What Do You Want from Life?

Well you can't have that but.....

May 29, 2022

Not everyone who reads about this trigger will remember or know who the Tubes are. Created out of San Francisco in the early 1970s with an affable and eccentric lead singer called Fee Waybill, The Tubes could be categorized as rock, glam rock, or even a punk persuasion. The band was best known for their live performances and the electric presentation of their musical library. I first heard about the Tubes in 1975, before I left New York, with an introduction to their self-titled first album release that featured a pair of well-manicured female hands ripping the album cover as its art. During that summer prior to my senior year in High School at Ward Melville in the Stony Brook/Setauket area of Suffolk County on the North shore of Long Island, I remember hearing one of the songs that would stay with me throughout the years in a local bar called Tueys (rumored to have been named for Tuinals, recognizable to lovers of barbiturates).

In case you are wondering what I was doing in a bar named after a barbiturate as a 17-year-old in 1975, let’s just say that I was not alone. There were no real rules at the time. There were no Mothers Against Drunk Drivers, the drinking age was 18, my hair was halfway down my back, and the bars never carded us. The freedom may have played into the ease of use and obvious escalation of my alcohol consumption for many years to come, but it is part of my history and I embrace the adventures, and my enormous love of music and especially in my new playgrounds out in live venues and the adult world. In the bars, such as Tueys, The Mad Hatter, Hammerheads, and a few others I have lost too many brain cells to remember, there would be live music including local bands such as Twisted Sister, and The Good Rats, along with loud DJ’d or Jukeboxed music in between sets, and a constantly filled dance floor.

I originally heard songs like “Mondo Bondage”, and the glam parody “White Punks on Dope” and that was enough to send me searching through the racks at Sam Goody at the Smith Haven Mall and the eventual discovery of the aforementioned self-titled album that would play my personal sound system for months to come and well into my Senior year of High School. What is interesting, however, is that although the original triggers come out of the clubs of Long Island, and my bedroom in 1975, I developed at least two other triggers that happened later in February of 1978, and January of 1980, both in my Arizona chapter of life, but both occurring at concerts in Los Angeles, California, which would become (and remains) my longest living chapter which would begin only a few months after the second concert in January of 1980.

One of the triggers for “What Do You Want from Life” comes from a particularly spectacular evening on February 23rd, 1978. I had come to Los Angeles with several friends from the restaurant I was working in at the time in Phoenix, Arizona. A couple of them were also people I had met and formed a bond with partying while in the dorms of Arizona State University in the first year, or the house I rented with several guys during the second year. The relationships continued, but the college did not. My 20th birthday was one of the focuses of this trip, aside from the absolute desire to get to Los Angeles as much as possible during the time I did, unfortunately, live in the hot, dry, desolate sadness of Arizona.

While in Los Angeles during this time we found out the Tubes were playing at the Pantages Theater in Hollywood, and we all got tickets to see the show that night. I have a vivid recollection of both the theater and my solid enthusiasm for being in this place I had always wanted to be. We were young, free, and high. What better combination could be had? The Tubes were a band known for performance art. Characters were portrayed, stunts were pulled, it was all in good fun, and because it was more than just the songs being played it became memorable throughout. They opened with “What Do You Want from Life” and regaled us through the evening with such Tubes staples as “Slipped My Disco,” “Mondo Bondage,” “Don’t Touch Me There,” and the anthem “White Punks on Dope.”

It was at the 1978 concert that I was first introduced to Fee Waybill’s character Quay Lude (yes, after the wildly popular drug of the same name in the 1970s). Quay would come out in an enormous pair of platform heels, a wide open-to-the-happy trail sparkling shirt, tight-fitting white pants, and a huge blonde hair band wig to sing what many might call the signature Tubes tune.

Then, in early 1980 some different friends and I had the opportunity to see the Tubes in the Roxy on Sunset Blvd. On this exceptional Saturday night at the dawn of a new decade, we were able to experience the world-famous concert/gig bar (it may have been my first time) and see the Tubes play an expanded gig that included more music from subsequent album releases but honored their classics with the songs I had originally sought them out for as a teenager on Long Island. The Tubes were always fun, they were always exciting, and they were always full of energy and spark. Nights like these will always create triggers for years to come.

Last but not least when speaking about the Tubes I must mention for those of you who don’t feel you know the band or have seen them before, there is one more place it may have occurred. In 1980 the guilty pleasure anyone with a gay card would have gone to the theater to see premiered. Xanadu, the Olivia Newton-John led, rolling skating musical extravaganza arrived and in it was a musical number that included the Tubes. While in the skating hall where everyone was happy, beautiful, stylish, and talented, there was a ‘mash-up’ of musical eras portrayed by a full orchestra showcasing a 40’s style with the singing being performed by an Andrews Sisters styled group juxtaposed with a rock band taking on the old and countering it with the new. The production was fun, the songs were catchy, and the film was cheesy as hell, but if you were living and gay in 1980 you likely saw the tubes perform.