I spend a lot of time looking for 3 things: a photo of Otto that may not exist, a photo of a marine I had a torrid affair with a few decades ago which I know does exist— I remember a lot about him but not his name— and my astrology workbook from when I lived in Amsterdam. That one I also knows exists and have shown it to people and it is just misplaced somewhere around the house. It’s important to me because not only do I not remember the marine’s name; I don’t remember my son’s name— just a biological son, not someone I ever got to know. I met him twice when he was an infant and then moved back to America and never saw him or heard from his mother again. I did his astrological chart when he was born and his name is on that. He’s about 50 now and he may not know I exist. We covered the astrology workbook a few months ago. I’m determined to find it but whenever I look for it, I find something else that I forgot existed.
A few weeks ago I found a notebook with dozens of handwritten transcriptions of interviews I did. A kind of table of contents indicates 43 interviews but once I started going through the book, I realized there were many more, interviews I must have written out after I wrote the tables of contents, like Bob Welch from an early iteration of Fleetwood Mac (1971-’74), Rickie Lee Jones from before her first album was out, Chaka Khan, and Graham Lewis from Wire. But instead of any of the big rock names, today I want to share an interview I did with someone you may not have ever heard of, Lance Loud, who died of AIDS in 2001 (age 50)
Lance was one of the first TV reality stars— long before Trump. His family was THE family in PBS’ An American Family (filmed in 1971, aired in 1973) and Lance was a kind of black sheep who more or less came out as gay during the show causing lots of TV controversy at the time.
I interviewed him late in 1976 in New York where he had moved. (He was a big fan of Andy Warhol and the Velvet Underground and he fronted a punk band, Mumps.) I was living in India when the show ran so I missed it and the whole circus around it. People told me about it years later. Before you read the transcript of my interview, here’s an interview from around the same time that Dick Cavett did with him when he was 22:
I can’t remember what magazine I was interviewing him for, but it was a gay magazine as well as for Rock’n’Roll News. The Rock’n’Roll News story was just a blub about how Mumps’ drummer Jay Dee Dougherty, left the band and joined Patti Smith. But here’s the 1976 interview. My notes say it was in New York City— but not where— and that when I got there, Jack Ford, the 24 year old pot-smoking son of President Ford was with him. Lance had a schpiel he wanted to get out so asking him questions was just a vague prompt for him to go off.
Before I could even ask him a question, he said “I moved to New York 4 years ago. I always had a band— I had one in California. And then we had that television series, which was an incident thing to my mind, and yet it turned out to be the most important thing to everybody else. I had to— not really live it down— but I didn’t want to live it UP at all. I didn’t want to capitalize on the fame of a television and on the famed myself because of my personal life. I didn’t want to be known for being just a personal figure from a television show. I was too interested in the me I keep thinking that everybody else should see.”
That gave me an opportunity to break in with a question. “Are you a different ‘me’ than the one that came across on the tube?”
“No, it’s not a different me,” he said, “but that person was 19 and was growing up and although it is me, it isn’t me in memorium. It wasn’t me forever. It was someone who trying to experience and experiment with life and try to find a way to fit into the world. Basically, it all boiled down, after the show was over, that what I really wanted to do was to have a band. I’m just not interested in doing anything, unfortunately, but my band.”
Howie: You’re a writer, aren’t you?
Lance: I used to write. I only wrote for money. I never wrote because I wanted to but I thought, “this is a way to get free records and meet some people and learn things.” But all the time I was writing, I went to the band rehearsals every night. And we played, even while I was writing. But I stopped writing 6 months ago. Sice then, I’ve been trying to keep out of the limelight as a writer. Once I started realizing that I was establishing myself as a writer, I decided… you know, evcerybody’s gonna think that having a band was just gonna be a minor fling of Lance Loud and what he really is is a journalist. So I had to quit—although I did love the money. I was pretty respectable for a year. Meanwhile and since then, I’ve had this band— for 4 years— and now it’s finally just starting to go someplace. We played around New York clubs. We lost our drummer to Patti Smith. Jay Dee, who’s a great, great drummer… well, we went to school with him and he was always in our bands and he was really close and we were real good friends with him but then he got into est or one of those things where they yell a lot and we said “Jay, you’ve got to come out from California.” We brought him out here and he got a job and we went to rehearsals every night and stuff and then one night we were playing and Patti Smith came in and she needed a drummer and me and Kristian, my friend, went on a vacation back to California, ‘cause we were both from Santa Barbara and then when we got to Santa Barbara, Jay called us and said, “I’m joining Patti.” We couldn’t blame him because she had a recording contract.
Howie: Is everyone in Mumps from California?
Lance: No, but no one is from New York. We have a boy, Kevin Kiley, who’s on bass and he’s 18 from Boston. And we have Toby Dupree, who’s 23 from Washington DC. We’re all from broken homes. I’ve been trying too find some underlying aspect of that band that makes us all alike and it really is like we’re little lost sheep. We are little sheep who have lost their way, all from broken homes, all kids who were never really popular, all people who were kind of loners— and not artistic bad-ass guys, just kinda clumsy and outa step with reality. And stuff. And then Kristian Hoffman and I, who’ve been friends since high school ‘cause no one else could talk to either of us; Kristian was too smart and I was too.. I don’t know. What was I? I wore wire frame glasses and that meant you were an instant war objector and all the big football guys would beat you up. Plus everybody knew I was afraid of snakes.
Finally, last year, we started getting good. I started taking singing lessons. I sing and write but I don’t play any instruments. I make up songs and the sing ‘em to Kristian and he works them out on piano.
Howie: Are you guys lovers… you and Kristian?
Lance: Oh, no, no. We’ve always been best friends. There’s a whole new asexuality emerging, just because it’s safer. If you have any sexuality moving between people, it always makes for fights and ugghhh… unless you’re really dumb. Then you can get along with anyone. That’s what I wish I was. I mean, I’m not too smart. We have a new song about that too, called I Like To Be Clean.
Howie: What is punk rock?
Lance: I don’t know. I guess it’s basically the pride of brute force that a lot of kids revel in. Although no band in New York would call themselves or call anybody else punk rock. Well the Ramones might. The Dictators, I’ve heard, do. I’ve just heard this. Still, it’s just a name because people need names and labels andI can understand this.
We just finished recording two songs for a compilation LP. It might rereleased on Warners. We did songs called “You’ve Gotta be Stupid If You Wanna Love Me” and a song called Dutch Boy.
I’ve really gotten so singleminded in my purpose. Dedication is such a fatal thing. You can’t give up. It kills me. I wish I was as vague and as semi-free-wheeling and free-spirited as I was a long time ago, during the series. I hate growing to love something so much and even though sometimes you think people don’t understand it and “Oh, God, it might not work and what if you’re wasting all this time!” You still have to go through it; it’s like being addicted.
Howie: Has the fact that you came out on TV in front of millions of people given you difficulties?
Lance: I’m sure it will.
Howie: It hasn’t yet?
Lance: No. Because
A- I never came out. I never said I was gay. I wore blue lipstick so it must’ve seemed pretty obvious. But I never talked about homosexuality. The producer needed to have publicity for the show so he decided tops that. And people went crazy over that. I never said I was gay. I never did anything— except I did wear lipstick [giggles]. I actually thought I was being incredibly original. And I didn’t see it as feminine and I didn’t see myself as feminine. This was pre-Bowie and pre-Alice Cooper. For me— in Santa Barbara— I really thought I was just so original [giggles]. But it was cute. I like that kind of blind faith in your creative sources, especially when you’re young and dumb. So the producer put all this stuff out saying that I was gay and suddenly, like, I had to say something. I thought, “Well, I can’t say no, ‘cause I do have sex with boys and I never want to pretend I’m something that I’m not.” It was pretty terrible. I keep thinking that it is going to be really awful in the future.
And B- I don’t have any sort of gay life anymore. I don’t have a straight life. All I do is I go to the Y and swim, I go home, make dinner and then go to rehearsal. That’s all I do. I’ve been doing this for 8 months.
Howie: The Y is a pretty gay place, no?
Lance: [Giggles] Not the one I go to. I have a friend, a close friend who is my roommate— just friends, separate bedrooms— and I found that is such a satisfying relationship. We just and talk. He’s straight.
Howie: Are you saying you’re non-sexual now?
Lance: Well yeah, not forced though, but not by choice. Sooner or lake like there has to be something else that you’re going to do besides decide what you wanna have sex with.
People were always asking me about homosexuality and I said “I can’t stand liberation.” I hate it that people become liberated because then they become uninteresting and then they start thinking that sexist themes important thing. I think that everybody should go back in the closet. I think private lives and secrets are best.
What can a person do but be funny? It leaves a nice impression.
I was basically out for thrills. I didn’t care where or who, whatever I got ‘em. I mean, I was lower than low. I’d do anything. I really would do anything. I was a real swinger. Then I tried to become hippie and I lefthand I tried to be a hippie in Denmark but I couldn’t standout because all they ate was rice and soy sauce. It was terrible. So I came back and the series came on and I realized that people were going to start pinning me as “a gay spirit” and that really made me upset. I felt pretty put upon. It was weird. I still don’t understand. Why should it be so important? Why should sexuality be one of tiger main interests in people? I think that I’m probably much better at talking than I am at having sex. I think the main interest is to leave a good impression. That’s the only thing I can imagine people are on this earth for— to impress other people, just by being an interesting person. Give something that people can react off— give a few ideas, give a few new angles on life, styles and looks. Just try to aspire to something other than the norm.
I didn’t put any big stake thinking it was bad or so good to go to bed with boys. It didn’t seem to be the most important thing on the menu each day. There are other things you have to achieve.
I plan on going maniacally religious in something at the end of my life. I’ll start wearing rags and say things like “Be here now.”
Howie: Do you think of yourself as a songwriter?
Lance: I think of myself as a performer with an interesting outlook. I mean we have really good lyrics; that’s one thing that we really do have. Kristian writes more than I do. But Kristian is too smart for everybody’s own good and so what the band needs— it’s like an organ-grinder needs a monkey to beg for pennies— well the band needs the monkey to beg for attention so the people listen and suddenly pick up on a message.
Howie: You’re the monkey?
Lance: Uh huh. I’m proud to be a monkey for this group. The group has a lot of passion— there’s so much unrequited love and stuff in it. Everybody’s very nervous and tense and keyed up. They want it to work so badly.
One of the main things about Mumps and one of the main things that still remains a question to me is that part of the thing that it’s based on is the whole clumsy, out-of-step with the rest of mankind attitude, that it just might be so successful that it won’t be successful. Maybe someday we’ll just start coming out with middle of the road songs. I’d really love to. Most of the New York music has its roots in the English Yardbirds sound, mixed with Iggy and the Stooges and maybe some Rolling Stones. And then Patti, of course, is very original and very artistic. But I think we are based from a Gilbert and Sullivan point of view— just melody and harmony and lyrics. That’s all. We try to be very precise. There’s no room really for enlarging on the basic idea of the songs. We want each song to be short, melodic, have good lyrics— they have to have good lyrics, which means there aren’t may love songs and no sex songs another’s not one drug song.
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