Anita Explanation

My Father’s Place & my lasting heartbreak

My Father’s Place (Roslyn, NY) like CBGB, was one of the few area clubs the Nihilistics played more than once. While most LI venues of its size were content to book local cover and tribute bands, according to Wikipedia:

In the nearly sixteen years the club was open before it closed in 1987, My Father's Place presented more than 6,000 shows from over 3,000 diverse artists. Its promoter Michael "Eppy" Epstein refused to book cover bands, and so the club became known as a place aspiring artists could perform. Young unknown musicians such as Black Flag, Billy Joel, Bruce Springsteen, Madonna, Aerosmith, The Police, Tom Petty, as well as hopeful comics Billy Crystal, Eddie Murphy, and Andy Kaufman, and a host of others graced the stage. Unlike most other clubs that highlighted one genre or one particular era of music, the variety of My Father's Place was possibly its most important trait. The club debuted in America most of reggae's biggest stars, helping to make the genre mainstream. Along with CBGB and Max's Kansas City, My Father's Place was a nurturing ground for young punk and new wave acts like The Runaways, The Ramones, Blondie, The Police, and Talking Heads. Country, bluegrass, and blues artists like Charlie Daniels, Linda Ronstadt, and Stevie Ray Vaughan performed early in their careers, while artists like James Brown, B.B. King, Johnny Winter and Bo Diddley played in the twilight of theirs.

Enter the Nihilistics.

Roslyn is an upscale North Shore town: Nihilistics hailed from the South Shore. This is a bigger deal than you might think. Against the North Shore’s conjured images of Great Gatsby levels of inherited wealth, the South Shore always carried a faint whiff of blue-collar inferiority. Back then, not even the South Fork’s Hamptons or Montauk carried the same cachet as certain moneyed North Shore towns. I’d attended shows at My Father’s Place and had a fair amount of trepidation over playing there. The place had been a car dealership, funeral home, bakery and bowling alley but came into its own as a music venue, nationally renowned for its top-notch sound system, fantastic sight-lines and classy interior. Nihilistics played so many absolute shit-holes that appearing at My Father’s Place was trading up from a broken-down Chevy to a top-of-the-line Cadillac. I’d love to tell you how many times we were booked there–was it 3 or 4? (and, contrary to the doctored My Father’s Place flyer–see above–floating around, we never were on a bill with Black Flag)–but it’s where we decided to shoot the one-and–(apparently)–only professionally-helmed video of the band on stage circa 1984.

We hired a local videographer who took a feed from the mixing console and filmed our entire show in front of an enthusiastic audience. I’m not sure I ever saw the results. Whoever paid the videographer (it wasn’t me) ended up with the video. Years back, when I was in touch with Mike Nicolosi (RIP), he told me the video had been destroyed when his basement flooded. But how is it possible there was only ONE copy? Wouldn’t SOMEBODY–the videographer, another member of the band?–have another? It remains a heartbreaking mystery, especially since no other footage of the band’s first incarnation has surfaced. I’d give my left nut to see us on stage in our prime (or, if you’d prefer not to have a testicle, I’d pay you a decent amount of cash). Ironically, it may have been Nihilistics’ one documented show that featured an unexpected appearance by none other than Anita Pallenberg (who was living in a rented mansion 10 minutes away at the time), subject of a new documentary.

Anita Pallenberg was much more than a Rolling Stones girlfriend (Brian Jones, Keith Richards and possibly Mick Jagger): she was a model, actress, fashion icon and one of the “It” girls of the 1960s. She was also an alcoholic, junkie and–by the time she emerged out of the darkness near My Father’s Place–a bloated, unrecognizable mess.

In my memory it was after Midnight, the Nihilistics were either packing gear away in cars, having a smoke-break, kibitzing on the sidewalk with fans or all three. This large, unsteady woman with a German-ish accent shows up and slurs “Mick and the boys wanna play a set!” We look at her like she’s nuts and invoke one of our standard lines, stolen from a Bugs Bunny cartoon:

Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure.

Ron’s the first one to figure out who she is.

Hey, maybe she’s not full of shit? Should we stick around, see if the Rolling Stones show up?

I’ll admit to not caring much about the 1984 Rolling Stones. I’d lost interest after Some Girls and was tired and not interested in hanging around Roslyn on the shaky words of an obviously fucked-up former paramour of the band. Someone came and collected Anita Pallenberg, leading her away from My Father’s Place and back to a parked car, while we razzed her.

Sure, tell Mick and the boys to come on down! HA-HA-HA-HA!

For the longest time I’d repressed this My Father’s Place story, focused as I was on the long-missing Nihilistics video. But if I never get to see footage of us, at least I can say I MET ANITA PALLENBERG.

Next time: I meet Nico.