

Eventually though the bills the team ran up led them to be fired from Mainman.

So how did a trashy glitzed up 34 year old go down in in the aggressive UK London punk scene and why did they even give her the time of day? As we said before, the New York connection plus The Heartbreakers was a big plus. Not only that she was FUN. She also didn’t pretend to be a punk. She just got off on the energy. Appearing on the covers of Sniffin’ Glue and Zigzag also helped to cement her relationship with the Punk scene (The advert for that Zizag edition was banned by The Sun for being obscene!)

“What does Cherry think of the New Wave? She admits she didn’t think much of the two bands she’s seen when we talked to her – The Damned & The Vibrators…These kids are bringing energy back to music and the scene. They’ve created a focal point which we haven’t had in years…they’ve got more to complain about. I’ve attained a reasonable standard of living, so I couldn’t be a part of what these kids are.” Zigzag 71

Selling her flat and possessions to come over, a band was put together with guitarist Louie and keyboardist Zecca. The band were completed by Stewart Copeland on drums and Sting on bass both from the fledgling band The Police who would also be the support band on her gigs. In fact The Police’s first gigs were with Cherry in early 1977.

“After they went on to big fame…they sort of erased me from their history in all of their PR and Stewart made some hurting remarks about me in the press. Sting … he’s given me credit here and there for giving them their first gigs. So, at least there is some acknowledgment…I remember being at Stonehenge with them, just standing there in awe, in silence, with just the sound of the wind. That is my most vivid and cherished memory of them.”

She played the Nashville, the infamous punk haunt the Roxy (on a bill with The Heartbreakers and Wayne County) and the Marquee among other places. She released two albums and two singles on RCA (the same label Bowie was on) to little success. She appeared on the German music programme The Beat Club performing The Punk with Louie and then that was it. As punk moved on so did she. Cherry still performs every now and again.

Did she leave a mark on Punk Rock? In all honesty…no. Is she part of punk history? Yes! Did she influence any female performers? Doubtful Her legacy, if truth be told, is her life history in rock, the songs off Bad Girl and THAT amazingly aggressively sexual shot with Sting in the background featured below.

Its really strange how people read such a lot of sexuality into my shows. I’m flattered in a way that so many people think the way I sing or move about stage is sexy, but that isn’t where its at. Record Mirror, 3.6.78

Cherry was always good for an outrageous sexual quote though.

The first time I jacked off with was my mom’s plastic banana…but I put it back again!…When I’m on stage, what makes me hot is to think what its like when you’re fucking. The energy you get at orgasm…I try to reach that with my music. Zigzag

So how did Cherry view herself…

Blondie & Patti Smith have all done a hell of a lot for women in rock, I came out a little later than them, but although the competition is obvious, in essence we’re all adding strength to each other. Women in rock now feel that the turn is theirs. As for being competitive with men, well, I suppose I am but I don’t think of it in those terms. I want what I deserve out of life, and realise that I’ll get no more than I work for….Everything I’ve always wanted to be I’ve achieved myself as an individual, I didn’t need the identity of feminism to hide behind.  Record Mirror, 3.6.78

Cherry’s sound was basic good time rock’n’roll with ever-present piano and very occasional lapses into borderline punk. The key factors were Cherry’s autobiographical reminiscences, occasionally sounding like a slutty Patti Smith.

Her ever-present partner in musical crime was Louie Zapore on guitar who she later married.

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The Punk / Foxy Bitch (RCA 1977)

The flip side Foxy Bitch has some lesbian interest if that’s your poison:

Zecca Esquibel Cherry had had lesbian experiences with other women and was attracted to women, and occasionally she would sing about it and ended up with one song on each album. “Foxy Bitch,” which was, is about Linda Ronstadt. Punk77 Interview

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Bad Girl
(RCA Records 1978)

I’ve actually grown to like this record. It may not be Punk rock as we know it but neither was Blondie though this record contains none of their exquisite pop-punk confections. The record goes from 50’s inflections to torch songs to rockers to kitsch to country which makes it a bit confusing.  Jane Suck’s enthusiastic review below methinks was more based on wanting to get into Cherry’s pants while Julie Burchill’s strays to typically over-the-top negative.

So somewhere in between the two is a more accurate portrayal of its worth; neither good nor bad. Highs are The Punk and No More Canaries which for some may not be enough.

The album was extensively promoted in the music papers by RCA, but distribution to shops that sold punk records was poor which didn’t help sales. She did get another go with Venus D’Vinyl in 1979 but by then she’d got rid of her band and had session musicians and her time had passed.

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Years later – 1993 to be exact – this little dancey dittie came out featuring Cherry Vanilla and Man Parrish – Fone Sex! Warning it is very explicit!

Her signing with RCA, her past history with Warhol and Bowie, her links with the US punk scene and her obvious sexual presence and ability to give out a good sexual quote meant Cherry Vanilla got a fair bit of media interest. Some of it is shown here.

Click the thumbnails below to view a larger image

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Cherry Vanilla – Sniffin’ Glue #8

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Negative Reaction #3 – Cherry Vanilla

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Cherry Vanilla – Reviews & Shit

How did you acquire the Police as backing band and what were they like to work with?
Miles Copeland had come to see me perform at a NYC club. My bass player at the time was actually drunk that night and fell off the stage at one point. Miles loved us. He said that if I could make it to London … and let me get this clear, because it has always been reported wrongly … MILES DID NOT PAY TO BRING US TO THE UK. RATHER, I SOLD EVERYTHING I HAD IN ONE AFTERNOON, MOST OF IT FOR A FRACTION OF WHAT IT WAS WORTH, MUCH OF IT STOLEN DURING THE SALE. I BOUGHT THE PLANE TICKETS FOR MYSELF, MY BOYFRIEND/GUITARIST, MY KEYBOARD PLAYER AND MY FRIEND MACS. MILES DID NOT PUT UP A PENNY TO GET US THERE, NOT FOR A HOTEL OR ANYTHING ELSE.

Anyway, he said that if I brought these two musicians, he could hook me up with a bass player and drummer in the UK and that they would also be my opening act (along with Henry Padovani, their guitarist at the time) and also play for me. They were professional and cocky. Henry was my favorite. He was really cool. He was the only one of them who came to my apartment for dinners with his girlfriend and so forth, the only one of them I hung out with outside of the gigs. They did the driving and loading in and out and played their sets and mine. They took stupid drugs, like cough medicine and antihistamines, things to make them up and down. They slept on floors with us and did their job.

I paid them each 10 pounds per night. Often, there wasn’t enough money for my own band and me to make 10 pounds a night. We lived mostly on beer and potato chips. There were fabulous moments, like one morning when we woke up on a sheep farm with a roaring fire and a French toast breakfast and hot coffee … and the time we all went to Stonehenge and just stood there silently with the wind whistling in our ears.

I sacrificed all of my worldly possessions to get my boys and myself over there, but behind my back Stuart and Sting were trying to get my boyfriend/guitarist, Louis, to leave my band and join them … and I was pregnant at the time on top of it all. I never knew about this until I read Andy Summers book. When I did, I cried my eyes out. How could they have been so heartless, so sneaky, so cruel? How could I have been so trusting, so naïve, so unaware of their intentions? And Sting is supposed to be this great humanitarian. How about having respect for the person who got them their first gigs? Without me, they might never have been able to get their band launched, or ever heard by the public. I am very hurt over this. No wonder they were never my friends. They were hiding something from me. Maybe they felt guilty, though I doubt it.

Obviously, they are like so many people in show biz, they will step on anyone to get what they want, break anyone’s heart and forget about anyone else’s life in order to climb their way to stardom. I used to have mostly good memories of them and was proud that I was so instrumental in the outcome of their lives and their music. But since I learned of what they were trying to do to me (Louie, bless him, never told on them), it has unfortunately wiped away all of the good memories.

Do you remember anything about the Roxy – atmosphere, convivial surroundings, people and fans? Or was it a total dive!
I remember thinking it was a fire hazard, especially the backstage area. We would have been the last to get out of the place. But the atmosphere was electric. It was one of those great moments in musical history, very high energy, very exciting. Even out on the street in front of the club, it was electric. And the kids (they were mostly younger than me and seemed quite innocent, despite the hard-edged fashions they wore) were quite friendly. I remember going there the night we arrived in London, just as audience. I got a kick out of the Slits, especially Ari Up. We all went to a coffee shop together. I was very attracted to her, even though I am not a lesbian. Playing there was a huge rush. I can’t even remember that though, the moment was so high and so was I.

What was the reaction of the crowd to you?
Great. They did their pogoing and spitting and all of that. We seemed to go down pretty well.

You were very blatantly sexual with a lick me t shirt and the Roxy posters with you mouthing a vibrator!
Well, that was drawn in. It was actually a microphone in my hand, but they made it into a vibrator. I had no control over that, but I didn’t mind it. I was sexual and I didn’t mind being portrayed that way. I found the whole stance in the UK to be a fraud, a pose, but an exciting and entertaining pose. They were all sexual too, but they were pretending they were all political and they decided it wasn’t cool to be sexy. I was probably the most honest of the punks. We were all young, we had hormones raging, we were sexual, them in their twenties and me in my thirties, we were all fucking our brains out and getting high. I was singing about it without any shame. And I was hard rock, punk, pop. Madonna came along later and did it with disco music and everybody accepted it. But the disco crowd was more honest about what was going on in their lives.

The punk crowd tried to convince everyone that they were political. But they were just as high, drunk and sexual as the disco crowd. By the time I made my second album, I was less high and I was deeply in love with Louie, so I made a more romantic album. It was so non-punk … and to my mind that was the punkiest thing one could do, to be honest to your own life and feelings, despite the fashion of the moment. Of course the punk crowd hated it and the record company wasn’t happy either, but I was always true to my own individual thoughts and feelings. I didn’t care if I was going against the grain. In fact, I loved going against the grain.

Up to this point UK punk rock in sound and dress had been more asexual. Forgive the wording, but how did the crowd react to this more aggressively sexual image?
They criticized me for it, some of the music press more than the audience. But like I said, I was just being honest, more honest than most of them at the time. I couldn’t be anything but true to myself. If they didn’t like it, that was their right. I wasn’t going to pretend to be something else.

The band had a major label but got very little critical acclaim from the UK press. Why do you think this was?
Well, actually you are wrong about that. I have an incredible amount of good reviews and press clippings from the major UK newspapers and magazines … and also from the fanzines and punk magazines and music magazines like Sounds. It was only the New Musical Express that was negative about me. There were a couple of writers there [Punk77: Burchill & Parsons] who decided they hated me right from the start. But I have tons of fabulous press from the UK, Europe and the USA.

You’d played at the legendary US clubs Max’s and CBGB’s. How did the Roxy compare in terms of a scene, excitement and possibilities?

The audiences in the NY clubs were more open. All of the bands were doing pop, and rock, not just punk. I mean, some of us came from a theatre background and we did more theatrical shows, more fun shows. Girls like Debbie Harry and me would wear wedding dresses, Girl Scout uniforms, tiaras, whatever. We wore Vegas showgirl make-up and hairstyles and painted our nails red and wore high heels and push-up bras. We did some songs that had comedic, tongue-in-cheek content. We kind of laughed at ourselves, and didn’t take ourselves so seriously. We did countryish tunes, ballads and poetry and used props and so forth.

In the UK at that time, it was all one style, punk. It was all supposed to be taken seriously. But come on, it was only rock & roll after all! I think the New York scene was more open, more varied, more fun … but the punk scene in London, combined with Malcolm McLaren and Vivien Westwood’s fashions and the music press and the poverty and drugs (heroin and pills were more prominent in London, while pot and speed was more popular in NY) all came together more cohesively, more narrow focused so to speak and made for a short-lived but high level of excitement in the UK at that time.

What do you think the American bands brought i.e. professionalism etc. You guys had been going longer and were a lot more tighter and rock’n’roll than the more wham bam UK bands. Were you surprised by the kids forming bands overnight and sounding shambolic? Did you think UK punk was a cheap imitation of the Ramones?
No, not really. I loved it for what it was, even if it was only a theatrical pose. I thought it was funny, amusing, brave, gutsy, and experimental. I came from experimental theatre, so I liked the kind of improvisational nature of the punk scene. But it didn’t hold my interest for very long, because, like I said, the focus was so narrow … and it really really lacked a sense of humor. In NY we had a sense of humor about what we were doing. Look at the NY Dolls! When I played rock & roll in NY, it was basically an expansion of the poetry/comedy act I had already done in cabarets. There was still a lot of humor, satirical humor to it. I had already worked in many facets of show biz and the music biz and I was basically doing a send-up of it all, at least with some of my songs.

Having been on the music scene since the early seventies how did you feel starting all over again at virtually the bottom again in a small club like the Roxy or did you pick up on the vibe that something exciting musically was happening again and feed off it?
Basically, I was learning on the job and I saw every gig as a learning experience. It wasn’t until after the Roxy that I got to play big festivals and fabulous clubs in Paris and Stockholm. I wasn’t starting over again, I was still starting as far as I was concerned. I was still learning to sing, write, perform, etc. I had done theatre, cabaret and rock in NY.

In the UK, I was just doing the rock part, but I was trying to get better at it. I was learning in public, which means sometimes I could be great and sometimes I could be awful, but I was learning and growing as far as being a rock singer/writer/performer, so I was very happy for the opportunity to learn and grow. The Roxy was small, but it was very important at that moment in time and I was thrilled to be booked there and I am still thrilled that I was part of it all. Too bad the knowledge of what Stuart and Sting were doing behind my back has kind of tainted my memories of it now.

We were travelling in a van and had to pull things from the bottom of our bags and put them on and somehow shine, no wardrobe person, no stylist … and we did it. And it was practical and fun. And to act like a punk, well that was fun too. The kind of hard rock songs I was doing needed a tough attitude and so I could have it. And then I could be softer when doing country, sultry when doing blues and sweet when doing ballads. Of course, the crowd in the UK probably liked the hard rock tunes and punk pose the best.

What bands/ personalities at the time did you like and dislike and for what reasons? C’mon dish the dirt!
I loved Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy and Van Morrison was always and still is my all-time favorite. I remember seeing XTC for the first time and really loving them … Generation X, because Billy Idol was always so cute and sweet. The Slits, whom I mentioned, they were so raw and they were girls doing it, so I loved that. I liked Blondie, because I knew them from the States and had done a play with them in New York. I loved Elvis Costello’s first album and The Sex Pistols, of course. Hearing the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy For The UK” is what got me to go to London in the first place.

I was never into Television or Patti Smith, though I had done a play with Patti too. She just wasn’t very friendly towards me, ever. And I thought they were all very pretentious. I liked The Clash and I loved The Pretenders and Kate Bush. Jayne County, Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, Levi and the Rockats — they were all friends and I liked them a lot. Of course, I also still loved tons of jazz, reggae, blues, folk, Irish, Hawaiian, new age and classical artists. I remember how often we all listened to the Steve Reich tape I had brought to England when we were in the van on the road with the Police. No real dirt to dish on any of them. I didn’t like seeing them picking up girls when I knew their wives and girlfriends, but I kept my mouth shut about it.

While in a live environment I can see the Cherry Vanilla working with songs speeded up and the association with the current punk scene I can also see it in hindsight as a double edged sword. Because the album really shares nothing or very little in common with Punk.
As I said earlier, I believe that going out there and doing the music you want to do is the punkiest thing one can do. Not to feel that the songs could only have three chords and could only be played by inept musicians. Think about it. Was Blondie’s music punk? was Television’s? was Elvis Costello’s? or Ian Dury’s? I never gave myself the label. I never wanted to do only one type of music. l was doing rock & roll and pop music and all that it encompasses.

I had written a track called “The Punk,” which is actually very much a pop song which says simply “I wanna rock & roll, I wanna be a punk.” I was a punk in life. I did what I wanted, broke rules, was as bad as the boys and I was rocking’ and rollin.’ And just like country, folk, jazz, reggae had been included in the rock & roll umbrella earlier, at the time of punk much pop and all of the elements of rock & roll were included under that umbrella for many artists and bands. I was invited there and I went there. It was punk time, so they called me punk. My song “The Punk” was my post popular song, so the association was made. If you are into separating out all of the songs of the time that weren’t in the category you want to term “punk,” then you can do that. And there are many. I did what I did and I did it there and then and I’m glad I did. Call it whatever you like. Do What Thou Wilt Shall be the Whole of the Law. That’s punk, as far as I’m concerned.

How well did your records sell?
Not well at all. “Liverpool” did well in Holland, the “Bad Girl” album too. But there was a major problem. They weren’t in the stores. Miles Copeland tried to get RCA to sell him a bunch, so he could get them into the punk record shops, because those shops only ever took a couple of copies of each record at the time and RCA had a minimum order rule — but they wouldn’t sell them to Miles and so the hot little punk record shops couldn’t even stock it, because they couldn’t meet RCA’s minimum numbers.

And forget about the USA, they completely screwed me there, screwed me out of having Robert Stigwood release “The Punk” and never released my records at all in the States. So how could we sell records when they weren’t even for sale? In Holland they managed to get them into the shops and sell them, but for the most part, they weren’t available. So, who knows? By the time of the second album, I knew they were not even going to try to push them. I even tried to get out of the RCA deal before we ever recorded the second album, but they wouldn’t let me go. That made me even more determined to do the offbeat kind of album that “Venus d’Vinyl” was.

When “Bad Girl” was released I had an A&R man at RCA, Andrew Hoy. He had signed me and was also the producer of the album, therefore he cared about me and had something to prove. An artist needs that at a label, someone who made the choice and then fights for the artist in order to prove they were right. So Andrew fought for some ads. I would not use the word “heavily” to describe the ads they placed that I could count on one hand. However, they did buy a few. Problem is that Andrew Hoy left RCA to go to Polydor with Vangelis and I was left without an A&R man who had anything to prove. So any promotion that might have been fought for at the beginning, was soon gone. And the main problem, as I said and as Miles Copeland can confirm, is that the independent record stores where the new punk singles were selling, were not able to stock my record.

Whether they would have sold or not if they had the, I don’t know. Funny enough, as life turns out, it is Vangelis for whom I now work and with great satisfaction, because I consider him an artistic genius, both in his music and his paintings. And Andrew Hoy is still one of my very best friends. So, all’s well that ends well. I was not a genius musician, songwriter, etc., never claimed to be. I dabbled in so many sides of show biz in my life. The rock singer was just another little adventure I wanted to experience, like so many other adventures I have had.

Did you find being associated with punk rock helped or hindered the Cherry Vanilla band?
Sometimes I think if I had stayed in the USA and kept developing my own sound, style, shows, without any punk label, it might have been a better move. But I love that I am part of that whole UK punk history now. I came to realize that I wouldn’t have been happy leading the life of a rock star forever anyway, so I don’t know … hindered maybe from a rock performer career point of view, but helped add to my overall eclectic legend in the end.

Why did the Cherry Vanilla band split up?
Basically, I got very disheartened with the way the record company treated me and very tired of the whole punk thing and also tired of living in the UK and of being in the spotlight. Perhaps I could have stayed, gotten a manager, another label, more gigs … but I just lost interest in it all. I still loved show biz, but I wanted to be back on the other side of it again and explore new aspects of it. Then Louie and I broke up and that really put an end to the whole band thing, especially since he was my main co-writer, lead guitarist and musical director.

Any incidents that stand out?
I suppose playing to a crowd of thousands at an outdoor festival in Holland and going down really well was a highlight … that and playing the Paradiso, where I had hung out as a hippie in ’69 and never dreamed I would one day be playing there. And, of course, being one of artists of the 100 legendary nights at the Roxy … even if I can’t remember anything except how the hell I would get out of there in case of a fire!

Kisses, Cherry V – February 2007

The story begins with a trip to the UK…

Miles Copeland saw us play at one of the very last shows the New York Dolls did together or else the 1^st show David Bowie did as a solo performer. Miles looked at scenes like Max’s where we were at home and CBGB’s which was a little bit more hardcore and said there is a parallel scene going on in London. He said “You have to come to London and be part of what’s going on there” and we said the band is a fluid unit and we don’t even know who’s free to travel.

It turned out 3 of us could go; Cherry, our guitar player Louie (Cherry’s boyfriend) and me and a friend who acted as manager. Miles said that wouldn’t be a problem because his brother Stewart has a band called the Police and if we don’t mind them being our opening act they could play bass and drums for us. Cherry had a friend in London, an art dealer, so we didn’t have to worry about paying a lot of rent because he was glad to have somebody there. So we could survive if we lived on fish and chips and shared a pint. We do owe it to Miles.

These bands were as different to each other as they were alike. It was originality and the willingness to experiment that was the furnace that fired Max’s Kansas City. We had expected the same when we came to England. Instead, we found a punk movement with very rigid rules and restrictions, a dress code, behaviour code and a music code. At first, we were a little bit shocked but Miles was right we did fit in because of the incredibly aggressive energy level that we had on stage. We were much more of a power pop band in the sense of Blondie.

What was different about the Roxy? The outrageous level of freedom. There was still a little of the ceiling left. It hadn’t all come down and people were pogoing and literally pulling down what was left of the ceiling on their heads. And Andy was like ’cool.’ To him this was fascinating. It was as if it was a giant kids playground where they could express themselves etc. Complete freedom.

As you know from the reviews we definitely encountered significant resistance from the people who thought of themselves as punk spokesmen. At the Roxy Club there was initial resistance but we realised this and so we worked twice as hard. The gig went tremendous. I think it was an eye-opener to the kids who had gone to the 100 Club. They were following punk down a specific road and what they wanted to see was more steps and more steps and more innovation on a specific road that they considered they were building. That road was called punk.

Tangents to that road to them was heretical, blasphemy and I think it was an eye opener to them to see bands like Cherry Vanilla and the Heartbreakers too who didn’t stick exactly to that road but added their own elements and branched off in their own directions. So despite the fact that for a soft opening song or two we might get a little bit of friction by the time we were into our 3 or 4th song we were a smash every time we played and rarely anywhere we played got less than 3 encores. And I think that speaks a lot louder than the reviews from people like Tony Parsons and Julie. People who didn’t look at us like we were the real thing. The fact that we did so many tours. The fact that after the initial Heartbreakers tour we rarely opened for anyone, we always headlined because no one wanted to go on after us.

Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds – places like that all wanted to drink from the punk well and bands radiated out and played all over. There were times like at  Southampton we had to have bodyguards literally encase us in their bodies to get us off the stage at the end of the show because the audience just swamped the stage. We just put on great shows. You become a headliner when no one else dares go on afterward. Great reaction everywhere, even when we played a biker club the Lafayette in Wolverhampton and Chester. We walked on stage and it looked like there were all Judas Priest fans out there and we thought were going to be ripped to shreds but they adored us. I think Cherry’s sexuality sort of disarmed them very quickly. We were just a really crunchy band playing flat out rock ’n’ roll.   We used to double time the song ‘Liverpool’ at the end which isn’t done on the album It was high speed slamming rock ’n’ roll and the audience loved the chaos!

Cherry though hated the spitting. At the Marquee they began gobbing and Cherry just put her hands up and stopped the band and said “You think you are being so cool spitting on us. Well let me tell you something if one more person throws one more gob up here I’m taking the entire band and we’re leaving the stage” and that was the end of the gobbing

In terms of the setlist and the band itself, it should be remembered that when Cherry Vanilla arrived in London she did not have a permanent band. She had been encouraged by David Bowie to convert her poems like ‘Pop Tarts’ into songs and she had a constant flow of musicians that helped her; consequently, Michael Lamen wrote ‘Little Red Rooster’. All these musicians who passed through her bands at different times wrote different songs for her. By the time I joined her the list of songs was by 7 or 8 different composers and the show was a bit of a variety act. It was all rock but in different colours spices and grooves and that’s the show we played at the Roxy.

When we landed in London and lived there Cherry was in love with Louie and he became the sole writer. Together they wrote an entire show and this was very heavily influenced by the punk bands we went and saw. We went from a crunchier, more rockier more Mott The Hoople type of show to the speed show that is the Cherry Vanilla album. The band that Sting and Stuart played in had more different grooves and more different feel. By the time the New York boys joined us we had become a very different band with a very different show and sound. A lot of the songs on the album were fast. Only a couple written by other guys. ‘Foxy Bitch’ and ‘Little Red Rooster’ still have that slower Max’s kind of feel. We were always a great live act and one thing I like about the ‘Bad Girl’ album is that it captures the live act very well.

We wrote pop song the way the Ramones wrote pop songs just we were a little poppier. An important point not covered by reviews is that Cherry’s work is very confessional in the style of Lou Reed in that they are very personal narratives about what happened to her; what she felt and her experiences. They are her diary and when you saw her on stage you got the sense that this woman is being very candid and talking about herself.

I can’t say that Cherry wasn’t flirting with the lesbians. We were sexually stimulating every person in the house which was an alien experience for most people and most punks. Nobody had the hormonal level we had on stage. We carried ourselves down the street as sexual animals which was very unpunk.

I seemed to get on best with bass players like Gaye Advert and Sting. JJ Burnel was another who, though we didn’t see each other often, we were like 2 peas in a pod. I was most fascinated with bands that could drive the audience the hardest like the Damned and X Ray Spex. I was on the Pistols boat ride – I was the American arrested – I’m in the Filth & The Fury but in the background, you can’t really see me. I was in the nick that night. X Ray Spex, Gen X and Tom Robinson were all good friends and I was out every single night there was so much good music happening.

It wasn’t all fun though. I was beat up 5 times. A rib cracked, beaten and robbed, once by Teds, once by football hooligans and once from just some anti-punk. It was frightening to just walk down the street; It was scary. These things just made the punks nastier. It made us even more defensive. More bristly because it was dangerous to walk down the street. People could easily shout things at us and physically assault us.

There was alcohol fuelled violence but mostly it was not from the original punks. It was mostly from the suburban kids who came later and wanted to be punker than what we were. The ones that didn’t fake sticking safety pinks through their cheek but actually did because they hadn’t quite figured out how you could do that. Those suburban hooligans who came later were the aggressive and I remember one night outside the Vortex I got myself in trouble as someone walked by with a pair of Vivienne Westwood pants on, obviously some young kid from the suburbs who had never been to a punk club before, and I had the misfortune to open my mouth and say ‘oh £75 to be a real punk!’ Well, it was the stupidest thing I ever said and we got into a bit of a fight.

TOPPOP: Cherry Vanilla – Liverpool – 1.7.78

Being gay wasn’t a problem either. Both at Max’s and especially at the Roxy I encountered the most fraternal cooperative, friendly, interactions between gays and straights that I have ever seen before or since. There were so many gay people at the Roxy who were just as openly gay as straight people are openly straight and nobody gave a damn. The whole point was to be who you are, what you are and nobody gave a damn. There were a lot of gays in straight bands outside of London. I got laid just as much particularly Eric’s in Liverpool. Eric’s was particularly fertile ground.

The end of the band? I have unhappy memories about this. Bad Girl sold around 50K and ‘I Know How To Hook’ was used on Dutch TV on a documentary about prostitution but we never reached any charts except in Holland. Essentially Cherry sent us home when we weren’t touring and stayed in London with Louie.

Photos are a bitter memory for me. In that famous ‘lick me’ photo of Cherry, I’m standing directly behind Cherry and could have not been more strategically eclipsed if you had placed her! But look at the Roxy cover. Do you see the piano on stage? What looks like one person standing to the left is actually two. That’s me dressed in an olive green jumpsuit taking the pickup out of the back of the piano. The head that you see bending to the left is Stewart Copeland taking apart his famous Tamlas.

Look…the Roxy and Max’s was a privilege to have been at.

Let’s hear it for Zecca…