He's Never Straight

Rocket from the Tombs - "Ain't It Fun" (from The Day The Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs 2002/1974)


"Reminds me of a conversation I had with a 15-year-old on a bus in 1968. She had just gotten out of the psycho ward after kicking a meth habit. "All I could listen to was the Doors. It was like Jim Morrison could see inside my head better than any shrink...now I can't stand their records." She later picked up a mild junk habit, and once when presented with the opportunity to ball her my own meth use negated my abilities. I digress, although somewhere in the larger digression lies some justification for the kind of people who can scrawl "I love my life!" on their shirts and get written up in The New Yorker.

Okay, the Modern Lovers album is good stuff. It's the album Transformer could have been (how important it is that we recall the dates). In a year that has brought us such dross as Station to Station, Coney Island Baby and The Eagles' Greatest Hits, you owe it to yourself to buy this record."

-Peter Laughner (Modern Lovers review in Creem Aug 1976)

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Punk Magazine: Are you a rock star?

PL: YES! Can play maniac guitar better than Richard Lloyd or Ron Ashton, sing like Dylan with a cattle prod up his ass, make “Metal Machine Music” with only ONE amp, and look like nobody else so I’m original – Buncha other reasons but who wants to be verbose?

PM: Your favorite stars?

PL: One, Tom Verlaine. Two, John Cale – Drunk as a skunk! And Welsh, too! Three, Patti Smith – Despite the hype – She can sit on my face any time she wants.

PM: Good meal out?

PL: One, PATTI SMITH. Two, Katz’s Deli on Sunday AM withy hangover & Tina Weymouth.


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This album made me so morose and depressed when I got the advance copy that I stayed drunk for three days. I didn't go to work. I had a horrible physical fight with my wife over a stupid bottle of 10 mg. Valiums. (She threw an ashtray, a brick, and a five foot candelabra at me, but I got her down and sat on her chest and beat her head on the wooden floor.) I called up the editor of this magazine (on my bill) and did virtually nothing but cough up phlegm in an alcoholic stupor for three hours, wishing somewhere in the back of my deadened brain that he could give me a clue as to why I should like this record.

-Peter Laughner (Review of Lou Reed Coney Island Baby Creem Aug 1976


More Laughner writings here.