A few weeks ago I was having a heavy dose of clutter anxiety. So afflicted, I began rummaging through the house, scrapping every fossil in my wake: old photos, books, clothes, furniture, you name it - shit-can it. Buried deep in a box of old torn T-shirts, one, no doubt, sealed since 1987, I came across a well preserved Wendy O. Williams tour shirt. The material held the heavy stench of dust and mildew, but I could still detect an underlying hint of pot smoke. I was fixing to toss it into the refuse with my Foxy Brown lunch pail, Light of Day trading cards, Eve Plumb: Diary of a Teenage Runaway video, and dog-eared Hazel O' Connor biography, when I was stricken with the impulse to wear it - some nostalgic waft of reverence. See, Wendy O. was more than a faze, she was a 110% state of mind. For those who never experienced Wendy mania at it's peak, let it suffice to say that Wendy O. mania lies far beyond the boundaries of description. It was 1985. I was living in Phoenix, drinking four pots of coffee per day, and poised to drop out of school. Then I discovered the music and mayhem of Wendy O. (I still dropped out of school, mind you, but my life was about to take a scary turn . . .)
Let me start by saying that I'm a bi-sexual woman in her early thirties. I wouldn't generally preface a story with this information, but it might make certain things a little clearer. Female rock stars have been my thing from the start. In the forth grade, I masturbated and had my first period to a poster of Ann and Nancy Wilson, of which I've never never been ashamed. (I think it was the cover of Dreamboat Annie - yowza!). In jr. high, I got drunk on Southern Comfort and listened to Janis Jopin music with a vengeance. Soon after, I bought some Patti Smith records from the cut out section at a local drug store. I would fall asleep to side one of Wave, the hypnotic Dancing Barefoot coaxing me to sleep over the ka-thunk ka-thunk ka-thunk of my broken turntable. In 1982, Joan Jett brought me back to the world of guitar heavy she-rock with her rowdy Bad Reputation. For the next three years I lived on a steady diet of Joan Jett and Pretenders music believing that it didn't get any better.
But, it did! It got harder and heavier and, to put it in Wendy's own words, "Way over the edge!" One evening shortly after moving to Phoenix, I was up all night watching USA television and swilling Hills Brothers. There was this special on female rockers, parade of the future has- beens, Lene Lovich and Kim Wilde types. Then, I saw someone so out of control, so far gone, that I was completely sucked in. That somebody was Wendy Orlean Williams: Kommander of Kaos, High Priestess of metal. Scantily clad Wendy, all muscle and mohawk, came at me in my living room, plowing a school bus through a massive wall of t.v.'s. As if that weren't enough, her next clip featured her driving a speeding car off of a cliff. Just moments before the car was to go over the edge, Wendy O. climbed onto a plane ladder and the car exploded. I was totally pumped! The song, her brand new metal anthem, It's My Life, went like this: my New Years resolution is always the same, gonna do what I like, gonna do what I want, and the hell with things -Yeah! I was hooked on the Wendy O., sold on her angst-fueled message! In 1985, Wendy O. Williams went farther than any woman or man in rock 'n' roll. No one could touch her act for real life danger.
The next day, I went to Zia records and bought her first solo album, W.O.W. Produced by Gene Simmons of Kiss, it was better than I could've ever imagined. I played it over and over, loud then louder still, until my neighbors called the police. I didn't care. I kept on playing Wendy O. It was my duty. The front cover of her album featured a shot of her on stage wearing an inverted tool belt, white tank top, Brunswick bowler wrist guards, and skimpy panties. The expression on her face clearly said, 'don't mess with Wendy O.!' The name of the first song was tattooed on her arm. It was a song that challenged Joan Jett's position: I love sex and Rock 'n' Roll - another unapologetic invitation to promiscuity. My boyfriend was outraged by the blatant mockery of Jett's song. He tried to talk me out of my O. Williams obsession with rumors of Wendy's purported sexual liaisons with a jackhammer. "Sour grapes," I'd say. The rumors only made me dig her more. Every metal-head guy at school dreamed of screwing blonde bombshell Wendy. My fantasy wasn't so much to be with her, as to actually be her. A combination of coffee and a sky- high estrogene level left me crawling the walls of my dad's appartment in Scottsdale. I wanted to smash televisions, chain-saw guitars, and drive convertibles into exploding walls. I needed a big Wendy O. sized release!
"I'm an adrenaline freak," Wendy would say in interviews. In one appearance on the short lived Joan River's show Wendy told loud-mouth River's "I just never ever ever fit in." That's me - I said. I can totally relate! Among other things, Wendy was a self proclaimed health food junkie. Long before Henry Rollins jumped on the bandwagon, Wendy professed to a drug free, meat free, and weight training lifestyle. Wendy O. became more than an entertainer, she was a way of life, and now, my personal guru. I'd plug in the coffee pot, crank up the Wendy O., and lift weights. My dad was growing concerned. A voracious appetite for health fads led me to seek employment at GNC, the 7-11 of health food stores. There, I became the top dog in sales and an ephedrine addict.
Wendy O. Williams hailed from Rochester, New York. Out of high school she received a scholarship to the prestigious Juliard school of music for her saxophone playing. Wendy, however, declined and hit the road. She hitched across the states to Los Angeles where she worked as a macrobiotic cook. Wendy then took off for Europe to study eastern philosophy, returning to New York as a performer in a live sex show. It was there that she met Rod Swenson. Together they formed the punk concept band, the Plasmatics. The Plasmatics played CBGB's and other venues on the east coast, receiving national recognition in 1978 for Wendy's outrageously provocative stage attire. Wendy would come out on stage dressed in lingerie with only electrical tape covering her nipples. She'd frequently do encores in whipped cream and a motorcycle hat. Wendy was inundated with news coverage when she filed suit against the Milwaukee police department, who arrested her after a show on indecent exposure charges, and, while cuffed on the ground, proceeded to beat and kick her.
It wasn't until Wendy began blowing up cars on stage that the Plasmatics really took off (the first of these shows at New York's Madison Square Gardens- promoted as see Wendy Trash this 68 Coupe De Ville! - was a sell out). After defeating the Milwaukee police department in court, Wendy O. demolished a police car on the Dick Cavet show to her newest punk medley, a pig is a pig. The Plasmatics changed line-up with each album. Most of Wendy's outrageous videos were done in the Arizona or Nevada desert. Her video for the Damned was filmed in the desert outside of Scottsdale, and became known as the powerlines, where friends and I would would hang out, drink beer, and play Wendy O. music. The cover of The Plasmatic's Beyond the Valley of 1984 features Wendy and bandmembers horseback, with the Superstition Mountains in the background. It was all happening in my own backyard! It may sound demented, but somehow, it made Wendy O. accessible.
I liked her solo album so much that I decided to dig back into her early days with the Plasmatics. I bought New Hope For the Wretched on blood splatter vinyl, but it took longer to get into than her solo material.. The only other solo project Wendy had out was a mini cassette available through her fan club. I had to send check or money order for it. I remember my mother, much to her chagrin, writing a check payable to Jackhammer records. I wasn't sure if she had heard the rumors, or if something in the fan club advertisement triggered an alarm. The tape was called Fuck and Roll live! It featured a cover of Motorhead's song Rock 'n' Roll, on which Wendy changed the lyrics to fuck and roll. The pinnacle of the tapes trashiness comes in a song called Ain't none of your business, where Wendy stops and does this monologue (which, I still remember word for word):
"You know sometimes I'm walking down the street and these straight guys come up to me. Yeah, they got their jackets and ties. That's their little outfit of the day. And they got their ever so shinny shoes on. Yeaaaaah, sometimes they vary their outfits a little bit and they've got their shirts all opened up so you can see the....shit load of gold chaaaaaains around their neck. Yeaaaaah . . ., and they're always walking down the street going ' I'm straight, everybody else is fucked up but not me, no, I'm straight'. You ever notice that straight people got this certain posture about them. It doesn't matter if their standing up or their sitting down. They all got this - pooooosture. That's because, every fucking straight person I ever met, comes complete with a banana stuck up the old asshole. Yeah, that's right - they all come complete with the old banana implant!"
Soon after I got the tape my friend Pam came to visit from Detroit. Pam had been my closest friend since grade school. We were inseparable through high school, until I made the move out west in the middle of my junior year. We saw eye to eye on many levels - especially in the backseat of my car - but Pam was not a women in rock devotee. She'd mock my affliction for female rockers every chance she could. It was cool though, Pam was my best friend. "At least it's not Pat Benetar," she would say.
Wendy, however, was a phenomena even Pam couldn't deny. She loved that fuck 'n' roll bit just as much as I did! The thing that was so cool about Wendy's shtick was that the word straight could be taken to mean, conservative, drug- free, up-tight, or heterosexual. It pissed people off indiscriminately! Pam and I made several copies of it which we brought to local shopping malls. We'd pop it into a cassette deck at the stereo/video store - which ever component was closest to the mall - and let her rip. By the time the flustered sales clerk would dash over to turn it off, Wendy would be halfway through her monologue, spewing obscenities through the mall and into the consciousness of middle class America. We were proud of our devious stunt. At parties We'd amuse friends with Wendy O. standup. In once such performance, we went so far as to take an axe to my old black and white television set. Wendy used to say that society was callused to rape and violence, but if you destroyed personal property, especially society's sacred television, that was asking for trouble. I was stoked to be reunited with Pam, my partner in crime, and coaxed her to stay on.
Pam decided to stay in Phoenix, so we got a small apartment for two hundred and fifty dollars a month. It was an old building with a prolific bug populous. Pam used to catch bugs and keep them in an empty Smucker's jars. She said they all came crawling to Wendy's music, dubbing Wendy the 'pied piper of cockroaches'. Pam and I became lovers. Although we were never exclusive with one another - I still liked to date guys - our bond was much deeper than sex.
Meanwhile, I couldn't have been happier with my job at GNC. My boss needed time off and gave me run of the place. Pam kept me company. We'd listen to Wendy O. and hang out all day. Pam would put price stickers all over her face and hands and stalk the jewelry store across the mall. Performance was her forte. Pam would be escorted out of the mall kicking and screaming by security guards, and I would sneak her back in through the service corridor.
I was more than eager to push the products I so thoroughly believed in. Especially the herbal stimulants. I was taking between fifteen and thirty supplements a day, including ginseng, guranna, bee pollen, kola nut, and yohimbe bark. My favorite, by far, were Excel pills. The main ingredient in Excel pills, the Chinese herb Ma Huang, is today, found in products like Herbal Ecstasy and Sudaphed. Ma Huang is a source of the drug ephedrine, which is used in making methamphetamine. Some Ephedrine products are like a watered down version of a methamphetamine high. At the time, I thought it was the healthiest thing on earth. I had more energy than I'd had in my life. It felt as if I could have taken on the world and it's problems single handedly. However, there was one problem that was bigger than my herbal ego. Pam had been battling heroin addiction. She had initially come to Phoenix to sober up. While I was busy at GNC, I'd give Pam the car so she could job hunt. She never found work. The closest she got was a false sense of hope from the Red Lobster. I later learned that she'd been spending her days downtown at the methadone clinic. I tried to turn her on to wheat-grass juice and Excel pills, but it didn't have the same impact on her. She was in a bad way and not me, my pep pills, nor Wendy O. was going to change that. I felt like a failure, angry with Pam, and myself. Internalizing my frustration, I never realized that, as an addict in my own right, I didn't know how to help her. Pam left town with my Fuck 'n' Roll tape, and I moved back in with my dad.
In fall of 1986, while I was in rehab, Wendy released her second solo effort, Kommander of Kaos. As Wendy assured, 'it ran me over like a bulldozer, and had me down on the floor barking!, like a dog.' More than anything, though, Wendy now reminded me of Pam. I felt a great loss without her. We talked a few times after she left Phoenix, but we finally lost touch when she moved to Windsor, where drugs were plentiful. Shortly after the release of the Kaos album, Wendy stared in a John Waters type flick, Reform School Girls. I remember I took a hot high- school cheerleader I'd been seeing on opening night. In one classic scene warden Pat Ast says to Wendy, "Charlie, your just a stupid kid from Cleveland, a shit stain on the panties of life."
Wendy's retort: "You should know, you lick 'em every night!" Through the course of the movie, I could see repulsion in my dates eyes. Finally, during a scene where Charlie Chandlers (AKA Wendy) rapes and brands a defenseless prison debutante, my date fled the theater. I didn't run after her, she took a cab home.
My dad was outraged that I had let my obsession with Wendy O. Williams frighten another girl away. My father, having seen a trailer for the movie in Playboy, said "what kind of a woman would wear a shirt that says fuck 'n' roll or fuck me?"
"No dad," I said, as if defending her honor, "It says fuck 'n' roll or fuck off!" The movie wasn't spectacular, not even by camp standards, but at the time I believed Wendy would win an academy award for her performance: 'for the best dramatic portrayal of an incarcerated woman, the award goes to . . . Wendy O.!!!' It's the only time I've ever watched an awards show.
By the time Wendy O. did her Plasmatics reunion album, Maggots: the Record, I was getting pretty sketchy. I had graduated from the fourteen pack to the hundred size bottle of Excel pills. While I used to turn the customers on from my own stash, I was too greedy now to share. I hoarded all the customer samples for myself. I'd ransack my car in the hopes of finding a stray Excel capsule that had fallen behind the seat six months earlier. One day, in a drug hungry frenzy, I'd crammed my fists under the seat and pulled out Pam's old mottled bra. I wept.
To keep myself busy, I worked out at World Gym sometimes three hours a day, six days a week. The Excel killed my appetite so instead of gaining muscle, I was losing weight. Ironically, in recent photos of Wendy, the same thing appeared to be happening to her. It seemed both Wendy and I were on our own downward spirals. My nerves were shot to hell. I began pulling really stupid stunts. I'd run red lights blaring my horn, under the influence of Wendy O. In the middle of the night, I'd wake up and go for five-mile jogs in my leather jacket. I was losing sleep, I was losing my mind. Then, opening the New Times one day, I saw salvation in sight. Wendy O. was coming to town. Her gig was going to be at the Mason Jar, a real dive - yet, up close and personal!
In an effort to get my life back on track, I signed up for real estate classes and gave up coffee. It appeared as if I might be coming around. The night Wendy was originally slated to play, she canceled. I found out through the promoters that she had come down with pneumonia. I wondered how that could be, her being so health conscious and all. That night the Plasmatics played without Wendy. I didn't go. Instead, I tried to find out which local hospital she was at. I drove to all of them, one by one, posing as her daughter, to no avail.
Soon after, I received word that Pam had lost her bout with heroine. A vital part of me felt as if it had died with her, the part that taught me to go with life's little inanities, the part that taught me to feed from the trough of madness, the Pam part. I was completely numb. To this day I don't think there's been a soul that perceives this screwed-up planet in as enlightened a fashion as Pam did. I find I am constantly recanting to Pam's life to rekindle my creative spark. I didn't have any money for Greyhound fare, so I missed Pam's funeral in Detroit.
Two weeks later, the rescheduled Wendy show happened. After pumping myself with Excel and coffee, I was ready to rock. I got to the club early and had a hard time sitting still. I was too restless. I tried to study the sample questions for my real estate exam, but it was no use, I kept thinking about Pam. After a while, a worm in a Wendy O. shirt came in and sat down with his friends. He could have easily passed for Jerry Lewis' Buddy Love, stringy black hair, Nutty Professor glasses and all. The lot of them looked like three thugs on paint thinner. I didn't feel like company, but the place wasn't filling up, and I needed to talk to someone. After a few brief words, I found out that Buddy had met Wendy when she was in town with the Plasmatics (she'd done an appearance at Circles records). We started talking and one thing led to another. Soon I was outside in a car doing lines with Buddy Love and his friends. We talked about Wendy O., rock 'n' roll, and the meaning of life in Phoenix - a moot subject. Buddy worked for the Phoenix Gazette, which as an aspiring writer, intrigued me. We were parked out back of the Jar. We sat there talking as the sun set over a Burger King and night enveloped, what I liked to call, the Valley of the Rednecks. I felt as if I'd know these guys forever, but I guess cocaine does that. Sometime in the midst of our conversation, I offered one of the guys a blow-job to pass the time. Buddy and his other friend continued their conversation in the front seat, giving furtive glances into the rear-view mirror, under the false impression that they were next. Then, as the windows were starting to fog over (in Phoenix, yeah, it's a stretch), and this guy was getting ready to pop, we all heard the froggy throated Wendy speak. Looking up, I saw that her voice was coming from a small barred window in the back of the club. We sat in silence and listened as she spoke of the elements of her diet. "Apricots, raspberries, wheat germ oil. . ." I don't remember it all, but it got us fired up. Then we saw her tattooed silhouette in the window, just a glance, but you could clearly see her new back tattoo. It was a large blue eagle with a rattlesnake in it's talons, encircled by the words: 'United Federation of the Universe'. I caught the back of Wendy's head as her frail tattooed arm drew the shade. We smoked a couple joints after that, and the other guys went inside. I sat there a few moments longer with the frat-boy I'd just given oral to, trying to sort through things in my mind. For the most part, I was vehemently opposed to drug use. I'd especially been turned off seeing my Pam taken down on smack. I can only say that I was determined to celebrate Pam's life in the most appropriate and ignorant way possible that night: wasted at a Wendy O. concert. Anyway, what harm could a slight fit of recidivism do? I felt I had justification: between my sorrow and the Wendy O. rush I felt, I was on an e-ticket rollercoaster ride!
By the time Wendy walked out on stage to her thrash opera from the Maggots album, I was wired for sound. Even in the midst of my synthetic state of awareness, I could see that Wendy looked like death warmed over. Her face and lips were withered, her eyes sunk back in her head. She looked like somebody's grandmother. I have pondered many theories as to the nature of her health status that night and to this day have seen little evidence that Wendy O. William's still walks this earth.
The band was ultra tight. What Wendy lacked in appearance, she made up for in sheer effort. I felt bad for her, the house only half full. Still, what little audience she had, she took complete control over. Wendy grabbed the mic and proclaimed, "death to whimp rock!" I was hypnotized as Wendy stalked her audience. Strutting around the stage, lips pursed, butt in the air, she ran through a set of solo and Plasmatic material, each one a favorite. At one point Wendy challenged the audience to define the word Propagator, the name of a song from the Maggots album. Despite Wendy's emaciated condition, I don't think she could have given a more cogent delivery to Masterplan if she'd had a bionic diaphragm: "You had it made, you had it made, but you blew it all away!" I had never realized just how astute Wendy's words were. At one point, a guy to the left of the stage blew smoke in Wendy's face. Wendy reacted with pure instinct, kicking that asshole mother-fucker in the side of the head! It had to hurt, she was wearing her industrial strength combat boots. Bouncers dragged the guy out screaming as the band hammered into the next O. William's aria: here, Wendy chainsawed a guitar in half. She began to jog in place, knees thrust high. Wendy's headbanging increased in velocity, her blonde ponytail thrashing about as if Barbara Eden herself were summoning the destruction of all humanity. Her boobs convulsed in a leather brazier as she sang, "fuck that booty, fuck that booty, work that muscle!" I knew that instant Pam was in the room with me. Soon after, Wendy belched out Butcher Baby, Pam's favorite Plasmatics song.
Although it had a metal edge to it, I knew Wendy's career was finished when she broke into her new rap act. I wasn't buying it for a second. It was an imminent flop, not the kind of music you walked on the wing of a plane to. I couldn't fathom her skydiving naked to techno drums and scratching. "Perfect hard-ons," she rapped, "perfect breasts. No B.O. no PMS, It's lies all lies it's lies." The only thing Wendy's rap inspired me to do was come back to reality and complete my education. After the gig, Wendy and her crew drove off in a Hertz van. She did not stick around to greet the handful of fans waiting by the back door, myself included.
Leaving the Mason Jar, I took a short cut and ended up in a bad part of town, somewhere in the proximity of Roosevelt and Washington. By day, I knew these streets well enough to find City Court where I'd gone to pay speeding tickets. By night it was alien territory. I stopped to ask a prostitute directions, but she didn't seem to know her bearings any better than I did. She jumped in my car and it took me over an hour to convince her that I didn't require her professional services. "Oh, come on. You can pretend I'm Wanda O., it wont cost a dime extra," she pleaded. I was still wired and my ears were ringing. After driving around the same city block five times I eased over to the curb. It didn't take long till I realized where I was. I was parked in front of the methadone clinic. In an instant of rage I vowed that one last statement needed to be made. This was not a Wendy O. statement, but a personal one. I was going to burn that son-of-a-bitchen meth clinic down, once and for all! I was all set to siphon gas from my car, ready to do the deed. Miraculously, after searching through the weeds and trash strewn lawn of the clinic, I was unable to produce a suitable gas container: not a beer bottle, rusted coffee can, milk carton, nothing. I lost my courage when a police car drove by and flashed its lights. The remainder of the evening I spent at Denny's, committing my real estate questions to memory.
Today, I allow myself one cup of caffeinated coffee in the morning, usually savored to the stimulating conversation of Regis and Kathy Lee. I have strongly considered joining others in the fight to ban ephedrine from the marketplace. I never bought Wendy's rap album, and I don't know what has become of her.
ADDENDUM: Ms. O. William's has officially ended her reign as rock and roll's queen of schlock to pursue gainful employment with a natural foods distributor at an undisclosed location in New England. She has expressed no interest in being contacted by her fans. Should you happen to bump into her one day, scooping natural yogurt from a bulk bin, simply worship her from afar. She has 'been to hell and back'.