Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter One - Livers with Feet
Chapter Two - Vicious Freaks
Chapter Three - Not a Rebel
Chapter Four - Meet the Drops
Chapter Five - Vanillanova
Chapter Six - Unemployable
Chapter Seven - “Christened by a Crackhead”
Chapter Eight - Relationships and Rodeo Clowns
Chapter Nine - Maverick Records Doesn’tLike Beer Bellies
Chapter Ten - Always a Bridesmaid
Chapter Eleven - “I Call Him Dribbly”
Chapter Twelve - Freeze Dried and Born Again(in the Bar)
Chapter Thirteen - The Sleepkins Diet
Chapter Fourteen - Escape from Bellevue
Chapter Fifteen - The Triangle Trade of Misery
Chapter Sixteen - “Blackout, Baby”
Acknowledgements
About the Author
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First printing, March 2009
Copyright © 2009 by Christopher John Campion
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Campion, Christopher John.
Excape from Bellevue : a dive bar odyssey / by Christopher John Campion.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-02453-9
1. Campion, Christopher John. 2. Singers—New York (State)—New York—Biography.
3. Alcoholics—New York (State)—New York—Biography. 4. Dramatists, American—Biography.
5. Nightlife—New York (State)—New York. 6. New York (N.Y.)—Biography. I.Title.
CT275.C274515A3 2009
974.7’1043092—dc22 2008042360
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This book is dedicated to
Mom, Dad, Bobby, Kevin, Donna, Eileen, and Billy,
whose faith, love, humor, and music
have shaped my life.
We are the Campions,
my friends.
A Note to the Reader
Though the events that take place in this book are real and lifted directly from my life, I’ve had to, in certain cases, change the names of people and places or create fictional or composite characters to supplant real ones in order to protect the anonymity of the innocent and not so innocent (namely my felonious friends). Also, I’m reporting on a very foggy time in my life so if I got anything wrong by way of time lines and facts, I apologize.What you need to know is that I was in Bellevue three times, the second of these incarcerations I escaped, and I have thankfully emerged from it all with enough of my marbles intact to tell you this story. Of this I’ll swear on a stack of Stones records. In this current climate of “memoir witch hunts,” I think it’s important to say that. In other words, I’m asking you to read this book, have a good time, and don’t bust my balls....
Love,
Chris
“The only people for me are the mad ones. The ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved; the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
—Jack Kerouac
“Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief.”—Mark 9:24
Introduction
Standing in the wings, I could hear the crowd getting louder and louder and some drunken leather lung yelling out, “C’mon, Drops, get out here!” Then above the noise they began singing, “You’re a dropout . . .”—the chorus to one of our staple tunes, “The Dropout Song.”
The scene was the Paradise Rock Club in Boston and it was the fall of 1992. The Knockout Drops were playing behind our very first EP, The Burning Bush Chronicles, and on the bill with us was my brother’s band, The Bogmen, who were about to be signed by Arista Records and were already huge in Boston.
They’d circulated our cassette to all of their fans and started a brushfire of anticipation for this Paradise show, as well as a few others we had scheduled in the area. There were no Web sites back then so if you were an unsigned band (in our case from NYC), you never knew if your stuff was catching on until you got to a place. Needless to say, we were all excited to play the show—all but me, that is.
I had a scorching sore throat that had reduced my voice to a whisper and my heroic intake of cocktails and cocaine wasn’t helping matters. My brother Bill, lead singer of The Bogmen, came over to me and, seeing my look of helpless desperation, offered a solution. “Here,” he said, “drink some of this Thai stick tea. It’ll dilate your larynx and you’ll be singing like a birdie, trust me.” There were potent stems of marijuana floating in this cup so I was a tad reluctant. I generally didn’t smoke weed before I went on because it made me a little spacey, and I liked to chat up the crowd in between songs; a blow-and-booze combo was my preferred gasoline (the PB & J of all long-distance revelers) but this seemed harmless enough. It was tea, for chrissakes.
He put a little honey in it so it tasted pretty good, and I quickly downed a cup. I grabbed another and started warming up my voice a bit, and before long, I was singing “Fat Bottomed Girls” just like Freddie Mercury and leading everyone backstage through choruses of it, every so often going for refills of the tea. True to my brother’s word the potion had worked. I don’t think I had sounded this good . . . ever! I figured the more of it I drank, the better my voice, right? I also thought that because it was tea, it wouldn’t really get me that high since it was diluted with water, which shows you that I’m no Bill Nye, the Science Guy. In fact, the stuff goes right into your bloodstream with about three times the THC level—so not only does it get you stoned faster, it’s far more potent—information that would have been useful at the time.
As I was milling about, I felt an ominous transformation occurring. I was morphing in my head from a Jaggeresque cock-of-the-walk to a cowering little kindergartener. What the hell was happening? I had gotten paranoid from strong weed before so I knew that feeling, but this? This was something different. It was as if my brain had released panzer divisions of self-doubt and fear into my system and the tanks of inner hysteria relentlessly kept coming. I wanted my mommy. Goddamn it, I wanted my mommy RIGHT NOW!
Then the stage manager came running over to me, visibly upset. He was a red-faced, red-haired, pure Boston Irish heat-miser-looking guy named Patrick, and in his wicked New England accent he barked, “The band is on, where the hell have you been?” I couldn’t talk at all at this point ’cause I was tripping hard. I thought any answer I gave would sound like I was speaking in tongues—and in my head, I was. After a few seconds he realized he wasn’t gonna get a reply and had to cajole me into moving: “We got six hundred screaming kids out there; get your ass onstage!”
I gingerly walked out to an eruption of applause, as the band launched into “The Dropout Song.” I could feel my rib cage being vibrated by its thunderous beat and swirling, distorted guitar line. I stood behind the center mic with a lone spotlight on me—lathered in beads of flop sweat, eyes darting back and forth—a statue of fear. They kept playing and I did nothing. I couldn’t remember the words to my own song so I started spitting some low-volume gibberish into the mic.
The room was rattling with everyone jumping up and down in unison. Finally Phil, my bass player, came over and yelled above the music, “What the hell is wrong with you?” None of those guys were privy to my little backstage tea experiment. I squinted back at him and uttered a line that will forever go down in Knockout Drops history. “I dunno, man. . . . I feel like everyone is staring at me.” I’ll never forget the laugh that came out of him when he said, “They are! You’re onstage or haven’t you noticed that? Now start singing, asshole; we can discuss your nervous breakdown later.”
Side stage, there was a guy named Smitty hanging out and dancing. He’d popped me up with some key hits earlier in the evening, so I ran over there and shook him down. You know Smitty. He’s the guy with the brown hair, nervous smile, and shifty eyes with perpetual sweat gathering over his upper lip. He seems normal to you upon first glance but then you look again and realize that he’s jacked out of his mind. There’s a Smitty at every show.
He lovingly packed my beak full of blow, and I took a huge pull out of the bottle of Jameson’s that was on top of one of the big speakers—ahhhhhhhhh, warm, fuzzy, and familiar . . . MOTHER’S MILK! Cocaine was always a maintenance drug for me, but booze was the great love of my life. Everything’s gonna be all right. There’s nothing Jameson’s can’t get me through, I thought.
I was right. It went on to be one of the greatest shows we ever did. There would be many more nights to come, on bigger stages and in front of more people, where Jameson’s would derail me, but this time it had my back. I thought it always would. I was wrong. Well, it did for a bit and then it didn’t. You’ll be hearing about all that in just a little while.
Have you ever been to Bellevue? You really should go. It’s lovely this time of year. Between 1998 and 2000, I was there three times—so I’ll be taking you there three times. I call these “The Wonder Years” ’cause I’m still wondering, “What the fuck happened?”
Don’t worry, I’m not here to hijack you for some “shock and awe” journey of what it’s like to be a down-and-dirty drunk. We’ve all heard that twice-told yarn, and I’m as tired of it as you are. It just so happens that I was a down-and-dirty drunk, but don’t be confused. This is not a cautionary tale of woe or eventual triumph, but rather it’s a story about the tireless pursuit of a dream and a desperate quest for faith. In other words, it’s about growing up.
Chapter One
Livers with Feet
I threw up at my first Holy Communion. This was the first in a lifetime series of public pukings. I apologize if I get a bit misty-eyed, but who doesn’t get sentimental about their first time, right? Unlike the installments that followed, this did not come about as a result of bludgeoning myself, repeatedly, with the happy stick. This episode was brought on by the wonder and fear of a loving, yet invading, God.
For some people this might be a traumatic and paralyzing memory, but not me. Don’t get me wrong—it was an unfuckinbearable humiliation while it was happening, but I’ve found in this life that any dreary experience that makes for a funny story afterward is usually worth it. Laughter defangs trauma. Of course, that little chestnut is coming from a guy who found himself in the psych ward at Bellevue three times within a two-year span (two and a half if you count my escape), so you might not want to be getting your credos from me just yet. Another reason I wasn’t indelibly scarred by this unfortunate event is that I’m pretty much unembarrassable. Believe it or not, that’s a skill. It’s also a good way to be if you’re going to grow up and navigate the world in a seismic stupor. It’s all in the training.
I remember waking up early that spring morning in 1975, and my stomach felt like it had an undertow in it. Something just wasn’t right. There are six of us in my folks’ Irish Catholic brood: my three brothers, two sisters, and myself. At nine years old I’d already experienced the twenty-four-hour flu bug blowing through the house a few times so I knew what that was. The last go-round we all got it at the same time, turning the house into one giant vomitorium, everybody in their pajamas for two days with pots next to their beds, groaning. I’m kind of diggin’ the Dickensian image of that but don’t be misled, I’m from Huntington, Long Island. We got through that epidemic like every other family on the block by eating dry cereal, drinking ginger ale, and doing Mad Libs. This was the pre-video game era of the seventies when your only shot at bedridden amusement came home from the stationery store.
Anyway, my stomach was churning, making these slushy, watery sounds, and I got an image in my head of watching the sudsy clothes through the washing machine window, which I found hypnotically soothing. I pictured the mashed potatoes in my stomach from last night’s dinner doing the same thing, and this picture was yielding an entirely different feeling, but I wasn’t sure if it was the flu thing just yet. I thought maybe I was just nervous because this was the day I was gonna receive Jesus for the first time.
After Mom and I had gotten through saying my prayers the previous evening (an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be, for you Catholics following at home), she’d leaned in, kissed my forehead, and said, “Try to get some sleep ’cause tomorrow’s a big day. You’ll be r...
