David Cassidy on the Web
Queen of The Hill: Kelly Cutrone
August 12, 2008
August 12, 2008www.goodnightmrlewis.com
Editors note: This is a long article, click here to go to the section that mentions David Cassidy.
the club biz I think the order goes like this: rat. roach. agent. promoter. publicist. mosquito. Something like that anyway. For the most part, but with notable exceptions, publicists are "take the money and run" types. Just when you're about to kick them to the curb, they succeed in keeping your good name out of the gutter or even get you in the paper next to a fabulous celebrity or beautiful girl. So you write next months check, sigh, and hope for the best.
A great publicist (and make no mistake about it, Ms. Kelly Cutrone of People's Revolution is one of those) will sell the world on your brand whether it's your club, or even you. They'll hold your hands when your down, generate real revenues with items and features, and even tell you what you're doing wrong. A club owner is so often surrounded by yes men, that a rough, tough brash and brutally honest P.R. person might be one of the few that can be leaned on. Lizzie Grubman, R. Couri Hay, Norah Lawlor, Susan Blond, Nathan Ellis, Sam Ong, Richard Rubenstein, and if I forgot someone; maybe they should hire one of these peeps as a publicist, keep your good name on everybody's lips, mind and other important parts. None of these people are afraid to speak their minds. None are afraid of offending you with the truth. For what indeed is the truth? It is what is read in the funny papers?
Editor's Note: Check out Kelly's website, www.peoplesrevolution.com.
Steve Lewis: I'm sitting with Kelly Cutrone, and when I was at my computer a couple of weeks ago, on Facebook, my girlfriend, who always looks over my shoulder to make sure I'm not using it for dating purposes, said to me - Kelly is laughing right now. My girlfriend said, 'You know Kelly Cutrone?' And I said 'Yeah, how do you know Kelly Cutrone?' She goes, 'Everybody knows Kelly Cutrone, she's on The Hills!' I said, 'What's that?' See because I don't know you like that, but a lot of the world knows you as Kelly Cutrone from The Hills. So I don't know anything about this.
Kelly Cutrone: I'm still laughing right now.
SL: Let's talk about how I met you.
KC: Ok.
SL: And then we'll talk about The Hills at one point, because I don't know what that is; I've never seen The Hills.
KC: Ok.
SL: First of all, how did we meet? How do you remember it?
KC: I believe that we met through Maurice Brahms.
SL: I think so.
KC: Well I was working with Gene DiNino from Roxy, which I have an amazing picture that I'll send to you.
SL: Ok cool. So you were doing PR for Roxy.
KC: With Gene.
SL: Were you working for Susan Blond at that time?
KC: No, I was out, I had just started my own company with Jason Weinberg, which at the time was called Cutrone and Weinberg. When I was Susan Blond's assistant, I kept getting all of these letters that said, 'Who is Jason Weinberg?' I had hired him to be my intern. And I said, 'You and I'll start a company some day.' And then he went to work for Bobby Zarem and I went from Susan to Spin, and then I decided to start my own company. I called him, and he came and joined us. In the beginning, we made our bread and butter through nightclubs. I remember I used to have a unitard catsuit, and I would have a Chanel jacket for when I'd go Uptown to Tattoo and all of those places (Editor's Note: If anyone remembers the correct spelling of Tattoo, please let us know. We could not find it anywhere!) Then I'd wear a leather jacket made by Kenny O'Brien, who since passed away; and that would be my Downtown look.
SL: So you wore a different outfits.
KC: I changed jackets depending on the type of club. I'd go around to pick up money, right, that was our big thing. We'd go there to get the money, and we'd say, 'You know you have to pay.' And they'd have to give us like fifty drink tickets while we were waiting for the money to come in.
SL: So you were going at night, standing at the bar and collecting like those mob guys.
KC: Exactly. And I believe that I met you through Maurice, and he had this problem with a club called the Underground. And at the time, we had already started working on Red Zone first I think, right? Red Zone came before.
SL: Red Zone is before, I remember that.
KC: That's where we started working, we met at Red Zone. Then we came down to the Palace de Beaute and there was that crazy guy, the neighborhood committee guy, who wanted to stop us from going in there because there had been a shooting at the Underground.
SL: They shot an assistant district attorney outside. The Underground, by the way, which became Le Palace de Beaute, is where the Petco is right now in Union Square.
KC: But the other funny thing about that were those new kids from Atlanta who were there at the time, by the name of Larry Tee and Michael Alig.
SL: Michael wasn't from Atlanta, Michael was from Indiana.
KC: But Larry .
SL: It was Lahoma, and Larry Tee, and RuPaul.
KC: And they were there at the very early beginning, and this actually goes back to your design thing, because you were designing the Palace.
SL: I designed it.
KC: You designed it, and you thought of the name.
SL: No. Larry Tee, Michael Alig and I were partners, and we came up with the name Yeah Yeah Yeah. We were going to call it Yeah Yeah Yeah, which is interesting cause it became a pretty big band; and we liked it a lot, everybody agreed to it. About two days later, in Michael Musto's column, I read that Larry Tee, Steve Lewis and Michael Alig were opening up a club called the Palace de Beaute. And I said, 'What? I never heard of this?' Larry had just decided that that was the name, he spelled it wrong.
KC: It was B-e-a-u-t-e, right?
SL: Something really crazy, and Larry was from Atlanta; Larry brought with him Lahoma Van Zandt, who was a fabulous drag queen, and an unknown at that time in New York, RuPaul, and RuPaul became our host.
KC: And Jimmy Harry ended up producing RuPaul's record 'Work it Girl.'
SL: Wow.
KC: Who ended up producing my record after that.
SL: How do you like that.
KC: Yes. We worked on that project, and then we started working, if you remember correctly, with a man by the name of Peter Gatien.
SL: Yes we did.
KC: And we were with his in house publicist named John Carmen
SL: You know, John is still around. He's still alive. I hear he wanders up and down 23rd Street.
KC: Oh really?
SL: Yeah.
KC: Do you remember that time that he had to go; he was one of the first people who had to go up to the Betty Ford center.
SL: You're laughing way too hard for this tragedy.
KC: I was just thinking about when he went there, that he locked all of his .
SL: They didn't hear that with you laughing.
KC: When he went there, he had put some coke in his suitcase, and when he got off the plane before he went, he started opening up his luggage on the turnstile while it was turning, trying to get the drugs out so he could take them before he went in.
SL: Oh my god.
KC: But that was a crazy time; and then we did the Limelight, and then we did Palladium.
SL: Wow.
KC: And I remember Debbie Harry and Third Base, and Justine .
SL: It was Cold Cut, wasn't it? It was Cold Cut, it wasn't Third Base. I think it was Cold Cut.
KC: No, it was Third Base. I still have the actual original invite.
SL: You have the actual invite? Oh my god, I'd love to see that, it was a sun.
KC: No, it was a pink and orange striped invite and it said, 'Kelly Cutrone's 24th Birthday' or something.
SL: Oh my goodness.
KC: Do you remember my birthday party we did that time at Limelight?
SL: Everybody I interview is just amazed at how much I actually don't remember from those days. Tell me about it.
KC: Well I just remember I had on this really beautiful red dress, and I used to have a wig that was exactly like my hair, because I would have to go out all day and all night. I'd wear it with a headband like I was Diana Ross. And I remember Angie Bowie was upstairs, and she took my seat so I pushed her; I took the chair up and pushed her out of my seat. I remember Grace Jones and Jellybean, and Naomi.
SL: Naomi Campbell.
KC: Naomi Campbell, yeah.
SL: And Linda was there, Linda Evangelista, and Christy Turlington was always hanging out. We had a really good time; that was a really good club, the Palace de Beaute. It lasted only six months, and I ended up losing an absolute ton of money. It was a very big success socially and a really big disaster for me, because we got closed just as we broke even. We had Moby and a guy named GiGi who's married to Maripol, who is a friend of ours.
KC: Right right.
SL: They were doing our Wednesdays. Madonna was hanging out constantly at the club on Wednesdays. We had a great Thursday with Jellybean; we had a great Friday with Ernest Williams and that guy, I think his name was Anthony. Well there were a bunch of other people, and we were making a ton of money. My idea was this. I invested a little bit, and I was going to be paid when we broke even on the construction. And we broke even that very night, with $60,000 profit for that week, which is decent profit. I was going to get a third of that if the club had lasted another week. But unfortunately, we got closed down, because my publicist, I believe it was on Channel One News, actually struck .
KC: I didn't hit him, he hit me! I fell to the ground, cause I remember it was like, 'Coming up tonight in Clubland! In troubling Clubland!' He took a swing at me. Ask Maurice Brahms, he was there. He was standing outside. I did not hit that guy, he hit me.
SL: Why would I have gotten shut down if he hit you?
KC: I don't even remember; I think it was a problem with the neighborhood union guy, he was really upset. He was like one of those Anthony Perkins, I live with my mom in the attic type of guys. Don't you remember, you told me he died.
SL: Yeah yeah yeah. It was actually the State Senator, he was the highest ranking guy of the state.
KC: No, this was the neighborhood commission guy.
SL: That's not the guy who died.
KC: That's the guy who took a swing at me.
SL: Oh, I see, I see.
KC: That's the guy who took a swing at me. I remember we did David Cassidy's comeback show there, do you remember that?
SL: I saved David Cassidy's life because.
KC: Don't you remember he wouldn't perform? We had him in the backroom and I went back and started screaming at him, and there was all that press there.
SL: Well he's a very short guy.
KC: Yeah.
SL: It was one of the strangest parties ever, because it was on the radio and everybody was talking about it. You did an incredible job with publicity; you gathered something like a hundred paparazzi.
KC: There were a ton of people there.
SL: But really, no people came. It was like the public wasn't interested, but the paparazzi loved the story. And so David Cassidy and I were doing this thing, a meet and greet with the press which you had arranged. And I was standing next to him, and we got shoved by the media frenzy. We were getting crushed against the wall. The wall happened to be an elevator, I pressed the button and the doors opened. I pulled him in and I took it up to an upper floor, which just so happened to be where Ronnie Cutrone was, in the Factory - who is your ex-husband.
KC: The Factory.
SL: I just knew that that elevator existed so we went upstairs to the Factory, and David and I just had a moment of chill. He was kind of a cool guy.
KC: Do you remember when we had Butch Patrick for Halloween, and he got mugged?
SL: No I don't remember that.
KC: He went as himself, Eddie Munster, at Limelight.
SL: Yeah Butch used to do that; he comes from Philly. He's still a DJ, he's like a radio DJ.
KC: That was funny.
SL: Which was great.
KC: I remember we had him for Halloween one year, and he came to the event dressed obviously as Eddie Munster.
SL: Unbelievable.
KC: And he got mugged. And then we did an event for the "I've fallen and I can't get up lady."
SL: That I remember, Michael did that.
KC: He also did Right Said Fred at the Palladium.
SL: Right Said Fred, that was a big scandal. You had to do damage control on that. I had a huge fight with Michael Musto on that. What happened was, Right Said Fred came into the country, and they were gay. They wanted a whole big gay crowd on stage with them of transvestites and transsexuals, models, straight people, gay people, muscle queens and everything. And then when they came over, someone said to them, 'Uh, you're not going to sell as many records if you're gay,' so they backpedaled and they canceled all their performers. Leaving my wife, Jennifer Hamden, and Caron Bernstein, as the only stage dancers because they were hot girls. And then Michael Musto wrote that my wife had objected to the gays being on stage with her, but my wife was very gay-friendly. She was friends with Terry Mugler and Claude Montana, and was always around the gay fashion set. We rarely hung with a straight crowd. So I called the Voice and threatened to sue them for libel, cause she was a model and it would hurt her career. I was real serious but then a compromise was found. It was set up that Susan Anton and I took Michael Musto to the zoo, and we were all to become friends, so a retraction was printed of some sort and we decided we were going to be nice to each other from then on "cause we're good people". But of course Michael fucked me over like two weeks later, again. And that's the way it is; he's alright, but in those days I found him to be occasionally nasty. I guess the same could be said about me. Ok so you started with this club thing, and you were working with me.
KC: Yeah, and I did every club. We did every club, right?
SL: You were the best. You were the best club publicist ever. But you broke out of that and we have gone separate ways, although we've stayed in touch, we run into each other on the street.
KC: We're always friends.
SL: Always friends.
Good Night,
Mr. Lewis
Interview conducted and written by Steve Lewis. Interview has been edited and condensed.
