I Remember Anton Fier

I remem­ber my cam­pus friend Bob in 1978 or so express­ing fake annoy­ance when telling me of drum­mer Anton Fier’s immin­ent move from Cleveland to New York, where he would join the Haledon, N.J. band The Feelies. “I guess he heard some­where that I had a pool at my house,” Bob said. By which, I believe, Bob meant his par­ents’ house. “And he said ‘Well I’m going to be spend­ing a lot of time at Bob’s place then.’ ” I don’t think that actu­ally occurred. 

I remem­ber see­ing Anton Fier and John Zorn sit­ting around Soho Music Gallery, where Anton had a day gig, talk­ing about Charlie Parker and ignor­ing cus­tom­ers such as myself. 

I remem­ber Anton and Bill Laswell look­ing at a big photo book about Sergio Leone at a table at Maxwell’s once.

I remem­ber sev­er­al Feelies shows where they began imple­ment­ing the policy of fin­ish­ing  their set with the extremely frantic “Raised Eyebrows,” which ended with high-speed drum fills and cym­bal clashes embel­lish­ing the incred­ibly hur­ried beat, and then IMMEDIATELY launch­ing into “Crazy Rhythms,” and see­ing Anton, red-faced, between the clos­ing of “Eyebrows” and gui­tar­ist Glenn Mercer’s down­beat sig­nal for “Crazy” look­ing at Glenn with plead­ing eyes, as if to say “please don’t make me do this.” 

I remem­ber Anton being rather put out on dis­cov­er­ing that, on the first press­ing jack­ets of the album Crazy Rhythms, he was cred­ited as “Tony Fisher.” (Stan Demeski remem­bers it was “Andy Fisher” and I reck­on he is correct.)

I remem­ber drink­ing with Anton at Maxwell’s and mak­ing some kind of stu­pid joke about why was Greg Tate giv­ing him­self a byline after a Marvel Comics char­ac­ter. “ ‘Iron Man’ is the name of an Eric Dolphy num­ber, you idi­ot,” he said in an indul­gent tone, and I went “Oh yeah, sure, knew that all along.” 

I remem­ber going to Anton’s apart­ment to inter­view him for Musician magazine, my first and only fea­ture for the magazine. I could­n’t believe he had to slog his kit to a fifth-floor walkup after every gig. During the inter­view, which would be about, among oth­er things, the first Golden Palominos album, I remem­ber Anton say­ing of his label head, “Jean Karakos is a dog. He’s a dog rat bas­tard, the low­est of the low. And I give you per­mis­sion to put that in your interview.”

When the inter­view came out, he was pretty pleased with it. “I did­n’t put in that stuff about Karakos,” I poin­ted out. “That was  a good call,” he said. 

I remem­ber Anton com­ing off the Rockit tour with Herbie Hancock and express­ing befuddle­ment. “I don’t under­stand how you can be such a genu­inely devoted Buddhist and do all that cocaine.” I told Anton that Buddhism was one of those reli­gions that kind of let you do, and wish for, whatever you liked, which is prob­ably why it was so attract­ive to so many.

I remem­ber when the second Palominos album, Visions of Excess, came out, and the dual ded­ic­a­tion to John Bonham and Jim Gordon raised eye­brows, as did the back cov­er shot of an already soused Anton mid-cocktail-sip, prob­ably snapped at Maxwell’s. “I don’t care,” he said to me apro­pos all that. “I’m not going to live to be thirty-five.” He lived to be sixty-six, but he’s still sur­vived by…Jim Gordon. 

I remem­ber sit­ting in a stu­dio in the dead of night some­where in Manhattan for about five or six hours while Anton and anoth­er musi­cian and a record­ing engin­eer tinkered with the open­ing snare hit on “Something Becomes Nothing,” the open­ing track of the third Golden Palominos album. Just. The. Opening. Snare. Hit. I thought I would lose my mind. Everyone else seemed fine. If cocaine was present at this occa­sion, I was not offered any.

I remem­ber inter­view­ing Anton at his new apart­ment, on Eldridge Street, for a Spin fea­ture on the Palominos and their afore­men­tioned album, on which not a single snare hit would be any­thing less than per­fect. (I heard later that Anton aban­doned the mix and sent the tapes to Japan for a $250,000 remix.) Peter Blegvad was in attend­ance, and Anton brought a couple of bottles of “Chinese wine” as a social lub­ric­ant, and it worked rather well. Anton upbraided Peter for mar­ry­ing up, so to speak. He called me “col­lege boy.” (“It’s a STATE SCHOOL,” I pro­tested.) It was the first and last inter­view I con­duc­ted in which all the parties were lit­er­ally hori­zont­al by the time the tape ran out. I nev­er found out what the fuck that “Chinese wine” was.

I remem­ber Anton ask­ing me to write the press release for A Dead Horse, the fourth Palominos album. That was­n’t really my thing but you try say­ing no to Anton. I did my bit, and I was to present him with hard copy at the Bottom Line, after his debut as the drum­mer in the Bob Mould trio, with Tony Maimone. It was a pretty great show, I thought. Anton did­n’t. “BAND MEETING” he bel­lowed com­ing off stage, lead­ing Mould and Maimone to the dress­ing room. I don’t remem­ber what happened after that. 

I remem­ber walk­ing into Rebel Rebel Records some time in the spring of 1997, when I had just star­ted on the staff at Première magazine. Anton was hanging around the back. I excitedly told him about my new gig, and when I was done, said, “What are you up to?” He exten­ded his hands, palms up. He was as assist­ant man­ager there. 

The last time I saw him was in Hoboken, a long time ago, where he came out to see a Yung Wu gig in a park. He had a crew cut and wore a dark gray over­coat. “Oh I see you’re going full Fenster,” Dave Weckerman said to him.

I remem­ber he was always the most excit­ing drum­mer to see and hear. I remem­ber that he turned me on to Han Bennink. From mutu­al friend (and key Palomino) Syd Straw’s Facebook page I learn that he is now dead, age 66.