Punk Turns 30

Playboy, February 1981, cover and page 226 - which includes my photo of Stiv! Playboy Magazine is copyright Playboy Enterprises, Inc. Although the pictures were taken in the Summer of 1980, it wasn't until February 1981 that they started showing up in the press... Playboy was the first publication - and scored an exclusive - to pick up on the sexy backstage photos of Stiv Bators and Sabel Starr fooling around for the camera. I was thrilled beyond belief when Playboy's photo editor sent me a contract for the use of the photo. It ended up on Page 226 of the magazine - on the leading page of their "Grapevine" section - their photo/gossip pages near the end of the magazine. Because... everybody READS Playboy for their witty writing, don't they? I'd get a whole new set of eyes looking at my photography. Stiv always brought me good luck with our photo opportunities, to be sure. I've been showing this color picture of Stiv and Sabel for some time... its ...

I was one of the many people who worked there and lived to tell... I also lived behind the club for a couple years (commute to work: 30 seconds!)... it was a block jam-packed with future stars, too... Motley Crue lived in the apartment below mine... on the other side of the Whisky, across the street from Licorice Pizza - the record store - lived Joan Jett . One block away lived Rolling Stones long-time piano playing co-hort Nicky Hopkins and a couple blocks south of Nicky in a big garden apartment complex lived nearly all the guys in Milk & Cookies, and in their building lived Motown legend Mary Wells. That's Hollywood for you, though. After living behind the Whisky, I moved up the street a couple blocks and moved into a building where Derf Scratch from FEAR was my neighbor... and his pals John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd would always come over to see him and park in my or other people's spaces (Derf didn't have a parking spot of his own and often parked behind h...