DRINKING WITH... ROCKETS REDGLARE By Richy Vesecky and Eddy Christman July 1999

 

Rockets Redglare—the man in question, the man in doubt—is a little-known name to some and a well-known face to others. He has been a fixture in the East Village since the early 1980’s, and during that time, he’s built up quite a résumé. With appearances in almost 40 movies, he is regarded as an independent movie legend. He is also a former stand-up comic and a once upon a time performance artist. On one hand, he’s a story-teller, and on the other, he’s a raconteur. He used to be a night club impresario, but he will always be a barfly extraordinaire.

When we decided that an interview with Rockets Redglare would be the perfect way to celebrate all we have to celebrate, the question became who do we get to interview him? For that we reached out to Ricky Vesecky, a songwriter and an award-winning cartoonist, and Eddy Christman, a former paperboy, who have known Rockets since the mid-1970’s.

Richy: Other than us, who do you still know from way back when? Are you still in contact with your pal Dean?

Rockets: No. I haven’t talked to him in a while.

Richy: Does Dean still live in your old apartment in Astoria? Call him up and let’s go over there. That’s where we should be doing this interview.

Rockets: My old apartment? God, if those walls could talk!

Eddy: What are you doing with your time now?

Rockets: I am writing my autobiography, but I haven’t finished it yet. But based on the first 100 pages, I’ve managed to get a promise from my publisher to get a hardcover printing; also, I got a deal for two more books; and I sold my film rights to it already to Julian Schnabel.

Eddy: How many more times are you gonna sell the film rights? (laughs)

Richy: My question is—are we in the book?

Rockets: Oh yeah, you guys will be.

Eddy: You didn’t get to us yet? You already have done 100 pages. What part of your life does that bring you to?

Rockets: In the beginning it’s chronological, and then I drift into like stream of consciousness thing. Like after writing about my first sexual experience, then I go into the second time I had sex in a basement. So, it’s not according to time, but according to what seems like a good idea to follow up with.

Richy: Do you have a name for the book?

Rockets: Yeah, it’s called "Users Manual." (laughs) So far it’s a great tome. I haven’t even touched on any celebrity stuff. That’s for the big powerful ending, you know? (laughs) Everyone who expects a trashy, tell-all about, say, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Sid Vicious and all that are going to very surprised at what I center on.

Eddy: When are you going to finish it?

Rockets: Anyone who’s read it, the general consensus is "you gotta live long enough to finish it." Usually when people say that I wind up burying them. I have people who say things to me like, "Rockets, I can’t believe you’re still alive!" Then, six months later I’m sitting there at some eulogy for them.

Richy: Let me not make that mistake.

Eddy: But you actually promote that image. You used to tell people you only had one lung, and then chain smoke cigarettes all day in front of them.

Rockets: (laughs) You seem to think that. I remember always telling people I’m as healthy as a horse, the constitution of a mule.

Eddy: I remember that too! I remember you playing both sides.

Rockets: That’s why I believe I’m a good actor, because acting is lying in 3D, and I’ve always been a good liar. If I could just get my body to lie.

Eddy: Speaking of acting, what’s going on with your movie career nowadays?

Rockets: I did an episode of Oz about six or seven weeks ago for HBO. Matt Dillon directed an episode and he wanted me to play the prison barber, so that’s what I did. [The barber] might make another appearance later on in the show. But also, in August, I’m probably going to Pennsylvania or Montreal to do Steve Buscemi’s second film, "Animal Factory," which was written by Eddie Bunker, the guy who wrote "Dog Eat Dog." He did the screenplay for "Straight Time" and "Runaway Train." He’s a pretty interesting guy.

Richy: "Straight Time" was about him, right?

Rockets: Yeah, in fact all of his stories are semi-autobiographical. "Animal Factory" is basically a prison book. "Dog Eat Dog" is about guys getting out of prison and the whole way they relate to the world and stuff. I haven’t met him yet, but I can’t wait because he seems to me like so back to my Uncle Eddie days, a whole loyalty among criminals things. You can tell, Bunker knows outlaws. There are some people who are criminals, there are other people who are outlaws. They choose to live their life outside the law.

Eddy: Who was Uncle Eddie?

Rockets: Uncle Eddie was my guardian angel, who also happened to be public enemy No. 1. He was known by the name Joe Donahue.

Eddy: How many movies have you made so far? Is it around 40?

Rockets: 34 altogether. I always say 40 to make it sound good.

Richy: Talk a little about the early ones.

Rockets: The first movie was, uh, Eric Mitchell’s film. It had a really pretentious title–"Eurydice and the Avenue"–but it was really Orpheus Descending, you know, the Orpheus myth? I had a good part in it. There was a scene with Vincent Gallo and me playing pool with each other. We’re both supposed to be actors in the film and Gallo’s going, "Yeah, well I worked with DeNiro." And I replied, "Yeah, I worked with Scorsese before he worked with DeNiro. It was a whole "Can you top this?" kind of thing while we played pool. So it’s a pretty funny scene. I knew Vincent before he started wearing polyester. I knew him when he wore natural fibers.(laughs)

Richy: Next was?

Rockets: "Stranger Than Paradise" and then there was "Down By Law."

Eddy: Wasn’t "Big" in between there somewhere.

Rockets: Wait, Ed. I’ll do the chronology of my career. (laughs)

Eddy: I can’t help it; I’m all excited.

Rockets: Actually, they didn’t want me to do "Down By Law," except Jim Jarmusch stuck up for me with the producer. They wanted to use a guy from New Orleans, and Jim said, "Rockets will do a better Cajun/New Orleans accent than anybody you can find from New Orleans." So I got that movie and in one scene I did this homage to Orson Welles climbing the stairs the way he did in "Touch Of Evil" with the sweating and everything. It was a bitch doing it because it was like 105 degrees in that hotel room with all the lights and 40 people.

Eddy: That’s good for sweating, though.

Rockets: Great for sweating. But you’re trying to remember your lines, and you are getting dizzy spells. Then I did "Desperately Seeking Susan." I had known Madonna already but Susan Seidelman had seen me do my stand up and she really liked the mime routine I did. At the end of my show I used to wear a tuxedo and I would undo the tie, kind of ala Dean Martin. And everyone would expect me to sing but instead I’d grab a huge container of baby powder, fill my hand up with it, and throw it in my face and say, "What’s with these mimes?!" That routine got me my best compliment ever as a stand up comedian. There was a girl who was watching it, who had to go the bathroom, but she didn’t want to miss the end of the routine. Anyway, she was laughing so hard she actually wound up pissing in her pants.

Richy: That was actually on the poster the next week: Rockets has them pissing in their pants! (laughs)

Rockets: Rolling in the aisles!

Richy: Not a dry seat in the house!

Eddy: Anyway, back to the films.

Rockets: You know, the chronology gets a little mixed up. But then I did a bunch of other films with no real uh, cache, like "Hot Shots With Pele." All of a sudden I became a commodity.

Richy: Hot Shots?

Eddy: With Pele?

Rockets: Yeah, I was getting sent on all these movies. I did "Rooftops" for Robert Wise, the guy who did "West Side Story."

Richy: Wise is great. He also did "The Day The Earth Stood Still."

Rockets: Yeah.

Eddy: Don’t forget to talk about "Big."

Rockets: I did "Big" with Tom Hanks and Penny Marshall.

Richy: I don’t think that I ever saw it.

Eddy: Well, Brian Light saw it.

Rockets: Could you guys stop arguing? It’s my interview. If you don’t, it’s gonna end up with Richy and Eddy bickering and yelling at each other throughout.

Eddy: Brian Light has the perfect Rockets story. He said, "So there I am sitting at the movie and the kid goes into the hotel and he looks up and sees the manager. And as he does, the screen shows a close-up of Rockets’ face, and I was unaware that he was going to be in the movie. I gotta tell ya, it’s a little unsettling to see Rockets’ face, 40 feet wide and 20 feet high, suddenly staring down at you."

Richy: What other movies?

Rockets: I did "Mystery Train" with Jarmusch again. That was with (Joe) Strummer, and Steve Buscemi. Me and Steve had been friends for a long time because he used to be in my cabaret shows, which is where he first got noticed by the downtown crowd, which helped to get him his start.

And then I started to do some other films. I did "Talk Radio" for Oliver Stone. I was rolling. I did "Stars and Bars." That was my best film experience…14 weeks in Georgia. With Daniel Day Lewis, Harry Dean Stanton, Will Patton, Joan Cusack, Pat O’Connor who actually married Mary Elisabeth Mastrantonio...great director, great guy. We had the greatest crew, the greatest bunch of people.

I was doing good and then there was a little lull there. I kept on getting work, but I wasn’t happy with the kind of work I was getting. I got a Stallone movie where they paid me for a week but never really used me so I kind of said, "I’m not going to Rahway Prison everyday and sit around and wait to get called. I’m gonna take a pass on it." And of course, it turns out the other guy that was waiting around said "I’ll stick around until Monday." They shot him on Monday and he wound up working on the movie for 17 weeks, and went to LA. I’ve made a few bad career choices. (laughs)

Richy: What about "After Hours?"

Rockets: "After Hours" was a complete shock to me. I got the job the night before. Todd Thaylor who casts extras, called me all excited and said, "Listen, Rockets, Scorsese wants you to be in this movie "After Hours" that he’s shooting and you gotta be ready to go tomorrow. I said, "Alright." "But listen," he said, "you are gonna be an extra." I said, "An extra? I don’t know about that." He said, "Don’t worry. I’ve already been told you are going to get upgraded." So, I went down there and before I even had a cup of coffee, they said, "Oh, by the way you’re upgraded." Then they gave me my lines, and it was such a let down. I was the guy with the Mr. Softee truck chasing uh, Griffin Dunne around in Soho. There I was, a huge fan of Scorsese. To me he is a demigod. I thought: I’m gonna be in a Scorsese film! I’m gonna take direction from Scorsese! So in my first scene we had to run down these flight of stairs and it was hot... We run down the stairs. In fact, we are running down the stairs like 10, 15 times. And we kept hearing "Another take! Another take!" And Scorsese got his asthma inhaler out and he’s breathing into it as dust is flying everywhere. So we get to the bottom of the stairs. I deliver the line, "He stole my stereo!" And I’m all excited. I delivered a line and Scorsese turns around and says, "Too loud!" I was so devastated. If I had a tail it would have been hanging between my legs. I was so dejected. Too loud!. Nothing. Just "Too loud!"

Eddy: (to Richy) Have you ever seen Rockets dejected?

Richy: No.

Rockets: I’m really as upbeat as can be. I did a bunch of other shit. I did some television stuff. "Kate and Allie."

Eddy: Is this when you were living in LA?

Rockets: No. When I was living in LA I got very little work. I came in second on about 10 different movies. Which sucked because then you gotta go on like four auditions. You’re running around constantly. I’m just burning money up.

Eddy: When did you live in LA?

Rockets: About 94-95. The worst year of my life. I hated it. I went from staying at the Chateau Marmont to sleeping in the fucking weeds. (laughs) Not literally, but sleeping in a Lincoln Continental. In the morning some Indian guy was banging on the window saying "You cannot sleep here. This is for cars," Haha, I thought, well I’m in a car!

Eddy: Where did you get the car from?

Rockets: It was my friend’s car. He wouldn’t let me sleep in his house with his wife and his four kids. It was kinda crowded. Then, I rented a house in the hills in Silverlake. I had some money so I rented the place for two months—two thousand bucks. It was a place with a pool. I was all excited. The first morning I get out of bed. I’m an LA guy, so I get up and make myself a vodka and cranberry; I stick an english muffin in the toaster. You couldn’t get a bagel out there worth shit. I got some Topanga Canyon Cream Cheese or some shit like that, which I put on my muffin. So, I take my muffin, my vodka cranberry and I go out by my pool... I don’t even put my eye glasses on. I’m enjoying the sun, thinking this is the life. Maybe LA ain’t so bad. I jump in the pool, I come up and I thought there was a leaf in the pool next to me cause I had my glasses off. So I go to knock the leaf out of the pool, the big leaf, and it was a fucking rat! (laughs)

Richy: A floating rat?

Rockets: I go to scoop it up like it’s a leaf and I got this heavy rat in my hand and I go AUUUUUUUGH!!?!

Eddy: I would think you could handle that.

Rockets: I could handle a rat, but in New York, the rats are alive.

Richy: They don’t float by!

Rockets: They don’t disguise themselves as leaves. Here, when you see a rat, it’s in a fucking alley.

Richy: Jumping out of a garbage can.

Rockets: Not when you’re in a beautiful aquamarine swimming pool. Seeing a rat running across an alley or running across like a lump of food in Chinatown is one thing, but if you lift up Marilyn Monroe’s dress and a rat runs out, it’s gonna have a little different impact. (laughs)

I guess that says it all about LA. You get what you expect in NY. You see some guy walking down the street in NY and he’s crusty with dirt and he’s carrying a pipe, there’s a good chance he might ask you for your money, but like in LA, a guy in a suit walks over to you and says, "Hey, how are you?" and then gives you the fucking finger. Everyone is like that out there. They smell blood, man. If you’re not doing well they smell it on you. The worst thing you can do is ask a friend for help in LA. If you can’t talk about real estate or your last movie, you’re fucked.

Eddy: Let’s move back to when Rockets decided it was time to invent punk rock. Punk rock existed, but not really, until you decided to acknowledge that it existed.

Rockets: I don’t want to get into the punk rock stuff. Before we move on, I want to wrap up the film stuff. It was great doing "Trees Lounge" with Steve Buscemi. Steve is a great guy and has been a big help to me. We all know I almost died a year and a half ago. He was right there for me. Also, Schnabel is a believer. I want to go on the record as saying that. It has nothing to do with any future deals I have. (laughs)

I’ll tell you, one disappointment is Gary Oldman. Gary Oldman is like an English Punter. He has so much God-given talent but he’s a typical English knothead. As an actor, you would think he knows certain things that have to do with other films and stuff. I had on a T-shirt. and on the front was a green fist with tattoos on it and on the back it said "Anger Is A Gift." It was from the film "Once Were Warriors," about the Maori warriors from New Zealand. He comes up to me and says, "Anger is a gift. Does that mean that if I hit you with this chair you’ll thank me?" I said, "No it means if you hit me with that chair I’ll kick your fuckin' ass, you English punk. It didn’t go over real good.

Richy: How about a little on the New York scene in the 1970s? It was a pretty interesting time. For us you led the way out of Queens.

Rockets: I was kind of in exile from New York. I had moved to Queens. It was one of those times when I thought I needed to take a brake from the insanity. I figured I’ll stay out of trouble. I’ll get away from the drugs, which I did. I think when you guys first met me I was pretty much drug free.

Eddy: We remember you before you were Rockets!

Rockets: Shhhh. You’re pulling my cover!

Richy: You mean, Rockwell Redglario? (laughs)

Rockets: So I was out in Queens on a sabbatical, out in the Hinterlands, studying the forage. I was living the quiet life. I went to this wine tasting with this guy who was on lithium and we took two girls. I was in the backseat of the car. I got my head in this girl’s lap, my feet are out the window. I must have a guardian angel, because so many times I’ve come this close to death. Something said, "Pull your feet in from the window." Just as I did, the driver—the guy on lithium, and I guess the wine was hitting him—he started to roll the car. On the side of the car where my feet were, it started scraping along the concrete and I realized my legs wouldn’t have been broken, they would’ve been eroded. Little by little. There would’ve been two red lines next to the white line on the road. So I wound up in the hospital with a back injury and I met Richy’s sister Penny...

Eddy: And I was the paper boy, delivering newspapers at the hospital.

Rockets: I immediately developed a crush on Penny and she wanted nothing to do with me. But then me and Richy’s mom became good friends. I started coming over to hang out with Richy’s mom. Me and Richy met and started taking about music and movies and stuff. We became friends.

Eddy: And I was still the paper boy.

Rockets: I can remember a couple of times riding in the newspaper truck with you and your pal Flesh. Was he your pet or something? (laughs)

Richy: Fletch!

Rockets: He’d ride around in the truck and I’d be smashed on something unbeknownst to everyone else. I did want to get away from the drugs, but I didn’t want to stray too far. I might not find my way back! (laughs) So I left a trail of breadcrumbs.

Richy: That was around the time you got involved with the first crew to send up " The Rocky Horror Picture Show."

Rockets: I had been going to "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" and met a wild crowd. I thought, OK, I have a taste for this again and I started going back to Max’s Kansas City where I immediately hooked up with Sharon Mitchell, the porno star. So I started hanging out again.

Eddy: But for a while, you still lived in Queens.

Rockets: Yeah, I remember one night we all went to the movies on 42nd Street. Did we go see "Dawn Of The Dead"?

Richy: That was one of them.

Rockets: One of my favorite things ever…I’ll never forget this. We went to see "Dawn of the Dead," in a theater with a predominately black audience on 42nd Street. And in the movie, this guy walks down the stairs and has a gun in one hand and a flashlight in the other. And the audience knows there is a zombie ghoul death squad down there waiting for him. So, he gets to bottom of the stairs and there is a light switch. He’s gonna turn the light on. Instead of putting the flashlight down and turning the light on, he puts the gun down to turn on the light. And a black guy from the audience yells, ""Whoa, sucka. You don’t never lay your Roscoe down!" Naturally, right after this, a clawed hand on screen grabs him by the face and takes his skin off his face. It was perfect timing. I actually would like to go see the "Phantom Menace" with that guy, whoever he was.

Eddy: Billy Bell says he wants to go to "Phantom Menace." Maybe you can go with him.

Rockets: Billy Bell, now there is another funny guy. That was another weird thing about me. I don’t know, maybe it says something about me. One of my other best friends out in Queens was Billy’s grandmother.

Eddy and Richy: Granny!!

Rockets: Granny got me my apartment in Astoria. Granny was like my buddy. I used to go over and hang with Granny. She would make me those little cheese sandwiches…

Richy: I lived with Granny at that time!

Rockets: At the time I was on methadone.

Richy: Yeah, Rockets, you lived in like, the house of debauchery, and then you’d go across the street to Granny’s and have tea and cheese sandwiches. (laughs)

Rockets: One day, I had never taken elavil before, but elavil and methadone is a horrible combination. You know, you see these guys on the street, like the question-marked shaped people (laughs) that you can’t knock over? With their ritualistic semi-circle of possessions laying around in front of them. They picked up like a broken lamp somewhere that’s taken on some like totem symbolism… (laughs) That was the influence I was under. Anyway, I was at Granny’s and I guess the tea made the elavil kick in. (laughs) So Granny said to me, "Oh Michael, will you fix the blinds, they’re stuck." I said, "Don’t worry about it!" So I climbed up on a chair to fix them. Later, Granny actually had to call Billy and said, "Billy, can you come over? Michael climbed up on a chair and he’s been up there for an hour and a half. I can’t get him to come down! He’s not listening to me!" I was up there like a zombie. Granny was the coolest person. You never saw her clean the place but it was like a Dorian Gray thing—I would eat off her floor.

Richy: When I was living with her and Billy, she was always yelling at us, claiming that we had messed up the house.

Rockets: So I heard. Anyway, the funny thing was that I must’ve found a soft spot in her heart. I could do no wrong.

Richy: Soon you were going to Max’s and CBGB’s.

Rockets: And of course I was really into The Dots at the time. That’s really a shame about Jimmy [Quid, the lead singer for the Dots who died in 1990]. Great guy.

Eddy: Remember Racing Car Mikey?

Rockets: "Racing Car Driver." Remember I brought the big racer car and brought it on stage when they performed.

Richy: I think that was an early version of your performance art. You choreographed a Dots song.

Rockets: I used to fall down a lot in those days. We had fun.

Eddy: That was about when you met Sid Vicious.

Rockets: Oh Sid and that whole thing at Hurrah’s with the supposed fight with Patti Smith.

Eddy: You were on the front page of the Daily News. They made you seem like you were Sid’s bodyguard.

Rockets: No, third page.

Eddy: No, page one. The edition that I had.

Richy: Trust him, he was the paper boy.

Rockets: Ok, ok. I need that for my autobiography. That woke me up to what the media does to manipulate stuff. I had a leather jacket and a T-shirt on and my hair was spiked. They made me look like some Mafia bodyguard. They slicked back my hair, then they put a necktie on me and they made my leather jacket into a long suit coat. With Sid, they added like a huge distended Adam’s apple so he looked stupid, and they gave him extra spikes so he looked like a character. They really enhanced the images that they wanted to portray.

Eddy: You’ve been living down here on the Lower East Side for how many years now?

Rockets: Well, downtown for about 50 years on and off. I was born in Chinatown/Little Italy, born in Bellevue. I love to say that.

Eddy: Remember the year, you headed up security at Irving Plaza for the Copelands and then moved uptown with them when they moved the shows to the Hotel Diplomat.

Richy: And as soon as you were in charge, you hired me, Eddy and Billy. The three wimpiest guys around.

Rockets: Yeah, remember The Police shows there? Miles Copeland came over to me and said "We sold like 1,100 tickets and there’s 3,000 people in here. (laughs) He said, "You’re in charge of security. What’s going on?" I told him it must be someone else not watching their door. I know this is true because I was getting $20-$30 to sneak people in and I only had about $800 in my pocket so I know it wasn’t me!

Eddy: After that you moved onto the UK Club.

Rockets: That’s a good one. The UK club was open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It wasn’t even an after hours club, it was a before, during and after hours club.

Richy: Was it Mafia-owned?

Rockets: It wasn’t. But it was guys with Hefty bags full of cocaine, with chicks blowing guys in the bathroom, all kinds of shit going on. There was mother and daughter downstairs in the store room taking on all comers. We had quite a retinue of perversion. A rodeo!

Eddy: And you were the ringmaster!

Rockets: I had the top hat and the whip! (laughs) Anyway, once the club was hired by these mob guys to set up a party for one of their own. My marching orders were to hire three prostitutes. And they gave me a big stack of hundreds. So I set up a big bowl of coke, a big bowl of joints—really good pot, a perfectly stocked bar, with anything anybody could ask for. I had all kinds of weird liqueurs, and $300 dollar bottles of wine, a spread from Dean and Deluca.

So the guy and his friend shows up and there partying for 3-4 hours, all coked-up and drunk. Now the girls come out. The first two girls come out and they’re dancing around and playing games with everybody. But the last one, the really beautiful one—I mean she was beautiful. I was thinking, "Can I wangle a freebie out of her," because I knew I couldn’t afford her—she was for the birthday boy.

So they’re all hanging out having a great time and she comes out from behind this Chinese screen and she coming towards him and he’s laughing. She takes everything off but her G string. She starts unbuttoning his shirt, and he starts all of a sudden going, "No, no, no," and pushing her away. All the mob guys are laughing. And he keeps on pushing her away and the other mob guys are yelling, "What, you scared your wife is gonna find out?" But the guy keeps begging her off and finally the other guys grab his arms and say, "You’re gonna enjoy your birthday."

The woman starts undoing his shirt and he’s like really hairy. Hair on his shoulders, on his back, all over. And right on his lower right side there is a six inch by four inch square shaved bare. And all of sudden it dawned on all of us in the room that he’d been shaved because he had been wearing a wire. Immediately, the whole attitude in the room changed and they told me, "Get out, get out."

They told me to go downstairs and turn the music up. About twenty minutes later they walked him down the stairs and they have a Burberry raincoat over him and they are walking him out and they get him to the front and they go to me "We didn’t have any party in here tonight, right?" I said, "No!" He says, "Right," and he peeled up something like $1,400 and gave it to me. As they’re walking him out, I see the fucking stains from either stab wounds or gunshot wounds that were bleeding through the raincoat and that was it. So that’s my UK Club story. You can read about that and more in "User’s Manual, coming out in the next few months!"