"Woody Allen jokes about growing up across from the Roller Coaster at Coney Island," says Blackheart Lee Crystal, "but I actually did grow up across the street from the Cyclone." As a youth, Lee spent the summers on the Boardwalk, getting ride operators to let him on for free, and the rest of his spare time playing in bands and going to up to four concerts a week by sneaking in.



Since Lee Crystal was saving what little spare cash he had to buy used drums and broken drum kit hardware (which he repaired and used) at Sam Ash Music in Brooklyn, he had to be ingenious to get into concerts he could afford. "At the Academy of Music (now the Palladium)," Lee explains, "they used to have two shows. I'd wait until the first show got out, and as the people came pouring out the exit, I'd just walk in backwards. Once inside, you had to become an actor and pretend you were cleaning up, looking for a friend, or still leaving." He even devised a way to get past the ultra-tight security at Madison Square Garden by taping together old Ticketron stubs and displaying them to get past the flanks guards, then discreetly bribing the ticket taker with a $5 bill.



Through some luck and ingenuity, Lee Crystal got his first real drum kit at 17. "A car hit me when I was on my bike, and although I wasn't badly hurt I got a settlement of $350.00." But even added to the $150.00 Lee had saved, it wasn't enough for the kit he wanted, until Lee saw Carmine Appice play a Ludwig Drum Clinic in Brooklyn sponsored by Sam Ash Music. The next day Lee went into Same Ash, made them an offer for the set they'd loaned Appice, and walked out with a "slightly used-for-one-day-by Carmine Appice set of Ludwig drums--the same drums," he explains, "I played on the song 'I Love Rock 'N Roll'."



In 1977, three years out of high school, Crystal formed The Boyfriends, which developed cult status for its pure, New York sound.



After a year studying jazz history at C.C.N.Y. ("pretty boring" he recalls), Lee started playing C.B.G.B and Max's Kansas City with The Boyfriends, who recorded a single on Bomp Records, "I Don't Want Nobody, I Want You" and opened the shows for local stars like The Ramones and The Dead Boys.



The Boyfriends also acquired a national following by "piling into a '69 Plymouth with an old trailer and setting out across the country, all of us, and one roadie who we promised a meal a day--usually cinnamon toast."



But they won some hard-fought popularity, becoming headliners in Toronto during numerous visits, co-billing shows with The Romantics in Detroit (where The Boyfriends song is "still on the jukebox," reports Lee), and playing Chicago, Minneapolis and other Midwest cities, as well as the West Coast.



In Los Angeles, The Boyfriends headlined a Bomp Records week at the Whisky A-Go-Go. Living on toast and eggs with no money in their pockets, Lee and the band were in a local Safeway shoplifting one day. "I was standing there with a bottle of One-A-day vitamins in my gut and I ran into Joan Jett buying hamburger buns, and wearing a leather jacket even though it was 90 degrees out." One night Lee's motel room at the Tropicana was invaded for a post-gig party, where the guests were the band X and "this little punk rocker--Gary Ryan."



On Lee's return to New York, he also started playing with such friends and influences as ex-New York Doll Johnny Thunders and The Heartbreakers (who asked Lee to play their return gig at Max's when they came back from touring Europe with the Sex Pistols), David Johansen and Sylvain Sylvain.



Sylvain asked Lee to join his band to record Sylvain's debut RCA album, on which Lee co-wrote the single "Every Boy, Every Girl" and on a subsequent tour. But Lee was still unsure about his next step until he came across a copy of the English music paper Sounds while rehearsing at the Doll's old loft in lower Manhattan. "I saw this picture of Joan and Gary with caption: Joan Jett and the Blackhearts. I said to myself, what a great idea. That's the kind of group I want to play with. Even then, I knew Joan was a great front person in the true rock and roll tradition."



Two weeks later, Lee coincidentally got a call from Jett's manager, Kenny Laguna, asking him to audition for The Blackhearts.



"I knew right then that playing with Joan was what I really wanted."



Not bad for a drummer who got his first kit courtesy of a Ludwig Drum Clinic.