Jeff Buckley: Having Tim Buckley as my father gave me the parts needed to play music.  Even if I went and became a lawyer and someone asked me to sing something, I’d have the parts to sing. But that’s it. It’s not really [Tim Buckley's] voice that I have – because it wasn’t really his voice to begin with.  It was passed down to us from every man in our family.[i]

This oral history is the story of Jeff Buckley and his band.

Jeff Buckley: I’ve always played in bands – always.  I only go out and play solo to make money to pay the phone bill and the rent. [ii]

After releasing the Live at Sin-e EP, Jeff played a series of solo acoustic shows around New York City in early 1993, looking to attract musicians to form a band with through his live performances.

Mick Grondahl (bassist): …I was backstage hanging out and I noticed Jeff, and he was definitely someone who made me curious.  Backstage, he was very focused on tuning his guitar and cleaning it, and preparing his set.  During the show I noticed the interesting choice of cover songs he was playing and he played a lot of complex chords, and of course he had that great voice. I was quite impressed and we got to talk later at a party, and we talked about music.  He left an impression.

He was playing the New Music Seminar at the Fez, and I went and stood in line – I didn’t even have any money to get in.  Luckily I saw Jeff coming out from behind the curtain while we were waiting to pay, and he was singing “L.A. Woman” by the Doors and I sang the next part, and he remembered me.  We exchanged numbers and I went in to see the show and he had evolved even more.  He came out and did Nina Simone “Be Your Husband.” We got together at Nightingale’s, played pool, and then jammed back at his apartment.

Jeff Buckley: Micky and I sat down at my place. It was late in the evening so we had to play quietly …[iii]

Mick Grondahl: I sense that he wanted someone there to accompany him in the most simple and non-flashy way possible, just support him.  He was already quite interesting on his own. About two weeks after he and I started playing together we auditioned Matt [Johnson - drummer]. He was the first guy we auditioned and we hit it off really well.  Matt remembers Jeff looking at him and smiling and just feeling a connection between us.  And that first night we played together, within an hour, we wrote “Dream Brother.”

Jeff Buckley: Every guitar idea I put out they would close in on as the music happened.[iv]

Gene Bowen (road manager): He toured overseas for a couple weeks to support Live at Sin-e and he was describing how it was great and he loved it, but the absence of a band was really apparent to him.  He always wanted to have a band and then he finally got the band, but then he had to tour solo to support the Sin-e EP. He missed the band and couldn’t wait to get back.  He was really about the band and the personal connection that he had with each of them.

Mick Grondahl: Michael [Tighe] joined when Grace was pretty much wrapped up.  He had never played in a group.  He knew some blues stuff and few riffs here and there.  We auditioned people who played a lot longer in New York, people who had played very complex music, but it was more about enthusiasm and potential. We wanted to recruit people who were almost disciples to Jeff’s music.  If people were too set in what they were doing then there wasn’t this chance to instill the new music that could come from the way that Jeff worked.

Michael Tighe (guitarist): He knew that I played guitar but we never got around to playing together until he asked me to audition for his band.  It clicked.  I felt honored, excited and a little afraid to be playing with these older musicians who had been living in a world of gigs, touring, jamming, writing, recording. A world I wanted to live in.

Gene Bowen: Jeff used to call Michael “Chico” and I used to envision Jeff as an old man at the end of his life, just sitting on his back porch with Michael, because they were just so close.  There was just such a connection there.

Michael Tighe: First impression? A cartoon wolf. Playful and silly with eyes of pain and wildness.

Mick Grondahl: We were in many ways four parts of the group, and it felt like a band and Jeff accepted us as having equal say.  It was very much a democracy – he was the leader but he also listened to us and thought about what we had to say. The relationships that band members have between each other are more important than ability.

Jeff Buckley: They’ve become my family.[v]

June 1, 1994, the band along with Road Manager Gene Bowen and a soundman set out in a 15-passenger Econoline Van on their first extended tour.

Mick Grondahl: We were very excited.  They called it the Podunk Tour, to get us used to playing live. We had already written So Real together, we also covered Kangaroo.  We felt excited about the music, so if no one really showed up to the shows, we were at least doing something that appealed to us.  Jeff was just a great guy, and we all just loved spending time with him. He was really there for us as a leader.

Gene Bowen: The first tour we did with the full band was like a “Shitty City” tour.  The band had been rehearsing for the tour, except they weren’t rehearsing the songs from the record.  The guy from the studio where they were rehearsing told me that he hadn’t heard them play a single note off of Grace.  They were in there just jamming, playing the same riff for hours.

Management had them play the Stone Pony in Asbury Park, NJ.  They rented out the club so they could get the feeling of playing on stage – but the club was empty. Since they weren’t rehearsing the album, the thought was that getting them on a stage and rehearsing would help them get ready for the tour.

After the Stone Pony, we played the Red Creek Inn in Rochester and the tickets were $5 each and 32 tickets were sold. That’s the first show the band ever played together. So we went from playing an empty club to a 32-paid club.

Michael Tighe: When I first came up to the Econoline van [to start the tour] I felt like I was joining the circus.

Gene Bowen: They were all very excited at the beginning of the tour.  It was all of us and the equipment in the van About halfway through the tour, they figured out a way to suspend hammocks from the ceiling of the van over the bench seats. So one person could lay on the bench seat and another person could lay in the hammock, because there was no room in the van at all.

Mick Grondahl: We loved the van! It was difficult to have six people in there with all the gear, but we were together and we shared the time very intimately.  A little too intimately sometimes. We listened to music during the long stretches of driving.  At the time, we all thought it would be great to have a tour bus, but then when we did have a tour bus it just lacked the same intimacy and coziness that we had before.

We liked being on the road and partying – we didn’t have a lot of groupies or anything like that. We really enjoyed just hanging out with each other and playing music.

We were all learning a lot about what music each person liked and we would play it all on the CD player. Jeff didn’t grow up in New York or in an alternative music environment, so a lot of the music that Michael and I knew about he was just getting clued into. So he was excited to hear the stuff we were playing.  Like, the MC5, Sonic Youth, The Grifters, Shudder to Think, the art punk stuff.  And Big Star “Kangaroo.”

Jeff could listen to a song a couple times and then he would be playing it onstage the next night.  He could remember the lyrics, the chord changes, the arrangement and then sometimes come up with a new arrangement.

And he would do that with is own songs, just do a new arrangement and I would walk the wire with him and follow along, not knowing exactly how we were going to play chorus now that we just did the verse in a whole different way.  It was exciting and most of the time we would land on our feet.  It built great confidence between us. We never played the songs the same.  Each night was different.

Gene Bowen: If you hear Dream Brother at the beginning of the tour as opposed to the end, it’s completely different and that’s because of the band.  As a band, they evolved the music as the tour went on.

Michael Tighe: The first night we played, I was so nervous and made some mistakes.  I felt like I was giving birth or being born or something like that.

Mick Grondahl: I remember thinking that for people seeing us for the first time, it might be a bit off-putting.  It was so different; Jeff’s voice, the style, the way the shows were organized… because we didn’t have a set list, we worked on the spot.  We were asking something of the audience, which was patience because we wanted to make each show unique. They were intrigued of course by Jeff’s humor and the mystique that he could project, but mainly his voice and guitar were so stunning.

It took time for the set to get up to speed, but we wanted it start slow and build from nothing. Not just bowl people over and play the catchiest song at the very beginning.

We felt excited about the music, so if no one really showed up to the shows, we were at least doing something that appealed to us.

Gene Bowen: Jack Bookbinder [part of Jeff's management team] had a band called “Lobster of Hate” and they were out on the road playing weekends and we would go into a market where they just played and there would still be posters and flyers everywhere. I’d always ask the club owner, “Hey, how did Lobster of Hate do?” and the response would be, “Oh, they did 300 people.” So, that was the running joke – I’d get in the van after a show and be like, Lobster of Hate: 350 people, Jeff Buckley: 22.”

Gene Bowen: What Columbia Records did with Jeff will never happen again.  Just the economics behind supporting an artist like that.  There is no way now that an artist would play the same market four times. Now they want to get you into the mainstream as quickly as possible Back then it was servicing college radio and fanzines, and that era is over.  Jeff’s fanbase was built from the ground up.

After the U.S. tour, the band went to Europe.

Gene Bowen: There was a real momentum after that U.S. tour. When we got to Europe we were in an actual tour bus.  And we figured out that we could do a tour bus for the US when we got back.  From that point on, it was a bus and it made the grind that much easier.

Mick Grondahl: It was trade off – when we had the van we could stay in hotels, but when got the bus we just stayed on that the whole time. It was the moving hotel.  And we didn’t have the same intimacy we did before.

Jack Bookbinder: There were far more promotional opportunities in Europe for Jeff, just because of the way that Live at Sin-e was promoted from the beginning.  In France, Jeff was one of the top pop artists in the country and you couldn’t say that in America.  He just had something that people there connected to.

Mick Grondahl: Traditionally, I think European audiences are more forgiving and more open. It doesn’t need to be the buzz of the week to give it a chance.  I personally felt like there was more acceptance and more of a feeling of security.  By that point, we had started to come together more as a band so we had more to offer the audience. They were much more keen on us being on TV in Europe than in America. They wanted to capture it even through there wasn’t a lot of hype behind it – they recognized it as something important.

Gene Bowen: In every nook and cranny of the world, Jeff did promotion.  He really understood the business and he knew what it took and what he needed to do. And he loved to talk and share things with people and I used to love hearing him talk.  I would have a line of people standing there waiting to interview him and I would just cycle them through.  And with him, he would always give them way more than they needed – he would just give so much and I would have to come in to let them know time was up.

I started to listen to what was going on, because I thought “Who in their right mind could talk about the same shit, let alone themselves and this record, over and over and over.?”  You either go on autopilot and say the same stuff or you just make stuff up, just for your own sanity.  And what I started to realize was that he would answer their questions, but then he would go off on something else entirely. I think for his own piece of mind he would try to give them something more.  I would always want to cue in just to hear what he was saying – he would be talking about food or something else entirely. There would be a point behind it, but he would weave all this other stuff into it.

Michael Tighe: I don’t remember anything about the television tapings except that I would always think about Hendrix on the BBC to get me fired up.

Mick Grondahl: Chris Cornell came to see us quite early, in 1994 the whole Soundgarden crew.  It was great, since it validated our own feelings of excitement and often when you’re doing something of your own making, you’re naturally excited about it, but you don’t know how everyone else is going to feel. But in this case, our excitement was validated by people like Chris Cornell and Jimmy Page and Paul McCartney and John Cale. It was encouraging.  We were getting recognition from people that we all looked up to.  Certainly for Jeff, it was very exciting.  That to me meant more than record sales and how many tour buses we had.

The band would continue to tour the U.S., Europe, Japan and Australia until September 1995.

Gene Bowen: I think the tour went on much too long. And they didn’t really write on the road.  That’s not how Jeff worked.  And they toured the Grace for two years and that whole time they really didn’t have the opportunity to explore other things. Everyone, the band and the crew, were like, “Enough.”

Mick Grondahl: The irritation and feeling of stagnation didn’t start until late 95, after we toured twice on both continents, and then they wanted us to do a third and I felt that was really pushing it. Things started to wear a bit.  Personally, I felt quite self-conscious that we were touring a city for the third time for the same record.

Gene Bowen: I remember he talked about trying to come up with a name for the band, so that it wouldn’t just be Jeff Buckley.

Mick Grondahl: I proposed the name Two Ninas and Jeff liked it a lot, and we all liked it.  But the record company was against using another name because the Jeff Buckley name was so well known. Jeff liked the idea of a band name and that was the closest we ever came to doing it.

The band played its last show with drummer Matt Johnson on March 15^th 1995 in Sydney, Australia.

Mick Grondahl: I look for something different in musicians now than I would have before I had met Jeff.  Before I would concentrate on someone’s technical ability and that certainly has a value, but the person’s creative ability and enthusiasm lends itself to what I feel is a greater contribution to the music.  He was and still is like a mentor in that way.  I’ll never be able to forget what he taught me when I work with other people, just because what he was able to bring out of people was a lot more than what I had ever experienced before.  Having that trust only encourages more creativity and risk taking. I’m truly grateful for that experience.

Jeff Buckley: Artists just need to shut the fuck up and listen to what exactly is coming from inside. You just have to find exactly what you should be doing, and if you didn’t have that thing, you would die. Perish, slowly or quickly, violently or like a chump. And every choice is made from that. I have to do this, I’m made to do this.  I can’t do anything else. I tried. I don’t really feel fulfilled any other way.  Maybe when I get older, it will change. I’m sure it will. [vi]

###

Jeff Buckley died in a tragic drowning accident in 1997. An autopsy showed no drugs in his system.

Gene Bowen: Founded Road Recovery, dedicated to helping young people battle addiction by harnessing the influence of entertainment industry professionals who have confronted similar crises and now wish to share their experience and knowledge.

Mick Grondahl: Lives in Copenhagen, Denmark with his wife and daughter and continues to play music.

Matt Johnson: Plays music both as a solo artist and with other artists such as Rufus Wainwright.

Parker Kindred: Continues to play music working with numerous artists, including Antony and the Johnsons.

Michael Tieghe: Lives in New York City and is currently working with a New York band, “The Tiggers.”

[ii] ibid

[iii] Now Magazine

[iv] ibid

[v] Sky Magazine

[vi] Unpublished interview material, February 24, 1994, Amy Yates Wuelfing

***

Painting of Jeff Buckley special for The Rumpus by Mikayla Butchart.

Jeff Buckley, “Grace”

wikipedia page

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Randy Now: That Butthole Surfers show is another one of those shows that 5,000 people claim they were at, but only 500 or so tickets were sold. I loved the band, I really did. The Buttholes played three shows for me before this one. The first time was an all-ages show at a little place called New York South. The second time I booked them was at City Gardens with The Replacements. That weird bill happened because the Buttholes pretty much lived on the road. They would call up and ask for a gig, and then you would never hear from them again until the day of the show. You just had to believe that they would show up. So The Replacements wanted to play the same day and we hadn’t heard back from the Buttholes. We didn’t know if they were going to show up or not, and it was six weeks until the show date. And so I thought, why not just book The Replacements too? Leave the Buttholes on the bill, but then also have The Replacements play. We left them both on the advertising, I’m not sure who opened for who. I guess the Replacements opened for the Buttholes.

Gibby Haynes: My strongest memory of City Gardens is showing to play a show on one of our first tours and we didn’t confirm the gig in advance. So when we got to the club, the marquee out front said “Tonight: The Replacements.” I just thought it was ironic that we got replaced by The Replacements.

Randy Now: The third time was a great show. They were getting more popular and the audience loved them. They had three or four encores, people just couldn’t get enough.

Tony Rettman: I was really young. My older brother Don used to take me to shows, but the Butthole Surfers’ music was totally over my head. It just sounded like a jet landing—forever. Just a blur of noise. I remember one show where they had swear words written all over their bodies, like, “shit” and “fuck” written on their faces. And it wasn’t like something they did for the show, because they drove up and were hanging out the whole night before they played with cuss words written all over their faces. And I thought, “that’s pretty badass.”

Tim Hinely: It’s hard to describe exactly what a Butthole Surfers gig was like unless you were there. When kids these days tell me how wild or crazy their favorite band is, like Slipknot or Marilyn Manson, I utter three words to them: “The Butthole Surfers.” For starters they were total freaks. Drummer King Koffey and his “sister” Theresa played the double drums like they were from another planet, the bassist Jeff had a backwards Mohawk and looked like he was having trouble staying awake, guitarist Paul Leary was cross-eyed on purpose Last, but certainly not least, was seven-foot tall, Gibby Haynes. No shirt, gut hanging out, long greasy hair, yelling at whomever he could yell at. The guy was fucking scary.

Mickey Ween: That was the band we would sit around and listen to and get high. And you get these pictures in your head, “What are the guys who make this shit really like?!” It was just so insane. And then you find out the truth, and they’re even worse, even more insane, than you imagined.

Tim Hinely: Some of the bands that played the club were really polarizing. A skinhead band would play and the skinheads would be into it, but no one else would be, or a non-skinhead band would play and the skinheads would flip them off. But when the Buttholes played, everyone was into it. The skater kids, the hardcores, the skinheads, the punk geeks, everyone was into it. There was so much insanity that all genres were put aside.

Randy Now: They were pretty big at this point and starting to break through – they had just released Hurdy Gurdy Man, which got airplay on MTV and they had a lot of their own sound and light equipment. They had a projection screen showing films that had nude scenes and Ohio State Trooper accident films and stuff like that.

Gibby Haynes: Those were real 16mm films. To find those films I had to do research at University of Texas, looking in reference books and tracking things down. Back then you had to be pretty imaginative to get those kinds of films. The people who had things like penis reconstruction films were very sensitive about distribution. You had to call up and pretend you were a doctor. We would have stuff mailed to our house outside of town that were addressed to The Pathology Wing, at So-and-So Hospital, Dr. Gibson Haynes.

Tim Hinely: They played right before this show at The Court Tavern in New Brunswick, NJ and it was a wild affair to be sure. The band that played prior to them, The Serial Killers, had thrown cans of dog food out into the crowd so it was smeared all over the floor and it made everything very slippery. The place was packed to the gills, steaming hot and there was dog food all over the place. I haven’t even mentioned the naked lady dancer—with a beard, who had not bathed in a year—the smoke machine, strobe lights and the films playing behind them of gory car crashes from the 1960’s.

Gibby Haynes: I was in charge of the show. I thought if I couldn’t really sing, then I might as well put on a show. So at first it was smoke and strobes. And then it was lots of smoke and lots of strobes. Completely fill the club with smoke until you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face, with a pulsing, bright-as-shit light that would make you vomit and convulse. We would make effigies out of newspaper and then tear them up in the strobe light, which was cool because it looked like you were tearing a human apart. We would dress up the dummies the same way we were dressed, and then jump behind an amp and throw out the dummy and rip it up.

Randy Now: So, the show was booked and I kept hearing that all across the country that they had a nude dancer onstage. When they showed up that day I asked Gibby to not have the girl dancing nude, because it was an all-ages show and there would be kids there. And he said “okay” which really meant, “fuck you.”

Tim Hinely: The bill was Butthole Surfers, Malcolm Tent, Cleft Palate and Ween.

Mickey Ween: There were four bands. We were first, then Cleft Palate, and then a punk-rock accordion player named Malcolm Tent. There were three bands with no drums opening for a band with two drummers. I had seen Buttholes before and they were my favorite band at the time, but Aaron (Gene Ween) hadn’t seen them yet. And it was our first real club gig and it was total luck that we would open for our favorite band. We watched them do soundcheck and it all seemed pretty normal, just a regular band setup. And Aaron was like, “So what’s the big deal?” because I had told him all these stories about what mayhem it is when they play. But when they went on to play, it was suddenly a whole different thing.

Randy Now: The dancer takes her top off the very first song, but it was hard to see her because she was behind the two drummers and the film projections were reflecting off of the drums. But she was topless and I knew when (club owner Frank “Tut” Nalbone) saw her, he was going to go berserk, because it was his ass on the line in the end if some little kid goes home and tells mommy that there was a naked lady on stage. And it was huge crowd too.

Mickey Ween: Her name was Ta-da: The Shit Lady. Like, Ta-da! She had taken a vow of silence and didn’t talk.

Gibby Haynes: That was the first tour with Kathleen as our dancer. Generally, she was totally naked. She was from Atlanta and she was part of the crazy Atlanta music scene. Lady Claire, RuPaul and Frank Floyd Felecia, that whole group from Atlanta. We used to play a club there with a little bitty stage and we saw this band with two women; Kathleen played drums and Cabbage danced. But we got them mixed up. So when our drummer Theresa quit and we wanted another girl drummer, we were so loaded we got it backwards. We thought, let’s get Cabbage, thinking she was the drummer. And she sucked. Really bad. And then when Theresa came back, we got Kathleen as our dancer, who was actually the drummer. She was the drummer we really wanted but didn’t get, and then she became our dancer.

Tom Hinely: Guys just started elbowing each other and some of the punks were yelling lewd stuff at her. Not that I think she even noticed.

Tom Stanics: I was working the soda bar and I remember being pretty shocked when I looked up and saw a topless chick dancing onstage.

Tim Hinely: Parents were screaming at Randy. Parents who took their kids to the show and maybe were just going to hang out in the back were freaking out. There was the naked woman onstage and then Paul from the Buttholes pulled his pants down and was flipping his dick around. I remember turning around and seeing some moms and dads totally losing it.

Tony Rettman: I was 12 years old and I see this topless woman on stage, so I’m like, “Wow! Boobs!” It was the first time I saw naked boobs in person that didn’t belong to a family member. And the band looked really green and I didn’t know if they painted themselves or if they just had scurvy. I remember Gibby saying all this weird stuff like, “Don’t you hate it when your dad walks in and you have a wine bottle up your ass?”

Mark Pesetsky: I was onstage just acting as general security. The crowd was going nuts pretty much the entire show. When the crowd first saw the naked woman they went crazy, then it wore off and became old hat. After that they just focused on the band.

Tim Hinely: Something seemed a bit weirder about this gig… I mean, all was going smashingly. They played “Cherub,” “BBQ Pope,” “The Shah Sleeps in Lee Harvey’s Grave,” and , of course, their hit single, “Lady Sniff.” Complete with all the farting noises one can stand.

Mickey Ween: They dropped pieces of confetti that had cockroaches on them. Little white pieces of paper the size of a matchbook with a cockroach picture on each side. I don’t where they got this shit but they had bags and bags of it. I remember playing at City Gardens like six months later, and this confetti was still falling out of the lighting trusses. Like, up to a year later you would walk around the stage and find these little pieces of paper with cockroaches on them leftover from the Buttholes show.

Gibby Haynes: That stuff hung around. Three years ago, I coughed one up.

Randy: I know Tut’s going to go crazy when he sees this whole thing, so I kept him distracted and had him in the back counting bottles of Jack Daniels or something. Almost the whole set was finished, but he finally comes out and he sees what’s going on and tells me to go up on the stage and tell the dancer that she has to put her top on. I’m up there doing hand signals and waving, and they just ignored me. Of course Tut wouldn’t get involved himself, he’s just standing in the back yelling at me to go do something. We had this big on/off breaker switch that fed the power to the stage. It was gigantic; it looked like something out of a Frankenstein movie from the 20’s it was so huge. He’s yelling, “Pull the plug! Pull the plug!” And that thing just cut the power to the stage and so we pulled it.

Tony Rettman: Gibby set his arm on fire and he was waving it at people. When things got crazy, I was too young to be scared, I didn’t know enough to know that things like that aren’t supposed to happen.

Tim Hinely: Everyone realized the plug got pulled and was pissed. People were yelling, “Bouncers suck!”

Mickey Ween: And that set off a whole series of events. The lights came on and the PA went out, and the whole place was filled with smoke, either from a smoke machine or his burning arm, and when the house lights go up, you could see everyone for the first time. The two drummers kept going and Gibby had the bullhorn and it turned into this tribal hell. That’s what was so great about seeing the Buttholes, it was like you were in Hell, especially if you’re on drugs.

Randy Now: After we pulled the plug they kept on playing and starting pouring rubbing alcohol onto the drum cymbals, setting it on fire and then hitting them so that the fire flew all over the place.

Mickey Ween: I was watching them from the dressing room window, which was up over the stage. And they started doing the thing with the cymbal, he would pour rubbing alcohol into the cymbal and let it burn at this low blue flame until he hit it and the flames would shoot up. The flames were hitting the ceiling and then going horizontal, creeping along the roof. I don’t know if it actually caught on fire or was just smoldering, but it was clear it was all about to go up.

Mark Pesetsky: I see fire flying everywhere, meanwhile the insulation from the ceiling is hanging down and I’m thinking that’s going to catch on fire any minute. So I started grabbing their beer and throwing it on the cymbals to douse the fire.

Randy Now: Fire was a sore subject to begin with, because before that we had Wendy O. Williams from The Plasmatics. She had a little cherry picker that she would use to go out over the crowd and she set the ceiling on fire. A bouncer had to grab a fire extinguisher and put it out. Fire was always an issue at the club because bands always wanted to do stuff with it.

Mickey Ween: A security guard came onstage and Gibby threw the alcohol on him. The dude just started backing away, it was clear that Gibby probably would set him on fire. And now, knowing Gibby like I do, it was definitely within the realm of possibility.

Mark Pesetsky: And Gibby just gave me that psycho look with the Charles Manson eyes. He grabs a bottle of the rubbing alcohol and throws it on me and then starts walking towards me with a lighter. And John, the other bouncer, just jumps offstage. It was every man for himself at that point.

Gibby Haynes: Oh yeah, I do remember that. I mean, I’ve lit kids’ heads on fire and they were smiling! They were happy about it. If I was on fire, they figured they were safe too. When I say light their head on fire, I don’t engulf their head in flames. If you cover your hand in alcohol and light it on fire, for a quick moment you can touch the top of someone’s head and leave a handprint of flame on top of their head. And it’s really cool to look at. And people don’t even realize that their head’s been lit on fire, that’s how benign it is.

Mark Pesetsky: We turned around and went back to the stage and we were both ready to hit him. I went up to Gibby and tapped him on the shoulder and he turns around and sticks his hand out to shake my hand. So, I just shook his hand. But, when they were loading out, I stole his guitar tuner.

Gibby Haynes: Alcohol burns at such a really low temperature. You can dump it on your hand and go “one-thousand one, one-thousand two, one-thousand three, whoa!!!” and that’s how long you have before you feel it. Gas, you want to put it out quicker, but it’s a lot harder to put out. The first time I ever lit my hand on fire, I used lighter fluid and the flame would not go out. You have to deprive it 100% of oxygen before it will relinquish its fiery grip and it’s a bitch. It’s a bummer to put it out once it gets going. I learned all this through trial and error.

Randy Now: The insulation caught on fire—or at least it seemed like it was going to—and that’s when Tut ran up on stage with the fire extinguisher. He didn’t say anything, he just walked up there like he was the maintenance man and putting out fires was part of his job. But with me, he was panicking, cursing and yelling, but when he ran up on stage he was all calm. But the band had no reaction, they were just sort of laughing. It was so surreal that maybe they didn’t realize the battle that was going on. There was battle happening on that stage and it was The Bouncers vs. Gibby.

Gibby Haynes: We tried to create chaos, but it was never mean-spirited. It was never exploitative in nature. I would never play nasty pranks on people. There was no real philosophy behind it.

Mickey Ween: I remember seeing Tut in the middle of all of it. The band was a really intimidating band to look at. And they’re not pussies. I know guys in bands and they’re all artsy-farsty, they play tough music but they are not tough people. But Paul and Gibby are pretty athletic. They aren’t people you’d want to fight. And I just always assumed that those guys were on LSD. Gibby’s one of the smartest people I’ve ever met, he can talk about anything, but you wouldn’t want to mess with him.

Randy Now: At one point I was up onstage and I just remember grabbing Gibby and shaking him. And I grabbed a towel and tried to put it on the dancer but she just ripped it off.

Mickey Ween: The drummers kept playing, Gibby is screaming on the megaphone, the staff opened the doors to kick people out, and that was it. The show was officially over. The part that got scary was when the audience realized the show was over. Then they started breaking stuff up.

Randy Now: The soundman was trying to protect our equipment because we had no idea what was going on. But they managed to steal that big old 24-channel cable that I had just bought! I’m still pissed about it! How did they roll up a 100-foot cable and take it and no one saw? But the soundman is up there acting like nothing else is going on. He’s putting the mikes into boxes, and the fire didn’t bother him and the fire extinguisher didn’t bother him, acting like nothing bizarre was going on. He acted oblivious.

Tim Hinely: Everyone was just sort of milling around, yelling at the band, yelling at the bouncers, yelling at Randy. And finally Randy came over the intercom and said, “Okay guys, it’s time to go.” And everyone finally started leaving.

Mickey Ween: When they got thrown outside, they started taking the gravel and the rocks from the parking lot and throwing them. I remember someone throwing shit onto the cars and kicking out the headlights and grills of the cars parked along the front of the club. And that to me is what made it a certified riot. It’s was like, “What the hell is going to happen here?” And I think Randy’s car got targeted.

Randy Now: Some of the people went out and started smashing cars—they were really charged up. We finally cleared the audience out and then the band refused to leave. We had to call the police to get them out of the building. I told the cops, “This band refuses to leave the building.” And the cops showed up and were just like, “Look, you guys gotta leave.”

Gibby Haynes: Was there police involvement? That’s because we wanted to get paid. We didn’t get paid! I want it known that’s why we didn’t leave. I remember talking to really absurdly dressed state police. Dudes who looked like they were wearing English riding pants.

Randy Now: And so when they agreed to leave, that’s when I paid Gibby the other 50% I owed them from the guarantee. I said, “I need you to sign this before I give you the money.” I counted it out and held it in my hand and refused to give it over until he signed the receipt. Honestly, there was such a large crowd there, they probably could have gotten bonus money, but I wasn’t about to give them that. And now I’m glad, especially since they stole the cable! But I paid them their whole guarantee, which was $2,500.

Of course after that, we could never book them again. We told their booking agent what happened—they started a riot onstage, tried to set a security guard on fire. I’m not sure if told them about the naked women. Their agent, Steve Martin from Nasty Little Man, called me a bunch of dirty names, reamed me out. Somehow when the story got back to him, I was to blame.

Tony Rettmen: When I look back on it, it was pretty fucked up on so many levels. What was I doing in the middle of Trenton? Why was I seeing a naked woman? Why was I hearing this music? I was 12!

Mickey Ween: Sometimes I think people don’t believe me when I tell them what our first gig was like. I was never concerned for my safety, the whole time. It’s still the best show I’ve ever seen, to this day.

**

From the upcoming book No Slam Dancing, No Stage Diving: How a Seedy New Jersey Club Defined an Era, an oral history of 80’s and 90’s-era alternative/punk music told through the portal of one club—Trenton, New Jersey’s legendary City Gardens.

See also: The Shorty Q&A with Dean Wareham of Dean & Britta

See also: THE EDITOR’S DESK: Link, Commentary, Love, and Money

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