Eric Emerson (The Magic Tramps)

Today's subject is Eric Emerson, a singer/dancer/actor who, along with his band, The Magic Tramps, was one of the first, if not the first act to bring glam/glitter rock to the US. He was a brilliant performer who shone brightly but briefly; he died before he had the chance to celebrate his 30th birthday.

The Magic Tramps are little known to us because they had never had a recording contract during their existence as a group. It took drummer Sesu Coleman's efforts in recent years to collect existing recorded songs and release a compilation of their work.

Why didn't they have a recording contract? Coleman explains:

"... It was our last effort together to get a record deal. Up until now we turned down 6-8 recording contracts - with Eric
always thinking we could get a better one. Shortly after arriving in NYC we turned down Seymour Stein, President of Sire Records. I will never forget. He came to our early shows & loved us. He had a Dutch group called Focus at the time and Sire was based in Holland. He loved our theatrics & the fact Eric yodeled during the William Tell Overture. He said, 'I want you to be the first American band on Sire Records in The US. A perfect match with Focus.' We asked, 'How much ?' He said '$10,000 US & equipment & advertising & a West Coast tour & guaranteed 3 LP's.' We laughed!!! We thought we were getting offered $250,000-$500,000. Man, were we crazy."

"The clincher was he had a stipulation: He wanted his partner, Richard Gottehrer, to produce our first LP. We flipped out... 'No way - {we said} he produced the McCoys' Hang On Snoopy {a million seller}. We aren't bubble gum!!!'"

"Well, the rest is history. He signed the Ramones for $5,000. Richard Gottehrer signed Blondie for Private Stock Records. Sire signed Madonna, etc, etc, etc. CBGB's became a showcase for him & Sire records. God bless him, He's now in the R&R Hall Of Fame... And here we are... we always were waiting for the 'better deal' only to see our friends get signed."

Eric Emerson (June 23, 1945 – May 28, 1975) was born in New Jersey. Information concerning his childhood is scarce. He was born to John and Margaret Emerson, his father a construction worker by trade. He grew up in Hoboken, NJ and was trained in Ballet dance at an early age, to correct being "pigeon toed". It was through his love of dance that he came to frequent a small Lower East Side NYC club called The Dom, where he was spotted one night in April 1966 by the club's then-new owner, Andy Warhol, who was always keeping an eye out for interesting and beautiful people to put in his movies. Warhol essentially took the unknown long-haired kid from Jersey and made him a "superstar" by casting him in several of his underground art-films.

Emerson made his film debut in Warhol's 1966 classic Chelsea Girls, which debuted in New York City on 09/15/66. Eric was also featured in a few other Warhol films in subsequent years: 1968's Lonesome Cowboys, Andy Makes A Movie and San Diego Surf, 1969's The Mind Blowers directed by Harlan Renvok, and his final film appearance in Warhol's Heat, which premiered in New York City on 10/05/72.

When the debut album of The Velvet Underground and Nico was first issued, the main back cover photo (taken at an Exploding Plastic Inevitable performance) featured an image of Emerson projected upside-down on the wall behind the band. Emerson threatened to sue over this unauthorized use of his image unless he was paid. Rather than complying, MGM recalled copies of the album and halted its distribution until Emerson's image could be airbrushed from the photo on subsequent pressings. Copies that had already been printed were sold with a large black sticker covering the actor's image. The image was restored for the 1996 CD reissue.

Here is an excerpt concerning Eric from Black Jeans To Go Dancing At The Movies by Marilyn Bender:

"Emerson, who identified himself as 22 years old, a dressmaker and a hairdresser, was in black Levi's, a gray and white shirt, no tie, but a black t-shirt underneath. His blonde hair tumbled to his shoulders in a pageboy coiffure. His wife, Chris, 18, was in a low-belted, pleated dress and had her blonde hair cut in a Dutch bob. 'Someone has to have long hair in this family and he didn't want to cut his,' she explained."

At the time, Eric was living at 436 East 9th Street with his young wife Chris with whom he had his first child, a daughter named Erica, who was born in 1967. Eric had met Chris in Los Angeles and it was love at first sight. The two of them drove to Las Vegas the same night they met and were immediately married.

Eric also fathered another child with the Stillettoes' founding member/vocalist Elda Gentile, naming their son, who was born in 1970, Branch Emerson.

His youngest child, born to Warhol movie actress Jane Forth sometime around 1970, was given the name Emerson Forth. Jane Forth later said, "Eric knew everybody. There was not a day that you'd go out with him without meeting at least 20 people he knew."

Eric, however, was openly bisexual and had relationships with many of the Warhol Factory regulars. He was quoted in one interview, saying this: "I got really attached to my wife, and when she went out free-loving the way I did, I got crazy and went through a heavy gay-scene for a while." Once, when his father accused him of "being a little sweet," Eric responded that "What [my father] don't understand is that my generation can swing both ways."

While Eric was busy with his film-work and hanging out with all the other Warhol Superstars and the hangers-on who made up the scene at Max's Kansas City in New York, a group of musicians known as Messiah were making a name for themselves at a place called "The Temple of the Rainbow" in Los Angeles, CA. Messiah were an experimental three-piece group comprised of members Lary Chaplan (violin), Young Blood X. (guitar), and Sesu Coleman (drums). They were basically the house-band at the Temple of the Rainbow, and after a few years doing this gig, they decided they needed to write actual songs and hire a vocalist if they ever wanted to score the ever-elusive record contract. Guitarist Young Blood mentioned to the others that he knew just the right guy for the position of vocalist with their group, a guy he had met from New York named Eric Emerson. The band flew Emerson out to Los Angeles. Sesu remembers, "Eric fit [the group] like a glove. Now we were complete - a band with a singer and songs - the ultimate theatre. We at times played in funky blues bars as a blues band... we called ourselves The Magic Tramps."

After a serious earthquake rocked Los Angeles in February of 1971, the group had a meeting and decided to pack their bags and head for the East Coast. They were soon on their way to New York, where they were to become one of the pioneering and most important but overlooked bands of the then-budding Glam-Rock scene that was about to develop in Fun City.

They were hired to play in Max's Kansas City, where they were told by Paul Morrisey, "Rock and Roll will never fly in New York City - Cabaret is the way!" So they created two shows - one rock and roll and one cabaret.

They soon became the house-band at a place called the Mercer Arts Center as well. The New York Dolls got their start there, opening for the Tramps.

As Sesu Coleman said: "Our shows were very colorful, theatrical, original conceptually and musically. I think we were a bit misunderstood as we actually played original music with different time signatures, melodic choruses, lyrics, and stories. We always viewed our shows as an experience for one and all. Everyone was made-up and dressed-up - clothespins on their nipples, goldfish in their platform boots, anything went. That glam period was about show-and-tell, with audience participation. We had visuals, lights, colors, sometimes dry-ice for effect. We also brought various performers up on the stage to add variety. We tried to make the stage an environment and the music interesting enough to have the audience relate to the message. It was a fun and positive experience."

However, Eric wanted to continue exploring theatre and show concepts. He continued to work under a host of names - mostly solo efforts, working with other musicians and occasionally with Tramps roadie-and-sometimes member of the band Chris Stein, who would later go on to co-found Blondie. Unfortunately, Eric's various solo projects never took off. He was too much of an artist and individual. He never found that commercial musical groove that allowed him to be himself. 

In August 1974, the rest of The Magic Tramps got together with Eric at Barbara Winter's loft in New York City with a bass player named Walter ("Alter Ego") Greenberg to put together a theatrical show called "Star Theatre." It was their last effort together.

Early on the morning of Wednesday, May 28th, 1975, Eric Emerson's body was found lying next to his bicycle on the West Side of New York City. He was 29 years old at the time of his death. The cause of his death is officially listed as a hit and run and no one was ever charged or arrested in connection with his death. NYPD said the time of the accident was around 3:00 pm, shortly after Eric had returned home from a party at the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Shortly after his death, rumors began to circulate that Eric had not been the victim of a hit-and-run driver, but had, in fact, died of a heroin overdose in the apartment of his then-lover Barbara Winter, ex-wife of guitar great Edgar Winter, and his body had been dumped with his bicycle in attempt to cover up the true facts and location of his death. These rumors have never been substantiated, nor have they been disproven. The NYPD's citing of a 3:00 pm time of death and the fact that his body was not discovered until early the following morning certainly suggest some kind of discrepancy in the "official" story.

In the book Making Tracks, Debbie Harry provided an account of the circumstances surrounding Emerson's death: "One night we were over at Eric's apartment working on a tape of Heart of Glass on his Teac four-track tape recorder when he suddenly staggered out of the kitchen looking ashen. He looked even more distraught and sad when we left. Being satisfied drove him crazy in the end because he had everything so he didn't care about anything anymore. He used to go out jogging every day, and did feats of physical endurance like strapping twenty-pound weights to each ankle and then bicycling up to the Factory. The next day we were sitting around the house just after we woke up when Barbara called with the bad news. "Oh, Eric got hit by a truck." He had been a good friend and inspiration to so many people. We didn't quite understand what had happened, but we went up to a party/wake held for him and saw a lot of people from the earlier glitter days. Eric's death definitely marked an end to the glitter period. We still miss him."

Andy Warhol on the death of Eric Emerson: "Some of those kids who were so special to us, who made our 60's scene what it was, died young in the 70's. They found Eric Emerson early one morning in the middle of Hudson Street. Officially, he was labeled a hit-and-run victim but we heard rumors that he'd overdosed and just been dumped there - in any case, the bicycle he [supposedly] been riding was intact."

This comes from Warhol associate Gerard Malanga: "It's been said somewhere that the good die young - and this is as true now as when looking back at Eric's sudden and unexpected demise, a void is left in the wake of his absence. We can only speculate at the artist he would have become. He was a mercurial free-spirit. For me, his enthusiasm was contagious - his encouragement sublime. He was almost selfless in this instance. Whatever the engagement, whether it was crafting leather goods, stitching fabric or writing a poem, he was in the moment of creation and of the moment as well. Eric's legacy remains a constant wonder. He was a friend for all time."

Finally, bandmate Sesu Coleman remembers Eric: "Eric Emerson - a book unto himself. Eric was a kind and loving person - a party waiting to happen. He was sensitive, non-confrontational and not at all a negative person. Creative, fun, misunderstood. Colorful, magnetic and magical. Life was his stage. Mickey Ruskin - the owner of Max's Kansas City, thought the world of him as did Lou Reed and almost everyone who knew him."

Now, let's hear some of the songs. Unfortunately, there aren't many songs with Emerson on vocals available. One of these is Magic in the Moonlight:

... Another is My Reflection:

These are the only two that aren't geo-blocked in my area of the world. I will, however, link you to the rest - perhaps you will be able to listen to them. Here's Ode To Jimmy Dean:

This is Hey People:

This is Warriors Of The Rainbow:

This is Smoke + Mirrors:

This is Trippin':

This is S&M-Leather Queen:

Finally, here's a rare video: Wearing leather chaps and completely covered in glitter, Eric Emerson sings two songs in Jackie Curtis' Vain Victory: the Vicissitudes of the Damned at La Mama Experimental Theater Club in May 1971 on opening night. Restored from 1/2" B&W videotape. This was the original counter-culture hit play starring Curtis and Candy Darling, Paul Ambrose, Agosto Machado, et al.