The Dictators | Richard “Handsome Dick” Manitoba | Interview

The Dictators were one of the most influential proto punk bands from New York City.

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Richard “Handsome Dick” Manitoba is a musician, most well known for being the lead singer (for most of 45 years) with the New York City legendary punk band. The band was formed in 1972 by Andy “Adny” Shernoff and Ross “The Boss” Friedman. Scott “Top Ten” Kempner was asked to join, and the trio rented a house in Kerhonkson, New York, where they lived and rehearsed with various drummers. The original recording line-up consisted of vocalist/bassist/songwriter Andy Shernoff, lead guitarist Ross Friedman (aka Ross Funicello), rhythm guitarist Scott Kempner, and drummer Stu Boy King. It was this line-up–along with roadie/occasional vocalist Handsome Dick Manitoba–which recorded the band’s 1975 debut album, ‘Go Girl Crazy!’ for Epic Records.

The Dictators was forming and Handsome Dick was the best friend of the band, but not singing or playing an instrument left him out of the fun! The boys had to have a job for their best friend, so they made him a roadie. A job he was ill-suited for. Manitoba was a drunk roadie, lost equipment, pulled an awning halfway out of the side of a building, et cetera. While driving his 12″ box truck, the top of the truck caught the awning and yanked it out of its concrete. Manitoba recalls, “The owner asked me if I did it.” “No” I said… “Well I SAW you do it” … “Well then, I did it!”. But Manitoba, unbeknownst to the world at this point in time, did something very well… he was magic with a microphone in his hand.

“People responded to me every time I got up on stage”

How did you first get interested in music? Was there a certain record you heard and knew that “this was it!”?

Richard “Handsome Dick” Manitoba: I have an older sister who listened to a lot of music when I was young and she had shit taste in music so I didn’t like what she liked. For me it’s what my friends and I called the “big bang”. It was The Beatles on the Ed Sullivan Show. I don’t know if I thought of it as “this was it” moment. I don’t know if I was that conscious of it at the moment. I just knew I was completely overwhelmed and blown away and soon thereafter realized, the road to the rest of my life of popular music has just been paved. It wasn’t until years later I got involved in music myself.

How would you describe growing up in the Bronx.

I find it quite interesting and sometimes head scratching and sometimes actually understandable that people have such a variety of opinions about what the Bronx is like. There are many, many neighborhoods in the Bronx ranging from really rich people in private houses to really poor people in the ghetto. Yeah, people I meet all over America and especially from Europe, they hear the Bronx and they think of one thing, it’s a tough scary dangerous place. I grew up in city housing. Most people think that is a tough scary dangerous place and it can be. There is certain city housing that is like that. I happen to grow up in a really nice version of city housing. We looked out for each other, we took care of ourselves. It was a very soulful place to grow up. There were six buildings of 14 stories each with a big patch of grass in the middle. The maintenance men that fixed things were a crew of about six big – I mean really big Italian guys, who were mostly from one family. They were my next-door neighbors so nobody really started anything around there and like I said earlier, we all looked out for each other. Everybody knew everybody else. I’m not saying it was nirvana but it was much warmer and closer and cooler and a hell of a lot more fun than people might think. We used to draw white paint lines in the back of the building on the street between parked cars and make a football field and play football in the street. Across the street from the projects was a playground that I actually wrote a song about on my first solo album, ‘Born in the Bronx’. It’s called ‘Magenta Street’. That was a bad ass playground. Bad ass, I mean heavy drugs and just a lot of crazy guys who liked to fight. I got along with everybody. They knew me since I was a little kid. I had no problem.

Your 2019 album ‘Born in the Bronx’ kind of captures the atmosphere. Can you share some further details on how it was recorded?

Very interesting how it came to be. For example sometimes I would be recording my show, the “Handsome Dick Manitoba” radio program and I would just take a few breaks in between doing voice breaks and I’d write some notes on my notepad on my iPhone. Then I would always write notes wherever. I could be walking down the street and I would just talk some notes into my iPhone
and send them to my friend Jon Tiven in Nashville, who worked on about 60 albums and some of them with all-time greats like Wilson Pickett, Steve Cropper, Arthur Alexander and tons more. He plays seven instruments and has a studio in his house. He knows tons of great musicians in Nashville. I would wake up the next morning after sending him 10 or 12 lines and he basically had all the music for the song. The few lines that were missing, he would tell me, write a line here right in line there and I finish writing the lines. When I got 12 songs together I flew out to Nashville and we made the record. To me it’s a record that covers my whole life. It covers growing up, it covers the Bronx, it covers romance. There are three songs about girls. One surf song. It covers one of the best worst movies ever made, Plan 9 from Outer Space. It covers professional wrestling, it cover drug addiction. In other words it’s not somebody else from The Dictators writing lyrics that they think are important. It’s me writing lyrics from my life, from my experiences and things that make me laugh and be in love and just basically live!

“They put a microphone on my hand”

What were your first endeavors into music like?

I had no first endeavors into music. I was a fan of music. I went to a lot of shows. It was part of New York City culture in the 60s and 70s to go to shows. Every great band and act came into our backyard. It was a great time to be a teenager I never thought of getting into a band. It’s almost like they say I “stepped in shit” as a good luck thing. It’s just that they put a microphone on my hand
and I was a friend of the band. I was a drunk roadie and people responded to me every time I got up on stage. So I was the right man. The right man for the job.

You became a roadie for The Dictators. How did that come about? Where did you first meet them?

Well I was friends with Top Ten since the fourth grade. We met when we were 10 years old. As a teenager I became friends with Andy and Ross and they all started a band called The Dictators. I was basically the best friend of the band. There was no situation for me in the band outside of being best friend. I didn’t play an instrument so they made me a roadie. I didn’t do too good of a job and as I’ve said many times before once they put the microphone in my hand starting out with singing “Wild Thing” in Brooklyn it didn’t take long for me to become the lead singer. People always responded intensely when I was in front of the band. Chris Stein from Blondie was at that first show in Brooklyn in a place called Popeye’s Spinach Factory in Sheepshead Bay, so was Eric Emerson from the band called The Magic Tramps associated with the whole Andy Warhol crew.

“All the great and real teenage drives and desires on an organic do-it-yourself pre-punk punk record”

That was probably intense?

I was drunk! It was the end of the show. I got up on stage and people went more crazy for me than they had when the other guy who so desperately wanted to be lead singer was up there.

“We thought what we sang about”

How did you get signed to Epic to record ‘Go Girl Crazy!’?

Well Murray Krugman was working up at Columbia Records and Sandy Perlman, who managed and wrote songs and produced Blue Öyster Cult came to see The Dictators play and I guess it was really strange because the band never really played. The band didn’t have a following and we got signed to Epic which is a subsidiary of Columbia, so I guess through the power of the late great Sandy Perlman and Murray Krugman, The Dictators were now signed to a major label.

Well, ‘Go Girl Crazy!’ was just a bunch of kids who hung out just like any other kids who hang out. They all think they’re the coolest motherfuckers in the world and we thought what we sang about and how we ran our lives, it was IT! We got a chance to put “IT!” on the record. All the great and real teenage drives and desires on an organic do-it-yourself pre-punk punk record. I love the ideas, I love the spirit, I love what the songs were about. I don’t mean to offend any of our great fans because of all the things I mentioned above. I think we’ve made this record a cool record and an important record in a way. But sonically speaking – pure sound wise execution wise singing? I just think the record sounds terrible.

I think that is one of the most essential rock and roll records of all time. Drinking beer, partying, watching weird movies and listening to ‘Go Girl Crazy!’. Tell us about that cover…

Since I had the most powerful personality and identity in the band and was the focal point of the live show or to become the focal point of the live show… having me on the cover as a character,
a heel which is a bad guy and wrestling parlance… having that guy with that jacket on and that outfit, we made people go “what the hell is this?”. There we did it. We established The Dictators!

Your singing role became much more apparent on ‘Manifest Destiny’ and on ‘Bloodbrothers’, the third and final Dictators studio recording from the 1970s. At the time you moved to Asylum Records. What are some of the strongest memories from recording those two albums?

The Dictators to me were going through a confused period. Mostly because the first album that we put out, we thought was the coolest album ever, but was an abject economic failure and we were down about that. We thought this is great. Everyone’s going to think it’s great and a handful of people dead, but not enough to have us be successful on any decent level when we made the second record.

On ‘Manifest Destiny’ we were trying emphasis on the word trying to be a bigger arena act so the songs were to me almost zero punk and overproduced and not really written for who we were – which was in New York City rock and roll snotty. We know everything .We live for fun punk band. I sang more songs on this record because it was becoming obvious that the songwriter should basically write the songs and I should take care of fronting the band. That was what the audiences always responded most to. We went back toward our original direction with ‘Bloodbrothers’, except it was I would say, the craftsmanship was better… Songwriting, the performing… I think that was a real good record. We got dropped after our first record. We got to make two more albums on major labels and then we got dropped again. Oh well!

Would you mind talking about the reasons for The Dictators ending in late 1981?

We ended in the fall of 1978 for the next bunch of years. We did an occasional reunion shows.

“I remember almost passing out in the studio from screaming my guts out”

Your Manitoba’s Wild Kingdom and the release of 1990 ‘…And You?’ was such a strong release. What do you recall from working on it?

I remember almost passing out in the studio from screaming my guts out and trying to make the songs as loud and powerful and hard and insane as possible. Boy was that fun! It was our version of a speed metal band, which was what was hip back in those days.

I really enjoyed seeing you join the reformed MC5 on vocals, replacing original singer Rob Tyner, who died in 1991. Were the MC5 and the Stooges an early influence?

A huge gigantic monstrous influence. Both bands had a strong effect on my life. I mean not like the Beatles and The Rolling Stones, but in a different way. They had a great influence and it was an unbelievable honor to be asked to travel around Europe and do some shows in the States with one of my favorite rock and roll bands of all time, the MC5. As a matter fact, I just interviewed Wayne Kramer on my podcast “You Don’t Know Dick!”.

We also have to mention your co-authored book, The Official Punk Rock Book of Lists with Amy Wallace.

Rest her soul. That was a fun project. People make fun of me because they say I put out a book and I never read one! This was really just gathering people together and getting their opinions on things. It’s what I call a good bathroom reader. You put it in your bathroom and every time you go take a crap, it doesn’t matter what page, you pick it up and just read somebody giving their opinion about some list again. It was a lot of fun to do. My favorite thing was at the 11th hour and 59th minute before I had to hand everything in to the publisher. Debbie Harry called me back and gave me the list of her 10 people that she would most like to have sex with, and sadly as I looked through the list I didn’t see my name, but I soothed my fragile male ego by telling myself I was probably number 11!

How are you currently coping with the world pandemic?

Oddly enough being in what I called the cocoon of the pandemic, it started out for me terrible as I was not making much money and I was gaining a lot of weight and really starting to become unhappy. One day it turned around completely for me. I started going to the gym and I went and have been going six days a week and I’ve lost 46 pounds and I want to lose more. I want to be as svelte as possible. As I grow older the better shape you’re in, the better you enjoy your life so now I’m on a great road feeling fantastic just trying to get my kid to graduate high school. I’m kind of nervous about him going into the Marines but he’s been talking about going into the Marines since he was 14 years old so I just want to be a good father and be supportive of whatever he wants to do. I just got offered my first gig in quite some time. I put together an all-star band of unbelievable musicians. I just finished my first song. It’s going to be mastered soon. It’s called ‘DeLuise Nation’. I have the great Arno Hecht from the uptown horns on saxophone. Wonderful bunch of people playing on this song and I’m starting to get busy with music again which makes me happy and performing more!!!

You ran a bar for over 20 years in the East Village, Manhattan in New York City. A year later a pandemic broke out, so it would probably be a disaster…

It’s not just a pandemic. After 20 years and being 67 years old I really don’t know how long… and nobody does how long they get to live and instead of going into a bar every day and counting how much vodka I need to order, I’d rather play music, do different types of performances that I’m thinking about, maybe more solo stuff with one or two musicians, storytelling mixed in with music definitely playing with a rock and roll band, writing a book… I’d like to do all these things, rather than count bottles of whiskey and ordering whiskey although I do miss my bar. If I could had somebody to run the bar that I could trust, it would be great. I can come in and host and bring people in and have a clubhouse. I called it my clubhouse. I miss my clubhouse, but I don’t miss the actual bar itself.

“My show is a show from A-to-Z”

“You Don’t Know Dick!” is a really fun podcast you’re running. You had some cool guests so far…

It’s really DIY to some degree. I do it in my living room and if you can’t come into my living room, I talk to you on your cell phone. It’s very primal like The Stooges. It’s very organic. I don’t make a ton of money doing it, but I love doing it because it’s entertainment and it’s talking to people and that invigorates me. It’s not about only one subject, a lot of people are successful talking about relationships and drug addiction – one subject. My show is a show from A-to-Z. I could run into somebody in the street, like I did once, who was born woman and I met him as a 40 years old man, and I said come to my house. Let’s talk and I put him on the show. It’s like that and sometimes they get on YouTube and I just rant and rave and sometimes I do a little cooking show on YouTube called “Chef of the Future”. I do this all for enjoyment and when I say a couple of bucks I mean a couple of bucks. I always ask people to try to donate two dollars or three dollars a month. That’s actually all I ask people to donate. We’ll see what happens.

The craziest moment with The Dictators?

Oh I don’t know. The girl jumping on stage naked after she wanted to be Ms. All Bare America pageant. We were the band playing the pageant two weeks later. She came up on stage at CBGB’ and took her clothes off.

Staying at the legendary Tropicana motel in Los Angeles where the Ramones and every cool rock band stayed… and having a woman in my room… having some fun and she left and then I met this other woman and all of a sudden she’s got this convertible that we’re driving around LA in and now she’s my new woman and it was just a couple of weeks of being in rock and roll Los Angeles at the time and women were just buzzing around.

Your finest moment in music?

One of them was Bruce Springsteen going off stage changing into a Dictators t-shirt and saying I wanna dedicate this one to HDM and the boys and then he did ‘Born To Run’.

Believe it or not, running into Keith Richards coming out of the bathroom up at the radio station that I used to work for for 14 years and talking to him for five minutes. It was like talking to a rock and roll God. For me he’s the coolest rock and roll human being as there ever was, I’m talking about Keith not me!

And all the moments that are too many to count especially in the country of Spain and in Basque country in northern Spain where people work all week and throw down a few bucks and get drunk and come to see this rock and roll band that they adore.

That we affected peoples lives, that people who loved us got something added to their lives – that was very special.

And that’s how it works baby, that’s how it works.

We do what we do that we love with all our hearts. And it affects you and it makes your life better and that give-and-take is what performance and rock and roll should always be about.

Thank you for taking your time. Last word is yours.

Two things; one I’m gonna repeat from up top about rock and roll:

“it affects you and it makes your life better and that give-and-take is what performance and rock and roll should always be about.”

And what I told my personal trainer when he asked me what my goals were. I said: “my goal is singular. I want to look in the mirror and like what I see” The odds are if I like that person I will be a better person for myself and for others.

Thank you for the interview. I appreciate it very much. Be healthy.

Klemen Breznikar

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Richard “Handsome Dick” Manitoba Official Website / Facebook / Instagram / Twitter / YouTube
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