My Friend Brett Smiley

Brett Smiley in London, circa 1974. Photograph by Gered Mankowitz. ©BOWSTIR Ltd. 2016/Mankowitz.com.

Brett Smiley in Brooklyn, August 2013. 

At Brett Smiley’s wake on the even­ing of January 13, a week after he died in his Carroll Gardens apart­ment (thank God), his people had set up a small TV dis­play, and were play­ing DVD-Rs of some of his per­form­ances in the early aughts, backed by a band that fea­tured his child­hood pal Errol Bulut on lead gui­tar. They were taped at places like Pianos, the Lower East Side back room, and some joint on Chrystie Street where there’s a slid­ing glass door lead­ing to the side­walk behind the stage. As we watched, anoth­er friend, a musi­cian him­self, observed of Brett, “He’s really on point here.” He was/is; singing voice strong, his right hand steady and straight across the strings of his black Ovation Celebrity. He sang some songs from his much-hyped but abort­ive 1974 debut album Breathlessly Brett, which was finally released to what they call “cult acclaim” in 2003, and a bunch of new­er tunes. sol­id if not world-shaking stuff. The excep­tion being the anti-anthemic “I Ain’t So Cool Anymore,” in which a one­time cock-of-the-walk looks back on some ruins. “I went to the doc­tor and he looked at my blood/a Fifty-five Scotch and a forty-five slug/He said you ain’t/so cool/anymore.” Of course the fact that the character/singer/Brett could still stand up and sing the song sug­ges­ted that there was some cool in reserve. And any­way, yeah, he and his band were deliv­er­ing. We asked Errol when the per­form­ances dated from; he said 2005, 2006. 

I first met Brett in 2010. Something had clearly gone wrong, or maybe I should say fur­ther wrong, in the interim. 

Brett and I made our acquaint­ance a short while after I had taken my last drink. The cor­res­pond­ence was not coin­cid­ent­al. We had a shared interest in stay­ing away from drink and drugs, and in short order, a mutu­al friend—a well-intentioned but some­what brash and pushy fel­low in cer­tain respects—suggested it would be a cap­it­al idea were I to “work” with Brett on more act­ively pro­mot­ing that interest. I did not con­sider myself com­pet­ent to do so in any way, shape, or form, but Brett was actu­ally rather eager for me to help him out, so there I was. 

Even though he could be very chatty, I was not the recip­i­ent of the racon­teur mater­i­al Brett could lav­ish on wide-eyed inter­locutors from vari­ous and sun­dry fan­zines as they tracked him down over the years. The story of how at a per­form­ing arts high school in Los Angeles he was in a wood­shop class with Michael Jackson, and how he and Jackson were partnered on mak­ing a chess­board and how they got a D on the project—I only heard about that the oth­er night, at Brett’s wake. I had seen the Breathlessly Brett CD at Other Music when it had came out, and I knew of Nina Antonia’s book The Prettiest Star: Whatever Happened to Brett Smiley, but I nev­er put togeth­er my Brett with Brett Smiley, not until about sev­en months after we’d really star­ted to get to know each oth­er, and someone said, “Oh you’ve nev­er seen Brett’s infam­ous British talk show debut?” I had not. Eventually Brett had men­tioned the book, and I looked at the clip from the Russell Harty Show in 1974 on YouTube. “Well, that was inter­est­ing,” I said, dis­cuss­ing it a little later. He looked at me as if he was expect­ing me to fol­low up with “What the hell did you go and do to your­self,” but I did not, so he said, “You know, I was nev­er really into glam rock.” And I said some­thing like “Pshaw. You were into rock, and you were into dress­ing up. Of course you were into glam rock.” As a Broadway baby, though, he was more enam­ored of tra­di­tion­al “qual­ity” vocal­iz­ing than the con­tor­ted, strained post-Anthony-Newley-isms of David Bowie’s Stardust peri­od. Nor did he have much use for Varispeed Munchkinized back­ing vocals. A bit of a clas­si­cist, as his “Over The Rainbow” on Breathlessly Brett testifies. 

By spring and early sum­mer of 2012 we’d developed a bit of a routine: early morn­ing at the place where we got cof­fee, then off with one or two oth­er coffee-drinkers to Court Street Grocers, where we’d get a prop­er break­fast. When Brett was in an up mood, he could get awfully gar­rulous. “Eat your sand­wich, Brett,” I’d have to say to him peri­od­ic­ally. I once timed him. Ninety minutes for one Breakfast Sandwich. It was unbe­liev­able. I don’t remem­ber what he was talk­ing about. 

There had been one time when we were chat­ting, about stuff he was going to do—there was always stuff he was going to do—and he men­tioned that he’d recently found some demos he’d made in the late ’70s, that Del Shannon had pro­duced. “Ooh, Del Shannon,” I said, as one will. Yes, Brett replied, Del Shannon. This time in Del’s life had not been good, he con­tin­ued, lay­ing out some obser­va­tions on Shannon’s drink­ing, and some struggles involving sexu­al­ity. “Hold on, hold on,” I inter­jec­ted. “Del Shannon was gay? Wow, all of a sud­den so much makes sense…”

Couple months later and we’re doing the Breakfast With Brett Club and some­how the sub­ject comes up again, out of my mouth. And Brett looks at me like I’m nuts. 

“Del Shannon was­n’t gay.” His some­what nas­al speak­ing voice crackled a bit when he was mildly agit­ated. “Who told you Del Shannon was gay?”

I sputtered, as one will. Okay, as I will. “Dude, you did.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh for­get it. Del Shannon was­n’t gay.” He paused reflect­ively and looked at me again. “Everyone exper­i­ments.” 

He had me there. 

If I were going to write a memori­al of Proustian length I would make it about Brett’s Roommate Situation, because I could, but I’ll lim­it myself to one anec­dote, which I file under “Brett Smiley’s Iron Will.” Sometime win­tery time in 2011, I think, Brett had acquired a room­mate, a sort-of musi­cian who looked like an aged pro­to­type for Father John Misty and/or one of the Deliverance rap­ists. I did not really warm to him, and kept my dis­tance. One day Brett told me the fel­low had found a turntable out on the street, brought it back to the apart­ment and worked on it a bit, and now, when they wer­en’t snip­ing at each oth­er over noth­ing, they were enjoy­ing Classic Rock (Beatles, etc.) On Vinyl. Groovy. Eventually Brett decided this guy had got to go, and he asked that I come by the apart­ment on the day of the move and help the guy take his stuff down from the fourth-floor walkup, and make sure noth­ing unto­ward happened dur­ing this fel­low’s depar­ture. “Sure,” I said.

“There’s one thing though.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m keep­ing that turntable.” 

So I spent about ninety minutes reas­on­ing with Brett as to why if this guy wanted to take the turntable out with him, he was entirely entitled, and that this kind of self-centered think­ing went against sev­er­al import­ant prin­ciples and that insist­ing on keep­ing the turntable would hinder Brett’s SPIRITUAL GROWTH. And Brett was very calm and very recept­ive and said, “Everything you are say­ing is abso­lutely one hun­dred per­cent right.”

“But?”

“But I want to keep the turntable.”

How could you not love this guy? Really. 

Anyway. The time came when the beardo was pretty much all packed, and he did­n’t even men­tion the turntable, so that was the end of that. “Don’t gloat,” I said to Brett. “Oh I won’t,” he said. 

For all that steel, he could not get it togeth­er to do what he had done on those stages a rel­at­ively mere half-decade before. I will not go into the sham­bol­ic gigs I and his good room­mates would escort him to and from. Suffice it to say that if you think the bot­tom of the bar­rel in New York rock-and-roll is sit­ting in the Continental at 2 a.m. endur­ing some seventh-billed band while try­ing to shake off the cocaine and Jagermeister sweats, you ought to con­sider your­self lucky. The poor guy. A couple of years ago I acquired a snazzy new Gibson gui­tar of stor­ied mod­el num­ber and I showed it off to him one day. “It’s heavy,” he said as he lif­ted it. He played a verse and a chor­us of “I Ain’t So Cool Anymore.” Without swag­ger. It was pretty heart­break­ing. His body was deal­ing with a huge vari­ety of ailments—various out­lets have named hep­at­it­is and HIV. I don’t want to be indis­creet but hon­estly that was the tip of the ice­berg. He was pretty funny about it some­times. There was this out­pa­tient facil­ity he went to that he called “HIV Romper Room.” Addicts in recov­ery like to say that drink­ing and drugs had made their lives unman­age­able, but the thing about Brett that I often got was that he’d nev­er had any school­ing on man­aging his own life in the first place. And by the time I met him, he was in such crummy shape phys­ic­ally that I don’t think there was a single day that he was­n’t in some kind of pain. I took him to the hos­pit­al at least once for every year I knew him. After which I’d buy him a Vonnegut book (that was his favor­ite author) and encour­age him to stay in the hos­pit­al for as long as he could. He needed full time care, I always thought, but the inter­sec­tion of America’s highly frayed social safety net and the afore­men­tioned Iron Will meant this was not possible.

What stor­ies he told me in these down times wer­en’t of past rock and roll glor­ies, but of lost loves and fuckups. He was grat­i­fied that I knew of Cheryl “Rainbeaux” Smith, with whom he cost­arred in a ’70s soft­core pas­tiche of Cinderella (which I have on DVD but have nev­er had the heart, or lack of it, to watch), and who died of a heroin over­dose in 2002. A tale of a par­tic­u­larly har­row­ing arrest in Broward County—he still had a war­rant out­stand­ing in Florida in recent years, and we were both rather flum­moxed about what he could do about it—was how I learned that he had actu­ally had a bit part in American Gigolo, because he asso­ci­ated his part in the pic­ture with his time in jail. 

That’s Brett at far left, num­ber 1. Richard Gere, far right, is num­ber 5. 

Once or twice in our travels, Brett and I ran into a female friend of mine, someone not in our shared circle. She told me recently that, his hag­gard­ness and slightly dis­trac­ted mien not­with­stand­ing, she could see a “flare” of his still-present cha­risma eman­at­ing from him. Indeed. But even that star­ted to go out once he injured him­self in a way that fur­ther dam­aged his appear­ance, and at that time, a few months before the August 2013 photo was taken, I began to worry even more about what life was going to bring to Brett. At his wake, Brett’s brother-in-law, the writer Richard Pyle,  observed that through­out his life, Brett had exper­i­enced “all the luck in the world.” ALL OF IT, he emphasized—the good and the bad. In the past couple of years the luck had been a lot of bad. It was abso­lutely a mercy that when his ter­ribly, ter­ribly frail body went out on him for the very last time, he was at home, not out on the street, out on the sub­way, out in some bad com­pany. It’s a shame, though, that he was alone. I miss him ter­ribly. He drove his poor sis­ter Brenda com­pletely crazy over so many years, and at his funer­al, she quoted Hamlet—yes, Act Five, Scene Two. “Now cracks a noble heart/good night, sweet prince.” And yes, exactly, I feel exactly the same god­damn way.

  Brett Smiley, again by Gered Mankowitz, ©BOWSTIR Ltd. 2016/Mankowitz.com

UPDATE: With respect to Cheryl Smith’s cause of death, see Paulina Victoria’s com­ment below. My cita­tion derived from a recol­lec­tion of a con­ver­sa­tion with Brett. The Wikipedia entry cites com­plic­a­tions from liv­er dis­ease and hep­at­it­is. I don’t want to be the cause of more con­fu­sion so I’ve struck (as of January 20 2016) the inform­a­tion in this post.

Personal thanks to Gered Mankowitz for allow­ing me to use his beau­ti­ful images, and sup­ply­ing me with the materials.