When We Was Kids: Willie Phoenix and Me In 1978

Right before I folded Growing Old With Rock & Roll the first time, back in 2013, I wrote a four (really five, including an appendix) part series about Columbus, Ohio, rock & roll genius Willie Phoenix.  I wrote that series because I couldn’t imagine NOT honoring Willie’s contributions to local Columbus rock & roll and – indeed – rock & roll in general before signing off Growing Old.  If I hadn’t met and befriended Willie in February 1978 I wouldn’t be HALF the rocker I am today.  I learned more from Willie about songwriting, about rehearsing a band, about attaining a sense of STYLE in rock & roll than from probably anybody else in my life.

That being said, it wasn’t like all that rock & roll education came as a chore.  Willie – and the rest of Romantic Noise: Greg Glasgow, John Ballor & Dee Hunt – and I pretty much had a BLAST all through 1978.  And it’s not like all this stuff is ancient history; my association with Willie continues to this day.  I found the piece reproduced below just this week while researching an article I wrote for Pencil Storm – my good friend Colin Gawel of Watershed’s blog – about the vinyl release of a single by Colin’s project The Willie Phoenix Tribute Machine.

About that 2013 series: You really need to promise me you’ll check those blogs out in tandem with this one.  Those were the meat & potatoes of the Willie Phoenix story, this blog is a dessert.  Here’s some links: The Ballad Of Willie Phoenix – Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four.  (appendix to The Ballad of Willie Phoenix, the songs of Romantic Noise and The Buttons is also cool, and you should check it out.)

For the 21st century PC-minded among you, please keep in mind these stories played out in 1978: before sex could kill you; when being a member of a rock & roll band carried some weight; before FUN was disallowed in rock & roll.  I have often said that the two greatest things ever invented in the United States are: 1) the electric guitar, and 2) the American teenage girl.  In 1978 Willie and I had the utmost affection & respect for both, when we was kids.

(Romantic Noise, 1978)

(reprinted from Pencil Storm blog: Three Random Willie Phoenix Stories; March, 2015)

I

When I first met Willie in 1978, when he was leading Romantic Noise, the band (Willie, Greg Glasgow on bass & vocals, John Ballor on lead guitar & vocals, and Dee Hunt – the pride of Beckley, West Virginia – on drums) all lived together in a house on 4th Street, right around the corner from that little strip-shopping center on Summit, near Oakland, where Café Bourbon Street and The Summit are now located.  (To be exact, I’m not sure Willie lived there all the time.  As always, his living arrangements were and are a mystery to me, but he was consistently there whenever I dropped by to visit.)

Frequent visitors to the 4th Street house were The CookieBakers: three teenage girls – Erin, Kim & Cindy, by name – who came to all the bands’ gigs and, true to their name, baked cookies for the boys.  It was all really quite innocent & charming; the girls really did bake cookies and bring them to the house.  They weren’t groupies exactly, but Kim and Willie “dated” for quite some time and Erin later married and still later was divorced from Greg, so more than chocolate chips were exchanged, if you get my drift.

Anyway, one day in early spring ’78 we were all at the house and Erin was telling an elaborate story about something that had happened at high school that day.  She was wearing a longish skirt, but the skirt was also really sheer and once the setting sun starting pouring in the picture window in the front of the house, she might as well NOT HAVE BEEN WEARING A SKIRT AT ALL.  So Erin’s jumping around, acting out the story and the guys and I are all stifling laughs, just staring at her essentially naked from the waist down form, when Kim walks back in from the kitchen and yells, “ERIN, WHAT ARE YOU DOING??!!!?”

She pulls a confused Erin out of the sunlight while the rest of us just fall over laughing.  Erin turns beet-red and flees the room, pulling her skirt tighter well after the fact and Kim soundly reads us the riot act: “That wasn’t funny, you guys, that was just mean.”  I think she might have actually cuffed Willie on the head, and then she spun on me, saying, “I would have expected this from these guys, Ricki, but I really expected better behavior from you.”  What the hell?  Was my twelve-years-of-Catholic-school-upbringing really that apparent, even at that late a date?

“I’m just one of the boys,” I said to a livid Kim, “you’d best not expect that much of me.”  That became only truer and more accurate as the year went on.

II

It’s after a Romantic Noise gig at either the Drake Student Union on the Ohio State campus or a club called Cafe Rock & Roll, I can’t exactly recall which.  I’m packing up gear and Willie initiates a conversation with my lead singer & girlfriend Nicole, whom I’ve brought along to the show that night:

Willie – “Hey Nicole, why don’t we go out to my car?”

Nicole (feigning naivete, she’s seen this Willie show before) – “What would we do in your car, Willie?”  

Willie – “Oh, we’d just talk and stuff.  It’d be no big deal.”

Nicole – “Well, we could talk right here, Willie, we’re talking right now.”

Willie – “Yeah, but in my car, we could listen to music, or we could talk more private.  Or do more private things.”

Nicole (in a tone like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth)  – “Oh, I’m not sure Ricki would like it if we did more private things, Willie.”  

Willie – “Oh no, Ricki would be cool with that.  Ricki’s a cool guy.”

Ricki – “WILLIE, I’M STANDING RIGHT HERE.”

Willie (glancing briefly in my direction, and then totally ignoring the outburst) – “So, whattya say, should we go outside?”

Nicole – “We’re not going out to your car, Willie.”

Willie – “Okay, just give it some thought,” patting Nicole’s hand and walking over to a random girl standing by the bar, “Hey, why don’t we got out to my car?”

(Willie Phoenix & Dee Hunt: May, 1978) 

III

Drummer Dee Hunt, Willie & I are having a bite to eat at that Wendy’s on High Street across from campus by where Schoolkid’s Records used to be and Willie starts telling us – apropos of not much – that the night before he scored with a Hare Krishna girl he picked up at the airport.  Dee & I exchange a glance, and then Dee says, “You made it with a Hare Krishna girl?”  “Yeah,” Willie says, nonchalantly, like this is an everyday occurrence in the little rock & roll circles in which we move.

“Didn’t it creep you out that she was bald?” Dee asked, in those long-ago pre-Sinead O’Connor days of the late 1970’s.

“Well, I made her wear a hat,” Willie deadpans, and I laugh so hard that some of my Frosty comes out my nose.

Willie was my hero.

I miss the 1970’s. – Ricki C. / March 4th, 2015.

(your humble author: May, 1978)

© 2020 Ricki C.