Searching for The Blue Willow

Every season comes with its own accompanying soundtrack; certain songs and albums that fit the mood and the climate to a veritable tee. Likewise, there is some music that just does not work in certain seasons, like, for example, reggae in the darkest depths of winter. Now that the splendor of autumn is in full, colorful swing, I find myself returning to certain discs that suit the light and temperature and evoke autumns of decades past.

One such album is Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves, the debut album by Gavin Friday & The Man Seezer. Though he'd found his initial renown in Dublin's Virgin Prunes, an endearingly difficult and artsy gaggle that combined elements of post-punk, goth, glam and experimental theater into a thrilling and often horrifying mix, Gavin Friday largely abandoned the more confrontational aspects of the by-then-defunct `Prunes in 1988 in favor of the dramatic trappings of vintage cabaret music. Hooking up with versatile multi-instrumentalist Maurice "The Man" Seezer and storied cinematic producer Hal Wilner, Each Man Kills... was a striking departure for Gavin Friday.

I'd been a slavish fan of the Virgin Prunes' sophomore LP from 1982, ...If I Die, I Die from a couple of years earlier, after a husky Irish co-worker at an eatery I'd been washing dishes for extolled its demonic merits to me in the summer of 1986 (I wrote at some length about same here back in 2005). After immersing myself in the band's bedraggled dissonance, I started the follow the Virgin Prunes, but wasn't as enthused about their latter efforts, which found them swapping aggression for foppish new romanticism, like so many other bands of the day.

By the fall of 1989, I'd graduated from college and was interning paylessly at SPIN Magazine. In lieu of income, I handily helped myself to stacks of LPs, cassettes and compact discs that were otherwise discarded by the weary, jaded and underpaid editorial staff, along with a handsome amount of SPIN t-shirts and coffee mugs. In any case, one afternoon while doing some menial task like alphabetizing the press releases, I heard the distinctive, immediately recognizable voice of Gavin Friday come warbling out of the cubicle of a senior editor named Christian. I poked my over the divide and politely asked, "Is this the new Gavin Friday?" She looked at me suspiciously (which was pretty much how she always looked at me) and then raised her eyebrows, wondering how this insufferable college brat knew who Gavin Friday was. Probably in an effort to get me to leave her alone, she slammed her finger down on the eject button, restored the cassette to its case and basically thew it at me. Such was my first hearing of Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves.

Light years away from the deliberately unsettling caterwaul of the early Virgin Prunes, Each Man Kills... exuded a stylish sense of elegant decrepitude, like a Christopher Isherwood novella scored by Jacque Brel (whom Friday covers on the album with great, zealous aplomb). Filled with world-weary melodrama and rich atmospherics, the record truly conjured its own sepia-toned realm that seemed a million miles away from my shrill reality (i.e. transcribing dead-on-arrival interviews with go-nowhere bands over the brain-deadening din of Right Said Fred's "I'm Too Sexy," on seemingly permanent rotation on SPIN's in-office sound system). Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves swiftly became one of my favorite albums of all time, and it remains so to this day. Your life will be enriched for owning it.

Okay, so where am I going with all this? Hang in there.

A big part of the album's atmosphere came augmented by the distinctive photography of Anton Corbijn. If you're unfamiliar with the Dutch shutterbug in question, you'd still doubtlessly recognize his dark, moody portraits of bands like Depeche Mode, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Gavin Friday's bosom buddies in U2. For the Each Man.. sleeve, Corbijn shot Friday and Seezer holed up in what looked like a crumbling speakeasy, lounging wistfully near an antiquated jukebox (doubtlessly trilling something appropriate like Edith Piaf) while an inexplicable nude couple embraces in the corner. Again, C+C Music Factory this was not.

For years, I was curious as to the location of this photograph, assuming it to possibly be a club in Dublin Friday co-owned called The Blue Jaysus. It wasn't until some time later that I bothered to fully read the liner notes to glean that it was actually shot at an establishment right here in New York City called The Blue Willow. Even after I learned that, though, I just sort of took it for granted. This was before everything I found cool about New York City started to vanish on me.

As it turns out, The Blue Willow was a restaurant on the northeast corner at the intersection of Broadway and Bleecker Street, in a building commonly referred to as the Bleecker Tower, a very stately building that you'd probably recognize (it even made a brief cameo in "Ghostbusters", see below).

In any case, by all accounts, The Blue Willow was a pretty stylin' place, although I was unable to find any photographs of the interior outside of Gavin Friday's sleeve. It was evidently only open between 1983 and 1990, about a year after Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves was released. Given that I'm so enraptured with this album, I thought it would be interesting to see what was going on in that room today, twenty-four years after those photographs were taken. So off I went.

I'm not entirely positive what happened at 644 Broadway immediately following the demise of The Blue Willow, but today, it's a rather cloyingly douchey menswear emporium called Atrium. Bohomoth, a website that makes a very dubious claim to being "the quintessential guide to New York City," describes Atrium as being known for its "hip, fashion-forward designer accessories." I stepped into the place this weekend, and it immediately repelled me, but let's face it, despite being male, I'm not exactly their target demographic.

In any case, the liner notes for Each Man Kills cite the album cover photographs as having been taken in "the backroom" at the Blue Willow. Today, sadly, said backroom has been basically split into two chambers that play host to Atrium's shoe department. The floors look pretty much the same, but the endearingly rustic interiors of the old Blue Willow are long gone.

 

If I'm not mistaken, the window box in the right hand half of the cover (where you see Maurice Seezer seated in front of a piano) is now a doorway to the alley behind the building (see below).

The only real visual leftover from the Blue Willow's years that remains is the wide, lustrous marble trim around the two portals that lead to the backroom, one of which having since been plastered up (see below).

I'd originally intended to reproduce my own version of the album cover, but with the room now divvied up as it is, it was nigh on impossible. Moreover, the Atrium staff weren't exactly too pleased to have this weirdo wandering around the shop, not buying anything and taking random pictures.

Epilogue:

In the ensuing decades since the release of Each Man Kills the Thing He Loves, I've continued to follow Gavin Friday. On the tour for that first record, my friend Rob and I saw him perform at CBGB, a venue he seemed somewhat unimpressed by. A little time after that, Friday came back and played a spirited show at the Bottom Line. Like the Blue Willow, both CBGB and The Bottom Line are now gone. A couple of years alter, I had the pleasure of spending a long afternoon interviewing Friday at his manager's office down on White Street in TriBeCa on the eve of the release of his second album, Adam 'n' Eve on 1992, and caught an intimate performance of his later that same evening at Sin-E on St. Mark's Place. Like The Blue Willow, CBGB and The Bottom Line, Sin-E is also now gone. The final time I saw Gavin Friday perform was during his tour for his 1995 album, Shag Tobacco. For that event, he played another intimate gig, this time in the way West Village at the WestBeth Theater. And, yes....like The Blue Willow, CBGB, The Bottom Line and Sin-E, The WestBeth is also gone.

Enjoy what's left of the city while it's still here.

Comments

[Dan O]

I decided to google search for the Blue Willow as I saw a friend today , whom I haven't seen since we hung out at the Blue Willow. I too returned (like a decade ago while on a business trip) and found some sort of offensive clothing store. I used to be kind of a regular. Bartenders name was Amy...and there was a HUGE grand Piano in one of the back rooms (there were several AND a labyrinthine basement) Word was Mr. R. Diniro had a few parties there...I did crash some. Anyway, I fancied myself a songwriter and for SOME reason Amy let me hang in the back and play, play, play.
The interior had, what 30' pressed tin ceiling...lots of persian rugs, antique (ish) furniture, an AWESOME bar...it was so very stylish, cavernous and comfortable at the same time. Historic and it is a crying fucking shame that it isn't still there.

[Jim Yansick]

It was very sweet you went looking for the blue willow, I think the first time I did was early 90s. I did eventually realize it was gone. The city was still cool then. Time Square was just one big titty bar, and the village felt almost other worldly. Now in a sinister way it's very Disney!
Yes Darlin the city has changed now, but few spots are still left amid the new rubble.
I still have the poster to each man hanging in my music room, a place devoted to just music listening. It's the one poster that has not come down in spite of comments that do not support the concepts that Friday and Wilde presented to the arts. I do enlightened them as best can. I followed Friday from just about day one as vp, meeting him in a record shop in early 80s, then seeing the exquisite over the top performance at Carnegie, saw in between, always a highly intense art performance, simply orgasmic.So if you think about what you went searching for and the title to the setting of the album it seems appropriate. Each man doth kill...that which he loves!
Cowards with a kiss, brave men with real estate...perhaps that is backwards but you get my drift ... Sentimentality is often devoured by those in a position to just take it away, the wise hold onto it in their hearts always! The blue willow will always live on in your mind and heart!
Jim

[Lisa Guliani]

I used to work in the penthouse of 644 Broadway. My boss, Martin Fine, owned the building, and his restaurant, The Blue Willow, was located on the ground floor. His real estate/law offices were situated in the penthouse suite. The office staff used to eat and drink at Blue Willow, and we also printed up their menus. We got to know the restaurant staff pretty well. It was a wonderful, eclectic restaurant.

Robert DeNiro held a party for his father, I think it was, at the restaurant one year.

The penthouse, where I worked, was furnished with all the antiques my boss had bought. IHe used to bring women up there - models - and in the mornings, we'd find glasses with residual alcoholic drinks still in them, or small roaches of the joints that had been smoked the previous night.

It was a strange place to work and a strange man to work for, but it was one hell of an experience during my time there.
I worked there in my 18th year.

It saddens me to see that it's gone now.
It was a fine old building and Blue Willow had an undeniable ambience in those days. It will remain as it was, in my memory box.

Nothing stays the same, does it...

~ Lisa G.

[WasProxy]

great writeup. i went to Blue Willow with my girlfriend on our first date on February 18, 1989. was a great place, spacious, great food, wonderful staff, tin ceiling. the evening light through those huge picture windows made everyone look like a star. i remember having a delicious foie gras ravioli in broth. sadly, the place closed a few years later along with several other neighborhood favorites of ours - Poppolini's, Hayashi, West 4th St. Saloon and of course Riverrun down in what would eventually be known as Tribeca.

But it's not all bad news - we're now married and it's 24 years later.

Good times!

[Damien Bentley]

What a magnificent write-up and I have to say I loved the comments from others as well, almost just as much as I enjoyed the article; This is one heck of a weird album, it's the sort of album you just live with... if that makes any sense[!?] I am just as nostalgic about this album today as I was years ago, the feeling hasn't changed oddly enough! Frankly, it's my least favourite Gavin Friday album musically, yet I still adore it for the artistic/poetic Oscar Wilde-like quality it possesses... and I think the biggest thing for me is that it's like a timeless time-capsule in and of itself... it's just sort of silently there, austerely sticking out like a sore thumb... in the background of my memory! The grainy, mysterious Anton Corbijn photography has just about every bit to do with it as the music itself does. That's what sticks out most in my mind; the photos that accompany the liner notes in the booklet. As an avid album collecter, I used to pore over the liner notes repeatedly, revisiting them when the mood dragged me back to them, as if to see if I could find the mystery within suddenly revealed... you know whn you can't remember something... and you say to yourself 'ok, forget it, i'l go do something else, it'll come to me later perhaps!', well this album has that exact effect on me, for whatever reason! My story and connection with discovering Gavin Friday is a strange one; I had followed the VIRGIN PRUNES on and off since somehow aquiring the 'IF I DIE, I DIE' Cassette Tape way back when, and after that any time I saw any sort of Virgin Prunes release on cassette, vinyl or CD, i simply snatched it up without a 2nd thought... I think that happened because I was listening to other things like Depeche Mode [Black Celebration], early-Ministry, Christian Death and Alien Sex Fiend I think it was back then. So, I just new this weird band called the Virgin Prunes that way! Years later, when I got into U2, I learned about Gavin Friday and then retraced the connecting dots and realized it was the same bloke, in a completely different guise... so then I got into GAVIN FRIDAY as a solo artist in his own right, and as much as I love U2, Gavin Friday suits my style and artistic weirdness much better perhaps... so, for me Gavin Friday has just always been there, with me... I have bought 'Each Man Kills The Thing He Loves' at least twice, 'Adam & Eve', twice, 'Shag Tobacco' twice... anytime I noticed a diffrent cover or different release version, I snatched it up and I'm proud to say I was thrilled to find his glorious recent album, on special order mind you, from a record store in Hong Kong... so for me Gavin Friday follows me around internationally, wherever I may be and on whatever side of this planet I happen to be on at the time... and somehow, it's a rather consoling, comforting feeling that brings me great solace, I'm happy to say!;)

[Susan Abbott Wofford]

It's so interesting to have found this page. I was having fond memories of a spot that a friend and I stumbled across in the early-mid '80's called The Blue Willow. I will always remember how at home I felt there, we were young girls visiting NYC from the South. I've got a trip to NYC coming up soon and was going to take my own "young girls" to experience this lovely place. I hate to hear that it's gone, but glad to know so many others out there enjoyed it as much as I did.

[Polly]

Just reading this now, as December 9th 1989 was the day I met my husband to be at a a Christmas party at the Blue Willow. It was the best place and it’s so sad that it’s gone. We had a few really cool parties there and hung out there a lot, always just the best place. We remember the Nlur Willow every year on this day and thank it and everyone there who helped bring us together that fateful night on December 9 so long ago💜thank you blue willow and thanks for this great article 🙏🏼