“MIKE HUNT”?
DOA/Sex Pistols Tour Chapter 35: April, 1978
Narrator: In our last episode, the shooting of Larry Flynt began the disintegration of both PUNK and High Times magazines, while the cover shoot for PUNK #14 took place.
A few months after the Sex Pistols tour ended, Tom Forcade hired a Business Manager to sell ads and increase our circulation: Some guy who called himself “Mike Hunt.” He would actually introduce himself to people with his pseudonym and grab his crotch while he wore a shit-eating grin: “Get it? Mike Hunt!”
Although the staff at PUNK was often politically-incorrect? Well, this was just plain stupid. Funny nicknames are common to punk rockers and drag queens, but they should be clever. To make matters worse, he wasn’t bringing any new business for the magazine. When he occasionally showed up to work he spent most of his time on the phone selling crystal meth. While this didn’t bother me, my small staff was very uncomfortable. The legal risks were too much, especially since we thought the phones were bugged. They were worried that we could all end up in jail. I had to fire the guy.
Tom Forcade was not happy with my decision (to say the least). Mike Hunt took it well, and even gave us a sample of his product before he left. It came in handy when we had to rush to try to make the printer deadline, which became almost impossible when the Ramones suddenly asked me to redraw the cover art for Road To Ruin in the middle of production, but that’s a story for another day. (You might have noticed I was often torn between the two bands that year.)
The Contents
Since several pages had already been put together for PUNK #13, we were off to a good start. (But we decided to skip that number since we had enough with the bad luck, already!) Here’s a rundown of most of PUNK #14’s ingredients, which the staff, contributors and I thought was one off our best:
The Bay City Rollers
Elin Wilder had written the cover story for PUNK #13 about The Bay City Rollers. (At the time we didn’t think that we could ever attend the Sex Pistols tour: We could barely pay the rent and keep the phone and electricity on.) In DOA: A Rite of Passage, Bernard Brooke Partridge, who was banning the Sex Pistols from performing in England, claimed the Bay City Rollers (who were dubbed as a punk rock band by the English press in 1975), were much worse than the Sex Pistols. This excerpt from DOA: A Rite of Passage was filmed around the same time we were working on PUNK #14:
The above excerpt didn’t appear in DOA, but sums up the absolutely insane hatred that the mainstream media had towards the punk rock movement.
“The War Issue”
A corporate magazine called Punk Rock was being published by a very sleazy outfit back then, and attacked PUNK Magazine (and even me personally). So we retaliated by declaring war on them, and all of our enemies (which was a long list). We welcomed independent fanzines that covered punk rock (Slash, Ripped and Torn, Sniffing’ Glue, Search and Destroy, etc.) as competition, but hated watching the mainstream media attempt to encroach on our territory.
The News
There were several pages with News, since we hadn’t published a new issue for several months. The biggest news was that Tommy Ramone was leaving the Ramones. Around the same time Joey was in the hospital recovering from a foot injury. There was also a report on the teenaged punk rock bands that were showing up around town: The Blessed, Middle Class and Shrapnel. This was the start of the hardcore movement in New York.
Edith Massey
We made friends with Edie when she was the Guest of Honor at the First Annual Sleaze Convention in Wilmington, Delaware on Labor Day weekend, 1976, so when she visited New York to perform at CBGB we interviewed her at Arturo Vega’s loft. Gina Shock, the Go-Gos drummer, says she played drums behind Edie during her tour, which inspired her to move to Los Angeles and get involved in the music scene. We also did photo shoots with Edith, Joey Ramone and Debbie Harry for Mutant Monster Beach Party around the same time. She was a very sweet lady, everyone loved Edie!
AC/DC
On August 24, 1977 a little-known band from Australia opened for the Michael Stanley Band and The Dictators at the Academy of Music: AC/DC. Later that night they played a surprise gig at CBGB. Along with the Bay City Rollers, they were dubbed a punk rock band back then by the English press, and the record company was buying advertisements for them in PUNK, so we interviewed the band a few days later. Although I spoke with Bon Scott at the bar for a long time when they played at CBGB, he didn’t remember me at all when we interviewed Bon and Angus at a CBS office a few days later. Since I had all of their records, I was a fan already, but disappointed that we only had 20 minutes to talk with them. They didn’t exactly have a lot to say, were worn out after doing a clusterfuck of press interviews and were probably very hung over.
Working on the Layouts
The Sex Pistols article was the longest story we had ever published: 20 1/2 pages. Due to time and space constraints, we had to use typesetting instead of hand-lettering. (Hand lettering took up a lot more room on a page than typeset.) This wasn’t the first time we used typesetting for a page layout. We ran advertisements and Letters To PUNK and other content that was not hand-lettered and we used typesetting for the Dictators’ cover story in PUNK #11. It saved a lot of time, and for the first time we were under the gun to deliver the magazine on time.
Bruce Carleton had just replaced Hal Drellich, who was worn out with the magazine’s constant financial woes, so PUNK #14 actually had two Art Directors, since Hal did the layouts for PUNK #13. (Well, three art directors when you count me in.) The issue was huge (by our standards): 54 pages plus a cover, with full color covers and centerfold. This was to be our first national-distributed issue, thanks to our distribution deal with High Times (who were being distributed by Flynt Distribution). We printed over 25,000 copies, which was a big deal. A lot was riding on this issue!
Of course I didn’t know that at the end of April, Tom Forcade set up a drug-smuggling run with his best friend Jack Combs. We had previously flown together in Jamaica to help Jack get the training he needed for a pilot’s license.
NEXT EPISODE: Total Disaster.
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Do you remember that guy? He wasn't around for very long... Crazy daze!
Them was the days!