I shot this live video clip at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach CA in what I believed was September 2000, but have now confirmed through newspaper archive searches the show was earlier that year on April 7th.
Belly Up ad for that week in spring 2000
These were the days when the relatively new band fronted by former FastWay singer Dave King were still touring on their own self released debut live album, Alive Behind the Green Door, recorded at their old stomping grounds Molly Malone’s on Fairfax in LA. The Flogging Molly debut studio album Swagger came about after hooking up with the Side-One Dummy label around this time and they were invited to tour with Kevin Lyman’s Warped Tour later that summer.
They’ve since gone on to have a huge career, selling out venues around the world, playing major festivals, securing corporate sponsorship funds from the likes of Jack Daniels & Bushmills whiskey, Orrick law firm and Death Wish Coffee, and even having their own branded Salty Dog Cruise themed cruise weeks. Salty Dog Cruises are annual cruise ship traveling circuses curated by Flogging Molly that cost attendees thousands to attend on giant cruise ships from the Port of Miami Florida on into the Caribbean, down to Belize and back joined by their fave bands performing sets including Rancid, Slackers, Stiff Little Fingers, Vandals etc. It all seems pretty amazing to me since they used to play free shows weekly in LA in the months before this gig where I shot them in Solana Beach where admission was just $10 at the time.
Sad news came down the punk rock pipe yet again lasterday when I got word that Walter Lure, the affable sartorial sidekick to Johnny Thunders onstage antics for many years had succumbed to liver & lung cancer at age 71.
Walter Lure aka Waldo R.I.P. Walter Lure aka Waldo
Numerous musicians & fans took to social media to pay tribute to a guy who remained far from a household name to most casual rock music fans, played key roles in some seminal punk rock records, was there when it all went down, often in flames and had recently toured and performed with a long list of rebel rock heroes and mutual admirers.
I got a few chances to shoot video of Walter playing over the past few years, and he was a true old school rock n roll showman, and the ramshackle style made for gigs that were always a blast. I’ve included a few clips from some of Walter Lure’s last gigs in San Francisco on this page as a he salute to his bravado and role in providing us all with such great rock n roll memories over the decades.
Walter Lure was in NYC in the mid 70’s when he left his gig as guitarist for largely unheralded rock band The Demons, whose lead singer was a drug dealer to local musicians including the New York Dolls, to join up with Johnny Thunder’s post Dolls disastour outfit The Heartbreakers. Lure was already a fan of Thunders, who’d he watched at the Mercer Arts Center as they threw away the rock rule book, and eschewed the currently in vogue prog & hippie folk ditherings for a more animalistic vital 50’s influenced street rock sound. The charismatic & chaotic Thunders “could get a round of applause simply from messing with his own hair,” Lure writes in his recently published memoir “To Hell And Back”, and Walter, a banker’s son, who’d attended Fordham U and enjoyed classic literature, was eventually asked to join the rough housing unit known as The Heartbreakers in 1975 and quickly tried to fit in. ” I played my last show with The Demons on a Friday night at CBGB during a 1975 July 4th festival to about 20 people at 2 am and my first Heartbreakers show the next night to a jam packed house of probably 500 people with lines around the block. ” He let Dee Dee Ramone cut his fashionably long 70’s locks off, and then had to get on the same drug wavelength as his bandmates , writes Lure “like an idiot I said: yeah, I’ll try it. Within six months or a year became as fucked up as they were.” In addition to a dope habit, he established a role in the band as a sidekick and musical foil to the notoriously unreliable and drug addled singer/guitarist.
#WalterLure
The sole survivor of the classic #JohnnyThundersAndTheHeartbreakers era has left the building #RIPWalterLure Got to see Waldo a few times, and it was always a blast… Here he is performing an old #Contours classic #DoYouLoveMe with his 2017 #LAMF touring band featuring #GlenMatlock (@glenmatlock1) , #DannyRay (@explodingsax) , #MikeNess (@mikeness) and the mighty Clem Burke on drums ( @cbdproject )
In 1976, at the invitation of former NY Dolls manager Malcolm Mclaren, The Heartbreakers traveled to England for the potentially promising, but very soon to be The ill fated, Anarchy in the UK tour, with the infamous Sex Pistols headlining, as well as The Damned & The Clash as support. The New Yorkers had barely cleared customs at Heathrow when it became apparent the tour was going to be sabotaged by mountains of bad press, public out cry, boycotts and bans by local gov’t councils . This tumult arose as a result of the aftermath of the Pistols appearing on the live BBC Bill Grundy TV talk show and mischievously uttering some four letter expletives in the direction of the lovably lecherous lout of a host and all heck broke loose. Recounted Walter to interviewer Joe Whyte in 2017 “Malcolm picked us up at the airport in a limo and he was really nervous and muttering to himself. He mentioned something about the band cursing on a TV show, but we had no idea. The next day we woke up and every newspaper had nothing else on the front pages but the hideous outrage that some punks cursed on national TV. We couldn’t understand it at all. “
The Heartbreakers played what UK shows they could, and as they’d a bit of a reputation in the UK, unlike NYC where they just had debts and detractors, they stayed in London with their raging queen of a manager Leee Black Childers, hoping to score a lucrative or at least livable UK record deal.
“Leee Black Childers had kept some cash in reserve for a few spare meals and transport needs. Luckily the Clash’s roadie, Sebastian Conran offered to put us up for “a few days” at his parents flat in Belgravia. They were out of town – they being the founders of Conran’s department stores. The flat had around 5 floors and about 8 bedrooms and was beautiful. I knew Sebastian was nervous that we’d destroy the place but we were actually fairly well behaved didn’t wreck anything. I guess we didn’t have enough cash to get lots of drugs and booze and start vomiting over everything. The Clash members would stop by with friends during this time sometimes bringing food and booze. I know Johnny sold his Gretsch White Falcon guitar to Joe Strummer while we were there. “
Remaining in London throughout most of 1977 working on their debut album, they went from place to place, even crashing at a famous punk dominatrix residence, where they’d hang out getting high, while she tortured her clients in the back. Said Walter to Louder Than War in 2017 “Someone said they saw David Frost coming out one afternoon looking all red faced after having gone through a session with her. Quite the scene at the time. . . “
Upon getting a record deal offer Walter said he “finally quit my day job as a chemist with the Food and Drug Administration in New York and embarked on my new career as a drug addled punk rocker! It doesn’t get much stranger than that.”
While his bandmates used their spare time pursuing pints in the London pubs, or nodded out waiting for the man and calls from management, Lure took in musicals on the West End, and read Sartre. He came across a used English school girl tie, and incorporated it into his look, and adopted the Bowler as his headwear. They played many gigs with Siouxsie & The Banshees, and after the Heartbreakers one & only album was released and quickly bombed commercially they “officially” broke up, but soon began doing “reunion” gigs as early as 1978.
Living in New York in the early 1980’s, Lure was openly bisexual, had his drug habit, occasional “reunion” gigs with the ever impossible Johnny Thunders, and own band affairs to tend to with groups like The Heroes, The Blessed, The Hurricanes, The Waldos, but he still needed a job to pay bills. His father stepped in to get him work on Wall St. and Lure would suit up daily, and often cop dope on his lunch break at a brokerage firm, doing millions of dollars in trades while managing a debilitating drug regimen, and by night head to gigs and change out of his day job outfit backstage, in his book says he finally managed to clean up by the late 1980’s. Lure told interviewer Jeffrey Wengrofsky that after finally putting the needle down after Memorial Day 1988 “I was in charge of a settlement operation of 125 people, making four hundred grand a year. I had thought that music was complex, but this was like a world unto its own. It gets so complex with private equity. All through the ‘90s, I would work during the day in suits and change into my rock clothes at night – beat up pieces of shit from the other side of my closet. Sometimes, people from my job would come down to the gig, and there I’d be, on stage, singing “Too Much Junkie Business.” It would blow their minds. I lived a double life. I’d play once a month at The Continental with The Waldos.”
His former Heartbreakers bandmates attempted one last reunion in the early 1990’s, and Lure was achingly aghast at his old bandmates chronic condition, and could see the grim future for Jerry Nolan & Johnny Thunders barreling down hard. Writes Lure in his autobiography “Musically, they belonged together, and when they passed away, both in the span of nine months, they were buried within fifty yards of one another. Together again.”
Lure eventually was reunited with his long lost son Damien in the early 2000’s, and while the kid quietly told friends he didn’t really appreciate Walter’s simplistic “Nursery Rhyme” style songs, at least the two had a chance to bond and reacquaint after years of separation. Just a few weeks months before he died, Walter’s autobiography emerged in both hardback and paperback editions from Backbeat Press.
Entitled “To Hell And Back: My Life in Johnny Thunders’ Heartbreakers, in the Words of the Last Man Standing” the tale mostly delves into the sordid stories, tawdry shenanigans, that make up the trials and tribulations of being an on/off again bandmate to the legendary Johnny Thunders for umpteen years. Walter spends much of the story detailing the “Too Much Junkie Business” they were known for until the men parted. An Epilogue and Discography are provided for those that care to follow the tale past the Heartbreakers saga. Said reviewer Jim Spaeth on Amazon of the self penned tome “I couldn’t put this book down. Non-stop excitement, craziness, drama as the weirdest cast of characters rampage through the pages. I love inside stories of the music biz; this book recounts the birth and death of punk from the inside out. Walter also tells the very human and personal stories of his bandmates as they struggle with the music industry, the music press, the fans, each other, but mostly with themselves. You root for them to make it, then you root for them to just stay alive. Most didn’t; Walter lived to tell the tale. Don’t miss it!”
Bassist Casey Watson sings lead vocal on “Hell’s A Lot Better”, the lead off track from the Old Firm Casuals’ 2017 EP release “Wartime Rock ‘n’ Roll“. Shot Dec 27th 2019 at Eli’s Mile High Club in Oakland, here’s their closing track that night.
The Old Firm Casuals are an American street punk band formed in 2010 as a sequel to Lars Frederiksen’s previous Rancid side project band known as Lars Frederiksen and The Bastards. Other members of his Old Firm Casuals unit include Paul Rivas (drums) and Gabriel Gabriloff (lead, rhythm guitar vocals).
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Jennifer Joseph, Publisher of Manic D Press introduces Dave Dictor at his first ever book store appearance to promote MDC: Memoir from a Damaged Civilization: Stories of Punk, Fear, and Redemption, co-presented by 924 Gilman St Project. The punk singer and now author candidly talks about finding Raul’s club in Austin Tx in the late 1970’s and how it lead him to release the “John Wayne Was A Nazi” single, and begin a multi decade global odyssey of politically charged punk rock.
More excerpts from this talk forthcoming, subscribe for more. To learn more about Dave Dictor see his new website http://DaveDictor.com
To get Dave Dictor’s autobiography, request at your local bookseller or try this online link : http://amzn.to/29grKPh
Overall Dave’s book would be interesting to anyone interested in the behind the scenes history of D.I.Y. punk, with Dave’s personal path also being a parallel tale of a subculture, where punk music is not merely a fashion, or memorialized like a long gone artifact, but is treated as a living breathing movement.
Dictor’s book holds anecdotes and adventures as told through the eyes of a world weary Woody Guthrie-esque citizen soldier who has taken his lumps, learned lessons, and is still inspired to travel the road less traveled, and make a glorious din whenever and wherever he still can.
The die hard punk rock world MDC traverses is not that of the corporate sponsored festivals and action sports soundtracks, but one of more idealistic people powered shows, grass roots political benefits and the loosely connected friends and fellow travelers motivated not merely by money, but by a need to help each other network and navigate from town to town, nightclub to VFW Hall.
Dave Dictor’s view from the stage has included thousands at large sports halls and theaters, but more often than not was maybe a gig put on in a basement, squat or a community center, much like it was back when he first started touring in the early 1980’s.
Conveniently I scored my copy of Dave Dictor’s book at a reading he was doing at a local bookstore in Berkeley CA, and the audience there was rapt with attention as Dave regaled us with numerous stories of his 3 decades plus journey through American Hardcore Punk’s early days. Dave’s tales start even before that era, back in the late 60’s, when he was already becoming an iconoclastic teenager, dealing pot with the aide of a friend’s mom, bending gender & norms, and seeking out a vegetarian diet in an age when the only two people he’d heard of who’d existed like that were Hitler & Gandhi. Fortunately for us, Dave abandons his wannabe teen hippie persona behind on Long Island, and eventually hits Austin Texas just as Raul’s was starting to put on punk shows, where bands like The Big Boys and The Dicks were also forming, creating a feisty brand of Texan hardcore unlike the somewhat more macho & commercial flavors available in the more urbane coastal cities.
Dave Dictor released the “John Wayne Was a Nazi” single in 1979, his band The Stains later changed their name to MDC
In the book you’ll read of Dave leaving his seventies singer songwriter stylings behind to and eventually hit the West Coast full throttle as a punk rock pioneer living to the pulsebeat of politically aware subculture, subsisting through squatting and D.I.Y. touring, living out of vans, eating at soup kitchens and deftly dodging police and skinhead violence whenever possible. The book has tales of many shows including an early 90’s run behind the Iron Curtain, where border guards and paper work pose problems, and Russian promoters threaten to pull the plug on the tour if the band doesn’t come up with $5000 dollars overnight. You’ll learn about his friends and family, like his long time drummer Al who Dave met as a fellow Monkees fan in the 60’s, to both of ’em doing separate stints of prison time in the 1990’s.
As a memoir, and much like a friend telling a meandering adventure that no one is sure where it ends, the storyline occasionally drifts back and forth through time. Dave has met many thousands of people and magnanimously, many names are dropped briefly, while exact event details might get glossed over. Over 30 years of touring means some great stories got left out, while some chronological anachronisms occasionally appear, such as when he mentions a gig with Husker Du, where Dave relates feeling “like Prince was gonna show up, mount the stage” at First Avenue in Minneapolis “and do a few bars of Purple Rain” even though the MDC show referenced was back in 1982, and Prince was still several years away from creating that iconic cinematic moment.
Enjoy the vicarious rambling ride through these pages, Dave sure has, and one gets the feeling if some medical setbacks hadn’t sidelined him momentarily a few years ago so he’d have time to share these tales in print, most of these stories would’ve gone untold. Dictor had a serious health crisis and spiritual awakening just before penning the manuscript and feels lucky to be alive to still share his happiness and life story.
One criticism I heard of the book is that, despite conflicts and complications in a long career, this MDC book itself is not full of “dirt” and that Dave doesn’t talk hella sh/t about anyone. That is just the type of person he he is, and the author courageously, if not naively, still strives to find the positive side to everyone and everything. While allusions are made to occasional nefarious conduct by bit players in the book, Dave moves on rather than dwell on the painful parts. It is perhaps good advice for all of us. As he mentions near the end of the book on page 180, freshly leaving the hospital he almost died in, he tells a cab driver “From now on, only love will come from my mouth and be on my breath”.
Video was made at Dave Dictor’s first ever bookstore reading , the Mosh Lit release celebration for MDC: Memoir from a Damaged Civilization: Stories of Punk, Fear, and Redemption held at Pegasus Books in Berkeley CA May 25th 2016.
For over an hour, the author gave us all an informal, humorous, but deeply reflective overview of his multi decade journey through punk, as well as familial anecdotes, and life lessons. The tales dated as far back as his first cross dressing session with a 4 year old playmate to opinions on the 2016 Presidential campaign and the origins of his recently revived 40 year old slogan “No War , No KKK, No Fascist USA“.
