Speaking to writer Paul Hawkins, Joe Ambrose discussed recent chqnges at the Chelsea Hotel, which have seen veteran manager Stanley Bard removed from his position running the hotel. The ffollowing questions and answers derive from Joe's conversation with Hawkins. The full text can be read on brink.com and headpress.org.
Joe, history suggests that the Board of the Chelsea have been trying to modernize for a while, were you aware of any stirrings when you stayed there?
Joe Ambrose: I think it's a long time since the Chelsea Hotel was a focus for dissent or interesting art. When I was there the predominant people living there were prosperous Manhattanites posing as artists. people working in media, advertising, graphic design, the film industrry, areas of life which run parallel to art but which are not actually art. There were a lot of rich useless people there with lime green nail varnish and purple hair.
PH: Surely not all the occupants read the same fashion magazine though?
JA: There were leftovers from the old days and there have always been creative people of importance there. Herbert Huncke died there. Victor Bockris moved in after I left and if anybody was ever the real thing, then Victor is the real thing. But the Chelsea Hotel of popular mythology has been dying for a long time. All this whingeing about the changes from the so-called artists living there is just a pile of rich kid horseshit.
PH: How do you understand the implications that the new management team will have on the Chelsea?
JA: It means that an era which has been ending for a long time can now be officially declared to be over. And that is a good thing. Nostalgia is just a disease to which we've all become addicted, especially as it relates to activities carried out in the 60s and 70s. It doesn't matter a shit to anyone except Stanley Bard and a handful of other people what actually happens to the Chelsea now. It doesn't matter if it's turned into condos. Manhattan is already full of condos. It's not like they were renting out cheap rooms to struggling artists or something.
PH: Years ago that was the case at the Chelsea though, wasnt it ? Its been a gradual change then, not a wrench?
JA: Stanley Bard did that at one time, for a long time, and in more recent years he has been presiding over something different, which is entirely his own business.
PH: The musician Marc Ribot once said, "I hate nostalgia, I want nothing to do with it", is that a sentiment you share?
JA: I'm totally opposed to nostalgia. It goes against everything that I believe in, everything the Chelsea stood for in its heyday, everything that the Ramones mean. It's a beautiful building in a city full of beautiful buildings. If it changes irrevocably, so be it. Stanley Bard, whose family have been involved in the running of the Chelsea for 50 years now has a somewhat nebulous role as ambassador following the new management takeover.
PH: You interviewed him for your new book, did he mention anything about these potential changes?
JA: No, but it was quite some time ago that we spoke. He is a pretty remarkable individual, entirely responsible for the Chelsea's status as an art hotel. He went to art school and when he took over running the hotel from his Dad, he effectively began to curate it. Painters were his special thing and it was in that context that the place became associated with the Warhol crowd. It is rather unpleasant, the manner in which he has been usurped out of his hotel, and the way he was treated shows a certain lack of class and style on the part of the new Chelsea powers-that-be, as does the new website which scarcely mentions the hotel's past. I guess Stanley Bard should have been left in position until he was ready to retire. He deserved that respect and courtesy. But then older people are treated with disrespect and discourtesy and indifference every day of the week... It's one of the most beautiful buildings you could possibly roam about. Huge long corridoors and Victorian stairwells. Stairwells full of art , much of it appallingly mediocre. Like living in a small town full of eccentric people. Professional upper middle class people interested in the arts and talkative and inquisitive and nosey. Pretty stylish place insofar as it'd seen everything. The staff there then were pretty much unflappable and standoffish other than Bard himself who reigned in the lobbly, was always on the phone, was a nice man to meet every day who always made it his business to have something to say to one. It was very comfortable in the winter weather with thick walls and good central heating. The toilets were not quite so reliable. There was nothing exasperating or uncut or plastic about the place. It was kind of classy and offbeat, like a lot of other things about New York.