RIP, Linda

Linda, second from left.

I don't usually get serious here, but I found out a few days ago that an old friend of mine died. I had let her go years ago because she had gotten really bad off, but in a way I had thought we'd always get together again once she straightened out. We had a lot of wild times. Nobody could make me laugh like her because, although her - and our - stories would be filled with drugs, cops, and, well, to the outsider, "dangerous types," you'd be crying with laughter, music blasting, and mascara running.

I first met Linda when my friend Andrea's band, The Maneaters, played Boston. I'm not quite sure how, but it was one of those "you guys have to meet," and within 5 minutes of, Andrea and I (and maybe all of us) dropped acid. The Maneaters were playing a show with Tex and The Horseheads, and just as we were peaking, Tex broke into "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport." At first we thought it was a group hallucination! I'm not sure if it was planned, but I jumped into the van with them and went back to NY. That's how I lived back then. I spent a fair amount of time with Linda at her day job ... which was for a place called "We Deliver." It wasn't food. Boy, she could be surly. Funnily enough I just reconnected with one of the messengers from there, 20+ years later. She'd always have tons of weed and we'd smoke, order chinese, maybe play some guitar or just tell stories ("One time I brought Peter Perrett home to my parents house in Allentown and my father walked in on him shooting up in the basement! Oh my god! But you know his wife had just had a baby and everything, I had to send him home.")

Linda had a knack for getting into wacky situations. She had a small apartment on East 10th Street and had an open door policy. "Nico is in my loft bed and won't come out," she once called me. "What do you mean?" "I said she could stay here, you know, Nico from the Velvet Underground." "Yes, I know Nico." "Well she is up there and she keeps yelling down to some junkie guy she brought with her, 'Getttt me sooooome herrroooin' and I want her out of here.'" A few days later she told me they went to Andy Warhol's house "but he opened the door, took one look at us, shoved some money out, and slammed it."

Andrea once quipped, "Linda, you're the Gracie Allen of rock'n'roll" to which Linda replied: "Gracie Allen didn't play guitar."

Some of my other favorite Linda-isms were:

"Linda, what kind of guitar do you play?" "The blue one."

"I forgot my guitar" (halfway to a gig.)

"I got into a taxicab in Amsterdam and said 'take me to my hotel.' It was a police car, and they took me to jail!"

I went to her apartment for Easter dinner (!) and I will never forget the sight of her in a leopard teddy, crouched over the oven with a turkey. She regaled us with stories of a religious cave somewhere in Pennsylvania where you put on "The Jesus Hat." We later figured out she meant a crown of thorns.

I love you and godspeed, Linda.



Hey! Garage Hangover has some demo tracks of The Maneaters and a link to them on The Hound's show! Listen here. That's Linda on lead guitar.