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Current mood:  sad Category: Friends
UPDATE: Brendan's Memorial The
memorial for Brendan Mullen will take place on Sunday, 15 November, at
the Echoplex (entrance at 1154 Glendale Boulevard, Echo Park, 90026;
between Park and Montana avenues; there are city parking lots south of
Sunset off of Lemoyne, Logan and Echo Park avenues and there will be
valet parking). Doors open at 4 p.m. (all ages are welcome). The
memorial starts at 5 p.m., with an Irish wake to follow.
The first time that I met Brendan Mullen was at the Club Lingerie in 1981. I had driven down to LA from Santa Barbara with my good friend Michael Wiles to go to clubs and to take demo tapes to see about getting some shows for my band "a ƒew Circles". Michael and I were having so much fun though that we forgot to act civilized and didn't even try to arrange getting any shows. On the way back to Santa Barbara, Michael took over the wheel for me in my car and he ended up spending the night in the Ventura County jail.
The next time that I met Brendan was in 1995 when Jeffrey Lee Pierce took me to Brendan's house to jam in his garage. Jeffrey, Brendan, another guy and I had a very enjoyable jam together. I hadn't learned any Gun Club songs yet, so we just were making things up. I told Brendan about our first meeting, he didn't remember, but he apologized even though he didn't owe an apology. It was Michael and I who had behaved badly that night in 1981. In fact I think I had been too embarrassed to ever ask Brendan for a gig again. After we jammed Brendan told me I'd be welcome to come jam at his house anytime.
The next time that I met Brendan was at an Iggy Pop show at the El Rey in around 1998. Brendan was there with Rik L. Rik and I had come to the show with Jeffrey Lee Pierce's sister Jackie. I had never met Rik L. Rik before though I had seen him play many years earlier. The four of us talked for a while in the lobby. I remember Brendan asked me about the pelican earrings that I was wearing that night, I told him that I have a thing for pelicans because for me they represent a renewal of sorts, because when I was a small child there were many pelicans here in California, but by the 70s the DDT had nearly wiped them out. After DDT was banned, the pelicans came back. I also remember telling Brendan at that time that I had quit playing music for the time being. He seemed to try to get me excited about music by mentioning bands that I might like.
A very short time after that meeting at the El Rey, perhaps a month or so, is when I heard that Rik L. Rik had passed away. He died of a brain tumor. I guess that also was the last time that I actually saw Brendan Mullen.
I've only communicated with Brendan online since then and at that only in the last year. I had looked for him on myspace when I first joined but didn't find his page for some reason until later. In the short time that I was on Facebook and friends there with Brendan, there were several deaths of major figures in punk rock. I would never have guessed that Brendan would also be gone so soon. Brendan to me seemed somehow omnipresent.
Due to some strange myspace computer bug weirdness, something odd happened when I looked at Brendan's myspace page after I heard that he had died. It appeared that he had posted my 1986 video Henry's Tacos. A chill went up my spine. Why would Brendan post Henry's Tacos on his myspace page I wondered? I felt honored but at the same time it really scared me, was Henry's Tacos some sort of curse? But... I mainly felt sad that I couldn't ask Brendan why he had posted it there and that I wouldn't be able to thank him for it and that he was really gone. Computer's can really mess with ones head sometimes.
Brendan died in the town where I grew up and in a hospital that I had volunteered at when I was a teenager, I worked in the maternity ward there, helping to deliver babies etc... That hospital is also the place where, as a child, there with my doctor father, that I think I first understood the concept and finality of death, after I had heard the wails of a woman who had just lost her son in a motorcycle accident. In a way, I experienced a dose of that reality all over again when I heard that Brendan had died there.
Brendan certainly left his mark on Los Angeles. It's hard to imagine punk rock here without him.
Thank you Brendan Mullen.
6:22 PM
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