Chapter One

Jukebox Boogie

1970

The tiny club was wall-to-wall with the usual cluster of night crawlers:  drinkers, gamblers, druggies, perverts, dancers, smokers, jokers and midnight tokers.  What a fucking motley crew they were, but never a dull moment passed at the Horizon Club, one of Pittsburgh’s most infamous after-hours clubs.  From 3 a.m. to 6 a.m. the place was rife with cheap cologne, open shirts and assorted chains for the men and sizzler panties and stacked heels for the ladies that revealed as much leg and ass as possible. 

Sex was in the air, and all it needed was a 4/4 bass kick and guitar wa-wa to fuel it. The disco era was just dawning, and the sparkling ball rotated above addlepated brains, particularly when the customers were flying on mescal, cocaine, speed or whatever. 

My name is Frankie Severino and I am going to tell you a story you won’t believe.  Believe it, it all happened. I am the drummer for the Nite Lites, a quartet of part-time musicians and full time goombahs that became the go-to group for the wise guys who ran these clubs. 

I am 23 years old and have a head of bushy, curly hair growing abundantly like fescue.  I’m of average height and have what my friends called “rugged good looks,” which I interpret to mean I’m not all that good looking.  Actually, a few people told me that I resembled Neil Diamond, with my thick hair, long sideburns and prominent, slightly off center nose.  Working for years in the clubs owned by the syndicate, I felt more like Legs Diamond. 

Everything was available in these joints, from unlicensed liquor and cigarettes, high-stakes gambling and numbers, drugs, hookers and other vices that appealed to the sporting gentry who frequented these establishments. 

The Nite Lites made a few bucks weekly by covering the top 40 hits of the day and regurgitating them back to a packed room of drunks until the sun spilled all over the city’s industrial-strength landscape.  Five or six, sometimes seven, nights a week we did this, while consuming as much liquor and pussy as we could handle.  We could handle a lot.

Chapter Three

Bosses and Bouncers

As the leader of our quartet, I had the responsibility of dealing with the club owners and managers where we performed.  Many of these guys, especially when it came to after-hours clubs which operated illegally, were members of organized crime, commonly known as wise guys.  Western Pennsylvania had a particularly rich and deep history with members of La Cosa Nostra.  I remember one Pittsburgh Public Service Director commented to the media in the late 60s, “There is no syndicated crime in Pittsburgh.”  What a dumb fuck.  All you had to do is visit one of the city’s hot spots at 4 a.m. and do something stupid, like walking your bill.  You’d have a wise guy who managed the joint get up close and personal with you in a heartbeat.  And anyone with half a brain could spot them at the clubs.  They were dressed like extras for the Godfather.

One incident at the Horizon brings back fond memories of how these boys served their customers.  It was about 3:30 a.m. and this one table had just finished a meal of various pastas and calamari, washed down with copious glasses of Chianti and anisette.  As they prepared to call it a night, they paid their bill with one small detail overlooked:  They didn’t leave a tip.  Doorman Jerry and club manager Paulie “Guns” Petroluzzi were summoned to intervene by the waitress.  These guys all had nicknames, and Guns described the fact that he always was packing a weapon, with a second secreted away on his body.  You ask him to give up number one, and he proceeds to blow your head off with number two.

So Jerry and Paulie confront our group of revelers as they were donning their coats.  “’Scuse me, was your meal to your liking,” politely inquired Paulie. 

“Yea, it was,” responded the group’s bulky spokesperson, who didn’t look like somebody’s kindly uncle. 

“Did youse like the service provided by Maria over here,” he asked, tilting his head slightly to their server, as she impatiently looked on. 

“She was fine,” declared the spokesperson. 

“Well, wyinthe fuck dinit ya leave her a tip,” Paulie inquired, the veins on his neck pulsating and his hair follicles clenched. 

“Cause I chose not to,” said the spokesperson. 

That’s when all hell broke loose. Paulie smacked this guy so hard in the chops, his mother probably felt it.  None of his party made a move, as he fell back over his recently vacated chair.  Then Paulie, along with his able-bodied assistant Jerry, grabbed him by each arm and face planted him against one of the club’s tastefully decorated red velvet walls.  Their next move, which I anticipated as I looked on, was the stair toss.  This guy went down like a gut shot moose, ass over tin cups, until he came to a sudden stop at the bottom.  His party, looking neither left nor right, meekly rushed down after him.  Jerry slammed the door and turned to the assembled night owls, as we provided enthusiastic applause for a job well done.  He just nodded and made his way back to his perch.  Paulie and Maria went about the job of cleaning up the mess, and the Nite Lites slowly assembled on the stand. 

As we tuned guitars, adjusted cymbal stands and positioned our drinks on the amplifiers, it was back to business as normal.  Just another night in paradise.

Chapter Six

Can You Swim?

Intimidation and threats were the coin of the realm for many of the gents who ran the clubs in which the Nite Lites appeared.  A vivid example of the ways these malviventes interacted with yours truly occurred when we decided after more than three grueling years of playing until dawn at the Horizon Club that we had enough. 

To the uninitiated it might sound like so much bullshit that musicians would get tired of making music in a club where the customers loved them, the girls were plentiful and just about anything went.  But it happened. The aching back from sitting on a drum throne for hours; sleep deprivation from trying to work nights and during the day; often being “over served” alcohol; the crazy schedule of having to get from point A to Point B after 2 a.m. to begin anew at an after-hours club at 3 a.m.  Every once in a while I’d nod off at the wheel at 6 a.m. on my way home.  I fell sound asleep once as I was driving through some tunnels east of the city and was awoken when my car was metallically grinding against one of the walls, sending sparks flying into the air.  That brought me back to reality in a hurry.  I cranked the windows so that the cold air would keep me semi-conscious until I got home.

This after hours gig just got crazy and tiresome, and my paesanos and I had enough.  One Sunday morning, as we were groggily setting about the business of loading out some of the equipment that we would need for the next week’s appearance at a Holiday Inn, I worked up the courage to inform club management that we were giving two week’s notice.  The only Horizon official available at that time was doorman Jerry, who was perched on a bar stool slurping a Jack and Coke, pinkie extended. I approached cautiously.

“Jerry, the band wants to leave, and I’m giving you two week’s notice,” I said.

“Minchia, the boss is gonna shit when he gets this news,” he declared.  “But I’ll pass along your intentions.”  I had a premonition that this wasn’t going to go well.  I turned out to be a prophet.

Two weeks went by and not a peep from anyone.  Everything was business as normal, or abnormal I should say.  We played to a packed room every night while customers would occasionally engage in punch ups, snort lines in the bathroom, clandestinely grope each other under the table, pedal hot Rolexes, place bets, guzzle unlicensed liquor, cheat on their spouses or engage in a myriad of other acts that transpired on any given night.  It was business as usual at the Horizon.

As we packed up on the last Sunday of our two weeks notice, we were almost

giddy in the knowledge that we would actually get some decent sleep on the weekends (normal club dates would conclude at the civilized hour of 2 a.m., which meant that unless you were on a quest to get laid, you could actually be home in bed by 3 a.m.).

Jerry tapped me on the shoulder and informed me, “Hey comp, phone for you in the back.”  Italians called each other “comp,” short for compagno or friend.  Sometimes they didn’t intend the endearment to be all that friendly.

Who in the hell would be calling at this hour?  Visions of a well-endowed young lady who just had a hankering to get together danced in my head.  Far from it. It was Big Julie Passano, and as Jerry predicted, he wasn’t happy.

“Frankie, what da fuck’s going on?” he asked.  This guy seldom made any sense to me.

“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Passano,” I said.

“Let me axe you, where inafuck da you and dose udder monkies think you’re goin’?”

“Well, we gave you all two weeks notice, which I believe is the business-like thing to do,” I explained.

“Fuck business,” he said. “You ain’t going nowhere.  My customers like you guys. I like you guys.” I could feel his love through the phone.

“Mr. Passano, we’ve played at the Horizon for a little over three years, and we’re tired.  I believe it’s a good time to bring in new blood, and another band that will re-energize the club.”

There was a deafening silence on the other line.  Then Julie Passano calmly said in a frosty voice, “Frankie, can you swim?”