Joe Ambrose - Chelsea Hotel Manhattan: A Raw Eulogy To A New York Icon

Joe Ambrose

A babelogue about one hotel, its superstars, bohemians, junkies, losers and outsiders. With diversions concerning Harlem, Brooklyn, negritude, the Lower East Side, punk rock, hip hop, tales of beatnik glory, and the loneliness of the city crowd.

A Headpress Book

First published in 2007

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CHELSEA HOTEL MANHATTAN

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Text copyright Joe Ambrose & respective authors

This volume copyright 2012 Headpress

Design & layout: Hannah Bennison

World Rights Reserved

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilised in any
form, by any means, including electronic, mechanical and photocopying, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from
the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-1900486-60-6 (pbk)

ISBN 978-1-909394-03-2 (ebk)

www.worldheadpress.com

Long John Silver, Treasure Island.

As for the unbelievers, Allah can surely do without them.

The Koran

Beware the deadly underdose.

Marty Matz

We started as a cell in a sea-like situation.

Now its a little smoky and hard to breathe and there are dead people everywhere.

In the city where once walked Gods there are no longer even people left alive.

Joey the old punk rocker had reached the end of time. His hair dye and longhair wigs were laid aside. It was time for Joey to go against his will into that bad night. The glory days of three night stands in Brazilian stadiums were other peoples memories now. His memories disappeared into the morphine sea that awaits us all. The stocky hospice nurse, a Nora McCarthy from Kerry, eyed Joeys drug-loving best pal, wondering if he was the wretch whod stolen that lifetimes supply of morphine sulphate which went missing the week before things got this bad for poor Joey.

His onetime gallery-running mother and his in-bitter-awe of wealth and fame punk rock brother were gathered by his bedside. As the singer disappeared into his personal cancer coma the brother pressed Play on the shocking pink ghetto blaster. Music from the new U2 album .lled the hospital room air. Tubes and machines had all been put aside. It was time to go. Hey, ho, lets go! There was no hope now, other than U2. And that was no hope at all.

Once hed changed my life with his 7 street symphonies, and once hed taken this sorry scheme of things entire and remoulded it closer to his hearts desire. Once he had rejected the values of his older brother and his mother to forge his own. Ira Cohen told me on the streets of Manhattan that Joey was the surviving half of a pair of Siamese twins. I heard so many stories from his friends about how he was the intelligent one, the principled one, the one with the vision, the one with the art, that I convinced myself not just that this was true, but that I too was the intelligent, principled, one amongst my peers and the one with the art in my veins. Such is the power of repetition. And morphine sulphate.

I am not on the side of my species.

I move through this world like one born under a fortunate sign though there is no evidence to support this fantasy. At least I hope my luck holds out.

It is 5am. Everything is for the best in the best of all possible worlds. In a floating world I erode. I am floating desperately, watching a Sissy Spacek TV movie on the TV, when I decide to go look at the Empire State Building and to visit Easy Everything on Times Square to check my emails cheap. It is my first night in America.

The anti-ghost of Joni Mitchell arrives on time to greet me and welcome me to her universe. As Im leaving the Chelsea Hotel, with a view to walking to Easy Everything, Joni is arriving back there in a limousine. We pass each other in the flapping glass doors. She looks like she did decades ago on the cover of Dogs Run Free, all Canadian collegiate intellect and California Blow Job Queen looseness.

Her long white fur coat rubbing up against my brown Armani effort. Im impressed. She that has been with almost the entire lineup of CSN&Y.

Like Joni, Ive lived my whole life in clouds at icy altitudes. And looking down on everything, Ive crashed onto the ground. I head north, out from around the Chelsea Hotel, but I pause to stare in the window of a bad sneakers shop. I should have been here twenty years ago. Two black boys poor and mutts are looking at the bad sneakers enthused about them. I think to myself that, man, I got better sneakers at home that Id only wear if I was laboring or working on the farm.

It takes me no time to check my emails at Easy Everything. As the next monitor a fifteen year old black kid who must weigh about four hundred pounds is slumped over a ghetto blaster tuned into a pirate ragga station just now blending Batty Rider by Buju Banton with Ah Si JEtais Riche by Big Boss & Winsome. Which is winsome OK. A French version of if I Were a Rich Man with, of all things, a ragga beat.

Theyll never make a go of this place. Junkies, male prostitutes, the homeless, the dirty, the hapless, the dispossessed, the strung out ones and worse, have returned to Times Square via Easy Everything. A Missy Elliot-fat dyke is chatting up young white suburban girls in New Jersey on her cellular. She is hollering like a pig, Yeah, sure honey. I can travel to Jersey. Then they discuss things they could do with their tongues and clits.

I get back to the Chelsea about 6.30am and Im finally ready for sleep, jet lagged or not. The ghost of Herbert Huncke roams the corridors of the hotel. He is an old friend, come back to welcome me to the city he called home.

What do you suggest I do tomorrow? I ask Mr Huncke before sleep surrounds me.

Dammit, I suggest you go see Handy Dandy, a nice man, a reasonable saxophonist, and a fine heroin dealer whom I first met in Amsterdam in 1989 when he lived over a restaurant with this charming young girl called Yaniss. I was doing a series of readings across that part of Europe organised by a female psychopath who could have gone ten rounds with Sonny Liston. It was a particularly unpleasant experience I was having but Handy Dandy fixed me up just fine. Dandy lives south of Houston with his old girlfriend, Lady High, who used to be Chet Bakers dealer in the late 50s. Then she was known as Sue Tyrer, under which name she had a couple of good supporting roles in movies starring the likes of Mitchum and Burt Lancaster. Yes indeed, Lady High was in with as good a chance as the best of them, but she let her addiction get the better of her, says Americas oldest living junkie, now deceased, chuckling.