Interview with Robert "Bob" Morgan, June 7, 2012

JEFFRIES: You know, as a, as a, as a way of introduction, I said, you know, if--it's, it's possible that you could use some of this stuff in your, in your project. Because early on I was just sort of a little sensitive to--I didn't want to be sort of stepping on her toes really.

MORGAN: Oh, I don't think--

JEFFRIES: I mean, I have no idea if I was or not.

MORGAN: I, I think there, you know, there's oodles of documentaries that made on different stuff from that time period--

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: --that are on different subjects.

JEFFRIES: --(whispers)--There you go. So, um--

MORGAN: Did you bring your little list of questions?

JEFFRIES: I did.

MORGAN: Okay.

JEFFRIES: Yeah. So and I'll just kind of refer to it. But you know, I mean, I do this on the radio all the time. So one of my favorite things about this is, this really--and you're such a great kind of storyteller. I mean, it's not like I'm going to sit here and go "dun, duh-dun, duh-dun, duh-dun," you know? But this kind of--like I said, I'm a little bit out of practice and this project is different--very different, in fact, from the RFL project where I was 00:01:00a seminal player in the whole thing. So I knew all the ins and outs. I never went to Café LMNOP. I didn't live here yet. It closed right before I moved back. And, um--

MORGAN: I was going to say, were you that young that you couldn't get in? --(both laugh)--

JEFFRIES: Right. I moved here in 1986, so I, I just missed it is all. And, um, yeah, I would have been there for sure. And I would have been too young.--(Jeffries laughs)--And I still would have been there.

MORGAN: Oh, I thought, I thought maybe you were.

JEFFRIES: I think. Well, I used to sneak into The Bottom Line so. Um, I mean, you know, I'm not sure. I've no idea, you know, how strict--if he--

MORGAN: LMNOP was over by the time you were sneaking in The Bottom Line.

JEFFRIES: Exactly.

MORGAN: You were definitely too young to have come in LMNOP.

JEFFRIES: I may have been sneaking into The Bottom Line because I was poor and didn't want to pay. I don't think it was--it may not have been because I didn't have the money.

MORGAN: That was a hard one. There was only one way in, one way out.

JEFFRIES: Over that gate.

MORGAN: Over the gate, in the back.--(Jeffries laughs)--

JEFFRIES: Yeah, you could go over the gate on, on Broadway. Like down that alley. I think that's what it was. Or maybe it was in from that 00:02:00parking lot. But let's see. So, okay, so let me just--and like I said, I had no intention of doing video, but you don't mind if I do, do you?

MORGAN: No, no, no.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: I washed my hair this morning, so I'd look good on camera for the first, for the first visitors.

JEFFRIES: Woo! Okay, so um, let's see if we can just start out by if you would introduce yourself and say your, um, your occupation, where you live, where you're from, if it's from somewhere else.

MORGAN: Do you need to test the sound?

JEFFRIES: I will as you're doing that, I think.

MORGAN: Okay. Okay, I'm Bob Morgan and I am sixty three years old and I am an artist living and working in Lexington, Kentucky, which is my hometown.

JEFFRIES: You grew up here? Yeah?

MORGAN: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I grew up in Lexington, but it was a 00:03:00totally different town when I grew up.

JEFFRIES: That's what I was going to--

MORGAN: I mean, I hung out downtown when I was a little kid because I went to St. Paul's School downtown and the 'burbs were already really a big deal. But I was still in the downtown scene. My grandparents lived downtown. My dad had grown up downtown. My family came here in 1790.

JEFFRIES: That's amazing.

MORGAN: And that was before they named Lexington. And so, so I knew every little back alley and everything going on downtown--

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: --as, as a young boy, you know?

JEFFRIES: Was there a time when you started to notice a change that maybe kind of let--you know, we're sort of talking--we want to talk a l--s--about kind of the, the kind of underground art and music culture a-and--

MORGAN: Well, let me take this opportunity to say that there was an underground in the forties in Lexington. There was a beat scene in Lexington and there were jazz clubs in Lexington that were underground scenes. I think 00:04:00some of that was fed by the federal narcotics hospital that brought all the jazz greats to Lexington, and lots of them spent a lot of time in Lexington on weekend passes. And some people even stayed in Lexington and married local girls and, and lived out their lives here, you know. And so, so there, there was always a time when there was something going on in a little part of town that was not the norm in Lexington, especially in the way of music. And I think a lot of people don't know that there were beatnik coffeehouses and there were jazz clubs in Lexington at one time. And, and so, so if you scooch a little bit into the fifties, you know, that was still going on, but by the time the sixties got here and the cultural revolution of the sixties, Lexington had an underground of hippies.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: And so, so there was, uh--and some of that underground of 00:05:00hippies was connected to the old beats and a lot of the old druggies that had settled in Lexington.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: So there, there--in some ways, there was a continuum of an underground scene, especially in the downtown of, of Lexington.

JEFFRIES: Ha--and then in, into the, say, mid-, the mid-seventies, how old were you about then? Or was that when, was that when things--did your ey--did, did, did you--did your eyes begin to become open--or did you begin to participate in the scene at some point? At what, at what point in time--

MORGAN: Yeah, we started hearing about punk rock when it was all the rage in England, you know. And New York. We had friends in New York, you know, so, so we were hearing about punk rock and we were going up to the old CBGB's and hearing bands and stuff. And, you know, Boston. So, so, you know, we, we 00:06:00culturally knew all about it going on, but just that there wasn't any happenin' scene in Lexington, you know, in the way of like the new music scene.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: Everything was still stuck in the rut of like the old Lynaugh's Pub and the, and the Metropolitan Blues All-Stars and people were still talking about Exile, you know. Like maybe there'll be an Exile reunion, you know, and stuff, you know, so. So when a few bands got together in Lexington, it was really--people were--a lot of people were just waiting for something like that to happen, you know. Of course, there was no venues, so people would have house parties and yard parties and garage parties.

JEFFRIES: What were--there had to have been nightclubs. I mean, what were they--

MORGAN: They didn't play any of the new music.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: They were still playing all the old school shit, you know--

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: --that was appealing to the old hippies. Places like The Bottom Line and stuff like that. Reggae, you know, was still being played, you know. There was like--there was no venue for punk-leaning or New Wave music in 00:07:00Lexington at all, you know? And so--

JEFFRIES: How were you all getting your information about that?

MORGAN: Well, like I said, we had pe--friends living in Boston and New York.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: You know, and, and people in Lexington were saying, "We're taking our--we're going to England for our vacations. We're going to go to London." You know? And they'd bring back records and everything from, from London, you know, so. So--and you know, there was there was some stuff. There was no internet, and Lord only knows the music was not on TV, you know, but there was a, a--WRFL had a couple late night shows that played David Bowie and stuff like that, you know?

JEFFRIES: But that would have come much later.

MORGAN: No, not--WUKY.

JEFFRIES: Okay, okay.

MORGAN: WUKY is what I meant. Yeah.

JEFFRIES: Which at that time was WBKY.

MORGAN: Yeah. And, and you know, Jim Thompson, Hunter Thompson's brother, had a late night show at WUKY, and he played glitter rock and, and things 00:08:00that were moving towards that new kind of music sound on his show late at night.

JEFFRIES: Was he a student at UK?

MORGAN: No.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: No. He was, he was local. He made a living as a painter, house painter. And, and Hunter T--he was Hunter Thompson's brother. And, uh--

JEFFRIES: That's great. I've never heard that before.

MORGAN: Yeah. And he died. I talked to his ex-partner a few years ago. He died about 10 years ago.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: And but yeah, you know, they were from Louisville. So, you know, it wasn't that--he came here to go to the UK and, and got a job at WUKY. Which, as you said, they had different call num--

JEFFRIES: WBKY.

MORGAN: WBKY at the time. And so, so, you know, there, there wasn't a lot.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: I remember going to Barney Miller's record store and saying, "I heard that--do you have any punk or new wave?" And this guy showed me Elvis Costello's first album and I said, "Well, that's not punk or new wave. That's 00:09:00not at all what I meant." And he said, "No, this is the in thing, I promise you." And he sold me Elvis Costello's new album that I'd never heard of, just because he assured me that it was part of the new sound, you know. And, and I bought Elvis Costello's new al--first album there.

JEFFRIES: Well, I mean, before--since it was before all kinds of digital technology and everything--and Bill Weidner's talked about this a lot--you--if you, if you wanted to, you know--if you were a music fan, you had to, you had to take a lot of chances.

MORGAN: Yeah.

JEFFRIES: You had to just buy records.

MORGAN: Oh yeah. That's why you asked the guy at the record store. You told him what you were looking for. And he said, "I know what you're talking about. This is it." You know? Or, you know, "If you know the name of it, we can special order it. And maybe in two or three weeks, it'll be here." You know? And, and so that's what you did, you know? But so, so--

JEFFRIES: So it's very word of mouth. The, the--this kind of--

MORGAN: Oh, yeah, yeah. And it was very, very subculture too. I mean, it was--it reminded me of the early hippie days in a way because you 00:10:00literally--if you were driving down the street and you saw somebody with a wild punk haircut, you'd stop the car and say, "Where are you going and who are you? We want to know you."

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: And in the old day--in the sixties, you would do the same thing. You saw a long-haired guy going down the street, you'd say, "Who are you? Nobody in town knows you. What--you know, what's your story?" You know?

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: So, so you know, that's how you met people, you know?

JEFFRIES: So as this, as this, you know--kind of circling around the, the new music as you called it, or punk rock, did it finally begin to coalesce around some locations in Lexington? Or how--

MORGAN: No, it started with the band The Thrusters .

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: Yeah. When The Thrusters--that was Brian Moore and Willie Shuman and Bradley Picklesimer and Becky Sturdivant--actually Becky wasn't in it at first, but joined later--and then, uh--I'm missing somebody. And they 00:11:00changed drummers a couple of times. But they were just so much fun and so grassroots, and they would try and get gigs playing at like local, sort of, almost rednecky bars. And then we would go that night. It would be a Wednesday night, and all of their friends would show up that Wednesday night and just raise hell. And they would sell a whole lot of booze and so they would have them back, but never like on a weekend when their regulars would be there because they wouldn't go for it, you know? They wouldn't go for the people. And they attracted sort of a gender-bending kind of crowd that was gay and it was straight and it was like a teenage and it was middle aged. And so it was a mixed crowd, you know, of--but, but--

JEFFRIES: What was it do you think that--this is one of my, my favorite sort of themes in general here is the, the, the audience would be so, like you said, gender bender.

MORGAN: Yeah.

JEFFRIES: It's so kind of varied really. Like a lot of different--

MORGAN: But you know, Lexington has, you know, always had a whole lot of cool people and it's a very small town. So we learned many years ago over 00:12:00several generations to get along with each other. And if you found a place that would let you misbehave a little bit and drink you like all learned to get along and go there, you know? So there had been a history of bars in Lexington where that kind of scene was prevalent, like the old Bungalow. You know, you could go there and there would be like lawyers and drag queens and Idle Hour Country Club ladies and like a--and a bunch of lesbians shooting pool and stuff, you know? And, and, and, and that was--that's just a tradition in Lexington, I think. You know, that, that we had oddball people getting together to have fun.

JEFFRIES: Do you think that's distinctly Kentucky or Lexington?

MORGAN: I think it's distinctly small town to some degree, you know. I can speak for the gay community. You know, in a lot of cities where you would have men and women went to separate bars and never mixed with each other. Blacks 00:13:00and whites went to separate bars and, you know, seldom mixed. In the gay bar scene in Lexington everybody had to go one place. So, you know, so you learn to get along with each other, otherwise you didn't go out, you know, that night, you know. And, and I think, you know--and, and I think at LMNOP, if we're jumping ahead just slightly, that was new to a lot of the kids that came there. They had never met pool playing dykes. They had never met drag queens. And, and so--and, and they found a lot of that a whole new experience to them, you know. And of course, the music was all new to them, too. So it was a whole new thing, you know, of everybody getting along, you know. There'd be motorcycles parked in front and like, you know--and as long as people didn't seriously get into knockdown, drag out fights, you know, it was considered a pretty good night, you know. For people getting along and learning to have fun with each 00:14:00other, you know? And so, so, you know, I just think that's a tradition in Lexington that to some degree doesn't exist anymore, you know, because we've gotten big enough now that people can go to a, a venue that is people like them, you know. And, and they're, they're not used to having to go in a place that has three or four different types of people in it, you know, and learning to get along with each other.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm. But so--at the--and, and at the time--so that kind of was handed--it sort of was hand in hand with kind of an underground sort of punk rock music scene.

MORGAN: Yeah. And so Bradley opened a small club on Winchester Road called Club Au Go Go.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: Mainly, it was a place--

JEFFRIES: Was this after The Thrusters? Was The Thrusters first?

MORGAN: During The Thrusters. The Thrusters were the house band.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: But you know, they'd been playing around a bunch of these redneck bars and saying, "We need a place where we can play and do our own 00:15:00thing, you know, and invite some bands we--" people had met some bands, maybe in Cincinnati and Louisville and stuff and said, "have our friend bands come here and play too." You know? So he rented a small little place with just a few hundred dollars. It didn't have anything in it. They got a cooler to put the beer in. I tell kids today I said, "If you don't like the bars you're going to, all you have to do is rent a place, get a beer license and, you know, and put some chairs in it, you know. Make your own bar." You know. And--because we did that in those days, you know?

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: And so they--he opened that little bar on Winchester Road and people came out of the woodwork who had heard about this new music, you know? But I mean, young kids into like Jamaican music would come there, you know. Or like--so it wasn't--and some of them were uncomfortable with all the gay aspect and stuff, you know, so people had to get used to each other. And, and it was a little hole in the wall. And he rented it right next door to Wade Littrell's Lexington Restaurant Supply place.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: So Bradley got to be friends with Wade Littrell. And he used to come over there and he was an old time redneck boy, but he loved to drink and party and, and he thought it was just most fun on Earth. And his wife would come over and they would like, go hang out at Club Au Go Go and, and watch all that was going on there, you know? And so, so then, and then that's when you know, the connections to Boston and stuff started coming in handy because bands from Boston would say, "We're going to be going to Florida. Let's go to--stop in Lexington and play at this little bar Bradley owns, you know, there." And Human Sexual Response came several times and played. And then, you know, word of mouth started getting bands and everybody would like talk about it for like three weeks. "There's a band coming from Boston." You know, and uh, cover would be five dollars, you know, everybody'd save their money for, for weeks to be able to go out that night. And that was when the bars closed at one o'clock in the morning, too. And so everything had to be done by then, you know. 00:17:00And, and that bar was a lot of fun, you know. And everybody had a great time with that bar, and I don't exactly remember why that bar closed.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: But it did. And Wade Littrell remained friends with Bradley, and he was the one who opened LMNOP.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: It was his bar, his money, he and his wife's money. And Bradley said, "You know, we should get David Anderson. He's thick in the music scene in Boston. He's from Lexington, and he was thinking about moving back to Lexington. Why don't we get him to come down here and run the bar and, and he'll book bands and get his friends from Boston to come and all this, you know, and it'll be a great new scene." And so at the time, I was living in Florida. I moved back to Lexington in the middle of a bitter winter where it was like, you 00:18:00know, knee high snow and ice for months. And the first thing we did was go down to LMNOP and, and David Anderson was the manager. And, and it w--in the daytime, it was a restaurant and it like, uh, served country cooking. It had a hotel right next door called The Downtowner. And, and people--there weren't many restaurants downtown in those days, so they'd get a lot of lunch crowd in there during the middle of the day. And then in the evening, it would be a music venue bar run by David Anderson. David was a great guy and knew a lot about music, and he would go to great pains to get bands to come there and play and stuff. But after I'd moved back, one day Wade called Bradley down there and said, "Bradley, I've got some serious issues about the place. We're not making a nickel. I'm losing money every month and we're going to have to close it unless we do something different." And he said, "Well," you know, he was distraught about it, but h--Wade's solution was, "I'm going have to fire D.A. 00:19:00David Anderson."

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: "He is a great guy. He knows bands and stuff, but he doesn't know how to run a nightclub or a bar." And you know, we have--he'd have a band there and he'd invite people in at seven o'clock. They would have drinks for an hour, then he would open the back room and everybody'd go back and watch the band perform. Then they would close the back room and everybody would move back to the front. You know, there was no spontaneity or wildness to the place at all, you know. And it's supposed to be this new age ki--new wave kind of music venue. And so with much hand-wringing because this was going to be very difficult to fire David Anderson and, and they did. And Bradley took over managership of LMNOP.

JEFFRIES: Was Bradley involved prior to that?

MORGAN: Not really, except his advising--

JEFFRIES: Okay. Okay.

MORGAN: And was friends with D.A. and would maybe help plan special parties and stuff down there.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: But no, no, he wasn't, he wasn't particularly involved at the time. But--well, that sent shockwaves through the music scene because a lot of people were really, really, really loved David Anderson. And were just so pissed off and so upset that he had been fired from the job that they never set foot in the place ever again and did everything they could to sabotage the future of the place.

JEFFRIES: Huh.

MORGAN: Yeah. And like--

JEFFRIES: Well, he really--he was br--he was bringing--he was, he was kind of this lifeline, sort of, wasn't he?

MORGAN: Yeah, yeah. But, you know, but he wasn't ringing the cash register, you know.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: And so, so Bradley--Wade said, "Do whatever you need to do to have the place make money." Well, Bradley knew how to throw a party. So he redecorated the place, painted everything hot pink and glittered and black patent leather and, you know, with no budget whatsoever. And, and hired Freddie Powell to book the bands, a woman booking the bands, who said, you know, "We 00:21:00need to get--we need to experiment with like younger bands and, you know, and get some, you know, some real excitement going on here." And so things changed almost overnight. But it was rough like I said. Vale of Tears were D.A.'s best friends and they never set foot in the bar ever again and never, ever played LMNOP. And, and, and went without having a place to even play in their hometown because they couldn't play any of the other bars because they weren't the kind of music people wanted. And so--

JEFFRIES: Did Vale of Tears pre-date The Thrusters?

MORGAN: No, no. Some of the Thrusters formed Vale of Tears after The Thrusters.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: And so, so--I mean, Willie Shuman and Becky mainly had been The Thrusters. And Brian Moore wasn't in Vale of Tears.

JEFFRIES: I don't believe so.

MORGAN: But he had, he had moved on to Active Ingredients--

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: --anyway by then. So, so, you know, that was terrible, but you know, people weren't speaking to each other and people who had been great friends, you know, were mortal enemies about the whole thing.

JEFFRIES: And was this at kind of a time when this, this, this music scene was maybe kind of coalescing?

MORGAN: Yeah, it had been--

JEFFRIES: So it was sort of a--

MORGAN: --it had been really. And, you know, and it was trying to get everybody together and everybody be friends, you know. And then that was just a death blow to that whole philosophy. But also by this time, music--this kind of music was all over the radio. You could see some of it on TV. So it had gotten much, much bigger.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: You know, I mean, you know, you could, you know, get three, four hundred people into LMNOP on a weekend night, easily. Whereas the old Club Au Go Go days if there were a hundred, it was like, you know, astronomical.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: So, so, so-- and then Bradley introduced, in a real intense 00:23:00way, the gay scene to mix in there. He started having giant drag shows and drag pageants and, and, and insisted on dressing in drag and running the place in high camp drag and hired wild country drag queens to work the front door and bartend and, and had transgender strippers working there and stuff, you know. And so it upped everything a whole notch, you know. And so, so, so it became a scandalous place to go. Becau--and you know, the people over at Lynaugh's and all these other places said, "That's a homo place." You know, all these people that we see and know now as like, all being so liberal were all like, you know, they were these long haired hippie rednecks bitching about, "That place is full of homos!" I remember Metropolitan Blues All-Stars said, "We would never play in a homo joint like that." You know? And one time, apparently all the 00:24:00Metropolitan Blues All-Stars did want to play there, but Nick Stump nixed it all. He was doing all the booking. He said, "I'll be damned if we play at a homo place." He denies all this these days. It was like, who cares? You know? It's just a music venue, you know? So they did end up playing there one night. And, and must have--they called every person they know to make sure that they had two hundred of their fans there and it wasn't going to be like them playing in front of this crowd of freaks at LMNOP, you know? And--but--so they did play LMNOP. And they were the house band of Lynaugh's Pub, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: And, uh, so--

JEFFRIES: Well, sort of like following on that, do you think--I mean, it sounds like a circus there.

MORGAN: Oh, it was. But, you know--and, and--

JEFFRIES: Was it--but was it a scary place to be?

MORGAN: Oh, it could be, occasionally. But you know, there were so many tough dykes and big rednecks and stuff that anybody who came in there 00:25:00thinking they could cause trouble found out real quickly--(clears throat)--you know, that they were way outnumbered and way outmanned in the way of like maintaining anything. So, you know, so it could be scary if you didn't know, but I mean, people who knew knew everybody's real safe here, you know?

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: But--so, so it became, you know, quite the hangout for like people who--this was the last hurrah too. This was before--

JEFFRIES: This was like--(Morgan coughs)--1979 or something maybe? --(Morgan clears throat)--Seventy-eight?

MORGAN: I'm bad on the dates.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: But, but it was--AIDS had not really devastated Lexington yet.

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: And drug addiction had not taken its heaviest toll yet. So people--everybody there had a sense this might be our last real hurrah because everybody was getting high, everybody was partying, and everybody was fucking, you know.

JEFFRIES: Did people--you felt like there was kind of like a dark--dark clouds on the horizon or--

MORGAN: Oh, everybody knew it. Because, you know, all you had to do 00:26:00is open the paper and see, you know, that like--yeah, by this time, all of our friends in--(clears throat)--San Francisco, New York and stuff were, you know, were dying of AIDS and, and it was, it was all over the place, you know--(coughs)--by then. But--so I think that intensified people's need to party like there's no tomorrow, too.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: So the place had a reputation for a very high level of tolerance and intoxication. And--

JEFFRIES: Is that a nihilist kind of thing? Was that a word that, that you would use or--such a heavy word, I don't know.

MORGAN: I don't know. I would stick with just, you know, like decadent hedonism.

JEFFRIES: Yeah.

MORGAN: Yeah. But--and you know, and it also became, you know, as any kind of place like that does, a place for sexual experimentation--(coughs)--people would get drunk and do things that they never did before. And--

JEFFRIES: Was there are a little bit of like--

MORGAN: --and come in contact with people that they might not, you know, so.

JEFFRIES: I can't--I'm, I'm keep thi--I'm thinking of the, of the Las Vegas slogan, "What, what, what happens at LMNOP stays at LMNOP." I don't know.

MORGAN: I'm not sure there were any secrets.--(Jeffries laughs)--Because things were happening right out in public, you know?

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: But--so--well, then there was this--Bradley and--I was living with Bradley--(coughs)--

JEFFRIES: How did you--

MORGAN: --a big old house over on Madison Place.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: And, and somebody bought the house and we had to move. It was like, God damn, you know? And so Wade said, "Well, you know, the"--this building was a gigantic building. He said, "Well, the whole upstairs is completely empty, you know. You could live up there if you'd like." And he said, "Well, not really got a functioning bathroom." And so--(coughs)--everybody said "Well, let's get that taken care of." So we put a fully functioning bathroom upstairs. And Bradley and his sister Liz and I moved in and lived upstairs. --(coughs)--Get my--

JEFFRIES: Let's take a break for a second if you want.

MORGAN: Yeah, let's take a break. --(coughs)--

--[Pause in recording]--

MORGAN: Yeah, because I'm a--well, I never really professed to own it. Call it Bradley's bar, you know, but--because Wade was a totally silent partner. You know, he just talked at the end of the night about closing out registers and stuff and he'd come in occasionally and sign checks.

JEFFRIES: Yeah, yeah. No, I thought until, until you said that--

MORGAN: No.

JEFFRIES: --I think I would have assumed the same thing.

MORGAN: No. And I think, you know, he and his wife still are here in Lexington. I see them every now and then at Kroger's. P--they're the most unassuming people you'd ever expect to be involved in such madness.--(coughs)--Okay, let's try it again.

JEFFRIES: And so, um--Okay. So, uh--

MORGAN: So we moved in upstairs.

JEFFRIES: How do--can, can--

MORGAN: Giant rooms. You know, just with like--so it was like loft 00:29:00living. True loft living. Except we came down the stairway and we're standing right in the middle of a bar nightclub, you know. Which, hey, a lot of people, that's their dream come true. And you know--and it was for us.

JEFFRIES: I was gonna say.

MORGAN: I guarantee you, we loved it. Bradley had two pit bulldogs. We moved them on upstairs, too. The warehouse was so big the dogs had a whole section just for them to run wild in, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: So, so that was probably some of the funnest time in my life.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: --(coughs)--And--then--

JEFFRIES: Did you say how you all kn--did you--had you known each other for a long time?

MORGAN: We'd known each other for a long time. Yeah, yeah.

JEFFRIES: Good.

MORGAN: --(coughs)--But I had been living in Florida--

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: --for a while, you know.

JEFFRIES: Because Bradley grew up here, too, right?

MORGAN: Yeah, but he was considerably, considerably younger than me.

JEFFRIES: Oh, okay.

MORGAN: Still is.--(both laugh)-- And so it, you know--Asbury 00:30:00Theological Seminary would bring a bus of young theology students over to preach in front of LMNOP. --(coughs)--To tell everybody they were going to go to hell and it was a palace of sin, a den of iniquity. And--

JEFFRIES: I'm thinking you all loved that somehow.

MORGAN: Let me tell you something, you can't pay to have people do that. People drink so much when they get so mad and they would stand out there and scream and yell and fight with these kids, and they would come in and order drink, after drink, after drink. --(coughs)--So that was like--that was funny because people say, "Why don't you do something about those people?" "We don't want them to leave. We sort of like it." You know. Nothing like having some controversy out there, you know? And then there were things like, you know, there was this sense that we could do whatever we wanted, you know. Three big picture 00:31:00windows facing Main Street. So rush hour traffic was always inching along on Main Street--(coughs)--so Bradley said, "I think we need to put drag queen go-go girls in the windows during rush hour. Under black light with Day-Glo bikinis." You know, so you had literally--people would just drive around the block just to see it again, you know. I'm sure people didn't even know it was drag queens, you know. It was just so, you know, out there for Lexington, you know. And, and UK campus and art department, you know, tons of kids from UK started coming down to LMNOP. So there was a whole fresh crop of young artists hanging out there, too, who all wanted to contribute somehow in the way of performance or like--or helping decorate or, you know. So, so there was a tremendous community involvement in the place at one time. And, and every night of the 00:32:00week, if you had the money or if you didn't, it was the place to go.

JEFFRIES: Every night of the week?

MORGAN: Every night of the week. I mean, except Sundays. We didn't have Sunday openings in those days, you know.

JEFFRIES: That's right.

MORGAN: And so, so--and, and--

JEFFRIES: And you all were living upstairs.

MORGAN: Yeah. We were living upstairs. With, with pit bull dogs.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: And that end of Main Street was not so jazzy at the time. I mean, right behind us--they hadn't built that park with the Thoroughbred horses and all that. It was--that was the hill where Belle Brezing's house was, right behind there. --(coughs)--And there were still a whole bunch of those old whorehouses over there that hadn't been torn down yet. They tore a lot of that down when they did that project, built that park and building those new townhouses there. So we would walk the dogs back up in through there. It was, it was a, you know, rough little, rough little turf up that way.

JEFFRIES: Would it be, would it be accurate to say that LMNOP was 00:33:00about where Dunkin Donuts is?

MORGAN: No, LMNOP looked--the upstairs windows looked right into the Chamber of Commerce's second floor mirrored front.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: --(coughs)--So right next to LMNOP was the Mammoth Garage. And that's where the Rose Street extension went right through.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: So, so it would have been like, right on the corner where Wells Fargo is right now.

JEFFRIES: Oh, okay, okay.

MORGAN: Yeah, but close, you know, just a few doors down.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: And the Downtowner Hotel was borderline a little seedy, but, you know, had a restaurant, and, you know, it was, was, you know, a regular business right next door, too.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm. How, how were relations between, between the two places?

MORGAN: We go over there and eat on Sundays with terrible hangovers. But we would also--here's what we would do. We would take all the bands that had slept on the stage from the weekend --(coughs)--and any leftover drag 00:34:00queens still in their dresses, with their wigs cockeyed and everything, and we would all go to Louden Square. For Sunday afternoon. And that's where--if you ever go Louden Square, you know, all the church people are there on Sundays. You know, all the little old ladies have their hats on and all this shit, you know. So we would go in there with like, you know, 10 band guys and four or five drag queens, and everybody was so hungover that we couldn't even speak hardly, you know. Everybody would--we would sit at three or four or five different tables scattered around the place--(coughs)--people didn't even know, particularly we were all together, you know. We'd never had anybody say anything. Like, "Who the hell are those people?" or anything like that, you know? And Max Flannery, who still owns the place, he was always just, you know, really great guy, you know, and was always glad to see us. He never--he's never sorry to see anybody come through the door spending their money. So that was, that was where everybody went to eat on Sunday. And it was cheap, you know, six dollars all you can eat. You know these--some of these bands were living out of a, you know, a 00:35:00van, you know, traveling across the country with no money at all. So--

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: --so that was like--

JEFFRIES: I think it's only $7.50 all you can eat now.

MORGAN: It' $7.75. I think.

JEFFRIES: $7.75

MORGAN: I think. Or maybe it's $7.50. But yeah, it's gone up.

JEFFRIES: It's amazing.

MORGAN: It's gone up a little bit. But so--and, and, you know, Freddy [Fred Mills] down at the Kentucky [Theatre] was always--you know, we had this deal with the Kentucky: Kentucky employees always get in free to everything at LMNOP and we always get in free to everything at the Kentucky Theatre. So that was like a nice exchange, you know.

JEFFRIES: So you say 'we.' Like that's sort of a loose term. Like--

MORGAN: Anybody who worked at LMNOP or anybody who worked at the Kentucky Theatre. JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: So employees got to, got to go back and forth. But you know, there hadn't been a drag scene in Lexington for many years. You know, there hadn't been a drag bar. There hadn't been any shows.

JEFFRIES: I didn't realize--

MORGAN: And the whole culture had died out. Until Bradley started having all these drag shows at LMNOP. And then, and then it wasn't till after 00:36:00about a year of that becoming a raging success that The Bar started thinking, "Maybe we'll have drag shows down here, too."

JEFFRIES: The Bar was open, but they didn't have drag shows.

MORGAN: They didn't have drag shows, yeah.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: And, so, so that was--that that helped revitalize that entire culture in Lexington, too.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: You know, I was thinking about the generational thing and before Cafe LMNOP, before Club Au Go Go, there were occasionally a few times that New Wave or punk bands could play in Lexington. And one night I remember in particular was there was a bar called Brezing's that was named after Belle Brezing. And Mike McCormick owned it and it was on Short Street. And, and it was where the Lexington Club is right now, the new edition of the Lexington Club. And it had a-- it was two floors, two floors, and they had a stage--

JEFFRIES: Was it across from Central Cafeteria?

MORGAN: Yeah.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: They had, they had a stage upstairs and a stage downstairs. And one night there was a big sort of culture crazy music festival there and The Thrusters were going to play there. And Henry Faulkner was singing with his blues band there, too, uh, that same night. And then Richard Brinegar's first band, whose name escapes me, but it was sort of a Devo-esque kind of band. They were all in these jumpsuits. They were playing, too.

JEFFRIES: Was it I.S.?

MORGAN: No, no, no. It was--

JEFFRIES: That's later.

MORGAN: But, but anyway, I went in drag and sat with Sweet Evening Breeze. And Sweet Evening Breeze--now you have to understand, I'm dressed in drag, so we have something in common. She's Black. She'd been born in the eighteen hundreds.

JEFFRIES: Amazing.

MORGAN: And we're sitting watching Henry Faulkner doing the blues. 00:38:00And then the deal is as soon as Henry is through, we've all got to run upstairs to get in front to see The Thrusters. So I was telling Sweet Evening Breeze about The Thrusters and what punk music was about.--(coughs)--She had never heard of it. Here's an old transvestite from the 1800s, still alive almost, you know, in her nineties. And, and so I, I had to tell her and Henry Faulkner all about the punk music scene. And then we all ran upstairs to get in the front row to watch The Thrusters, you know. Which was something totally new to, you know, these people. And you know how odd that I would be sitting there with Henry Faulkner, who, coming of age in the fifties in Lexington, and Sweet Evening Breeze who was born in the eighteen hundreds and introducing them to punk rock in a bar in Lexington. So--

JEFFRIES: Do you remember what they thought?

MORGAN: Oh, everybody had a great time, you know. It was a wild and 00:39:00wonderful evening, you know.

JEFFRIES: What was a Thrusters show like?

MORGAN: Well, you know, for its day, it was pretty--I mean, they were all great musicians.

JEFFRIES: Oh, okay.

MORGAN: They wrote all of their own music. And Bradley was, you know, a born front man, you know. And so--and he would always, you know, push the boundaries on how little he could wear on stage. And then Chris Slone played keyboard. Chris Slone looked better than Marilyn Monroe. Usually, you know. He was the most beautiful drag queen anybody'd ever seen, always. And, and Becky always tried to, you know, do herself in some severe way.

JEFFRIES: Severe's a good word.

MORGAN: Yeah. So, so--

JEFFRIES: Because there was that new wave kind of visual aesthetic. I mean, I've seen pictures of Brian--

MORGAN: Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

JEFFRIES: --and he's looking really sort of severe,

MORGAN: Oh, Brian used, used to, you know have to sit and have somebody do full makeup on him before he'd go on stage, you know. That--you know, people veered away from that after a while but at the time, you know, for little 00:40:00Lexington, they were like, you know, quite a, quite a band. I mean, they toured Boston and New York and a few other towns, you know, and played lots of big clubs. And, and you know, and people, people loved them, you know. They had lots of friends in, in those towns, too, you know. Willie's first wife lived in Boston and, and they had lots of connections up there.

JEFFRIES: Now, but they were kind of the whole package. I was just thinking about how later came, say, you know, the punk rock of, say, Active Ingredients, who didn't put anything like the same emphasis on, on, on, on appearance, I would say.

MORGAN: Well, yeah, they did. They--just their drag was different, you know.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: They wore black jeans, black t shirts, black leather jackets, you know.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: I mean, but they, they didn't just show up haphazardly. They carefully planned their look, too, you know.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: Yeah. But you know, there were all these different little schools of, you know, musical identity going on at the time.

JEFFRIES: What were some of the others? That you recall.

MORGAN: Well, there was like the real art like Kraftwerk kind of bands, you know. And then there were bands that were much gayer, and there were bands that were, like considered hardcore. And Active Ingredients, considered themselves a hardcore band, for sure, you know. But there were bands that were much harder core than them. And--

JEFFRIES: Can you give examples of any of these genres that--

MORGAN: Oh, local bands?

JEFFRIES: Yeah, yeah.

MORGAN: Oh, the Active Ingredients was about as hardcore as it got.

JEFFRIES: Okay, okay.

MORGAN: Yeah. And, uh--

JEFFRIES: I thought you said--I thought you were talking about like the local scene, or different other musical styles or whatever.

MORGAN: No, no, no. No, but you know, a lot of bands sought to mirror what was going on on the national stage, you know. And identified--there, there were, you know--music--people think that that era had lots of different genres of music going on that had their own identity, their own sound. People lumped 00:42:00it all together as sort of like punk or new wave, but--

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: --but you know, there was--people would, would be quick to tell you they weren't this, and weren't that, and didn't like that, and like this and--

JEFFRIES: Because everybody was kind of doing their own version of quote unquote--

MORGAN: See, that was another thing. When Bradley took over LMNOP, most of the bands that David Anderson had been booking had tended to be old school punk or leaning towards hardcore. And Bradley really wanted it to loosen up. He wanted things to be fun. He wanted people--have electronical music. He want--The Og Pots were a great example of that, you know. That was Tripp Bratton's band at the time. And he and like six really young boys, you know, formed that band and they were all over the map with like international music and drums and electronic and all kinds of stuff, you know. And, and so--but even bands touring, you know, theatrical kind of bands and, and, and 00:43:00electronical music, they started playing at LMNOP. And a lot of people who were into, you know, just old school, you know, hated it, hated it, hated it.

JEFFRIES: --(laughs)--You mean people--the, the, the punks kind of--

MORGAN: Yeah, the punks--

JEFFRIES: --people that wanted to hear punk rock.

MORGAN: But you know, punk was on the way out and music was changing, you know? And so, you know, that bar was trying to, you know, adapt and stay ahead with stuff, you know. Didn't want to get locked into, you know, one kind of scene going on there. Here's a funny story about LMNOP you might not know. Sue Wiley at the time was like head bitch at Channel 18, you know.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: She, she was--she didn't have her talk show anymore, but she was--noon news was her trip. She did the noon news. Well, she called up and said, "I want to come down to LMNOP and do a series of shows from LMNOP." Like five 00:44:00shows. You know, like one about the music, one about the drag queens, one about the, you know, like the, the fashion scene there and, you know. And so she got a camera crew together and came down there and spent like two weeks filming and taping at LMNOP. And then she put together these shows. And then each day on the noon news report they would say stuff like, "Stay tuned tomorrow for shocking scenes from LMNOP, the nightclub that ends all sense of taste and beauty in Lexington." These sensational headlines, you know? And then people would tune in, you know. They said, "Tomorrow it'll be all about the queens. Who are these deviant queens who dazzle people at night at this club?" And, and then it was--everybody was watching it. It was crazy, you know? So then like--oh my God, the line was around the door for people to get in, you know.--(Jeffries laughs)--And, and then--and a lot of these people didn't understand 00:45:00the, you know, the, the balance of, you know, all the different groups and everybody getting along and no fighting, you know. And like, you know, you can explore sexual stuff, but you can't, you know, rape people. And you can like, you know--I mean, so we started getting all these like redneck and frat kid tourists in there that, you know, didn't understand all the, the, the rules, you know.

JEFFRIES: It wasn't quite so insider, it sounds, it sounds--

MORGAN: It was losing a little bit of that. Losing a little bit of that, you know. And so--you know, Divine had come to Club Au Go Go on Winchester Road.

JEFFRIES: Famously. It seems like I've heard--

MORGAN: Yeah, it was pretty, it was pretty famous, you know. But it was still only about 150 people who saw it, you know?

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: And that was considered great. You know, and so--

JEFFRIES: And, and Divine would have been famous at that time for anything in particular?

MORGAN: She was internationally famous, but not real famous in Lexington.

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: You know, I mean, she had done a couple of stage productions in London that were, you know, big smash hits, and she had done, you 00:46:00know, plenty of movies with John Waters, and she had a bunch of hit records out too, you know, and was an international like, uh, club performer. And so--and the fact that she, you know, slowed down to stop in Lexington, you know, was, was pretty good, you know? And--but Bradley really wanted to get her at LMNOP. So--and it was difficult because she was big shit by then. She, she stopped at LMNOP after a tour of Europe before she was headed to like Los Angeles to chill after the tour. So we were the last stop on her tour, I think. I may be all wrong, but, but anyway. So, uh--and tickets were like fifteen dollars. People thought they would die. Fifteen dollars, my god. I saw a post the other day and realized how cheap the tickets were. And so anyway, you know, so it 00:47:00was just--everybody was crazy for like, you know, "We've got to sell tickets. We've got to get this many hundred people in here. We've got to--she's going to cost all this money." So she arrived in town and checked in the Downtowner Hotel next door and was there like a day early and--but not seeing anyone. And so, so we sat at the front door the night of the Divine concert and her deal was her manager said, "When you get half of the money bring it over to us at the hotel room." So they got half the money, took it over there, laid it all out on the table, counted it all. They said, "Fine. Now Divine will come over when you get the other half." So we're taking the money in the front door literally like counting and rushing it upstairs where Bradley had all laid on a table, counting it. Finally he said, "Okay, we've got the other half." So get all the money, put it in the bag, run next door to the Downtowner Hotel, give them the money there, they lay it all out and count it, and Divine's like, "Okay, 00:48:00I'm ready to go." So she walks down the street--oh, no, they didn't want her to walk in front of the club because there were so many people out there. So they put her in a car, went around the block and drove to the side of the club. She came up the side stairs to the upstairs. And by this time we had a big new stage in the back and--with a staircase that came down to it so she could--no one will have seen her and she could come down and come out onto the stage, you know, for the show. And so everybody knows, "Okay, Divine is in the building," you know. People are out of their minds. And so they start heading down the long corridor to the back of the stage and get to this door and Divine won't fit through it.

JEFFRIES: No!

MORGAN: Can you believe this shit? So had to call a couple of guys who had done all the construction and built the new bathroom, they came upstairs, took crowbars, and tore the doorframe off this door so Divine could fit through to get to the stage. She was like almost to the stairs that went down 00:49:00the stage, but she couldn't fit through the door, you know. Well, I mean, it wasn't to code or anything, they had just built this little hallway upstairs, you know. And so finally Divine, you know, came down onto the stage and did just, you know, the, you know, the show to end all shows, you know. It was like--she sang all of her big hits and was absolutely as, you know, as evil as possible and like, you know, insulted everybody in the audience and, and put on, you know, just a great show. And, and, and then I swear, I don't know whether it was that night or the next weekend, at the end of the evening show Bradley got up and announced that LMNOP would be closing next week, and it was really nice to have had so much fun with everybody. Good night.

JEFFRIES: Did you know that was coming?

MORGAN: Yeah, I knew it was coming. But I mean, basically it involved--it was becoming a headache.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: And, and it wasn't new anymore, and Bradley didn't like 00:50:00anything that wasn't really new, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: It was starting to become a routine, you know.

JEFFRIES: A chore maybe, or?

MORGAN: And I think that might have been why he closed Club Au Go Go, too. I don't remember. But yeah, it was all a chore, it was all a headache, it was all very much like a job, it was all--and, you know, and it wasn't--it had lost a lot of its fun inner circle cultishness and was becoming more of a tourist attraction. The music scene was changing and AIDS was right on our doorsteps and everybody was strung out as hell on whatever, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: So, you know, there, there was just, you know, a real dark shadow in the peripheral vision of everything, you know, there. And so--and Bradley would not be swayed.

JEFFRIES: Huh.

MORGAN: People begged and pleaded. Wade said, "If you're not running it, I ain't going run it, nobody else can run it so, well." He was an old timer. He said, "Eh, that's fine. We'll just close." You know, like, you know, "We 00:51:00still got another month on the lease. What the hell. It takes that long to get everything out of here," you know? So I mean, like, it was like--and that's what happened, you know. And, and, and god, did that leave a vacuum, you know.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: You know, but you know, but I swear--

JEFFRIES: That was probably, I don't know what year that--

MORGAN: --people have never learned that you can go out and start this yourself. You can just rent a place and say, "We're going to have a crazy, wild night. We're going to have r--we're going to--" and do it, you know. People keep waiting around for somebody to--if s--they say, "If we only had a place like that to go!" I said, "Make your own dang place!" You know. It was all made out of stuff that people threw away, anyway, that were salvaged or like bought at bargain basement, you know. I mean, it was just, you know, you dim the lights and, you know, if you do--if you've got any kind of creative vision, you know, you can have a place that looks out of this world. And then y--and then, you know, and then it's up to you to make it fun, you know? And I mean, 00:52:00you know, a lot of people from those days that I talk with now on Facebook on a regular basis, you know, it's amazing how much, how, how, how much affection we have for each other after all these years. People that, you know, weren't exactly my little crew or anything, either, you know. I mean, a lot of the straight boys that hung out there, you know, it was the funnest time of their life, changed their lives. They saw everything totally different after that, you know. And, and, you know, and then every time somebody puts up old pictures, you know, people just go crazy about it. It was a, you know, a time period in people's lives when, you know, when, you know, the world is just such a magical place, you know. But, you know, for many years old, downtown Lexington was a magical place. People didn't care what happened there and creative young people could run amuck, especially after the sun went down, you know.

JEFFRIES: When you say they didn't care what happened there, you kind of mean that it was sort of discarded, right?

MORGAN: Oh yeah, because everybody had moved to the 'burbs and you 00:53:00know, all the storefronts were empty. And you know--and like, you know--and once the office workers went home, you know, it was the Kentucky Theatre and a few other things going on. And you know, like, you know, you could run up and down the streets crazy, drunk, in drag and, you know, there weren't any police to look at you. They didn't, you know--

JEFFRIES: It sounds like it was like your own personal playground, kind of.

MORGAN: Well, it was for years, you know. It was like that for years, you know. But, but it only is if you have people who want to go out and play, you know. So I don't know if the town's really changed. You know, people tell me North Lime sounds like that these days, but you know, I don't think that it's as magically inspired. I don't think, you know--

JEFFRIES: Maybe everybody--

MORGAN: It doesn't seem the same. Doesn't seem the same.

JEFFRIES: Maybe everybody just knows too much now. With all the technology--

MORGAN: I think there's no incubator anymore, you know. Everything is, you know, thought of and then it's right out there merchandised, you know?

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: You know, nothing gets to sit around just steaming in the incubator for like a couple of years, just, you know, just because we're bored out 00:54:00of our minds and we're going to figure this out, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: Every, every--you get online, and it's "Okay, there's the answer there. There, do all--okay, do that," you know. It's like we go into the record store, you know, people don't go look and say, "I think I'll loo--I think I'll buy this record, see what it sounds like," you know. I mean that, that kind of a--and you know, and I think people had a sense that, that time period of LMNOP was the end of a whole lot of things, you know. And that things really were changing. And, you know, none of us b--none of us knew--none of us were online, you know? And it was, you know--things, things did change after that, a whole lot.

JEFFRIES: You know, a lot of--

MORGAN: Lots of people died. Lexington became very rough turf for AIDS and drug addiction and overdoses and, and, uh, and a lot of the casualties for a lot of beautiful creative people that hung out down there.

JEFFRIES: Which I think, I mean, it seems like that, that would be 00:55:00kind of an extra toll because of this, this kind of familial quality, the sense that I get from you.

MORGAN: Yeah. Yeah. Oh yeah, it was, you know--for, for a while there, it seemed the only pe--time I would see people was if I went to a, you know, a party at Toni Briggs' backyard or something. And everybody seemed a little older and people who were still drinking seemed really slurry and, and you know, and there were, you know--it took the nucleus right out of that, you know. All the people danced around the planet in the center, you know. The-- and, you know, there was just nothing. Evaporated the whole lot of it, you know.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: And it became--people grew up, too.

JEFFRIES: Yeah.

MORGAN: I mean, I was way old for the punk rock scene myself, you 00:56:00know. And--but, you know, I mean, I was one of the older ones down there, you know, so. And, uh--but even the kids who were the younger ones were, were growing up and it was all changing, so. And, and then, you know--I mean, just the wild drag scene that happened down there where, you know, they would have like these, these crazy drag shows that went on for like four hours where like, you know--and rock and roll bands would play in between the different parts of the drag shows and stuff, you know. And, and, you know, nobody just ever mixed it all up like that, you know, so crazy.

JEFFRIES: And it seems like it was just going on and on and on, kind of.

MORGAN: There was one weird night there that--there were a lot of weird nights there--but some of the weird nights were like after having closed or like on weekend--on Sunday when it's completely empty or something. But one night we were all sitting at the bar and we were all yakking and talking, it was early and there were like 10 or 15 people sitting at the bar, everybody is 00:57:00getting really good and drunk and all of a sudden Bradley said, "Wait, what is that noise?" Everybody goes real quiet. He said, "I thought I heard a, a weird noise. Sounded like something--" And we looked up at the ceiling and right then those two pit bull dogs had found a way to get--tear up a floorboard and they had gotten down and were walking on the drop ceiling right above the bar, which collapsed, crashing right on to the bar with two savage pit bull dogs smashing, breaking drinks, hitting people on the head. And then they proceeded to just start biting and attacking everyone at the bar who started running, running, running around in circles with pit bull dogs grabbing hold of them and screaming and fighting, and Bradley hitting the dogs, trying to catch the dogs and drag the dogs out, you know. It was like, finally a--but can you imagine? Like, like I remember about an hour later, we were trying to figure out how to repair the ceiling and cleaned everything up and is everybody okay? Does anybody need to go to emergency room? And it was only six o'clock on a Saturday. It was like, we got a whole night ahead of us yet, you know. Already had this like, 00:58:00just insane, surreal scene happen with the pit bull dogs crashing through the ceiling on people, you know? And, uh, and, uh, and, and--(Jeffries laughs)--there were many, many strange, weird stories about stuff at LMNOP. And it had the best jukebox in town. Had Sophie Tucker on the jukebox.

JEFFRIES: Bradley himself mentioned that in a--

MORGAN: Sophie Tucker?

JEFFRIES: --in a--yeah.

MORGAN: --(laughs)--Well, I mean, who has Sophie Tucker, "The Last of the Red-Hot Mamas" on the jukebox? Come on, you know. And had Sophie Tucker and The Monkees. You know, it's like--it was, it was--

JEFFRIES: You mentioned--just last night I was watching--I'm, I'm, I'm in possession of the short documentary that, um, what's her name? The cartoonist Heather McAdams did.

MORGAN: Oh, yeah.

JEFFRIES: And I have it, and I watched it last night, finally. And he, uh--there's a part where, where Bradley crows about the jukebox. Says it's the best jukebox in town.

MORGAN: Right.

JEFFRIES: Sophie Tucker.

MORGAN: You know, I showed that film. I had a, had a show at Gallerie Soleil called "Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves" and it was, and it was a prelude to the "Pagan Babies" thing. It was just all the visual art and photographs starting back with Sue Mundy coming all the way through. And, and in conjunction with that show, we showed that documentary and several people came and saw it who had never known Bradley or never known LMNOP. And you know what they told me? They said, "He seemed so mean," from seeing that, you know. So I thought, "Huh, I guess I, I gu--" I mean I--I, I, I hadn't thought that, you know. Because I knew him, you know. But, you know, but, uh--

JEFFRIES: Can you see how, how he could be perceived that way? Having, having had someone say that?

MORGAN: In the film? Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, he's pretty like--you know, he's barking orders at the camera and saying things like--you know, I don't know, you know. But, uh, but I did think that was interesting, that people 01:00:00told--several people told me that. They said, "He seemed so mean."

JEFFRIES: But that, that wouldn't have occurred to you, though, right? You're saying it would--

MORGAN: Bradley could be like, you know, a raving lunatic, you know. But for the most part, I didn't think of him as a mean person.

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: You know, but, but see, that was one fun thing about the punk rock era, you know, you could be as rude as you fucking want, and that's the style, you know. Like you're going to be as drunk as you want, and as mean as you want, and as rude as you want, and that's part of the style, you know, of the whole period, so.

JEFFRIES: That's a good point. It was, was kind of a role to play, if you will.

MORGAN: Well, it ga--well, yeah, you could do it for sure, you know. But I mean, bottom line is, everybody always likes nice people better. You know, like they might not be as good on stage or in photo ops, but people prefer nice people--

JEFFRIES: It's more comfortable for everyone.

MORGAN: --to mean people, you know.--(Jeffries laughs)--But, uh, but 01:01:00yeah, LMNOP closed. And then almost, uh, almost immediately after that, I remember like, you know--I mean, I was really strung out and had been drunk for 10 years, you know, seven days a week for 10 years. And I remember one time Bradley and I were sitting in the walk-in--(laughs)--we had a walk-in cooler filled with booze and we were sitting in there. I think we went in there because we wanted to cool off so we just went and sat in the cooler.--(Jeffries laughs)--I remember Bradley saying, "Look at this. We have everything we've ever wanted to drink, and if we run out, we just order more and they bring it right in to us." I remember for--at several times we had gone for weeks without even leaving the building. People would bring us food, people would take our laundry out and do it and bring it back. We would dress up upstairs, come downstairs, you know, have our social lives and drink and pick sex partners and go back upstairs, and then the next day sleep all day until time to come downstairs. And he was like, like, "We've got to start leaving the building, you 01:02:00know, like more than once every couple weeks," you know. I mean, but that was when I said, you know, this is like a dream come true to some people, you know?

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: It was a lot of fun, you know. I mean, who wouldn't want to live in a wild punk rock nightclub that you didn't even have to leave the building, order everything you wanted? You know, it was, it was, it was great. A great time.

JEFFRIES: It sounds like a Fellini movie.--(laughs)--

MORGAN: You know, we were big Fellini fans. And on Sundays, we would sit downstairs at the bar and watch nature specials on TV and drink. And, and people didn't come around on Sundays. It was a quiet day, you know, for the most part.

JEFFRIES: That's--

MORGAN: I remember one time we were sitting on the bar and we had a big Christmas tree in the front window. And it had all kinds of great stuff on it and hot pink lights and blown little crystal stuff and dah-dah-dah-dah, and we was just sitting there, we were drunk as hell, and Bradley fell headfirst into the Christmas tree. Fell off the bar and landed in the Christmas tree, headfirst. Knocked over the Christmas tree, breaking ornaments, 01:03:00smashing bulbs and short circuiting the electric and stuff, you know. And it was like, "Okay, it's time to go to bed. You've, you've ruined Christmas, smashed the Christmas tree." And, and there were some--couple of like Thanksgiving dinners and stuff where like we had had dinner up--oh, that was--Bradley told this story a couple times of waking up upstairs and--everybody ate, and we got drunk and didn't want to eat. We just wanted to drink. So we just kept drinking and the next morning we woke up, we were starving to death. And oh my god, there's got to be something left in here to eat. We were shaking with, you know, with the DTs and hunger. And Bradley went over to the table and there was a cheese ball left on the table. And he said, "Oh God, there's a cheese ball." And--

UNKNOWN PERSON: --[unintelligible]--

MORGAN: [To unknown person] Yeah, just a second.

MORGAN: And, and he said--he looked at it and the pecans started moving, and he realized it was covered with roaches--(Jeffries laughs)--who were all eating that cheese ball.

MORGAN: [To unknown person] Hey! I've been waiting for that letter. 01:04:00You got it out there?

UNKNOWN PERSON: It's, it's--

[Pause in recording.]

MORGAN: So, uh--

JEFFRIES: Oh my god.

MORGAN: Yeah. And then--oh, here's a other fun like sort of end of the whole thing. Bradley was--what was he gonna do when LMNOP closed? He was gonna go somewhere. He was gonna move to Florida. So that's the whole story you heard in the movie from Heather McAdams.

JEFFRIES: Yeah.

MORGAN: But--

JEFFRIES: Florida or California? Florida?

MORGAN: He moved to Florida. And Heather went there and filmed him crawling up out of the beach and all that.

JEFFRIES: Oh, that's in Florida. Okay.

MORGAN: Yeah, that's all Florida. And no, he didn't move to California till--he moved back to Lexington and bought a house and renovated it and lived for a couple of years and--before he moved to California.

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: But he--oh, so the bed that Bradley had been sleeping on, Katie, the pit bull dog, had torn a big hole in it had a birth of puppies in the middle of the bed. And we couldn't afford to get a new mattress so we just flipped 01:05:00it over and stuffed it full of stuff to keep it from flopping down in the middle. It was one nasty fucking mattress. And so it was almost the very last day, getting the last shit out of LMNOP. This is weeks after it had closed. Everybody was sort of down. There wasn't any money. And we lifted up that mattress and there was a shopping bag that Bradley had thrown under there, drunk, full of money that had been mashed flat. And we could figure out when it had been put under there because it had traveler's checks from a friend of ours that had come up, left her husband in Florida and had like two thousand dollars in traveler's checks and she kept writing them to LMNOP to spend all her money there.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: And, and they were in that bag, too. So they were dated, and it had been under there for like six months or something, you know. And, and we--Bradley said, "What's this shopping bag?" We opened it up and it was like hundreds and hundreds of dollars, just like in a shopping bag that was thrown under the mattress. This is the kind of bookkeeping that was kept at LMNOP, you 01:06:00know. It was like--and Bradley was like, "Don't you tell anybody on earth that we found that bag." You know, because it really--it was Wade's money, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: But--I guess. Or like, you know, whatever. But, but anyway--

JEFFRIES: But it was a surprise to everyone, right?

MORGAN: Oh yeah. Nobody--Bradley didn't even remember he'd thrown it under there. But he used to do shit like that all the time. Like, you know, take the money upstairs, not be able to find it the next day because he hid it somewhere. So we'd have to have people search everywhere trying to find the money from yesterday, you know. It was like crazy, you know. But anyway, so how's that for stories?

JEFFRIES: That's good. Just to close or whatever, I would just, um, I don't know, what would you say is li--could you--is there anything that you could sort of pinpoint as kind of, I don't know, the zeitgeist at that time? I mean, what do you think it was that--what was it that--what was it that made that scene sort of, kind of, kind of gel, then? What was it--was there, was there, was there some quality or attribute that you think kind of held it together?

MORGAN: You know, I think it was--I think there was a tradition in 01:07:00Lexington of that sort of partying. But I swear it all really boiled down to force of will. Several people just wanted it to be fun and wanted it to work and just weren't going to let it not do that, you know. You know, I mean, I mean it's--it could have never become that with David Anderson running it. That's not--I mean, the music to some degree took--was taken out of center stage and it became a cultural event, you know, with a soundtrack. But but--and because, you know, people don't want to sit in little rows and watch a band or something. Or like, you know, I mean, people want--at the time, I think just really were looking--I think everybody felt like there was this big dark cloud on the horizon and people really wanted to have one last chance at running 01:08:00wild, you know. And, and, and, you know, and I think--I mean, my only job at LMNOP was to advise Bradley. As a matter of fact, people said that I had brainwashed him. They called me Svengali. I was like, "I haven't brain--" Nobody could brainwash Bradley. Bradley has, you know--but Bradley, would ask--I had been working in a motorcycle lesbian bar in Florida for quite a few years and, and, and I would constantly remind Bradley that, you know, the whole idea is to have fun and ring the cash register. So, you know, keep that in mind, you know. I mean, like, you know, if it, if it's just going to be a liability, like we experimented with having all-ages shows on Saturday where younger kids who weren't twenty one could come in and see some of the bands: disaster. First off, you can't make a nickel. If you charge them three dollars to get in, they say they don't have three dollars, you know. And then they try and sneak 01:09:00booze in and drink underage or come in high on drugs, you know. So what on earth is the advantage to doing any of that, you know? And I recently got removed from the T13 page for talking about things that were deemed un-T13, you know, like--(laughs)--. That was the underage kids that had been coming in on Saturdays, you know. You've heard of the T13?

JEFFRIES: I, I, I have, but now I can't remember what it is. And I think I'm even in the group. It's on Facebook, right?

MORGAN: Yeah, yeah. They, uh--

JEFFRIES: I can't remember what it is, though.

MORGAN: Oh, they were like a club, gang, kind of skateboard--early skateboard parks in Lexington--

JEFFRIES: Okay.

MORGAN: --who were all into hardcore music and nothing could deviate from their world, you know. And, and, and they all hated LMNOP because they said it tried to kill the music in Lexington and they weren't ever allowed to come 01:10:00in there and that, you know, they were discriminated against and stuff. But, you know, bottom line was they were too young to have sex with and too young to drink so, you know, I mean, like, it, it had no money. So what, like, you know, what--(Jeffries laughs)--We weren't social workers, I mean, like, you know, so. So then a whole lot of it became totally mythologized in Lexington, you know. And what's funny is is that, you know, there was such a schism between the Bottom Line and, uh, and there--it was the Wrocklage by then, wasn't it?

JEFFRIES: No.

MORGAN: No, Wrocklage was first.

JEFFRIES: No, absolutely not. No, Bottom Line was first.

MORGAN: Bottom Line was first. Okay. Well, you know, there was just such a schism at the time, you know. But the bar had been set so high for having fun and running wild that like everybody else's scene paled by comparison unless they were just sitting around saying, "That was all just a bunch of pervert weirdos, you know. Like, who would want to go there anyway?" You 01:11:00know, kind of thing. And the, the bar had been set so high for having fun that like, you know, no one could open a place to try and emulate it.

JEFFRIES: Do you think that's why it's so fondly remembered by so many people?

MORGAN: Oh, sure. Yeah. It was fun. I mean, it was fun, you know. I mean--and it had the roughest, cut-throatest pool table in town, you know. I mean, between the rednecks and the dykes and the people who shot there, it was like--you know, there was a transgender stripper that bartended there for a while, named Tiffany, and she would wear hot pants and a cowboy hat. She wore the cowboy hat on her tits. She had big silicone tits, and she just take the cowboy hat and shove them in it, and it would hold up the cowboy--her tits would hold up the cowboy hat sideways, and she would just--that's what she wore, you know. People could not believe it, you know. And, and she was old time--she'd 01:12:00worked at Comer's, you know.

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: And so--and she was, she was wild and lots of fun. You know, Bradley thought nothing of--"Oh, you need a job? You'd make a great bartender. Do, do you like rock and roll music? Well, you can learn to like it." She said, "No, I like country." "Well, okay, don't tell anybody." You know, like, "You're the new bartender," you know? And Lorelei Lee, who is featured in the Heather movie, she was country as hell. She lived in an apartment with like seven cousins and sisters and nephews and nieces and stuff way up on Seventh Street. And, and she would walk down to LMNOP in drag, you know, to work the front door, you know. And she was like, she was like--you know, and she could handle anybody at the front door, honey. They'd give her any shit, she'd just knock them down, kick them down the street, you know. And, uh--and so--lots of people remember her and loved her because she talked so country and was just--and she danced. She did country two-stepping, you know, in a punk bar, you know. And, uh, 01:13:00and--so, so a lot of the queens were real characters, too, you know. And I know that they entertained and a lot of people who didn't ever know anybody like that were just blown away by them, you know. And of course you give them all the liquor they want, and a little bit of food, and tell them you can do whatever you want, and if you have sex, don't use my bed, you know.--(Jeffries laughs)--Like so, so that--so, you know, they worked for nothing, practically. --(Both laugh)--So, uh, anyway.

JEFFRIES: Is that a good place to stop, do you think?

MORGAN: Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a good place to stop, you know.

JEFFRIES: Thank you.

MORGAN: Because it never really exactly ended, you know?

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: And, and, you know--

JEFFRIES: Well--

MORGAN: --and then a lot of the bands went on and splintered and then, and then the music scene really did change. And then really punk and new wave were almost over everywhere in the world. And, you know, and then everything was moving on to something else. So it all happened timely, it's just that nobody 01:14:00wanted it to be that time yet, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh.

MORGAN: So--

JEFFRIES: Do you think that, do you think that there are--I don't know if remnants is the right word. Do you think that there are aspects of, of LMNOP that kind of--that still sort of, I don't know, sort of--

MORGAN: I meet some young people in the music scene that are like the people at LMNOP. Like do you know Mayo Baltimore?

JEFFRIES: Uh uh.

MORGAN: Oh, he's wonderful. He, he was the lead singer for The Loaded Nuns. Little, sort of short, tattooed guy. And, uh, uh, uh, Austin Scandore is born name. But, but he's a whole lot of fun. And I meet some young people in the music scene occasionally that, you know, are fun.

JEFFRIES: Kind of hard to--

MORGAN: But you know, a whole lot of the people in the music scene these days, I see that same kind of thing, that mindset of like, "This is what we 01:15:00do. This is what kind of music we have at our bar."

JEFFRIES: Hmm.

MORGAN: You know. I still see that a little bit, you know. And, and if you go in any of these bars, they're never like real mixed anymore, you know?

JEFFRIES: Mm hmm.

MORGAN: And, uh, it takes--people need to be invited to someplace like that, you know, by people who have put it together. And that's what Bradley did, you know. He said, "Come down to my bar and we'll have fun," you know. And, and, you know, then one person told another. You might sit there for a few months without a big crowd or something, you know. But everybody drank every day in those days, you know. Maybe some people still do, you know.--(Jeffries laughs)--I don't know.

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: But you know, I mean, you can't go up to Al's Bar like every day of the week. It's, you know, okay on weekends there might, you know, be a place full of people in there drinking, you know, but--

JEFFRIES: Well, ironically, if there's anywhere that this might apply it, it might be Lynaugh's.

MORGAN: Oddly, oddly, Lynaugh's has stuck around so long that it is a 01:16:00little more like this, I guess, you know.

JEFFRIES: You go into Lynaugh's and you will maybe see some people in there that have been there for like 30 years.

MORGAN: But I see people that I knew from the old days in there, too, you know.

JEFFRIES: Right.

MORGAN: But, but I don't see a, you know, a transgender stripper behind the bar wearing a cowboy hat on her tits, you know. You don't see that.

JEFFRIES: No, there's no spectacle.

MORGAN: No.

JEFFRIES: It's just people drinking.

MORGAN: Yeah. And if you go down to The Bar, even into the drag show, it's all--everybody is trying to look like a woman, for the song, you know. I mean, nobody tried to do that shit at LMNOP. People were wild and crazy, and stripped naked on stage and stuff, you know. And, you know, anything went, you know. And uh, so, uh, so uh--a lot of performance art, you know.

JEFFRIES: Uh huh. What--can you think of a couple of other bands that--

MORGAN: Played there?

JEFFRIES: Yeah.

MORGAN: Well, you know, Bill Widener's posters, he put out those calendars month after month that li--tell the names of every band--

JEFFRIES: Oh, right, right, okay.

MORGAN: So you can--

JEFFRIES: Yeah, I can check that out.

MORGAN: Yeah, that'll tell you lots of the names of bands, you know. And, uh--

JEFFRIES: Um, that seems good to me.

MORGAN: Yeah, that was fun.

JEFFRIES: I mean, we can sit here and--

MORGAN: It was fun. I hope, I hope, you know--