Speaker 1: Teenage lobotomy.
Speaker 2: I want to be sedated psychotherapy.
Speaker 3: My brain is hanging upside down, brain drain.
Speaker 2: Why this fascination with the brain.
Speaker 4: We're screaming out for help.
Speaker 1: I hope you get that.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Amusing Jews, where we celebrate Jewish contributors and
Speaker 2: contributions to American popular culture. I'm Jonathan Friedman.
Speaker 4: And I'm Joey Angelfield.
Speaker 2: Producer engineer Mike Tomren is working somewhere behind the scenes.
Speaker 2: Amusing Jews is a project of a Dot Hoverine Congregation
Speaker 2: for Humanistic Judaism, the Jewish Museum of the American West,
Speaker 2: and the Atheist United Studios. Hey, Joey, Punk rock is Jewish,
Speaker 2: As today's guest is written, punk reflects the whole Jewish history,
Speaker 2: repression and uncertainty, flight and wandering, belonging and not belonging,
Speaker 2: always being divided, being both in and out, good and bad,
Speaker 2: part and apart the Shpilkes. The nervous energy of punk
Speaker 2: is Jewish.
Speaker 4: We're delighted to talk with Stephen Lee Bieber, a freelance
Speaker 4: journalist and author of.
Speaker 2: The hebgb's at CBGB's.
Speaker 4: A Secret History of Jewish Punk. Stephen, Welcome, to amusing Jews.
Speaker 3: Oh hi, thanks for having me. Great to be here.
Speaker 4: What led you to explore the Jewish history of punk rock?
Speaker 3: Well, I'm Jewish and I grew up at a time
Speaker 3: when it wasn't that cool to be Jewish. You know,
Speaker 3: there was Barry Manilow, and as much as I like
Speaker 3: Paul Simon, it wasn't rock and roll, and yeah, Barbara
Speaker 3: Streiss and and the like. But I liked rock and roll,
Speaker 3: and I did not have heroes as I were, So,
Speaker 3: you know, like most Jews, I wouldn't say I do
Speaker 3: the jew but you do kind of notice when when
Speaker 3: one crosses the radar. And I was at some point
Speaker 3: in the I think it was the early nineties when
Speaker 3: Perry Ferrell of James Addiction was talking about being into
Speaker 3: Cabbala and then Madonna was into Kabala and Britney Spears
Speaker 3: and Heat magazine. It appeared, I'm like, what the hell's
Speaker 3: going on? Jews are cool all of a sudden. So
Speaker 3: I started thinking about looking at this rise and you know,
Speaker 3: Jewish hit and as I started looking at rock in general,
Speaker 3: it hit me, which I'm kind of amazed had never
Speaker 3: hit me before, how Jewish punk was. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: from New York. New York, for all its cultural cachet,
Speaker 3: and like the center of American culture, has really had
Speaker 3: very few rock movements. There's the San Francisco scene, there's Athens,
Speaker 3: there's you know, grunge and Washington and Seattle, but New
Speaker 3: York really is only known for punk. And why because
Speaker 3: well it's the most New York of rock movements. And
Speaker 3: according to the Lenny Bruce formulation, it doesn't matter if
Speaker 3: you're Catholic, if you live in New York, you're Jewish.
Speaker 3: And I think that's so true of punk. Not only
Speaker 3: were once I started to look more closely, a lot
Speaker 3: of the people whose names you know, were changed for
Speaker 3: stage the stage, they were Jewish, but their attitudes were
Speaker 3: so Jewish, you know. Even some of the non Jewish
Speaker 3: acts growing up around Jews and being New Yorkers were
Speaker 3: jew Asque, let's say, not Jewish, jew Esque. So that's
Speaker 3: kind of how I ended up there. And then, of
Speaker 3: course the connection between Nazi imagery and punk and Jews
Speaker 3: seemed counterintuitive at first and then so obvious, like you know,
Speaker 3: like hiding and playing sight and a you know, follow
Speaker 3: the money of the kind of mordergate that the deeper
Speaker 3: I went, the more it became a parent that it was.
Speaker 3: It was really something integral to the beginning. It is
Speaker 3: a punk if not the most intricral thing.
Speaker 2: The spot the jew tendency that a lot of us have,
Speaker 2: myself included. I mean, it can be done on a
Speaker 2: very superficial level where you're like, oh, isn't that interesting,
Speaker 2: isn't that interesting? But when you start to analyze the
Speaker 2: individuals that we spot as Jews, it's very common that
Speaker 2: there's something really quite universal in the Jewish experience that
Speaker 2: is expressed through this person. I know that you found
Speaker 2: a lot of that in the punk movement.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, yeah, no, I you know, I grew up in
Speaker 3: a Jewish family. I love my family, but it was
Speaker 3: always like, oh so and so is jewious, like so,
Speaker 3: you know, unless there's something that is meaningful about it,
Speaker 3: And that's what I was looking for. Is there a
Speaker 3: common thread here other than an accident of being from
Speaker 3: the same background? In other words, ha, did that background
Speaker 3: affect then? And that? Yeah, that's that's what really is.
Speaker 3: From that sort of cultural studies component of it, you know,
Speaker 3: American studies and I pe, you know, kind of looked
Speaker 3: at all the aspects of cultural Jewish and it's not Judaism,
Speaker 3: uh though there's you know, a bleed over there's you know,
Speaker 3: there's some relationship, but cultural Judaism, you know, that idea
Speaker 3: of being outsiders and rootless cosmopolitans, right, who are critiquing
Speaker 3: the culture and making jokes about the culture and making
Speaker 3: jokes in part because the culture they have to deal
Speaker 3: with is oppressive and in the history of oppression for sure.
Speaker 3: I mean, the Holocaust is just the cherry on top
Speaker 3: of the history of Jewish oppression. It's the it's the ultimate.
Speaker 3: But there are plenty others. Inquisition, you know, Babylonian exile,
Speaker 3: you can you know, we all know, we can find
Speaker 3: any anyone anywhere in the world. People have hated us
Speaker 3: at some point badly. And the Holocaust, though it is
Speaker 3: so such an impactful cultural trauma for Jews and really
Speaker 3: for Western civilization. You know, that's I think why it
Speaker 3: doesn't matter in a sense if you're Jewish. You know
Speaker 3: that old Levi's Rye commercial. You don't have to be
Speaker 3: Jewish to love Levi's right. You don't have to be
Speaker 3: Jewish to get how horrible the Holocaust is. But it
Speaker 3: sure doesn't hurt to have for it to strike a
Speaker 3: little deeper. Yeah, yeah, I think it.
Speaker 2: Does hurt, But it hurts so much because it's us.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: You know that Lenny Bruce is considered the patron saint
Speaker 2: of punk rock?
Speaker 3: Why is that a lot of the people who I
Speaker 3: interviewed and I talked about one hundred and fifty people
Speaker 3: in addition to doing you know, research and books and
Speaker 3: past interviews and that kind of thing, but so many
Speaker 3: of them mentioned Lenny Bruce as being really important to
Speaker 3: them growing up. You know. So these were punk is
Speaker 3: early to mid seventies and New York and so these
Speaker 3: are people came of age in the mid to late sixties,
Speaker 3: right or even earlier. And that's Lenny Bruce's height, the popularity.
Speaker 3: And he was synonymous with Jewish, synonymous with New York.
Speaker 3: He was cool. He was you know, a badass, as
Speaker 3: they said, a smart ass and funny with an edge.
Speaker 3: You know, he's all social critique, no taboos. And you
Speaker 3: know Chris Snine I remember from Blondie, who was partners,
Speaker 3: never buried, but partners with w Harry for before the
Speaker 3: band started and through the end of the band talk
Speaker 3: to me about how he kind of recognized later in
Speaker 3: life listening to Lenny Bruce again talking about his own
Speaker 3: marriage to Honey Harlowe, the shick Sagata and how you
Speaker 3: know he was attracted to her in part for that
Speaker 3: and Chris jokingly but also you know, with some truth
Speaker 3: saying that that resonated. You know, that's kind of I
Speaker 3: realized how much that is like Neian Debbie. So they
Speaker 3: really just kind of came up in conversation, and then
Speaker 3: I started asking people because enough people mentioned it, and
Speaker 3: it sounded like just about everybody loved Lenny Bruce. You know,
Speaker 3: maybe except for the DA at the time in New York,
Speaker 3: at most of America, but all the all the punks,
Speaker 3: all the punks liked Lenny Bruce a lot like an adult,
Speaker 3: one of the adults they could look up to, as
Speaker 3: they put.
Speaker 4: It, enjoining the show, click like and subscribe. You argue
Speaker 4: that these largely Jewish musicians, a generation removed from the Holocaust,
Speaker 4: were the first to truly break the silence. How did
Speaker 4: that play out?
Speaker 3: When I wrote the book, I didn't actually even see
Speaker 3: a further connection that I've since kind of come upon,
Speaker 3: and that is the the Eichmann trial. Nineteen sixty one
Speaker 3: was not. It was a pivotal event in Holocaust history
Speaker 3: because up until the Aikman trial, people generally did not
Speaker 3: talk about the Holocaust. Immediately after the war, it was
Speaker 3: all but too painful to talk about it, and it
Speaker 3: was among Jews considered somewhat shameful. It was really hard
Speaker 3: for survivors in that sense to not only have had
Speaker 3: to go through that, but then to be on some
Speaker 3: level not supported. I don't mean they were shunned in exile,
Speaker 3: but people didn't want to advertise that aspect of Jewish is,
Speaker 3: that victimhood as they saw it. When Eichman was brought
Speaker 3: to trial, the idea for David Bengerien and a lot
Speaker 3: of the other Israeli leaders was to use the trial
Speaker 3: for justice obviously, I mean, who deserves to go on
Speaker 3: trial more than Eichman, but to publicize why there was
Speaker 3: an Israel that was that there was a need for
Speaker 3: a haven of sorts, because there were people like this
Speaker 3: out there at very high levels of power, and you know,
Speaker 3: it could happen again. So that trial was one of
Speaker 3: the first, if not the first, really broadcast on network television,
Speaker 3: and there were excerpts every day and in New York
Speaker 3: they were not just excerpts. It was like, I don't
Speaker 3: know if any either you're old enough to remember the
Speaker 3: Watergate hearings, but those were on TV would ruin the
Speaker 3: cartoons on certain days, and Galligan's Island, you couldn't say.
Speaker 2: For us it was the oj Simpson trial.
Speaker 3: There you go, there you go equivalent, Yeah, you know,
Speaker 3: we preempt this message, and so preempting that message in
Speaker 3: New York for long stretches of time was the Eichmann Trial,
Speaker 3: and it was graphic, I mean on purpose. You know,
Speaker 3: they really were honest about what had happened in the
Speaker 3: camps and in Germany and general. And the the children
Speaker 3: who were watching that were the punks. You start to
Speaker 3: see beginnings of the late sixties into the seventies, lots
Speaker 3: of movies, television shows, books, uh directly about the Holocaust
Speaker 3: and indirectly just about Jews. Jews only become very interesting
Speaker 3: to people. Philip roths all Bello, you know, Bernard Malamud
Speaker 3: and writing on television. You got you know, Bridget Loves
Speaker 3: Bernie Rhoda Holocaust, the mini series with Meryl Street and
Speaker 3: Theater Sophie's Choice, Woody Allen Elliott Gould leading men, I
Speaker 3: mean jus is leading men and would have been unheard
Speaker 3: of at one time. Elliott Gould, Dustin Hoffman, Richard Dreyfus,
Speaker 3: lots and lots of very openly not just coded Jewish,
Speaker 3: they were clearly Jewish. Springtime for Hitler, you know the
Speaker 3: producers mel Brooks movie in which he uses the Nazis
Speaker 3: for humor, and that's what the punks did and a
Speaker 3: lot of people misunderstood at the time and thought they
Speaker 3: were just being insensitive offensive. Well, I mean, one can
Speaker 3: make the argument it's kind of insensitive, but one can
Speaker 3: make the argument just as Jews have always done to
Speaker 3: cope with oppression and difficulty, They've made jokes you know
Speaker 3: today and I guess the equivalent would be, you know,
Speaker 3: black people using the N word, they reappropriate it, turn
Speaker 3: it into something that doesn't have the power anymore because
Speaker 3: who is using it, Who's the one that's in charge
Speaker 3: of it? Well, they are, And that's a lot of
Speaker 3: what the the Nazi imagery and punk was about. And
Speaker 3: some very funny jokes about you know, Nazis. They saved
Speaker 3: Hitler's cock, they put it in a box. Was one
Speaker 3: of my favorite lyrics from one of the punk de
Speaker 3: heads of the time.
Speaker 4: Well, I'm also thinking how Jews were not the only
Speaker 4: ones who suffered at the hands of Nazis, and so
Speaker 4: I think maybe Jewish punks were sort of dabbling in
Speaker 4: intersectionality as opposed to exceptionalism. You know, they weren't saying
Speaker 4: Jews were the only ones who suffered, but they were
Speaker 4: sort of leading the leading the charge of the you know,
Speaker 4: anti fascist, fuck Nazi kind of movement.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. I mean, if you want to call the original
Speaker 3: punks the original antifa, I think you're absolutely right. It
Speaker 3: was fascism in general, and it wasn't just the Jews.
Speaker 3: It was the punks in general recognizing that, you know,
Speaker 3: this kind of tendencies, I mean, especially once Reagan came
Speaker 3: around in nineteen eighty. But you know, the punks. I
Speaker 3: think one thing people forget because punks hated hippies, they
Speaker 3: always say, But a lot of the punknks, the early
Speaker 3: punks were hippies, but they were at that end of
Speaker 3: the hippie movement that was more yippie, you know, Jerry
Speaker 3: Rube and Abbie Hoffman politically revolutionary, and they wanted to
Speaker 3: bring back that element of rock and roll, the basic
Speaker 3: rebellious nature of rock and roll, the democratic impulse in
Speaker 3: right anybody can play it, uh, if they have something
Speaker 3: to say, and the passion to say. All of the
Speaker 3: punks were, yeah, addressing not just the Holocaust and history,
Speaker 3: but the potential of Holocaust thinking ideology, you know, right
Speaker 3: wing eyey ideology.
Speaker 5: To to to create darkness and and uh, you know
Speaker 5: when when Ramone wrote this, the Ramone song Bonzo Goes
Speaker 5: to Bittberg about Reagan going to a cemetery in Bittberg, Germany,
Speaker 5: honoring the SS.
Speaker 3: It's different to honor fallen drafted soldiers and who fought,
Speaker 3: you know, in World War Two. That's understandable. It's not
Speaker 3: their fault really, but the SS you had to you
Speaker 3: had to pay your dues and prove you're really loyal.
Speaker 3: And I mean, what are we doing honoring the SS?
Speaker 3: You know? So yeah, and you know, like I say,
Speaker 3: if in the book, but I would even I think
Speaker 3: stress it more now if I were to go back
Speaker 3: and revisit it, the non Jews who also were very
Speaker 3: impacted by the story of Western civilization and what I
Speaker 3: was capable of. If you want to just put it
Speaker 3: into a bigger umbrella. You know, Iggy pop Uh then
Speaker 3: Iggy Stooge are the Stooges had a I think it
Speaker 3: was called the Rape of the Virgin is what he
Speaker 3: called the act, and it was him being stomped on
Speaker 3: and literally bloodied by Ron Ashton, one of the band members,
Speaker 3: wearing a Nazi uniform. And Iggy used to date Jewish
Speaker 3: women almost exclusively, I think married a Jewish woman eventually,
Speaker 3: and his father was actually raised by two Jewish sisters.
Speaker 3: And Iggy when he was dating this one Jewish woman
Speaker 3: at the time, who was a child of Holocaust, of races,
Speaker 3: I have a surprise for you at tonight's show. He
Speaker 3: thought she would love because like cathartic and and he
Speaker 3: did the rape of the Virgin. She hated at She's like,
Speaker 3: what the hell? But he meant well, he met well,
Speaker 3: he was he was trying to exercise the demon in
Speaker 3: a way, right. I mean, even the sex Pistols, for
Speaker 3: all their questionable practices, you know, the holidays and the
Speaker 3: sun talking about, you know, go to a new Belsen.
Speaker 3: What wasn't like they wanted to go to a concentration
Speaker 3: camp for a vacation. They were making fun of people
Speaker 3: who go to like third world countries and enjoy themselves
Speaker 3: while there's misery all around them, and like, you know,
Speaker 3: so they're making a parallel life. Like I'd like to
Speaker 3: go on a vacation to Belsen, you know, that'd be great. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: I think you're right about the intersectionality. It wasn't just
Speaker 3: Jews of gay people, you know, romany people, many Catholics,
Speaker 3: any political enemies. You know, the original concentration camp was
Speaker 3: for political enemies in Dacau, Germany. So I'm not telling
Speaker 3: you anything you don't know. I'm just I'm just saying
Speaker 3: I absolutely agree with you that. Yeah, I think that
Speaker 3: the intersectionality of it is is definitely part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how should we assess the impact of the Ramones
Speaker 2: and specifically it's frontman Joey Ramon born Jeffrey Hyman.
Speaker 3: Well, Joey is so such like a paradigm shift and rock.
Speaker 3: You know, Joey was and I don't mean this in
Speaker 3: any knock against Joey. I loved Joey and everybody did.
Speaker 3: Everybody called him a minch, right, that was the term
Speaker 3: always used for him. But he was a little freakish looking.
Speaker 3: If you look at the average person. He was very,
Speaker 3: very tall. I think it was six or eight something
Speaker 3: like that. Grew up, you know, feet taller than his
Speaker 3: kids in high school and later he put on a
Speaker 3: little weight, but he was emaciated, so it was all
Speaker 3: the more exaggerated. He had a big hook nose and uh,
Speaker 3: you know, kind of bad posture due to some physical conditions,
Speaker 3: and looked like a you know, one of those stereotypes
Speaker 3: of Jews and the dishturmer, the Nazi newspaper mericature of
Speaker 3: a Jew. He was anything but what was at the
Speaker 3: time seen as a rockstar. Rockstar was Robert Plant with
Speaker 3: his shirt unbuttons of the navel and tight jeans and cockrocker,
Speaker 3: you know, like it's all sex and stud and I'm
Speaker 3: in charge. And Joey was like, I'm a freak. You're
Speaker 3: a freak. We're all freaks. That's cool, you know. Gabba
Speaker 3: Gabba hey, one of us, one of us. Yeah, that
Speaker 3: Gaba Gaba Hey comes from the movie Freaks, So it
Speaker 3: was actually Gobble Gobble Hey in the movie, but it
Speaker 3: was the chant of all the freaks and I'm again
Speaker 3: quotation works around freaks bonding together and putting a spell
Speaker 3: on someone who was cruel to them. Who was the beauty,
Speaker 3: the blonde beauty. Uh so Joey. Yeah, Joey was kind
Speaker 3: of the emblematic of it in so many ways. And
Speaker 3: so much of punk is about neuroses and about being
Speaker 3: broken and twisted. And yet it's an anti hero, right,
Speaker 3: because if you were in this culture and you're paying attention,
Speaker 3: you really should be broken and twisted. You know, if
Speaker 3: you're not upset, there's something wrong. If you're not wounded
Speaker 3: by the culture, there's something wrong. Joey. What's interesting to me,
Speaker 3: especially about Joey, is that Tommy, the other Jewish member
Speaker 3: of the Ramones, who no one knew was Jewish, including
Speaker 3: their Jewish manager Danny Fields, until I told him. Tommy
Speaker 3: was very self conscious about it. It was Tommy who
Speaker 3: insisted to the other two d D and Johnny that
Speaker 3: Joey be the lead singer. They're like, what, that's insane.
Speaker 3: He's not a he's not I mean, they knew he
Speaker 3: could sing, but he just let he looked ridiculous as
Speaker 3: the leader of Bend. Tommy said, no, that's the point,
Speaker 3: that's what we are. That's the kind of band we
Speaker 3: are where he's the leader. Tommy was a child of
Speaker 3: Holocaust survivors who were hidden or protected by non Jewish
Speaker 3: friends in Budapest during World War Two, and they fled
Speaker 3: in fifty six with the Soviet you know, when Soviets
Speaker 3: kind of crushed a rebellion and anti Semitism was on
Speaker 3: the rise there like that, and we've been through this once,
Speaker 3: We're not here for that again. And Tommy was I
Speaker 3: don't think paranoid's the right word, because you know, if
Speaker 3: they're after you, you're not paranoid. So but he was very
Speaker 3: alert and cautious, never denied as Jewish as was proud
Speaker 3: of it, but didn't advertise it. And his vision for
Speaker 3: the Ramones was really a very Jewish vision. And the
Speaker 3: fact that the Ramones and I'm sorry to fear from Joey,
Speaker 3: but Joey's so intrigral to the Roan's like you can't
Speaker 3: talk about John Lennon with they're talking about the other Beatles, right,
Speaker 3: They're They're that kind of band where the four distinct
Speaker 3: personalities make up a whole. Johnny collected Nazi memorabilia and
Speaker 3: was known to say any Semitic things. Was it just
Speaker 3: to wind people up or was the questionable it's a
Speaker 3: you know, who knows, it's a little No one knows
Speaker 3: what's in someone's heart, but he sure did hurt people
Speaker 3: like Joey and Tommy. Tommy had to drop out of
Speaker 3: the band in part because of Johnny. That's why he left. Dede,
Speaker 3: whose mother was German, whose father was an American serviceman
Speaker 3: who married her while stationed in Germany occupying force, had
Speaker 3: a very conflicted relationship towards Germany. But to piss off
Speaker 3: his father, he collected Nazi memorabilia as a kid, and
Speaker 3: the two of them were somewhat counterpost against Joey and Tommy,
Speaker 3: and together those preoccupations came up. And yet in a
Speaker 3: comic context it was kind of you know, Tommy especially
Speaker 3: would take those songs and make them funnier, so that
Speaker 3: the Nazis seemed kind of ridiculous. And Joey, obviously later
Speaker 3: with Bonso goes to Bitberg part of that as well directly.
Speaker 3: And that was a song originally Johnny did not want
Speaker 3: Reagan named in the title. It was called My Brain
Speaker 3: is Hanging upside down, which is the chorus. And you know,
Speaker 3: Johnny was a big support of the police and Reagan
Speaker 3: and supposedly had a photo of Hitler over his fireplace.
Speaker 3: I never saw it, so I can't say for sure
Speaker 3: that's true, but I heard that and anyway, so there
Speaker 3: are a lot of negotiations in there that reflected bigger schisms,
Speaker 3: and not even just on the Ramones. It's another bands too.
Speaker 3: You know, Kiss was sort of punk adjacent, same time period,
Speaker 3: some of the same fright elements, like for kiddies, and
Speaker 3: they were split between two Jews and in one hardcore
Speaker 3: any you know, Nazi sympthizer.
Speaker 2: So it's just fascinating that these bands were able to
Speaker 2: be friends, we can assume, and work together despite that
Speaker 2: kind of deal breaker in most relationships.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Ramones are also known as the most dysfunctional
Speaker 3: band in history, and they really were. They hated each
Speaker 3: other by the end. You know, Joey would sit in
Speaker 3: the back of the bus, Johnny on the front. Joey.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't I don't mean to sound like
Speaker 3: I'm mocking. I mean, you know, he had like everyone
Speaker 3: had his shaes, but he was ocd very clearly, you know,
Speaker 3: had to touch. They would try to leave to go
Speaker 3: on tour and he'd have to go up and down
Speaker 3: the steps of his apartment, like for an hour, touching
Speaker 3: certain things over and over. Sometimes. You know, Johnny, who
Speaker 3: found Jolly intolerable, was his own kind of OCD. He
Speaker 3: was obsessed with baseball statistics to the point that it
Speaker 3: was like reams and rims of of notebooks, you know,
Speaker 3: keeping track of everything.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: Tommy was probably depressive, seem seemed like and d D
Speaker 3: was a mystery hard to tell bipolar, perhaps not schizophrenic,
Speaker 3: but people all everyone commented on how he could turn.
Speaker 3: There were like two d d's, you know, this sweet, innocent,
Speaker 3: almost childlike to the point of that being almost creepy, like,
Speaker 3: how was this he not more you know, grown up
Speaker 3: and a kind of cruel uh, you know, violent character,
Speaker 3: very talented, hugely talented, also hugely important to their moones.
Speaker 3: So I don't mean to make it out Tommy was
Speaker 3: their Moones, not by far. You know, of the Beatles,
Speaker 3: they got to dislike each other, an the Ramones ever
Speaker 3: liked each other that much. You see those early films.
Speaker 3: I think it's one of their first shows at CBS
Speaker 3: and they're fighting on stage about which song to do next.
Speaker 3: They're really fighting. It wasn't an act. It was funny,
Speaker 3: but it was suposedly real.
Speaker 1: Judy is a punk.
Speaker 4: Turning to CBS. Jews were also central behind the scenes,
Speaker 4: like Hilly Crystal, owner of the punk maca CBGB. What
Speaker 4: was the significance of Crystal and that club?
Speaker 3: Well, Hilly, Hello, Crystal is his real name? What's his name?
Speaker 3: Interesting character. Grew up on a Zionist socialist collective and
Speaker 3: this is back when Zionism wasn't considered a dirty word.
Speaker 3: It was the lefty version of Israel where you went
Speaker 3: to a kabbutz and you shared the wealth. His great
Speaker 3: uncle was head of this collective in the Jersey homestead
Speaker 3: and Hilly grew up there. The idea, just as it
Speaker 3: was in Israel, was to for Jews to get back
Speaker 3: to the land. It was kind of a Romantic era
Speaker 3: response to displacement, you know, the Romantic era of like
Speaker 3: the you know Beethoven, that kind of Romantic era that
Speaker 3: you get back to the soil, kind of like the
Speaker 3: hippies word right, Brousseau and Beethoven, and you know, our
Speaker 3: natural healthiest celts were out of cities. We're in touch
Speaker 3: with the soil. And the thinking was among the original
Speaker 3: designs that Jews had been divorced from that kind of
Speaker 3: connection to the land, that they had been dispossessed to that,
Speaker 3: and that they needed a place, a literal place where
Speaker 3: they could till the land and be workers and be
Speaker 3: strong and healthy and all spiritually as well as physically hilly.
Speaker 3: It was a strong, big guy, big strong guy, but
Speaker 3: also loved music and wanted to play violin and was
Speaker 3: very good. I was playing violin all through his youth
Speaker 3: and high school years. He had a sister who was ill.
Speaker 3: He needed to take care of her, and he couldn't
Speaker 3: pursue that in the way he wanted. But he did
Speaker 3: finally go to New York and pursues singing that he
Speaker 3: also had a great voice, and he worked in a
Speaker 3: number of venues and then kind of segued from that
Speaker 3: into clubs, managing clubs. You know, he interacted with a
Speaker 3: lot of the famous jazz musicians.
Speaker 1: And then.
Speaker 3: He in the like early seventies, decided he was going
Speaker 3: to open his own club. And he picked the Bowery
Speaker 3: because it was cheap and you know, uncharted territory, and
Speaker 3: he opened CBGB's Country, Bluegrass and Blues. It was an
Speaker 3: Americana music club. Did not do very well. It was
Speaker 3: inhabited by bikers initially, and it wasn't until Richard Hill,
Speaker 3: Richard Myers and Tom Verlane came to him and said,
Speaker 3: we have a band we want to play, and hell,
Speaker 3: he said, you know what you can play, but you
Speaker 3: have to play your own music, which was not common
Speaker 3: in New York at the time at all. They were
Speaker 3: bands everywhere, and he's like, you've got to play your
Speaker 3: own music, and that was his line to everyone, you
Speaker 3: got to play your own music. All those early bands
Speaker 3: that germinated and just stated at CBS would never have
Speaker 3: gotten gigs alt where they were bad and that by
Speaker 3: their own minutes, you know, they start out bad. And
Speaker 3: Hilly said to me, I didn't like them, but I
Speaker 3: thought they deserved the chance. So I thought they deserved
Speaker 3: They were doing their own thing, do it yourself. And
Speaker 3: he said, you know, I wish someone had give me that.
Speaker 3: I grew up on the Jersey Home store. The whole
Speaker 3: idea was the not workers alone, but you know, empowerment
Speaker 3: of individuals, the common man. You know, the folk. The
Speaker 3: original meaning of folk is just the regular people, right, folks,
Speaker 3: wagon and folk. So folk music, which was the big
Speaker 3: movement in New York before punk, Dylan and the rest
Speaker 3: of them. He wanted that a place for the and
Speaker 3: so he was di y before there was a term
Speaker 3: for it, and he created the literal setting for punk
Speaker 3: to be born. And you know, I think we should
Speaker 3: just say that. You know, for years decades people said, oh, no,
Speaker 3: punk starting in England, and there was some you know,
Speaker 3: no it started, or starting let's starting. Well, I'm clearly
Speaker 3: on the site it started in New York. And I
Speaker 3: think one of the ways you can tell it started
Speaker 3: in New York is that the Ramones played a July
Speaker 3: fourth Independence Day show at the Roundhouse in London, a
Speaker 3: big club. In attendance were members of the Damn what
Speaker 3: became I should say the Damn what became the sex Pistles,
Speaker 3: what became the Clash, and all of them were hugely inspired.
Speaker 3: And if you listened to early Clash songs like White Riot,
Speaker 3: it's a basically a Romone song with one short guitar solo.
Speaker 3: Ramones didn't have guitar solos, But other than that, it's
Speaker 3: a It's a great song, and I have no problem
Speaker 3: with people sounding like the Ramones, but it clearly has
Speaker 3: its precedent and our Moones. Uh yeah, so Hilly, Hilly
Speaker 3: was was huge. Hilly was huge. And you know, if
Speaker 3: nothing else, he had a club where he allowed his
Speaker 3: dogs to run around and shit everywhere. People had always
Speaker 3: comment there was dog shit all over the club, and
Speaker 3: the bathrooms or legendary are infamous in their disgustingness. And
Speaker 3: you know, if it maybe, if nothing else, if Hilly
Speaker 3: had just done that, he would have helped to create punk.
Speaker 3: His punk is grungy, yeah, unkempt and sorted and wallows
Speaker 3: and and in the io call it the dark side,
Speaker 3: the smelly side.
Speaker 2: Did he ever come around to liking that music aesthetically
Speaker 2: or was it just sort of a business thing? Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like I said, I think you know a lot
Speaker 3: of those bands weren't good in the beginning. I mean,
Speaker 3: television became amazing. There were Moones, did they were? They're
Speaker 3: very loose, intous organised in the beginning, and then were
Speaker 3: very powerful once they kind of got it to click
Speaker 3: and you know, things to fall in place. And yeah,
Speaker 3: Hilly then let's not forget he was a manager and
Speaker 3: a music label owner later. So yeah, he liked the
Speaker 3: music and he liked the attitude. He liked what he
Speaker 3: saw is a real New York kind of music. And
Speaker 3: you know punk was originally called if you think of
Speaker 3: punk as starning New York music, there was no term
Speaker 3: for it.
Speaker 2: You quote avant garde jazz musician John Zorn who says
Speaker 2: the Jews are contrary by definition, How does this apply
Speaker 2: to punk rock Jews?
Speaker 3: Well, I don't agree with Jones or no trying to
Speaker 3: be contrary. No, it definitely, definitely you know the old
Speaker 3: joke two Jews, three opinions, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Punk was confrontational and argumentative with the culture. You know,
Speaker 3: it critiqued the alter It didn't accept, you know, question authority,
Speaker 3: all that stuff, the bumper stickers you would say around
Speaker 3: and Jews for good reason have traditionally been that way
Speaker 3: because they the culture ends up treating them questionably, so
Speaker 3: they don't trust all of the patriotic notions that often
Speaker 3: are talented as being the principles of the civilization and
Speaker 3: of the moment. You know, the Nazis they thought they
Speaker 3: were good citizens and that's what their government was telling them.
Speaker 3: And you know a Jew is not just because of
Speaker 3: that experience, but many experiences. Uh doesn't doesn't take verbta
Speaker 3: take take unquestioning the the the precepts and principles of
Speaker 3: any given movement, creed, even the judy Ism' That's why
Speaker 3: I'm saying it isn't I talk about cultural Jewishness, what's
Speaker 3: called Yiddish kite, I think in academic circles. And but
Speaker 3: there Jews were and still are religion, and the religion
Speaker 3: has something to do with that. And the religion is
Speaker 3: very I would say, proudly questioning that. You know, the
Speaker 3: Rabbinical tradition is one of interpretation and argument and debate.
Speaker 3: And even in the Torah, you know, the Bible, the
Speaker 3: characters are questioning God. They don't just have blind faith.
Speaker 3: They they they they're in dialogue. And so the contradictory
Speaker 3: nature the the the in the sense of questioning absolutely
Speaker 3: And I think living in a position, being both in
Speaker 3: and out of many cultures, you can't help but feel
Speaker 3: somewhat internally that way too, uh, you know, kind of
Speaker 3: torn between attitudes, which I think is super healthy personally irony.
Speaker 3: You know, people, you treat your own highest beliefs with
Speaker 3: some level of irony, You question them, you know, kind
Speaker 3: of stand upart and think about them, and that I
Speaker 3: think is healthy.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 3: You know, fascist were anything but humorous, anything but ironic.
Speaker 3: It was all black and white, all really simplistic, easy
Speaker 3: answers that are maybe maybe it makes you feel good
Speaker 3: if you're on the inside, but if you're the one
Speaker 3: who's the enemy, the Jew or the immigrant, raping immigrant
Speaker 3: who comes in, like all of them are just rapist
Speaker 3: and criminals, feels pretty good. Just like be on the
Speaker 3: other side not so good for them. So yeah, I
Speaker 3: think that's what Zorin was talking about. I absolutely agree
Speaker 3: with him that that's very punk. That couldn't be more punk.
Speaker 4: Do you think that the sound of punk rock is
Speaker 4: in some way Jewish?
Speaker 3: The harsh rawness of it, that's abrasive and not just
Speaker 3: gently melanic, and things are easy, you know, easy listening,
Speaker 3: that's so Jewish. Jews are in a state of agitation,
Speaker 3: often for good reason, you know. I attribute so much
Speaker 3: of it to their cultural positioning. It's sort of a
Speaker 3: byproduct of being a minority, maligned minority that has almost
Speaker 3: become an easy go to. It's just self perpetrating. The
Speaker 3: more every era decides that Jews are to blame, the
Speaker 3: more that next ere can think, well, the Jews have
Speaker 3: always been to blame. They're to blame, so that that
Speaker 3: sound and in fact, if you look at movements in
Speaker 3: we call classical music and around the turn of the century,
Speaker 3: previous century, the twenty you know Schungberg and all that
Speaker 3: discordinate nature of that. You know, it was supposed to
Speaker 3: reflect dasa, the feelings in society and culture of fragmentation
Speaker 3: that we're going on, you know, post World War One,
Speaker 3: especially in post World War two even more so. It's
Speaker 3: like the you know the World War One was was
Speaker 3: a horrible slaughter that made you lose faith in civilization.
Speaker 3: Well you'll really love World War two more so. And
Speaker 3: that sound is, yeah, it's the one. It's kind of
Speaker 3: what I'm referring to in the title the hebgb's at CBGS.
Speaker 3: It's a mixture of Shpilka's nervousness and Spilka's itself is
Speaker 3: a mixture of nervous energy, excitement almost but also agitation
Speaker 3: and feeling ill at ease and having to do something.
Speaker 3: Are you're going to jump out of your skin? So
Speaker 3: the music of punk definitely has that. It also, we
Speaker 3: should note, is intentionally what we might call simplistic. I
Speaker 3: would call it minimal minimalist, just like the classical music
Speaker 3: of that period, same exact period, Philip Glass, Steve Roth,
Speaker 3: Terry Riley. Minimalism was going on at the same time,
Speaker 3: and you know, the Velvet Underground, who are often thought
Speaker 3: of as the godfathers of punk along with iggy pop,
Speaker 3: had you know, Lou reed Lewis for Benowitz as their leader,
Speaker 3: but equally almost equally important in the beginning, it was
Speaker 3: John Cale, who was a classically trained minimalist musician, who
Speaker 3: brought the drone, an element of minimalism into that music.
Speaker 3: And if you want to hear discordance music, listen to
Speaker 3: the earlier Velven Underground. You know, the Black Angels Death
Speaker 3: song is for many people unlistenable. If you do listen
Speaker 3: to the lyrics, it's interesting. It seems to be about
Speaker 3: the killing fields of Eastern Europe during World War Two.
Speaker 3: I think it's what it is poetically referring to, just
Speaker 3: like John Zorn's Krystalnacht has elements. It's in different movements, right,
Speaker 3: but some of them are hard to listen to. I
Speaker 3: don't think you could write easy to listen to music
Speaker 3: about a holocaust. It should sound that way and punk,
Speaker 3: so punk was meant to reflect that. But as I
Speaker 3: was saying, also the simplicity, the democratic, primal, the folks
Speaker 3: element of everyone can do this and we shouldn't forget.
Speaker 3: That's what became punk was as much a concept in
Speaker 3: the mind of rock critic originally as it was a music.
Speaker 3: And all of those are rock critics, Nine of them
Speaker 3: were Jewish and very self conscious about it, like Sandy Pearlman,
Speaker 3: Richard Meltzer, the aesthetics of rock kind of the Bible
Speaker 3: before Grail Marcus and Lipstick Traces, I was, as Sandy Prolman,
Speaker 3: who went on to create really so much of what
Speaker 3: made the Blue Oyster Cult successful, and what the Blue
Speaker 3: Oyster Cult had was a playful and yet sinister preoccupation
Speaker 3: with fascism and Nazi imagery that got them banned in
Speaker 3: Germany in fact. So yeah, the definitely, I think that's
Speaker 3: a very Jewish aspect of punk. And I don't want
Speaker 3: to let me let me rephrase that. I don't want
Speaker 3: to say Jews alone, because again, I think so many
Speaker 3: people were traumatized by but are traumatized by history and
Speaker 3: what they see were capable of. You don't have to
Speaker 3: be Jewish to reflect the Holocaust, reflect the atom bomb.
Speaker 3: I mean, what was nineteen fifty sci fi horror films?
Speaker 3: But this this fear of technology gone mad and what
Speaker 3: we could do. You know, Godzilla is the ultimate atomic
Speaker 3: weapon come back to reck vengeance on everyone. So yeah,
Speaker 3: I think that is I think it's absolutely correct that
Speaker 3: the muse the abrasiveness of the music reflects the abrasiveness
Speaker 3: of history and its impact on Jews and non Jewslike.
Speaker 2: Do you have an opinion of the modern colloquial usage
Speaker 2: of punk. I hear a lot these days people saying
Speaker 2: kindness is punk rock or love is punk rock?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: No, takun alum, which is, you know, heal the world
Speaker 3: through good acts and uh, you know, pointing out the
Speaker 3: evil in the world. The fascism inherent in our culture
Speaker 3: is a healing gesture. It's a kind of love, even
Speaker 3: if it's about uh, you know, in the form of
Speaker 3: snot jokes and and you know, freaks and the rest
Speaker 3: of it, and shouting, you know, you have to shout
Speaker 3: to be heard. It doesn't mean for all the anger
Speaker 3: you feel, anger is not the opposite of love. Anger
Speaker 3: is caring and you're you're angry about something that is hateful.
Speaker 3: It's the opposite of love. So yeah, in that sense,
Speaker 3: punk is love, yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much Steven for joining us.
Speaker 3: Thank you that was great. I had a good time.
Speaker 2: And to our audience. Now back to your regularly scheduled lives.
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