Congratulations on making it to the end of another week! Unfortunately, these people didn’t. Light a candle for Funeral Friday.
One could argue that a “scene” didn’t truly exist without the photos to prove it, and in that sense, Nat Finkelstein was one of the most crucial elements of Andy Warhol’s Factory. Sure, there were the screen tests, Velvet Underground And Nico, the alternately scolding and titillated biographies—plus some paintings of soup cans or something—but, as Warhol himself probably would have admitted, the image was the most important thing. And for most of the Factory's run, it was Finkelstein’s all-consuming mission to capture it, giving both the scene and his own career immortality while adding a photojournalistic counterpoint to officially ordained “Factory Fotographer” Billy Name (presumably whenever the latter was too busy spray-painting things silver or huddling on a couch with Lou Reed).
And much as the Factory began as an experiment in aesthetic and creative pursuits before descending into just another New York drug pit, Finkelstein’s involvement foretold his own corruption: He started out as a Coney Island Baby—prone to rebellion, sure, as when he was expelled from Brooklyn College after protesting censorship in the staid campus newspaper by tossing a filing cabinet through a window (symbolic!)—who fast-talked his way into a gig at Harper’s Bazaar, where he took polite assignments covering dog shows and bridge tournaments. But soon enough he was indulging his fascination with radicals, chronicling antiwar and civil rights protests during a golden era when you could find an iconic image on seemingly every street corner. It was a chance meeting with Warhol at a Factory party that would give him his most important assignment, as well as transform him into a full-blown member of the counterculture—with all the attendant paranoia, self-indulgence, addiction, and other assorted awesomeness that implied.
Finkelstein was there to capture those nascent Velvet Underground performances (images from which can be seen in the upcoming “Who Shot Rock” exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, opening in two weeks). When Bob Dylan, Salvador Dali, and Marcel Duchamp dropped by to shake hands with Warhol, Finkelstein got it on camera. And of course, he was always shooting Edie Sedgwick, transforming her into a kohl-eyed object of art-school worship for decades to come. He published four indispensable collections of these photos (The Andy Warhol Index; Andy Warhol: The Factory Years; Andy Warhol: A Portfolio; Edie Factory Girl) that will guarantee the Factory’s importance for as long as there are kids who believe the road to the palace of wisdom is paved with both excess and cool, perfectly fitted leather jackets.
And then, he went a little crazy: Finkelstein became a Black Panther in the late ’60s, then scurried off to Eurasia when he believed the government was out to assassinate him (all stemming from an old drug charge they’d dug up). He spent the next 15 years, approximately—and the entirety of the ’70s—peddling hashish in Katmandu and more or less living the hippie dream. And just like the rest of the hippies, Finkelstein fell into a deep love affair with cocaine in the ’80s after returning to the U.S., even making frequent trips to Bolivia to score that shit himself. Perhaps not coincidentally, his coke habit dovetailed with his decision to get into music management, and he soon became the business rep for New York post-punk group Khmer Rouge, after Suicide/New York Dolls manager Marty Thau refused to take them on unless they changed their name. (Khmer Rouge was a decent band, but it’s probably most famous for giving The Fall its keyboardist, Marcia Schofield.) After it petered out, Finkelstein went back to photography full-time. By the early ’90s he’d cleaned up, even as he hopped right back in the middle of another drug-fueled hot mess, documenting the “club kid” culture in his book Merry Monsters. Finkelstein continued working for magazines, prepping gallery shows, and working on an unfinished memoir, The Fourteen-Ounce Pound until his death this week at the age of 76.
Sort of like the Factory was to the New York art scene, the Masque was to L.A. punk—a short-lived venue whose importance has been, at times, wildly overstated, but whose influence on a still-thriving culture is undeniable. In the wake of the closing of Rodney’s English Disco, L.A.’s glam-rock freaks had no place left to congregate. A Scotsman named Brendan Mullen—a former journalist turned drummer who was just looking for some place to bang around in peace—fixed all that in 1977, when he rented a 10,000-square-foot basement behind a Hollywood Boulevard porno theater. Shortly thereafter, Mullen was subletting it to local bands looking to rehearse; within two months it had become a full-blown concert venue. Groups that had found themselves shut down by local law enforcement flocked there, bringing an entire angry, disaffected cultural movement with them—seminal bands like the Germs, X, The Go-Gos, The Weirdos, The Screamers, The Dils, etc. But while many veterans of the scene are all too happy to point to Mullen as its godfather figure thanks to the Masque's open-door policy, Mullen always politely refused the honor, saying he never laid claim to “starting punk in L.A.,” but simply provided a place for everyone to come together. He was weirdly humble like that.
Of course, like the Factory, the Masque didn’t really last all that long—less than a year, actually, when it was shut down by city officials, tired of all the noise complaints and kids pissing in the alleys, who refused it a legal permit; shortly thereafter, the building owner sued Mullen to end the lease. Mullen threw some benefit shows to help fund his case, and the punks who ostensibly came to save him ended up throwing a couple of riots instead and fucking everything up. Oh well. Mullen continued promoting punk shows around town, and even briefly opened The Other Masque from 1979-1980, but not surprisingly he got weary of all the destruction. He went on to work for more than a decade as a booker for the comparatively more sedate Club Lingerie—where he broadened his palette to include everything from Sun Ra to Red Hot Chili Peppers to the debut West Coast appearances of New York hip-hop stars—then helped open other cultural hotspots like the Viper Room.
Perhaps most importantly, however, Mullen became the L.A. scene’s foremost chronicler, beginning with the highly recommended We Got The Neutron Bomb: The Untold Story Of L.A. Punk, co-written with Marc Spitz. Check it out if you haven’t. It’s a sort of L.A. counterpart to Please Kill Me, told in the same alternately reverent and “who really gives a fuck?” oral history style: You get all the Darby Crash dirt you've ever wanted, lots of digs at Penelope Spheeris and especially Belinda Carlisle—who was apparently fat and ugly and determined to sleep with everyone even half-famous—and lots of hilarious quotes by and about eminent scumbag Kim Fowley. Pick it up, seriously. Mullen followed those with more books on his heyday (Lexicon Devil: The Fast Times And Short Life Of Darby Crash And The Germs; Live At The Masque: Nightmare In Punk Alley) and Whores: An Oral Biography Of Perry Farrell And Jane's Addiction in 2006. In recent years, the longtime pillar of the L.A. music community had finally begun pursuing official U.S. citizenship. Sadly, it was never completed: He was out celebrating his 60th birthday last Friday when he suffered a massive stroke. (Doctors reportedly can’t figure out why, as he seemed to be in perfect health.) Mullen died over the weekend.