With platform boots as high as the Eiffel Tower, wearing a huge frightwig and skimpy Bacofoil outfit, his face behind shades that even Elton John would have dismissed as too vulgar, the sight of Quay Lewd tottering to the microphone to sing White Punks On Dope has always been the centrepiece of live shows by The Tubes.
“I don’t think we’ve ever played a show without including White Punks On Dope,” says Tubes vocalist Fee Waybill, the man behind Quay Lewd. “So I guess you could say it’s stood the test of time.”
Formed in San Francisco in 1972 by two bands who had relocated from Phoenix, Arizona, the classic Tubes line-up featured Waybill plus drummer Prairie Prince (briefly a member of Journey during their early jazz-rock era), guitarists Roger Steen and Bill Spooner, bassist Rick Anderson, and keyboard/synth players Vince Welnick and Michael Cotten.
White Punks On Dope came to life as the dynamic final track of the band’s self-titled debut album, recorded in 1975 with producer Al Kooper. Spooner and Steen cooked up the riff that powered the song, while the lyrics were written by Mike Evans, a friend of the band’s from Arizona.
“Even before we released records, we were a cult band in San Francisco,” Waybill says of the real-life characters who inspired the song. “For reasons only they’d tell you, a gang of rich kids began following us around. They had new cars and motorcycles and would turn up with all the best drugs. They were wealthy children of moneyed parents, and we were the new outrageous band in town. We were dirty and nasty and had naked girls on stage. For them to hook up with a band like us was probably the only controversial thing they’d do in their lives. There were 15 or 20 of them; you could pick them out of any audience because they wore suits.”
The second verse skewered these rich kids: ‘I go crazy, ‘cos my folks are so fucking rich/How to score when I get that rich white punk itch/ Sounds really classy, living in a chateau/So lonely all the other kids will never know.’
“When those people were around, things would happen,” Waybill recalls. “Somebody would get drunk, cause a scene, get kicked out of the club, or write off their car going home. But they led charmed lives and nobody died. They’d just show up at the next gig with a brand new car.”
Released in 1975 as The Tubes’ debut single, White Punks On Dope failed to chart in the US, though it did reach No.28 in the UK. But the song took on a life of its own thanks to the band’s OTT multi-media live show, which included TVs showing phallic cigarette adverts, a panty-snatching Tom Jones parody character, whip-wielding dominatrix Re Styles (real name: Shirley Marie Macleod) and, of course, Quay Lewd, the drug-addled alter ego Waybill created as a parody of rock star excess.
“I believe that we still hold the record for the most sold-out shows at Hammersmith Odeon – eight, which even beat The Who, in 1978,” Waybill proclaims proudly. “English audiences have always connected to our sarcasm.”
Not all Brits were impressed with their stage show. So outrageous were their performances that The Tubes were been banned from some venues during their debut UK tour in 1977. For a while the band themselves even tried to tone things down.
“Quay Lewd got dropped, but so many people complained that we had to bring him back,” Waybill recounts. “The TV screens and lavish stage sets became so spectacular that kids would sometimes remember the show’s production and forget the songs.”
Over the next decade, the band released a string of albums but never truly made the crossover to mainstream success, although they did score a US Top 10 with 1983’s She’s A Beauty (co-written with Toto guitarist Steve Lukather and producer David Foster). But by the time of their seventh album, 1985’s Love Bomb, the band were becoming, in Waybill’s words, “fried”.
“Love Bomb didn’t sell too well and they dropped us,” he says. “That was enough for me, although the band continued for a while without Mike Cotton and myself.”
Waybill returned to the fold in 1993, and The Tubes have played fairly consistently ever since, with the singer plus Prince and Steen still in the line-up. Over the years, the singer has developed something of a love-hate relationship with White Punks On Dope.
“The song did become bigger than The Tubes,” Waybill agrees. “There are nights when I wish we didn’t have to play it, but I love to see people’s faces light up when they see Quay Lewd’s plastic dick… a big, 12-inch sucker that hangs right down to his knee-caps. It’s a real show-stopper.”
This feature was originally published in Classic Rock 89 (December 2005)
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