October 16–23, 1997

music|the music issue

Where Are They Now?

the music issue

Stewkey Antoni: (l.) The Nazz days and (r.) now.

Where Are They Now?

Stewkey Antoni

by Geeta Dalal

Stewkey Antoni answers the door barefoot, wearing overalls with the legs rolled up. Settling into a couch in a robin's egg blue, country-styled living room, he lights a cigarette. The Northeast home, scented ever so slightly of cinnamon, is hardly the setting you'd imagine for a psychedelic rock legend.

But as you scan the room, rock memorabilia becomes apparent. Carefully framed pictures, album covers and magazine articles hang on the walls, including a caricature from a 1969 16 magazine of Antoni's former band, the Nazz, as a four-headed animal.

"Kind of fitting, isn't it?" he remarks. "We're dinosaurs."

Antoni is the former lead vocalist and keyboard player for the influential Philadelphia-based '60s band The Nazz. Worshipping at the Beatles/Who altar along with many other garage/power-pop bands of the era, The Nazz paired the writing team of Antoni and '70s songwriting superstar Todd Rundgren in a project that screamed of love gone to hell and '60s idealism.

Rock reared its sequined head when Antoni, a 13-year-old in Newport, RI, played in his first band, The Mods. A psychedelic foursome who were only together for a few years, The Mods often played shows with their idols such as Vanilla Fudge.

After tiring of the Newport scene, the 17-year-old Antoni made his way to Florida, with a plan to join a band, meet girls and hang out on the beach. But fate made its move when Antoni stopped in Philly to visit a friend, and his car blew up. He's been here ever since.

The Nazz met in the hipster hangout/pick-up spot of the late '60s: (ironically enough) Rittenhouse Square. The two blocks between 19th and 21st were "the only place where everything happened," says Antoni. "It was the two-block Mecca for longhairs." Antoni met Rundgren, who was then in a band called Woody's Truck Stop. The Nazz quickly formed, and the band crammed into a one-room apartment at 13th and Pine. (The forthcoming album of previously unreleased Nazz material, by local label Distortions, will be named 13th and Pine after this location.)

Approaching 50, Antoni is currently writing material for a band, tentatively titled Stewkey. He hopes to draft a star-studded cast for his band, though no one's been contacted yet. The last time Antoni performed, it was with old friends/ex-bandmates Cheap Trick at their live WYSP session at Indre studios. They did the love ballad "Mandocello"—a song Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen and Tom Petersson played with Antoni when they were in the band Fuse (in the early '70s).

Fuse originally came together in 1971 after Nielsen found out Rundgren had left The Nazz. Nielsen tracked down Antoni in Texas (where he was living with the drummer of ZZ Top).

Fuse moved to Philadelphia and changed their name to Sick Man of Europe, but management problems helped things fizzle out quickly.

After that Antoni gave up playing music to support his wife and four children. He spent the next 15 years doing various odd jobs—from bartending at the former rock 'n' roll establishment J.C. Dobbs to driving a limo.

Antoni talked about his other ex-bandmates with no hesitation, but at the mention of Rundgren, he paused.

"He badmouthed me once in Rolling Stone—called me a junkie, out of nowhere. And at that point, it'd been years since we'd even talked. [Since then] he's avoided me at different times."

(Antoni claims he was never a "junkie." Though, he says, he might have smoked a little grass from time to time.)

Antoni doesn't see a reunion happening anytime soon, but he isn't closed-minded about it.

"I guess it'd be nice once. But I want to do this myself. I'm trying to get my life together, trying to write. I've never written completely alone before—I've always written in a band setting. It's almost like I'm trying to teach myself how to play again."

He's not just speaking figuratively. In 1992, Antoni was in a head-on collision that caused him to lose 50 percent of the strength in his arms. Although he's recovering steadily, it's difficult for him to sit down and play at the piano over extended periods of time.

"Even though I have a history and reputation, it's gonna be brand new. The only thing that will be the same will be the actual physical playing."

From the stuff he's been playing live on radio shows (most recently in Virginia, and a month ago on WMMR), it's apparent that Antoni is still into power pop. He wants his new music to "punch the way The Nazz did before." Currently listening to the likes of Tom Waits and Shawn Colvin, Antoni is finishing a song titled "I Want You To Love Me," which he jokes sounds nothing like the similarly titled Cheap Trick song. Antoni sings, "I wanna sing for you and make you cry/ I wanna dance for you and make you laugh."

On Antoni's starred and striped overalls he wears the pins that read "On the Mend" and "Don't take your organs to heaven. Heaven knows you need them here."

Smoking a Camel Light, Antoni says solemnly that he is waiting for a liver transplant, having contracted hepatitis over 20 years ago from a blood transfusion.

Antoni's post-transplant plans are to tour again, and to record the new songs that he's written. He hopes that people will admire him for having the ambition to push forward.

"I want people to know I'm back. I wanna play. I wanna sing, and I want people to love it. And if you don't it's okay. I just won't sing at your birthday party."