Flaming Pablum

For The Love of Rick Wakeman

I should preface this post by firmly asserting two things. For a start, I love Yes. Secondly, I think the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is utterly fucking meaningless.

I’ve stated both before here, of course, but for the purposes of this post, they bear repeating.

If you’re trying to divine the most seemingly pompous aspect of what is conventionally known as Progressive Rock (or simply “Prog”), you really needn’t look any further than one Rick Wakeman. A hoarily hirsute keyboard-noodler with penchants for classical filligree and cape-wearing, Wakeman was integral in defining the sound of Yes. Originally a member of Strawbs, Wakeman famously turned down an offer to play in Bowie’s Spiders from Mars band, opting instead to replace exiting Yes keyboardist Tony Kaye prior to recording the Fragile album, arguably Yes’ greatest single LP (although some still prefer Close to the Edge). Alongside the spidery guitars of Steve Howe (who was also not an original Yes member), Wakeman’s signature baroque flourishes brought much of Yes’ more progressive aspirations to full-blown, dizzyingly technicolor fruition.

He also, more ridiculously, staged a musical revue of the legend of King Arthur …on ice. You can Google it.

I, meanwhile, first cultivated a love of Yes from hearing my older cousin Chuck blast the shit out of “South Side of The Sky” (also from Fragile) from the bowels of the bumper-pool room of the basement in their massive home in the Berkshires, its swirling keyboards, doomy Tolkienesque narrative, epic harmonizing and soaring guitars rocking the wood paneling off the walls and blowing my little tween mind. I was forever hooked.

Even though Wakeman would leave, re-join and leave Yes again several more times, his contributions to the band’s most beloved musical moments are ornately carved in stone. As equal to the sound of Chris Squire’s intricate basslines or Jon Anderson’s elfin vocals, Rick Wakeman’s fleet-fingered organ-bothering are an inimitable part of the band’s DNA.

But when you factor in the tonsorial and sartorial shenanigans of Wakeman, the preposterously pretentious nature of a lot of his work (the King Arthur thing is the just the tip of a very silly iceberg), it’s not hard to see how he became kind of the personification of all the more ridicule-worthy elements of Prog.

Here’s the thing, though – Rick Wakeman is fucking hilarious.

I didn’t watch it when it happened, because – as stated above – I fucking detest the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, but Rick Wakeman’s speech at their induction into the Hall in 2017 is really one for the fucking history books.

Instead of dwelling on the intricacies of recording some of their famously complicated compositions or unspooling anecdotes about how he came to join the band, Wakeman, who assumes the mic just after guitarist Steve Howe’s somewhat insufferably earnest speech (you catch the tale end of that in the clip below), takes proceedings into a completely different direction,... one that you might not totally expect from practically the face of Uber Prog.

Sit tight for Wakeman. It’s so worth it.

The Distant Sound of Drums: Finding the Lost Club by the Bridge

So,in somewhat typical fashion, after posting that piece about Pussy Galore and The Gun Club playing at a mysterious club called Drums near the 59th Street Bridge, I became preoccupied with finding out more. This kinda happens to me a lot.

This was challenging on a number of fronts. For a start, the very name of the club – Drums – isn’t one that readily lends itself to easy research. I mean, the term is going to come up in virtually every entry about live music in one form or another.

Secondly, there’s the neighborhood it was allegedly situated in. Personally speaking, I consider that midtown, but – technically – East 59th Street is broadly seen as the southern border of the Upper East Side. It may not feel like the Upper East Side to some folks like yours truly, but be that as it may, it has been thus established.

Thirdly, while really not that long ago, Drums seems to have only existed for a hot second. It would have been in operation when I was old enough to drink, mix and mingle within its interior, so why I myself had never heard of it is a mystery, especially since it was hosting arguably scary bands I cared about like Pussy Galore and the Gun Club, but I spent much of 1988 still in college, so I can only assume that’s why I missed it.

Anyway, fixated with finding out more, I went up there, on rainy Saturday, to check the neighborhood out. I don’t know what I expected to find, but I felt compelled to go look.

Back in the day, so to speak, I spent a little bit of time around the 59th Street Bridge. My late friend Danny and I used to frequent a video arcade on First Avenue not too far from the comedy club, Dangerfield’s. Similarly, my fellow avid comic-collecting friend Jeremy’s divorced father had a sad studio apartment at 300 East 59th Street that we sometimes hung out at. Lastly, my own dad had a relationship with an airline hostess (yeah, I know) who lived in a cramped little apartment under the bridge’s overpass on super-depressing East 61st street. Lest that sound worse that it was, Dad actually married her, rescuing her from said flat. She was his third wife of ... several, but was a genuinely nice lady. They divorced, too (spoiler alert), but that’s a whole other story. Her former street looks a little bit better today, but it’s still a long way from salubrious.

Anyway, on Saturday, I circumnavigated the area, speculating where a live-music venue and/or rock club might’ve once held court. I’d hope to come across a neighborhood Irish bar wherein I might have found an old mainstay who’d have recalled such a venture, but no such luck. There was one spot I had a hunch about, but more about that later.

Overall, however, that little cluster of sloping streets – now outfitted with a Trader Joe’s under the bridge – exuded very little to suggest that a band like the antagonistically slovenly Pussy Galore had ever plugged in and rocked out nearby, especially but a stone’s throw from the posh environs of Sutton Place. That all said, while snapping some pics, I did see one little trace of “downtown.” Spraypainted high on a wall adjacent to the bridge was the telltale Missing Foundation logo, normally never seen north of Union Square. To tie it back to this story, prior to joining Pussy Galore, drummer Bob Bert did play in Drunk Driving, the band fronted by Peter Missing that would later turn into Missing Foundation. I took that as a sign.

Over the next few days, meanwhile, I continued my largely fruitless Googling, but made very little progress. More recently, however, a regular reader named G (that’s it … just G) wrote in to say he, too, had been to Drums, but was not largely impressed. He did, however, suggest that it was on East 60th, and not East 59th. That one little tip made all the difference.

I started Googling “Drums” and “East 60th Street” and BOOM, up came a “Sounds Around Town” piece by John Pareles from a 1987 issue of New York Times that cited the address of Drums as 333 East 60th Street.

My hunch was correct. The space that used to be Drums in the late `80s later became an outlet of the strip-tease franchise Score’s (I was actually taken to this very address for my bachelor party in 2001), only to later morph into the venture it is today, which is another strip club called Sapphire, which caters to hip-hoppin’ high rollers.

While that doesn’t shed very much light on what Drums was all about, that does kind of close the case.

Pussy Galore, meanwhile, sounded like this, at the time....

Back to Zoo York

In a not-at-all-surprising development, I have now become obsessed with divining the exact address and location of Drums, the club mentioned in that last post, allegedly somewhere in the shadow of 59th Street Bridge circa 1988.

Thing is, though, this is an incredibly difficult one. I mean, for a start, try Googling “Drums,” and “rock club” and see what comes up. It’s not the most distinctive name. It might take me a while, ... a long while. 

In any case, in my vain searching, I stumbled (or re-stumbled, more likely) on the photographs in Flickr of one DMAX3270, and, more specifically, their album, “A Zoo York State of Mind: 1985-1993.” It’s a captivating look at a city that is now virtually unrecognizable.

FIXED: Check it out here.