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Chet's Last Call
Current mood:  nostalgic
This description is from Joe Harvard's exhaustive site, Boston Rock Storybook. You can tell he's writing about Chet's at a slightly earlier time than Sorry's hey day, but the details remain the same. The sad, creepy irony that the bar was a drug front still will not be lost on anyone who knows the entire Sorry story. When we were 16-17, we had NO IDEA. Chet used to make me a Jon carry cases of beer up the stairs...he was jolly, roly-poly and avuncular. He even came to see me and Jon in a high school play. Sorry did have gigs with Chet's regulars Harlequin, however. You can see the complete article as it appears on Joe Harvard's site here.
I'm at the Penalty Box! Except now it's called Chet's Last Call. The downstairs bar is still populated almost exclusively by plain clothes cops and local wise guys, who may or may not be taking turns being off-duty for the sake of peaceful coexistence. The same dumpy wall coverings and the same miniature dance floor with a fence railing around it...as though the room were also used to herd farm animals who had to be prevented from straying off and ruining the parkay. Even that same, long-suffering disco ball which had thrown back a hundred tiny reflections of my three-piece-suited shame so long ago was there, slowly revolving above a chair that'd been knocked over, like the body of a recent suicide-by-hanging! But in spite of the virtually unchanged, decorative time capsule, I soon realize things have changed a lot. A heck of a lot.
Chet's was the only club I ever frequented that you could pay your cover charge and then buy a couple of bags of heroin at the door. The owners of course had no idea that this was going on, and the proprietor may or may not have appreciated the situation. But it was a funny coincidence that each of a number of doormen that worked there all sold scag. And a strange irony that at any given moment there were a half dozen detectives one flight down. If ever there was a club that deserved the name "dive" it was Chet's Last Call. It's namesake is now gone, dead to the world, but images of a short, round, very softspoken fellow with ever-moist palms- whose eyes were usually closed even when having a direct conversation - persist. Moving slowly through the darkened room, with surprisingly long, feminine lashes obscuring the slits where his eyes should be, Chet always surprised you when he somehow recognized you and came over to say hello, as though he were executing some particularly crafty parlor trick, whereby an observer would be communicating via earphone from another location "Joe Harvard, two o'clock, about six steps away from you...good...okay, slow down...now, stick out your hand, you're right on top of him!" And as nefarious as the man's job description was, I found him extremely likeable...even kinda cuddly, if you just disregarded the sweaty-palms and forehead that come with maintaining a near-death level of opiates in the body. Of course, given my own sporting predilections at that place and time, there may well be someone, somewhere in the world, saying exactly the same thing about me at this very moment.
It was nice on occasion to get out and see a few other dope fiends, what with the junkie lifestyle tending towards isolation and all. There were a number of fiends at the time who were really great players- just as many, I suppose, as there were talented teetotallers, speaking in terms of percentages. You just wouldn't see as many of the latter group at Chet's is all. Not that you really talked about dope or anything, unless someone was on a mission and needed a name or number; just the sense of shared adversity, a touch of irony or black humor at the right time, could provide a bond. I ran into the late Jimmy Miller at Chet's a number of times, and despite his habit and his legendary background as a producer (Rolling Stones, etc.) he was always a true gentleman, a really sweet guy. One night I shared a few drinks and war stories with Jimmy and the late Matthew McKenzie, as we converged on the "means of production" before getting our respective nights off to a start. On a night like that, in the company of the creative genius and good humor each of those cats possessed, you could almost forget that being a junkie was ruining your entire life and causing you pain during most waking hours. Almost.
Chet's was more than just a known copping spot, though...it became a haven for bands who couldn't get their first gig at the overbooked Rat, had been turned down by the Jumpin Jack Flash- type places and the other better established clubs. During a period when the number of available clubs dropped and the number of bands seeking shows grew Chet's filled an important gap for young bands. Just about anybody could get a show there, especially in first year or so of it's existence. Chet himself was a pretty good harmonica player, and he combined a fondness for all sorts of music with a truly egalitarian attitude towards booking bands. There were even bands that played noplace BUT Chet's Last Call, much the way the fantastically weird band Harlequin would, for many years, only play the Rat. It was probably just as well that Chet's closed before everyone associated with the joint was arrested, including the innocent parties like bartenders and such. I mean, I assume there was someone there who was innocent...there were definitely plenty of parties.
For its "live fast and leave a wrenchingly ugly corpse" attitude Chet's will always hold a very dear place in my heart. It stood as a metaphor for the fate of many of us who thought that rock and roll and drugs- especially dope -went together naturally like peanut butter and jelly. Like Chet's many of the musicians of great promise who delved too deeply into the dark side of rock now lie in repose- empty, unused and gone. Who knows, maybe late at night they all get together, and prodding the ghost of Chet into breaking out his harp to jam, they fill the darkened room with spectral tones that sound to the living like the wind whistling through cracks, as the disco ball watches them, slowly revolving, and reflects nothing...to noone.
-Joe Harvard from his website Boston Rock Storybook
3:30 PM
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