Remembering Billy

We loved him, but it was hard

What to say about Billy? He was difficult, infuriating, reckless, and self-destructive. I spent a lot of time in three decades avoiding his phone calls, his manic episodes, and his sloppy, wet, disgusting, malodorous kisses. It's easy to forget this stuff, as we get ready to revisit him with the premiere of this film on Saturday. Because he was also generous, brilliant and OURS, a member of the family whom you deeply loved but frequently wanted to kill.

There were so many nights in the mid-80’s at Green Street in Jamaica Plain (where I was the booker) when he would blow in like a tornado, and shove three meticulously annotated cassette mix tapes in my hands. Then he would annoy the locals at the bar, to the point where it was always a crapshoot about whether a punch would be thrown. Then he’d buy them a round, making friends for life, and make his way to the stage where he’d spin and flail and contort as if the band’s lead singer were a trained exorcist. Then he’d blow out the door like a gust of wind and hop on his scooter to drive to Cambridge, with no thought about his safety or the safety of others. Before that though, he’d dance over to the merch table and buy everything. I don’t mean one of everything for himself. I mean everything. Later, as I spent several years on the road tour managing bands, I would get to a new city somewhere in the country or the world, and I would meet someone in a band and tell them I was from Boston. They would immediately ask me about the skinny guy in the suit and trench coat who jumped on the stage while they were playing, whipped himself around, and then bought every piece of merch they had to sell on the way out, ensuring that they had gas money to get to the next gig. “Oh,” I’d say, “that was Billy.”

(Photo by Wayne Valdez)

It was often hard to be around Billy, sometimes because of him and sometimes because of the people around him. There were many people who looked after him (Pat McGrath, certainly, Spencer Gates, Joe Harvard and Skeggy come to mind, at least in my time). There were also enablers and scoundrels and people who took advantage of his manic generosity. I found it hard to watch. He couldn’t be protected from it. People certainly tried.

In 1986 or 87, when I was in college, two classmates and I made a film for a class, and Billy was in it. Before Michael Gill (RIP) moved to California, I gave him the original reel of Super 8 film, so he could use it in his movie if it made sense. I hadn’t laid eyes on that footage since 1987, but when the filmmakers who took over for Michael reached out a few months ago to say they wanted to use some of it, I finally had a digital version. As I watched Billy’s big scene, I realized I could recite every word that he was saying. I had written it, but I don’t remember who I met with yesterday, never mind a monologue I wrote 40 years ago. I vividly remember hours and hours spent with Billy discussing his lines and his motivation and the logistics for this ridiculous student film. It was weird watching him inhabit a supremely bizarre and yet entirely fitting role. I’m told the documentary utilizes a bit of the footage. After the premiere, I will share the rest. I don’t want to step on their big night.

Billy’s contribution to the local music scene can’t really be overstated. There was a healthy, vibrant music scene from the late 70’s on, but from the mid-80’s to sometime later (Mid-90’s? My memory often fails me.) this place was a hotbed of musical brilliance. Bands from the area were creating exciting, vital music. There were so many places to play. No band dared skip us on their tours. Billy (along with other, more stable forces) had a lot to do with that. The Middle East, which became an epicenter of activity, began hosting music when Billy quite literally badgered them into it after he realized that he had over-invited people to his 1987 birthday party at the adjacent TT the Bear’s, and had to find more space (and more bands to entertain the hordes). They were off to the races. At the time, I was still booking Green Street Station, which I had similarly convinced to let me book bands, and I don’t remember there being competition. There were shows everywhere, and it wasn’t unusual to catch two or three shows in different places on the same night. But Central Square was Billy’s kingdom, forever changed by his vision to curate a place always bursting with music and art. I feel like he approached some kind of normalcy and functionality in those years, but I don’t know for sure. I didn’t really work with him then. I couldn’t. I had learned that the hard way years before.

As the 80’s turned to the 90’s, and I started to be away more than I was home, there was a whole new generation of people I didn’t know around Billy, and I sometimes wondered if they took more than they gave. I distanced myself. He was too much. He started calling me again in the mid 2000’s, ranting about conspiracies and asking me to help him sue the government. He claimed that the FBI was after him, and he wanted my help to reach out to Congress to intervene. In 2008, to commemorate the 75^th birthday of my mother (who died in 1999), I organized a fundraiser for Interim House, a residential treatment center for men with substance use disorders, which she founded. Billy, unprompted, directed a very generous donation to the house (oh, such sweet irony), and really wanted to come to the event. I really didn’t want him there. When Billy was around, it often ended up being all about him, and this couldn’t be that. But he insisted, and he had made this big donation. I trusted that Pat would keep him in check, and he did, though Billy of course ended up buying much of the silent auction. I saw him one more time after that – at the funeral for our beloved Spencer Gates, at the Charles Hotel, for which I believe Billy paid. In October 2010, we all got the call we’d been expecting for 25 years. I had put a lot of distance between myself and Billy again by then. That didn’t make it any less shocking.   

I didn’t expect to have such a strong reaction to the dredging up of memories this week. So many people have posted beautiful (and not so beautiful) things about Billy and what he meant to our community, our family. He was a giant. He gave so much to so many. He didn’t just love music – he was of music. And he had discerning, sophisticated taste. He was also a manchild who suffered from sometimes-crippling mental illness, and who was a championship substance abuser. He mostly couldn’t or wouldn’t accept the help that the people who loved him wanted him to have. He had some family and friends who wanted the best for him. He was also surrounded by people who preyed on him, and he let them. He could be mean. Before meeting Billy, I had never been in such close proximity to mental illness, and I am thankful to have had that experience because it gave me perspective that has stayed with me throughout my life. He was a cautionary tale. My greatest hope is that he does not become a loveable cartoon character, or a legend to be emulated. I think I speak for a lot of my community when I say, we loved him, but it was hard.

I have two substacks. This one is free, and I hope to write more often here, but no promises! The other one focuses on music, and has a paid and a free version. The paid version includes all emails, and gives access to the three-year archive. The free version includes emails, but only a couple of days of the archive.