Smokey (John Condon)

Most of the gay artists in the 60s and 70s were closeted, or semi-closeted. Today we'll deal with an artist who was (and still is) out and proud. Unforunately, he and his music were "too gay" to earn him any sort of recognition then. Thankfully, during the last couple of years, people seem to be discovering him. Hopefully, we here will add our little bit to further his recognition.

John "Smokey" Condon was just 15 years old when his father kicked him out of the house, and he moved to Baltimore, Maryland,  where he rented a room above a rock club. In his own words to noisey.vice.com:

"I lived on the third floor, and it was a nightclub called the Bluesette. I rented a room, I think it was $40 a month, and everyone used a common toilet. It was only musicians that lived there. I was still in high school at that point, and I washed dishes across the street. I went to school from quarter of two til two-thirty, and then I’d jam and watch bands. One of the groups that thought they were really gonna make it was called Grin. That was Nils Lofgren’s band before he started playing with Bruce Springsteen. So that was my living situation."

He was asked whether his father kicked him out because he was gay. His answer:

"Well, I was a handful. It was decided that it would be best if I were a handful somewhere else. [Laughs] But I’m very proud of that part of my life. Looking back, it was a struggle. Like I said, I went to school for 45 minutes a day. I was expelled for being gay several times. I went to a really preppy school, and I’d wear a hot-pink tank top. I’d get beat up, but I worked and I paid my own rent."

So you were openly gay very early on.

"Yeah, but it was the ’60s so it didn’t faze anybody I was hanging around with. It didn’t faze anybody until the late ’70s or early ’80s. Especially in Baltimore, people were just people. I hung out with all the John Waters people. It just didn’t seem to matter to anybody."

Except the folks at school.

"Yeah. [Laughs] But they were living at home with their parents. They were being kids. I had to grow up and be an adult. But you know, I marched with Cesar Chavez and all the grape pickers from Baltimore to Washington. I was in all the Vietnam protests. It didn’t really matter if I was gay or straight. People didn’t care. They were hippies."

You mentioned the John Waters crowd. Did you ever hang out with John Waters himself?

"Very seldom. I was at parties at his house, when they had a birthday party for Divine. I partied with Edith Massey. But most of those people hung out at a bar in downtown Baltimore called Leadbetter’s. But I haven’t seen John since the early ’70s. On Sunday, I was at a pool party here in Palm Springs and I met the guy who took the cover photos for John’s book. We were talking and I told him that John didn’t really pick the craziest people he had his choice of in Baltimore. There were some craaaazy people he overlooked."

At one point, you met the Doors’ tour manager, Vince Treanor, and you went to the UK with the Doors. That must’ve been an eye-opening experience. 

"Yeah, it was. They played the Isle Of Wight, so I got to meet a lot of people. I got to stand next to Jimi Hendrix. I met Ten Years After and Tiny Tim and Terry Reid. I saw Emerson, Lake and Palmer’s first gig. But I was hanging out with the Doors. Everyone remembers Jim Morrison as this sexy idol, but when I was with them he had a beer gut and a big beard and people threw shit at them when they were onstage because he wouldn’t talk between songs. We were supposed to go around the world, but the rest of the tour got canceled because he had his [obscenity] trial in Florida."

Later, in 1973, when the post-Morrison Doors brought Smokey to L.A., he’d meet producer and soon-to-be co-conspirator Emmons, a young roadie who’d been racking up impressive studio credits, including time with underrated L.A. producer Curt Boettcher. And so, in that strange world that came after hippie but before punk, they decided to make music together.

EJ Emmons: "Smokey was in my bed. That’s how I met him. [Laughs] Before that, I was sleeping on the floor of the studio I’d been working in. Then Vince called me up and said, 'I’ve got this guy here from the East Coast, he’s really good-looking and he’s got a great voice. Maybe you can do something with him.' So I went over and met him and he was everything that Vince said he was. Next thing you know, we went in and made Leather. I don’t think there was much time between when we met and when we recorded because I was already working with [singer/songwriter] Gordon Alexander, and we had a band and a studio ready to go, so why not?"

This is Leather, which was released in 1976 through EJ & John's own label, S&M Records:

After you recorded the single, EJ shopped it around to the major labels. But nobody was really interested, right?

Emmons: "We ran into the problem of being fags, unfortunately, in a time when fags were still not cool in Hollywood. Ben Edmonds from Capitol watched us for years. He liked it, but he thought it was too gay. It was kinda like that everywhere."

You guys must’ve been aware that you were pushing the boundaries as far as gay themes in pop music.

Smokey: "Of course we knew, but the idea was that somebody had to be first. Somebody had to get in there and go, 'Look, we’re just as valid as the rest of these motherfuckers.' That’s how music changes. If you don’t push boundaries, it stays stagnant. I mean, we were up against all this quiet California stuff like the Eagles or the English hard rockers, and we were just outrageous. We didn’t have any sense of 'We have to belong' or 'We have to fit in.' But I didn’t feel like I belonged or fit in anyway, so what better thing to do than make music that doesn’t belong or fit in? And people liked it."

The flip side to Leather was Miss Ray, and this was her story.

Smokey: Christine was her name. I needed a place to live because I’d moved to New York briefly and lost my place above the Bluesette. So I moved in with my friend Larry and this woman named Christine who weighed about 300 pounds. She would turn tricks at night while Larry and I stayed out and partied. In the morning, she’d give us money and we’d go clothes shopping for her. I really thought she was a woman. [Laughs] I had no idea.

Unfortunately, Miss Ray is not on youtube, so we move on to Smokey's second single, released in 1977. On one side was Smokey's own rendition of the evergreen, Temptation, unfortunately also not on youtube. The flip side, the more daring How Far Will You Go...?, is:

Their next single came in 1978 and was called Topaz:

In 1980, their single, Fire, was released:

On the B-Side was another good song called Strong Love:

Strong Love was the one side of their next single as well, released in 1982. It was coupled with DTNA:

“EJ can attest to this 'cause he used to have to hear me scream about it, but a couple things really broke the camel's back,” Smokey says. “I’ll tell this story over and over — we played Norwalk Roller Rink one night and we were supposed to play with another band but instead Van Halen was on the bill. Our big song we were pushing was ‘DTNA,’ which stands for ‘Dance the Night Away.’ And I’ll be damned — the first [hit single] Van Halen came out with was called ‘Dance the Night Away.’ It was not on their set that night. Shit like that kept happening and a couple really really got to me, and that’s why we walked away from it.”

But they went out with less a farewell than a fuck-you. One of the last Smokey songs was the epic, eight-minute Piss Slave, explicitly recorded as a dare to any second-guessers and potential plagiarists: “That was way out there — wayyy beyond the pale,” says Emmons. “And that was the exact intention. We were so pissed off at these assholes. We just couldn’t get arrested! That was recorded on one roll of tape from one end to the other and edited together, and the whole thing was to say, ‘We’re thumbing our nose at all you motherfuckers. You can’t play this on the radio! Here’s a record you couldn’t possibly sign!’”

It wasn't released, but it was certainly heard. Emmons tells us all about it:

"Oh, that was funny. The DJ at the Odyssey, Chuck E. Starr, was a good friend of ours. I had just had an acetate cut for Piss Slave so I brought it down to the club one Saturday night. I handed it off to Chuck and asked him to play it. He didn’t care - he’d play anything. So he put it on and for the first two and a half minutes, everybody’s dancing, everybody’s smiling. Then it hits the minor chord, where it goes “I wanna drink yo’ piss!” and everyone’s face just turned into an O shape. [Laughs] Chuck let it go for another eight or twelve bars and then segued into something else because he felt like he needed to keep everybody dancing. So it was kind of a half-bomb, half-major-success because it really stopped them."

I actually visited the Odyssey once in 1979! Unfortunately, not on that day. That would've been really extraordinary...

Smokey: We wrote that song in about five minutes. It was a one-take vocal. It was basically about a guy who I was living with at the time. [Laughs]

Emmons: We actually didn’t tell the band the name of that song when we had them cut the music. We were working with this great band at the time and some of them were [Jehovah’s] Witnesses, so I couldn’t put a chart in front of them that said Piss Slave. So the title on the chart I gave them said Fascinated Funque.

Here's Piss Slave:

By the time they officially put Smokey to rest in the early '80s, they had helped build the L.A. glitter scene, peformed with bands like The Dogs, Zolar X and The Quick, pioneered DIY record production by slipping the guy at the pressing plant a hundred bucks for a stack of 45s, and recorded with a now-staggering roster of sessioneers including James Williamson of Iggy & the Stooges, the Bowie/Iggy rhythm section Tony and Hunt Sales, guitar god Randy Rhoads and cult-famous funk band Rare Gems.

The guys' personal relationship also disintegrated by then. They did remain good friends, however. (Smokey: "We were together eight years total. That was some kind of a record in those days. [Laughs])

Unfortunately, the rent-boy funk workout Million Dollar Babies can't be found on youtube, but Topanga, another fun track, can:

Really, Smokey could do it all - stripped-down synthesizer disco, belting glam, bleak street funk and even some sadly unrecorded blues numbers, inspired by historical raunch such as Lucille Bogan’s startling Shave ‘Em Dry. But even with all this - even with L.A. punk legend Nickey Beat as the drummer at their very first show, who worked at a limo company then and drove them to the gig in a stretch limousine - Smokey never made it, either onto a label or into the history books. What happened? Would things have been different if Smokey hadn't barfed on David Geffen at one of those wild '70s Hollywood parties? (Smokey: Yes. The story even makes me blush so I’m not going to tell it.)

Randy Rhoads and Kelli Garner of Quiet Riot performed with Smokey while still teenagers. Elton John had their music in his private jukebox. Joan Jett was a huge Smokey fan before she was even in the Runaways. (Smokey: She came over our house when we lived in Hollywood and begged to play with us. She must’ve been 14 at the time. I said, 'Joanie, I love you, but you’re just too young.' But she’s another nice, nice person.)

And that was it. Emmons and Smokey walked away. Condon would move into lighting design and Emmons would return to the studio side of the music business, eventually helming his own mastering and recording outfit, Imagehaus. The world heard no more from Smokey until Chapter Music rediscovered one of their S&M 45s and used their song as the title track for the 2012 compilation Strong Love: Songs of Gay Liberation 1972-81. Once that deal was done, Chapter asked if there was anything else. And of course there was: reels of studio sessions that’d been sitting untouched in Emmons’ storage for 35 years. (“I’d look at the tapes and go, ‘Gee, what a pity we never made it.’” he says. “And that was as far as it would go.”)

Thus the collection How Far Will You Go? - The S&M Recordings 1973-81 (Chapter Music) came to be in 2015. It is a powerfully individualistic collection that deserved far better than it got from history or the industry. But looking back, Smokey regrets nothing.

“We gave it a shot,” Smokey says. “We gave it a really, really good shot. EJ gave me incredible production and incredible recordings and I gave it the best I had in me - and it just didn’t fly.”

“They had to take us the way we were or fuck it,” says Emmons. “That’s how it was. And that’s how it is.”