![]() These days, probably even more than for Elvis, Marilyn or James Dean who had head starts. Year after year there are more Warhol books, toys, giant banana pillows, clothing lines, shoes, Andy Warhol glasses, movies, action figures (or maybe inaction figures, this being Warhol), pencils, notebooks, skateboards-literally everything ever! There’s been more most post mortem Warhol merchandising than for practically anyone or anything you can name. In the thirty years since Warhol’s death, the human race has bought and sold more “Andy” than Andy himself could possibly have dreamed of and more. I have to think that anyone reading this knows the history of the Velvet Underground so I’m not going to rehash it here. This was all taking place even though only a few people knew about it at the time. The destruction and rebuilding of rock ‘n’ roll music as it then existed commenced. It was fifty years ago this week that the future began with the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol, and his banana. How many other things like this existed that have been lost to the sands of time and basement flooding?īut the best thing of all, in a collection with literally hundreds of thousands of amazing and astonishing items, was his banana ashtray, but I’ll tell Howie tell you the story himself, in this Dangerous Minds post from 2017. I couldn’t believe what I was looking at. Clearly the anonymous person who published this newsletter-which contained other items that would have been of interest to gay men, like recommending gay-friendly doctors and VD clinics-had been doing so for many, many years, as the height of this stack testified to. He’d found this dumpster diving in Palm Springs. ![]() The modest publication turned out to be these one to three page listings of Southern California-based establishments that were gay-friendly at a time when gay bars were still being busted and the patrons hauled away in police vans. Another was something that he’d recently acquired, a small black lithographed poster on card, brushed with actual diamond dust, advertising a 1971 benefit show at the Hollywood Palladium (which never took place) with, get this- The Stooges, the GTOs, John Mendelssohn-Super Star, and the Cockettes! At one point we were standing in his stuffed to the gills kitchen and there was a two foot high stack of faded green newsletters from the late 1950s/early 1960s-crudely produced on an old fashioned mimeograph machine perched next to the sink. ![]() I mentioned Milligan casually-as one does-and out came several folders (only the movie posters were organized) that blew my mind. He owned ALL OF THEM, from all over the world. One of them was his collection of Andy Milligan movie posters. The weirdest records (lots of rockabilly), hundreds of shoulder-high stacks of magazines and newspapers, memorabilia of every variety, as many times as I was there, I never saw more than the tiniest tip of a very, very big iceberg, but a few things stood out. While Howie might have (quite reasonably!) appeared to be a hoarder-this stuff was EVERYWHERE, the kitchen the bathrooms, EVERYWHERE, and there were little pathways so you could walk through-it was all nearly Smithsonian Institute level items! Getting a personal tour was an astonishing show. Nothing else like it has ever been put together, anywhere in the world, I can say without hesitation. Howie was also one of the world’s all time great rock-n-roll collectors. He was really sweet and kind and generous. The first word that comes to mind to describe him is sweet. ![]() Not that many people can be said to have been universally loved in their time, but I think it’s true of Howie. Then this.Īlthough I don’t think anyone would have mistaken Howie for an angel-he wouldn’t have needed a liver transplant if he had been-everyone who knew him loved him, because he was just such a sweet man. I was just thinking about him yesterday and made a mental note to write and wish him well. The rocker, cultural historian, DJ, founding member of D-Generation, bass player in Danzig, and frequent Dangerous Minds contributor, had a liver transplant last year, but then sadly caught COVID just when everything seemed like it was on a (TBH very unexpected) upswing in his health. I awoke this morning to the extremely sad news that our friend Howie Pyro had passed. ![]()
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