in '96 i lived two blocks from Willy DeVille.
after his girlfriend started buying presents for willy, who turned out to be a neighbor, at my gallery,
i got up the nerve to go over to their house one night.
for the next three years, i spent as much time hangin' out on his stoop as i could.
our topics of discussion were varied, but they seemed to always touch down on music, doctors...
doc pomus, little willie john, nyc, mardi gras indians, etc.,
i soon became a fixture at chez deville (even though the gf new that we weren't having AA meetings, and treated me commensurately).
conversation was easy...and heady (to the best of my recollection).
we shared a record label in France - New Rose; a prediliction for weird clothing and hairstyles (i had begun a short-lived flirtation with extravagantly long, colored hair extensions, which i bartered for goods; and he...well, let's just say that when i was seventeen, i would take his first album cover into the hair stylist).
we both loved antiques (and both took advantage of the French Quarter's never-ending suppy of same), bizarre art (i sold african and png ethnic art, as well as southern outsider and folk art--but what really turned Willy on was our collection of skulls, skeletons, and mostly, plastinated animal heads, which we were only the second gallery in America to feature).
the thing i liked best about willy, was that he was the first person i knew who collected Victorian eyeglasses--see i knew one of everybody who collected everything else.
Willy got me to share with him some of my headache remedies and cures (but never their source--a local, enterprising art framer); and i was bound by an oath, probably sworn over a little willie john record (his favorite), never to let on to his girlfriend (whose name, for the life of me, i can't recall) our very innocent (only by their infrequency, however) junco nights.
i was always repaid in full with midnight to dawn private jam sessions and dj nights in the parlor of his creole cottage, amidst the rin tin tinnabulations of his little mutt (although, knowing willy, it was some exotic breed), named dixie belle.
chez deville was decorated in what i'd call, early 'Interview With a Vampire'' (which strangely enough was filmed below my third-floor balcony, transforming the entire block of Royal St. over which I resided into a dirt-covered mews)...
sorry, starting to get sad again, and it's turning into a real fucking drag...maybe some other time. i'll let whoever wrote this post below which i compiled about the true events of johnny thunders death...right next door to chez deville, and as the junkie-walter cronkite might say, 'i was there, man.'
Singer Willy DeVille, who lived next door to the hotel in which Thunders died, described his death this way:
I don't know how the word got out that I lived next door, but all of a sudden the phone started ringing and ringing. Rolling Stone was calling, the Village Voice called, his family called, and then his guitar player called. I felt bad for all of them. t was a tragic end, and I mean, he went out in a blaze of glory, ha ha ha, so I thought I might as well make it look real good, you know, out of respect, so I just told everybody that when Johnny died he was laying down on the floor with his guitar in his hands. I made that up. When he came out of the St. Peter's Guest House, riga mortis had set in to such an extent that his body was in a U shape. When you're laying on the floor in a fetal position, doubled over - well, when the body bag came out, it was in a U. It was pretty awful.
courtesy of junkipedia
here's the swedish account, translated by sebastian, who formerly owned this blog...
Johnny Thunders låg död på mitt hotellrumNEW ORLEANSIko Iko
Sitter i Johnny Thunders dödsrum, dricker Hurricane, lyssnar på Dr John och stoppar nålar i voodoodockan.
Men ångbåtsorgeltanten tutar vidare.
Rum 37 på hotell St Peters House är litet, kostar 69 dollar, jag sitter på sängen.
På andra sidan korsningen Burgundy Street (Rue de Bourgogne) och St Peter Street ligger CD"s Saloon - baren där punkrockens Dean Martin, heroinisten Johnny Thunders, träffade två skurkar och tog sitt sista glas.
Sedan hittades New York Dolls-mannen död här på golvet, utanför toaletten. Rånad och antagligen mördad av dåliga droger. Han hade också lymfkörtelcancer.and your host has been kind enough without the aid of nicotine to translate it into pidginglish:"Johnny Thunders was laying dead in my hotel room.Sitting in Johnny Thunders room of death, drinking Hurricane, listening to Dr John and putting needles in the voodoo doll.But the steamboat-organist-lady is still horning away
Room 37 on hotel St Peters House is tiny, costs 69 dollar, I'm sitting on the bead.
On the other side of the Burgundy Street (Rue de Bourgogne) och St Peter Street crossing is CD"s Saloon - the bar where the Dean Martin of punk rock, the heroinist Johnny Thunders, met two crooks and had his last glass.
Later the New York Dolls-man was found dead död here on the floor, outside the toilet. Robbed and probably murdered by bad drugs. He also had lymphocyte cancer.
Han was 38 years old.Thunders sang "You can"t put you arms around a memory" and Per Bjurman likes him alot.
Bjurton likes New Orleans alot too. He's a sinner, he's a saint.
Bon voyage, baby.
My travel companion, Svenska Dagbladets enfant terrible, the man with William Faulkners "Sound and the Fury" on the nighstand, puts the needles in the country music enthusiast who can find a five star record every week and I've got two guys - you know who you are, teehee - back in the old country who will receive my needles in the voodoo doll for 15 dollars.but fiest I'm aiming at the lousy lady onboard the Mississippi steamboat Nachez. Her off-key steamorgansqueels by Tennessee Williams tramway "Linje Lusta" and perhaps all the way to Tipetina"s and I'm sure voodoo musician Professor Longhair, whos head you ought to rub there, had put his needles into her if he had been into voodoo. Been her in "The Big Easy" four times now, but never seen Mystikal or Master P. Or Dr John. But the lady plays the steamboat every time..
My voodoo must be wrong.
Voodoo religion exists only in Haiti, in Brasil and here in Louisiana. 15 % of New Orleans population is down with voodoo. The local voodoo saint is Marie Laveau but that doesn't help me. The old lady still plays.I wish someone could rub my head too. Well, this sickening headache; I don't know wether it was the cajun-martini I had at Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana-cooking-restaurang K-Pauls or if it is the plague from NYC or if it's the flu or if the needle I put in Mr. X's head backfired..
That's how the story goes. Respect voodoo.Like Dr John sings :
"After you rub it a while, you dub it."
Meeting perhaps the worlds fattest black gay. He's cooking his cajun sausages Po-Boys together with a tiny little transvestite at Clover Grill, a little place on Borbon Street and Dumaine.
- Come on in, ya"ll, we not gonna eat ya, he says and flirts with a gumbo in the hand.
What a man!"/ZMany rumors surround Johnny's death at the St. Peter House in New Orleans, Louisiana in April, 1991. He apparently died of drug-related causes, (i'm sorry but i'm just not buying that) was it accidental or the result of foul play? Dee Dee Ramone (and you know how fond jt was of dd) took a call in New York the next day from Stevie Klasson, Johnny's rhythm guitar player.
"They told me that Johnny had gotten mixed up with some bastards... who ripped him off for his methadone supply. They had given him LSD and then murdered him. He had gotten a pretty large supply of methadone in England, so he could travel and stay away from those creeps - the drug dealers, Thunders imitators, and losers like that."What is known for certain is that Johnny's room (no. 37) was ransacked...cont.
