Love Goes to Buildings on Fire

    New York City in the 70’s is always great to write about, but for years nobody cared to remember the era. Back in 1993 (20 years before this book came out) nobody really cared about the city’s rough decade, but that’s all changed since 2000. The 1970’s NYC has been the subject of books, documentaries, movies, fashion trends, and just about everything you can license for profit. So why do we have such a fascination with that decade? Perhaps it was because all the peace & love stuff of the 1960’s were over, and the nation’s confidence was scarred by Vietnam? Or was it the riots here at home? America in the 1970’s seemed to be in a kind of limbo, now that the Flower Power was finished. Jimi and Janice were dead, the Beatles had broken up, and whatever feeling we all got from Woodstock was ruined at Altamont. The feeling of the 70’s was rough, and who could illustrate it better than Bruce Springsteen, the great working-class balladeer! The author Will Hermes describes Springsteen’s first gig at Max’s Kansas City as a fish out of water; the torn jeans and stubble of the singer, versus a club full of Warhol superstars.  But then we get the surprise; the audience – transvestites included – loved Bruce Springsteen! They weren’t any flower children in that audience, but lots of flagrantly gay scenesters who were turned on by Springsteen’s proletarian roughness. The kind of bands that the Warhol crowd went to see weren’t the Crosby-Stills-Nash-Young types, with fringe jackets and love beads. They wanted edgy, transgressive artists like the cross-dressing New York Dolls, weird-sounding Lou Reed, and in this case, a messy-looking guy from New Jersey. It was a sleazefest they wanted, not protest songs. Springsteen’s rough look and rough subjects were perfect for the occasion.

   Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (long title, very punk rock of the author) doesn’t gloss anything, and why would it? Given that in the 1970’s, gloss couldn’t even stick, and if it did, then it would’ve been spray painted over and ended up looking like a subway car. One of the best parts is the chapter Invent Yourself, where Abe Beam (the mayor) says “I want to be the matchmaker that brings us together.” The author says “well mazel tov, sort of, the city was bankrupt and everybody knew it.” In strides Patti Smith, with her thrift store duds and unfeminine stick figure, who fit in perfectly. She certainly wasn’t a babe, and come to think of it, she looked like a vampire. Her boyfriend (if they were intimate, which I doubt) was an equally skinny artist named Robert Maplethorpe, who everyone must’ve known was gay. This was no hippy chick in a floor-length embroidered gypsy dress with a flower in her hair; nope, that was San Francisco shit, and this was 1973 New York City. Mayor Beam wanted to be a peacemaker, and it obviously didn’t work, because there was no way to bring peace. Everyone saw him as he was; a silly little accountant in a silly little suit, out of his depth, over his head, and with the rough look of the time, way more “out of his element” than Bruce Springsteen was in a club full of cross-dressers!

    There is one issue that the author doesn’t discuss, and one that I think had an effect on the development of the NYC art scene, and that issue is labor. The NYC mayors of the time – Lindsay, Beam, and Kotch – had a terrible relationship with the transit workers, police, firemen, sanitation workers, and just about all the other city employees. It really made the city’s progress slower, and that made the city less enticing for developers. If it hadn’t been for all the strikes going on, the city’s progress would’ve been stunted, and developers would’ve gone after all those run-down neighborhoods. I also suspect that the city’s bohemian life had to do with the civil service as well; with all the hiring freezes, there were fewer full-time jobs, so that left plenty of time for everyone to be silly. The jobs that the artists and musicians took – restaurants, bookstores, record stores – didn’t mind the employees having long hair and drug addiction. If the Ramones all found full-time well-paid jobs in a unionized outfit, they probably would’ve given up their music.

   I’d better remind everyone here, 90% of the characters in this story weren’t even from New York City. Patti Smith was from New Jersey, Iggy Pop was from Detroit, Lou Reed was from Nassau County, the Ramones were from Queens, Warhol was from Pittsburg, etc. Manhattan always attracts outsiders from all over the USA (E.B. White said the same thing in his essay Here Is New York.) Perhaps that’s why the “noo-yawk” accent has vanished, except in Staten Island. But after their careers were established, a lot of these people left the city. Patti Smith moved to Michigan, several Warhol superstars went to other cities (Billy Name went upstate, Viva got kicked out of the Chelsea Hotel and moved to LA), and countless artists and musicians moved elsewhere. Manhattan, bankrupt and derelict, was perfect for men and women who didn’t mind it rough, but it wasn’t a place to raise kids. The schools were crap, the food was lousy, and when you want to have a family, safety becomes paramount.

   

    Those of you who watched the documentary NY77: The Coolest Year in Hell know that NYC in the 70’s wasn’t a place to raise kids or find happiness, but you could move here to drop out and enjoy free love. It was for people who liked it rough and messy, and if it weren’t crime-ridden, it would’ve taken New Orleans’ place as “the city that care forgot.” Punk rock, hip-hop, Latin pop, it could only happen in the most non-judgmental city in America, where high fashion meant dirty clothes, and torn jeans couldn’t keep you down. If transvestites could be accepted, then who wouldn’t be?