There is melody in writer-director William Monahan's prose, so much so that you could easily sing-a-long while reading most of his works. It's not the same with textbooks, the reading of which is almost a daily grind for me. With a textbook, you're only processing the information laid out to you, but with Mr. Monahan's prose you could easily sing-a-long if you were so inclined. As Sam Allis of The Boston Globe said of The Departed: "At its best, [Mr. Monahan's] phrasing and structure rival the music of the late, great novelist George V. Higgins." That may be in part due to Mr. Monahan having been a performing musician in the early 90s. He used to play guitar for a band called the Slags and then later for another band called Foam.
Although the chronology isn't too clear, at a minimum Mr. Monahan played guitar for the Slags during the period 1990-1991, and perhaps even going as far back as the late 80s. By 1993 he was playing for another band called Foam, touring in San Francisco at one point, though his career as a musician came to an end around 1994.1
One of his bandmates in the Slags was New York artist Antony Zito, an old friend of Mr. Monahan's from Massachusetts. Of his days in the Slags, Mr. Zito has said, in an email, "We played in Sheehan's cafe and a few other spots in and around Northampton Mass around 1990 or so." According to a contributors note in an issue of Perkins Press, Mr. Monahan was still a guitarist in the Slags toward the end of 1991.2
Then, shortly afterward, Mr. Monahan started playing in another band called Foam. David Cronin, whose online handle is BostonBeaneater, recalls getting to know Mr. Monahan when visiting a friend in San Francisco in February 1993 who was the bass guitarist in Foam. Mr. Cronin said to me in an email, "I saw Foam perform live at an empty club in San Fran sometime around February 1993. They were a decent band with some clever songs. I'm not sure if Bill wrote all the songs but I know he had his hands in the pot. I was out there visiting a high school friend who had moved out there and shared a house with Bill and played bass in the band."
Though rare, occasionally Mr. Monahan has written about his years as a musician. In an essay titled "Cymru: A Week in Llareggub," he writes "When I was a musician I felt like a vaudeville fraud dying of cancer whenever I said what I did. We just got a new booking agent. I was on the radio once. We're opening for another band you've never heard of at Uncle Nasty's House of Pie."3 The italics are his own. I figure it was probably Foam that played on the radio and had a booking agent, since they also put out a demo tape according to Mr. Cronin who had a copy, and maybe still does, but hasn't yet searched through his archives to see if it's still there. A sampling of Mr. Monahan's work as a song-writer would be extremely interesting. Right now, we can only imagine how scabrous the lyrics might have been, but perhaps something will leak out onto the Internet in the years ahead as Mr. Monahan's star in the film industry continues to rise.
Mr. Cronin also got to know Mr. Monahan a bit when he was a graduate student in Western Massachusetts. That is another area where little is known about Mr. Monahan: his education. Though, don't worry, I'm hard at work on a future blog entry that pulls together tidbits about his education that I've gleaned from here and there.
A lot of great, original bands came out of Northampton, Massachusetts, according to Mr. Monahan in his essay "A Night on the Tiles: The Big Bad Bollocks & the Mirror of England."4 One of the most amusing bands to come out of Northampton was The Unband. A few of Mr. Monahan's friends were in the band, such as bassist Mike Ruffino. These crazy bastards were actually banned from one of Mr. Monahan's favorite dives in Northampton, the former Bay State Hotel, where, also, one of the bands that Mr. Monahan played in performed once, twice, or more (yeah, I know: vague). At any rate, the members of The Unband were banned from the Bay State Hotel in the 90s for a "nudity-and-pepper-spray incident" that they had been involved in.4 Mr. Monahan's friendship with Mr. Ruffino goes way back, farther than I know. When Mr. Monahan was briefly editor at Hamptons magazine in 1996, he hired on Mr. Ruffino as his assistant.5 When Kurt Vonnegut moved to Northampton in 2001, The New York Post briefly joked (probably in Page Six) that Mr. Monahan and Mr. Ruffino were going to personally welcome Mr. Vonnegut to their neighborhood, or something to that effect. There are also a couple of humorous mentions of Mr. Monahan in Mr. Ruffino's memoir, Gentlemanly Repose.6
All this background will probably inform, in some way or another, the rewrite that Mr. Monahan has been hired to do of the script for The Long Play, a film project about the music business that originated at Mick Jagger's production company Jagged Films and that Martin Scorsese is intending on directing. Obviously, however, Mr. Monahan's musical background is evident in any of his scripts.
Take-away question: During which years did Mr. Monahan play for the bands the Slags and Foam?Although the chronology isn't too clear, at a minimum Mr. Monahan played guitar for the Slags during the period 1990-1991, and perhaps even going as far back as the late 80s. By 1993 he was playing for another band called Foam, touring in San Francisco at one point, though his career as a musician came to an end around 1994.1
One of his bandmates in the Slags was New York artist Antony Zito, an old friend of Mr. Monahan's from Massachusetts. Of his days in the Slags, Mr. Zito has said, in an email, "We played in Sheehan's cafe and a few other spots in and around Northampton Mass around 1990 or so." According to a contributors note in an issue of Perkins Press, Mr. Monahan was still a guitarist in the Slags toward the end of 1991.2
Then, shortly afterward, Mr. Monahan started playing in another band called Foam. David Cronin, whose online handle is BostonBeaneater, recalls getting to know Mr. Monahan when visiting a friend in San Francisco in February 1993 who was the bass guitarist in Foam. Mr. Cronin said to me in an email, "I saw Foam perform live at an empty club in San Fran sometime around February 1993. They were a decent band with some clever songs. I'm not sure if Bill wrote all the songs but I know he had his hands in the pot. I was out there visiting a high school friend who had moved out there and shared a house with Bill and played bass in the band."
Though rare, occasionally Mr. Monahan has written about his years as a musician. In an essay titled "Cymru: A Week in Llareggub," he writes "When I was a musician I felt like a vaudeville fraud dying of cancer whenever I said what I did. We just got a new booking agent. I was on the radio once. We're opening for another band you've never heard of at Uncle Nasty's House of Pie."3 The italics are his own. I figure it was probably Foam that played on the radio and had a booking agent, since they also put out a demo tape according to Mr. Cronin who had a copy, and maybe still does, but hasn't yet searched through his archives to see if it's still there. A sampling of Mr. Monahan's work as a song-writer would be extremely interesting. Right now, we can only imagine how scabrous the lyrics might have been, but perhaps something will leak out onto the Internet in the years ahead as Mr. Monahan's star in the film industry continues to rise.
Mr. Cronin also got to know Mr. Monahan a bit when he was a graduate student in Western Massachusetts. That is another area where little is known about Mr. Monahan: his education. Though, don't worry, I'm hard at work on a future blog entry that pulls together tidbits about his education that I've gleaned from here and there.
A lot of great, original bands came out of Northampton, Massachusetts, according to Mr. Monahan in his essay "A Night on the Tiles: The Big Bad Bollocks & the Mirror of England."4 One of the most amusing bands to come out of Northampton was The Unband. A few of Mr. Monahan's friends were in the band, such as bassist Mike Ruffino. These crazy bastards were actually banned from one of Mr. Monahan's favorite dives in Northampton, the former Bay State Hotel, where, also, one of the bands that Mr. Monahan played in performed once, twice, or more (yeah, I know: vague). At any rate, the members of The Unband were banned from the Bay State Hotel in the 90s for a "nudity-and-pepper-spray incident" that they had been involved in.4 Mr. Monahan's friendship with Mr. Ruffino goes way back, farther than I know. When Mr. Monahan was briefly editor at Hamptons magazine in 1996, he hired on Mr. Ruffino as his assistant.5 When Kurt Vonnegut moved to Northampton in 2001, The New York Post briefly joked (probably in Page Six) that Mr. Monahan and Mr. Ruffino were going to personally welcome Mr. Vonnegut to their neighborhood, or something to that effect. There are also a couple of humorous mentions of Mr. Monahan in Mr. Ruffino's memoir, Gentlemanly Repose.6
All this background will probably inform, in some way or another, the rewrite that Mr. Monahan has been hired to do of the script for The Long Play, a film project about the music business that originated at Mick Jagger's production company Jagged Films and that Martin Scorsese is intending on directing. Obviously, however, Mr. Monahan's musical background is evident in any of his scripts.
1) William Monahan. "Vanity Plates: Something's Got to Give", New York Press, vol. 11, no. 8 (February 25–March 3, 1998), p. 62. QUOTE: "Four years ago I was in a band and weighed 160 in any weather."
2) "Contributors Notes", Perkins Press, vol. 2, no. 4, Late-Summer 1991. QUOTE: "William Monohan [sic] 'writes fiction and plays guitar for the Slags.' A long (but it's worth it) short story eats up pages 12 and 13."
3) William Monahan. "Cymru: A Week in Llareggub", New York Press, vol. 12, no. 27 (July 7–13, 1999), pp. 1, 18.
4) William Monahan. "A Night on the Tiles: The Big Bad Bollocks & the Mirror of England", New York Press, vol. 13, no. 27 (July 5–11, 2000), pp. 1, 27–29.
5) William Monahan. "The Burning Deck: My Brilliant Career at 'Hamptons'", New York Press, vol. 9, no. 29 (July 17–23, 1996), pp. 1, 28–29.
6) Michael Ruffino (2004-11-01). Gentlemanly Repose: Confessions Of A Debauched Rock 'n' Roller. Citadel Press. ISBN 978-0806526263. NOTE: Monahan is mentioned thrice in Ruffino's memoir: in the Acknowledgments as the person without whom the "book would not have been possible", on page 37 at a computer monitor smashing party, and on page 157 at a concert where The Unband opened for Def Leppard at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield, Massachusetts. Monahan may be present on page 193 as one of the "guest-listed friends" for The Unband's final show at the Bowery Ballroom on July 29, 2001.
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