BRENDAN MULLEN
By Jeff Penalty
It’s easy for any punk rock fan to rattle off a list of
musicians who left an indelible mark on the genre, or for any hip hop fan to
explain the valuable contributions made by the oldest of the old school
artists. But neither genre would’ve
progressed to the point we know it today if the artists involved didn’t have
one simple thing: a stage to stand on.
Brendan Mullen provided that stage for a long list of
influential artists at very critical points in time and, in doing so,
unwittingly secured himself a place in music history. He is not one of the shining stars or the
beloved martyrs of punk rock or hip hop that you have read about dozens of
times, rather he is an unassuming little Scotsman who made the careers of those
stars and martyrs possible.
And all he really wanted was a place to bang on his
vibraphone.
Brendan is known in punk circles as “the guy who ran the
Masque Club,” an infamous practice/performance space in Hollywood that was the
lynch pin of the early Los Angeles punk scene.
Nearly every L.A. punk band worth remembering played a show there, and
numerous bands, including The Dickies, X, The Bags, The Skulls, The Go-Go’s,
and Fear, can claim the honor of having played their very FIRST show there.
Brendan found the Masque while looking for a place to
practice on his varied collection of percussion instruments, which included
bells, gongs, shakers, a vibraphone, two trap drum sets, and a set of
tympanis. “After being thrown in jail
following noise complaints from a neighbor who lived above me,” Brendan claims,
“I was out looking for a storefront, a warehouse, a garage or
something…anything where me and my friends could be left alone to blast music
really loud and have insane freeform jams.” His search resulted in the leasing
of a basement of an office building on Hollywood Boulevard. He rented out the space he wasn’t using “at
such rock bottom monthly prices even punk bands could afford them. Within a month or so the basement morphed
into a performance space.”
Like punk rock itself, the Masque’s expiration date came
around quickly. But before the doors
closed for good, the club became a focal point for the local scene and a series
of shows would occur there that would provide fodder for the punk rock myth
machine for decades to come. Without
Mullen and the Masque, it’s difficult to know whether or not the legend of
L.A.’s punk scene would’ve ever grown past the city limits.
For two years after the closing of the Masque, Brendan tried
his hand as an independent punk show promoter, which left him flat broke and
homeless. He managed to beg, borrow, and
literally steal his way into a DJing gig at L.A.’s Club Lingerie, during which
time he discovered the effect early hip hop records had on the crowd. The amorphous nature of hip hop’s history may
allow dozens of people to lay claim to booking the first hip hop show in L.A.
county, but Brendan claims to have put on “the first full-spectrum hip hop
event NY style—including MCs, DJs, graffiti writers, and b-boy
breakers—probably in Southern California.
All of ‘em flown out specifically from the South Bronx.” The lineup included Grandmixer DST, Afrika
Islam, Mr. Freeze, and Crazy Legs, among others. “The place was mobbed by curiosity
seekers. I remember trying to explain
that it was sorta like a black version of punk rock, their own D.I.Y. thing […]
Nobody was dancing; instead, many at first stood with their arms folded
watching Islam and DST DJing, looking at
their watches for the first hour or so, saying ‘so when’s something gonna
happen?’ I had to go around literally
explaining to all who’d listen that in N.Y. hip hop is a dance thing […] but
when they started scratching many people just lost their shit.” Also in the audience that night: a skinny
17-year-old named Andre Williams. “To
this day I’ll never know how he slipped by our door security,” Brendan says of
the underage kid who would later become known to the world as Dr. Dre.
From ’81 to ’92, Brendan served as the in-house booker at
Club Lingerie and concurrently devoted time from ’86 to ’88 booking the Variety
Arts Center, a 5-story complex in downtown L.A. with “shit happening on every
floor on weekends, including film fests, live theater, hip hop/R&B, dance
clubs, live rock n’ roll, etc. […] One night the Beasties and Run-DMC jammed
together during one of the weekend dance promotions on the ballroom floor—100%
spontaneous. We didn’t know they were
going to do it ahead of time, otherwise I’d have pulled together better
production […] Afrika Islam DJing, hence only one DJ mic from his mixer
available, they were just passing it around one at a time.”
Between the two venues, it is certain that Brendan saw more
than his share of magic musical moments, and he booked enough bands to compile
the Ultimate ‘80s College Radio Mix Tape.
Black Flag, Husker Du, Buthole Surfers, Lydia Lunch, Schooly-D, Sonic
Youth, Red Kross, Hole, Rudy Ray Moore, Jane’s Addiction, Ice-T, Blowfly, Guns
n’ Roses and a zillion more. The list
even includes the L.A. premieres of The Replacements, R.E.M., Soundgarden, and
The Flaming Lips. Brendan also had the
pleasure of booking an opening band for a Bad Brains show that had only played
two previous gigs and had just changed their name…to Red Hot Chili Peppers.
With his place in L.A. music history firmly established, it
fits, then, that Brendan has also put forth great efforts to document that
history. Brendan has co-written several
books: “We Got The Neutron Bomb”, a historical overview of early L.A. punk,
“Lexicon Devil”, about L.A. punk icons The Germs, and “Whore”, a biography of
Jane’s Addiction. As of this writing,
Brendan has also begun work on a book about the history of the Masque club,
which will include photos and testimonials from those who were there.
You may not know his name, or his face, or the sound of his
voice, but Brendan Mullen’s status as an icon was cemented long ago by one
simple thing: his ability to be “in the wrong place at the right time…or is it
the other way around?”
