Just Show Up

Johnny and Joey Ramone at the Roundhouse, 1977.

This may seem like a still frame from Carpenter’s “Escape From New York” with Kurt Russell, yet it’s actually Cheetah Chrome of The Dead Boys with John Spacely aka ‘Gringo’ on the left, as captured in New York in 1979 by Bob Gruen.

John Spacely was a notorious a notorious hustler/junkie who had actually ‘escaped’ in the late-‘70s from LA to NY, where he became some kind of a popular nightlife fixture on the streets of NYC’s Lower East Side, especially after getting his trademark look following an altercation with a drag queen, who pierced his eye with a high heeled shoe forcing him to wear an eye patch over his damaged eye, as well as a contributor for Punk Magazine, befriending various musicians including Keith Richards, Willy Deville or Joey Ramone and becoming a close buddy of Johnny Thunders -despite the two getting in an on-stage physical altercation in 1982 with JT using his guitar as his weapon of choice, as seen in the documentary ‘Born To Lose: The Last Rock and Roll Movie’. 

It has been said that when Spacely, Cheetah & Johnny Thunders showed up at the bar together, it was always going to be a helluva night.