This is just a part of a longer piece from Longreads on the Detroit punk scene in the 80s.
An Oral History of Detroit Punk Rock
In Detroit’s empty buildings and troubled streets, restless kids squatted, ran punk clubs, pressed their own records, and made their own magazine. They mostly stayed out of trouble.
Detroit is known for many things: Motown, automobiles, decline and rebirth. This is the story of Detroit’s punk and hardcore music scenes, which thrived in the suffering city center between the late-1970s and mid-80s. Told by the players themselves, it’s adapted from Steve Miller’s lively, larger oral history Detroit Rock City, which covers everyone from Iggy and the Stooges to the Gories to the White Stripes. Our thanks to Miller and DaCapo for sharing this with the Longreads community.
by Steve Miller
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| Romantics '78 - Sue Rynski |
Mike Skill (The Romantics, guitarist, bassist): The Romantics played with the Pigs and the Traitors, with Don Was. It was some place in Oak Park at the school where Don’s dad was the principal.
Don Was: Yeah, my dad was a counselor at the junior high in Oak Park. We got him to book the Traitors and the Romantics just to have a chance to get out and play somewhere. It was disastrous. We got to play, but it was a huge incident for my dad.
Chris Panackia: The Romantics eventually would play three nights at Bookie’s and sell out every night. They played the Silverbird on a Monday night and didn’t announce the show until just before doors. This was right when “Tell It to Carrie” was starting to hit and people were just waiting for them to explode. When they announced it on the radio, 6 Mile and Telegraph became a parking lot. There were probably a thousand people there that couldn’t get in outside.
Bill Kozy (Speedball, guitarist): I was real young, and my pals from Warren Avenue took me and to the Silverbird when the Romantics did a surprise show. Beers were 25 cents. It was this rowdy rock crowd, but things were different than that. The Romantics’ fans looked like late-seventies rock people.
Mike Murphy: People kept saying someone will discover Detroit at that time, like they did in New York and Los Angeles, and it never happened. Then the bands imploded or were erratic, and it was kind of strange that nothing ever happened out of that whole time, the first wave of punk rock. Bands were going to New York and playing shows and showcases.
Katy Hait (Sillies, vocalist, photographer): These bands from other cities would come in—Teenage Head from Toronto, Skafish from Chicago—and we were just as good as those bands. We joked about it because Detroit was such an underdog. Bands from LA and New York would become famous even though they weren’t that great.
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| Rock Band The Romantics Performing on Stage (Photo by Lynn Goldsmith/Corbis/VCG via Getty Images) |
Kay Young (photographer): The music was really good, but no one hit like the Ramones or the Cramps did because Detroit was not New York. There were no record label scouts here.
Jerry Vile (The Boners, vocalist, artist, editor, White Noise, Orbit): The whole Detroit punk thing—nobody made it, and there are a lot of reasons. The record covers always looked like shit.
Vince Bannon (Bookie’s, City Club promoter; Coldcock, Sillies, guitarist): The Romantics were the only ones to pull out of Detroit in that era with any kind of substantial deal. You know it’s interesting: Jerry Harrison of the Talking Heads told me that all these bands rolled into New York City because there were so many clubs besides CBGB that they would play. They could actually afford to live in the East Village and build a buzz. So you’re an A&R guy in New York, and this band is playing various buildings, and there’s a big buzz. Same thing in LA. The thing you have to remember is, what big bands came out of LA? The first punk rock bands were all signed to independents. It was out of New York where at that time the record capital was, and if you were to make it, you had to go and live in New York and do it. Also, anybody who really made it—from the biggest pop star to the rock-and-roll guy you think is totally underground—their ambition is through the roof. A lot of these guys that were from Detroit, they lived at their parents’ house, they go and play a gig, they come home, and Mom would make them breakfast in the morning.
David Keeps (Destroy All Monsters, manager): Bands from Bookie’s didn’t break out. The bands that did do something had heavy management, people who were willing to invest money in them to get them out of Detroit, like the Romantics. Also in Detroit you didn’t have these bands with money or commitment. You had to have both, and many didn’t. I don’t think anyone was poor; I think that they were mostly suburban kids living in their parents’ houses and didn’t have jobs. They weren’t like dole kids. It wasn’t as if you went to Bookie’s and all these people were from the projects or got ADC. There were kids who wanted to move out of their parents’ and lived in shitty neighborhoods.
Read the complete piece here.
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