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You see the cover and think «Phil is really a punk with balls of steel! I wonder how he got that eye ruined? Surely it must be the result of a street fight against a rival gang. Or maybe a bottle hit during a heated performance. But how cool is he with that cigarette on the side and those tousled hair. He's definitely a punk with balls of steel!».
Then, towards the end, Phil brings out this story that he and the rest of the gang put up their posters on their own, crossing the streets of New York well before dawn, dragging buckets brimming with glue.
This is how it happens that, on one of those outings, Phil wipes the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand.
That hand is soaked with glue.
The glue, from the forehead, drips into the eye.
That eye remains glued shut and Phil can no longer open it.
Phil ends up on the operating table.
During recovery, someone takes a picture of him.
That photo ends up on the cover of «Beyond Avenue D».
The story happened like that.
Phil is not a punk with balls of steel.
In fact, Phil couldn't care less about punk.
That's why, when it comes to putting a band together, he does it to play rhythm'n'blues in the style of Dr. Feelgood and Mink DeVille.
They are the ones who inspire Phil, not the Stooges or MC5.
Even before that, Phil is struck by the blues and rock'n'roll records he listens to with his road buddy Bruce.
The road buddies, if you follow them, you never know where they will take you.
From France to Belgium, Phil and Bruce end up in New York.
Bruce is grown up and American, so it's normal that sooner or later he goes back home.
Phil is French and a little over fifteen years old, so moving permanently to New York is less normal.
In any case, they go to a New York Dolls concert where they end up chatting with Johnny who is occupied with tossing large plush dice backstage.
Better to skip how they end up discussing the preparation of an ideal tomato sauce, the fact is Johnny goes to Phil and Bruce to taste the tomato sauce as it should be done and as Bruce cooks it.
From that moment on, the three become best friends.
Just to say, when Johnny first strums «You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory» in the living room, Phil is there.
Even that nickname—“Flipper”, which sounds a bit like Philippe and in slang means you are a brother, more than a friend—Johnny gives to Phil.
Phil and Johnny sometimes even play together.
But when Johnny asks Phil to make those occasional jams official, Phil refuses because Johnny, anyway, always ends up messing everything up.
Anyway, here it is, Phil is not a punk with balls of steel.
But he ends up in that circle, with those who start playing a strange kind of music that in a few days will be called punk rock.
The Max’s and CBGB’s circuit, to be clear, Max’s especially.
Phil, at heart, is a good guy, gets into endless trouble but always with good intentions, and then his eloquence stands out and makes him seem even more cool than he really is, him, his lisp, and his rebellious teddy boy pompadour.
Just ask Legs and Debbie about it.
It's just that Phil is not punk and unfortunately, he doesn't have balls of steel either.
So it's inevitable that he gets caught up in the immense nonsense that is the epic of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll, that as long as it's sex and rock'n'roll it's all wonderful, when drugs get involved, things start to go a bit worse.
If Johnny gets high on heroin, come on, Phil does too, because Johnny is a friend, it's like having a drink with him.
If Bruce gets high on heroin, hey, he's also a friend, you can't abstain.
Only then, at some point, the book ends and it’s time to sum up a decade as a Frenchman in New York.
Some, like Johnny, didn't make it to the end of the book.
Others made it but in bad shape, like a rock band with two junkies, one with a foot in the grave, one deaf, and one committed to a psychiatric hospital.
Phil made it to the end, only because weakness had him cornered, pleading for help.
Philippe Marcadé, known to friends as “Flipper,” played in the Senders.
The Senders became so famous that Max's served a hamburger named after them.
Occasionally the Senders still play, but only Philippe is left of the original four.
Philippe is not a punk and doesn’t have balls of steel, and maybe that’s what saved his life.
And anyway, he really wrote a great book.
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