NOEL IT ALL (Part Two)

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Yesterday we posted part one of Steve's conversation with Plumm owner Noel Ashman. They discussed his journey through clubdom from the early age of thirteen: living in an NYC apartment on his own, soon to have a live in girlfriend, throwing kiddie parties full of Upper East Siders. If you missed day one, read it now. Otherwise keep on reading for day two.

“IF YOU CAN HANDLE A NIGHTCLUB AUDIENCE SUCCESSFULLY, YOU CAN HANDLE ANYTHING.†- Judy Holiday

Noel Ashman’s approach to nightclub promotion starts with getting the name of his club in a periodical; in bold face next to a celebrity’s. Oh, and once in awhile he gets his name in there too. In our interviews with Danny A we discussed the importance of cultivating celebrities while protecting their name, and providing them with the luxuries a club has to offer. The most important things offered are free booze, women, and safety against rabid fans or item/photo craving paparazzi. Noel Ashman’s tables are particularly athlete heavy and that brings its’ own particular set of problems. Athletes aren’t always necessarily the type of celebrity that brings an ‘A’ crowd if their name appears near yours in the funny papers. They also, at least in season, are inclined to not want the world, including their coaches and managers, to know they were out before the big game. I remember one night a group of athlete’s wives showed up at the front door of my joint. Beautiful, well dressed, and out to have a good time, they dropped their husbands names in order to get V.I.P. treatment. We were very willing to accommodate but we stalled a little bit, just long enough for me to go downstairs and whisper in the ear of the husbands, clear the table of all females, and replace the bottle of vodka with a bucket of beers. The wives “surprised†their sad, lonely spouses and career ending injuries were averted.

I was counting the stars and dreaming of sugar plum fairies one late night outside of the Red Zone when a car dropped off two very drunk large men. The security guards and I were laughing as they approached. One guy sort of fell onto the other and back and forth, but although these weebles wobbled, they didn’t fall down. I said, ‘Gentlemen, you can leave in this condition but I can’t let you in like this.’ They asked, ‘Even if we’re major league ballplayers?’ They showed us their MLB identity cards and we let the two all stars in. The next day they were awful; striking out, dropping pop ups, and the kicker came when one of them, the most famous guy from his team, appeared in a MLB sponsored commercial asking all to drink responsibly. Club people see a lot that doesn’t appear in the papers, and a lot that you do read is semi-true.

Noel is surrounded by celebrity types and although many don’t make it into the papers, the people at the clubs see them and get to go home to Jersburbia and tell all about it. They come back looking for more and their friends come too, and once they’re used to the place, the doormen smile at them and they make all sorts of new friends. Once this sort of action starts to happen over and over again, your clubs a hit. I was walking down 27th street about a year ago when Chris, the kid who hustles tourists from the club that isn’t letting them in to a club that most likely will, hailed me. ‘Sugar Ray Leonard can’t get into Pink Elephant, can he join you?’ I was with a group of friends including my bestest pal Marcus, who studies Muay Thai kickboxing. We took Sugar Ray with us to Home where we were treated like world champs. Marcus and I spent a few hours with the former boxing great and his family and friends; it was amazing. Scores of people came by to pay their respects or beg an autograph. I had watched him so many times. I saw him beat Marvelous Marvin Hagler when most of the interested world thought that impossible. Clubs can bring people who exist in the two dimensional world of media to you in real; in the flesh, 3D, living color, up front and personal. The club connects you in this way to the world of glamour and success, where most are mere voyeurs.

Steve Lewis: Everybody in the industry talks about everything, and we all praise and congratulate each other. There’s a fraternity comprised of these people like Noel Ashman and Steve Lewis and hundreds of others, who are part of a community of club management. The one thing we say as a group about Noel Ashman is that you hire the best publicists always. Your name is on Page Six almost as often as Richard Johnson’s. So how do you do that Noel? How do you get your name on Page Six and all these other places as often as you do? How are you such a press whore, how do you do this?

Noel Ashman: I like that question.

SL: You like that question?

NA: Well first of all, I think I’m very lucky that people have found an interest in putting me on. I don’t think that I’m the slickest dude on the block…

SL: Wait a second. I want to address that. You don’t think you’re the slickest dude around? I have never seen you in anything but a white t-shirt in over twelve years.

NA: There you go.

SL: I want to ask you a question. Do you have a new white t-shirt for every day of the week, or do you have a closet with like a hundred white t-shirts on hangers?

NA: I think I wear black T’s too. I probably have twenty white t-shirts, twenty black, and twenty gray.

SL: And you buy them, and you’re constantly changing them, and that’s your uniform…

NA: Yes, and shorts.

SL: Of course.

NA: I wear shorts a lot. I’m very casual. I actually have very sensitive skin, to where it itches when I’m wearing a suit for example. Since I was very young I’ve been the most casual kid everywhere I went. Even back when I was younger going to formals and such, I would go in jeans and a t-shirt. It’s funny, the person I always get confused for even though I don’t look anything like him is Alex Von Furstenberg, cause anytime we go somewhere we immediately dress exactly alike. People yell to me, ‘Alex!’ ‘I’m Noel, the other guy in the t-shirt, that’s Alex.’ We are the two guys who always did that wherever we went. I think I’ve only worn a suit three times in my entire life.

SL: You’ve worn a suit three times in your life, what were the three occasions?

NA: Now that I think about it, it might be four actually. My father’s wedding, my Bar Mitzvah, Chuck Knoblauch’s wedding, where he made me, and David Well’s wedding, where he made me, oh and Robbie Kravitz’s 21st birthday. It was held somewhere where you had to wear a suit, and he gave me so much shit about it like, ‘My father will really be mad,’ so it was those five, four times besides my father’s wedding.

SL: Ok, you’re not the slickest guy on the block but you just dropped about three or so names which I think was pretty slick.

NA: Well you asked where I wore a suit, how I am going to answer that?

SL: But you did drop some bold faced names, Robbie Kravitz, who’s Henry Kravitz’s son, you have Chuck Knoblauch who was second baseman for the Yankees, who ran into lots of troubles for us and was unable to continue performing in major league baseball because of his problems. Then David Wells, who despite his problems, despite the fact that he was in clubs drinking until the wee hours, was a great major league pitcher.

NA: Well the thing about David is that everyone thinks he’s such a wild and crazy guy, and in a lot of ways he is, but he’s under control. He never ever loses control and he’s very aware of what he does, and knows exactly what his body can do and it can’t do. I was with him before he pitched in the World Series for example. And you know we were out, we were hanging out; he knew exactly what time he had to go to bed, he knew exactly what he had to eat, and although he had this image of being a wild and crazy guy (which he is by the way) he’s very bright. He really understands his body in a way that other people don’t get, and he doesn’t seem to need a lot of sleep.

SL: Well I remember carrying him with the help of another guy, and David is a big guy; we were helping him get up the stairs at Life one night, and he was drunk.

NA: I remember the night, drunk off beers.

SL: He was drunk off beers, and as I carried him up to the first level I said, ‘Thank God you are not pitching tomorrow,’ and it was a Saturday night, and he said, ‘I got a 1:30 start tomorrow.’ I called my father and said, ‘Dad, bet the house.’

NA: Remember what he did that day?

SL: No, I don’t remember.

NA: Two hitter. I was with him.

SL: Torre got pissed at him.

NA: Torre and him had a hard time because of his drinking.

SL: Right, they said it was a weight problem, but it wasn’t a weight problem, he was drinking and everyone in New York knew he was drinking. But of all of them you’re right, Dave was able to control himself more. And you’re also friends with Pavano and all these players…

NA: How do you know that?

SL: How do I know that? I know things. I’ve seen Pavano at your table a lot. He’s the nicest guy in the world, good looking when he’s cleaned up. He doesn’t look like a major league baseball player. He looks like a club guy, you know, a sharp looking guy. But he’s never been able to pitch since he got here. I read something that said, ‘I wish that he was on the mound as much as I see him in clubs.’ He’s gotten that criticism.

NA: You know I think, especially when you’re an athlete, you can get away with a lot of things. Athletes are expected to be home by twelve, you know, but everyone’s different. Certain athletes can do it, like Wells being a prime example. As long as they know their boundaries and what they can and can’t do. It depends on the person, certain can’t play New York City, which is a very high pressure environment.

SL: I remember one night when these San Francisco Giants were in my club partying hard and they had a game the next day. And this New York Yankee who was there told me that as a professional baseball player, for the most part, it doesn’t matter what field he plays on. He’s been playing since he was a baby, it doesn’t matter home field or away. But he says that when they’re home, the players are with their girlfriends and wives, and when they’re on the road is when they’re partying and whoring so much that they’re wrecked. So the big home field advantage is that when they’re home, they’re probably getting sleep at night, and when they’re on the road they’re out partying. You’re nodding your head yes. So publicists, we got off on this tangent. How the hell do you get your name in the papers so much? You’re in the papers more than Noah, more than Mark Baker, more than any of these guys. Now many guys don’t like the publicity. They avoid it, it’s not part of their shtick. You’re very press oriented, and that’s your thing, Veruka got the most publicity of any club I ever saw.

NA: Studio got more…

SL: Veruka was a small place that got an unbelievable amount of press. They had a diagram that was in the New Yorker or New York Magazine…

NA: Entertainment weekly.

SL: There was a diagram that showed every table in the place, and which was whatever celebrity’s favorite table.

NA: It was actually a map of what celebrities had sat where over a three day period.

We had three nights in a row, one was a huge event and two were just good nights. I remember we had everyone from Leonardo DiCaprio, Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Spacey, Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Prince…

SL: This was a celebrity based club, and you’re in Page Six a lot. One of your ways of marketing yourself is through newspapers, and you find that a much more important tool than many club owners. Explain to me your philosophy.

NA: Well two things. One thing you asked before is, how do I do it? I think it’s funny because I don’t actually ever use one publicist. There are a couple I have used over the years. Look at someone like Susan Blond who never did a club before in her life. I used her once maybe eight years ago, and suddenly she was doing forty clubs. She used to always call and thank me. So to me it’s not about the publicist, at any given time I have two or three publicists who I have deals with.

SL: So you make a deal like, I’ll give you this item and you get this kind of money, kind of a deal?

NA: In part. A lot of these guys want me to get celebrities to come to their event type of thing. Like their client is opening up a hotel and I’ll get celebrities to come. I get to do a lot of corporate stuff, so I’ll bring celebrities to events and such.

SL: You’ve maintained a relationship with Leonardo DiCaprio. Mark Wahlberg has always been a good friend of yours, and Mark is one of the coolest, most genuine people.

NA: People don’t realize what a good person he is.

SL: When I got in my trouble, Mark Wahlberg sent me a letter of support that really raised my spirits; he’s really a great person. So yes, you maintain a relationship with celebrities. Now most people consider celebrities to be commodities, but you actually think of them as friends, that’s the difference.

NA: Most people who I guess you would say have celebrity clubs, do think of celebrities as commodities and they go out to meet the youngest, hottest celebs. The funny thing about me is, and I think you know this, I’m a very shy guy.

SL: This is true.

NA: There are owners and such who go and run up to every celebrity and try to make friends with them, I just kind of fell into it. A lot of the people I grew up with were lepers when they were younger, who everyone wanted out of their club. Now these little kids have gotten older and a lot of them became famous.

SL: I remember walking Leo up to a club once, it might have been your party. I don’t know whose it was but it was up on 61st Street…

NA: Mai Tai, sure.

SL: That was your party, right. I remember that I brought him in with me and walked Leo across 1st Avenue to the club, and the door didn’t know who he was. He was a young guy then. Wow I forgot about that place, that’s right, Mai Tai on 61st and 1st. Why haven’t you done more things on the Upper East Side?

NA: I used to when I started, I did a lot of things in my early days uptown like Country Club on Mondays.

SL: On 79th Street was it?

NA: Country Club was on 85th. I did Rouge which was Uptown at the time. I still have a very Upper East Side crowd, a lot of the Europeans and that kind of socialite crowd, but even a lot of them as they got older rather go Downtown if they’re going to a club.

SL: So that’s your theory, that Uptown will always go Downtown.

NA: And Downtown won’t go Uptown. Exactly. That’s a lot of work though.

SL: A lot of work to get Uptown from Downtown?

NA: Yes, it’s much easier to get Downtown.

SL: Alright so now you’re at Plumm. Now, it’s an interesting story; every maybe three hours I get an email from a girl named Ivy Supersonic. Noel’s laughing. And Ivy Supersonic goes into like five hundred word tirades about you. And I think that she actually got arrested…

NA: She was in jail, yeah.

SL: Ok, so this is true, she got arrested.

NA: I put her in jail.

SL: You put her in jail, ok. Who is Ivy Supersonic? Why do I get emails from her and what the hell does she have to do with you and the club?

NA: Ivy is the girl who I sort of had known from around the way for a while. She’s always been a little bit eccentric.

SL: She’s a scene girl.

NA: She has some issues. She used to beg me to do parties at the club, but I’ve always found her to be a little bit nutty. Nothing against her in that sense, but just a little nutty.

SL: She’s an eccentric girl for sure.

NA: Yeah, so I always kind of stayed away from her. Also, when it comes to celebrities, she’s aggressive and kind of rats on them; that’s something that’s very important to me when we talk about publicity. I never do a negative item…

SL: We talk about that a lot, it’s called burning celebrities.

NA: I never ever do a negative story on celebrities ever. If a celebrity comes to one of my clubs and doesn’t want to be in the paper, I won’t put them in the paper. If they want me to do a write up on them, then I will. I’ve always been very careful with celebrities. If they tell me to say something, I’m happy to do it, but certain celebrities come to my clubs every night and have never been in the paper as being in my club.

SL: Well Leo’s been around the last few weeks and no one’s put his name in the paper. Leo’s out there every day now, and we’re not reading about it even though he’s hitting all the stops. The clubs have respect for Leo and they just don’t burn him.

NA: Exactly, that’s the point. It’s very important to me not to have people around me who burn celebrities. Ivy’s one of those people who would go out of her way to talk about celebrities…

SL: What happens is this. When you deal with Page Six, Rush and Molloy, and all these other gossip columnists, sometimes you feel that if you give them an item, if you need something in the future, it’s quid pro quo. Ivy wants to get her name in the paper as much as she can, so she’ll burn celebrities for future consideration. But you did let her in at one point yes?

NA: Well what happened, to make a long story short, was she had been trying to do an event at the club for a while, but truthfully I didn’t really want to associate with her. Finally she talked one of my managers into letting her do a little event for a night, I think it was for some porn star or something. They decided to try her out, and were gonna pay her per head. She ended up bringing five people and said we owed her $20,000 because she’s a celebrity. Hey if Madonna came in, we would pay.

SL: She went nuts on you guys.

NA: Yeah, really that’s what it was. She wanted press and she knew attacking me would get a lot of press. It got to the point where she was attacking my friends, and all the things she was saying were complete lies, it was ridiculous.

SL: She committed vandalism and…

NA: Yeah, she went in and tried to spray paint something on the door that Noel has a big ego or something.

SL: I’ve known Ivy for many years, and in this family of clubs you meet thousands of people and ever so often there are clashes. I know I got in the middle of this because she wanted to write about it on the blog. She wanted me to report it and she wanted to do the writing. I would say to her, ‘Chill the fuck out,’ and I just couldn’t get her to chill. She knows that she’s a freak but I happen to like her. Although yes, she would burn anyone to get herself publicity.

NA: Right. So because of those reasons I never really wanted her around. Actually, there’s one exception that might be funny. There’s only one time in my entire career that I burned a celebrity, once.

SL: What was that?

NA: It was Mike Piazza, which you probably remember.

SL: I do remember this sort of, but tell me exactly. I remember that he got burned in the paper.

NA: Mike Piazza came to Veruka one night with about ten guys and they were all wearing sweats and shorts, really underdressed. My door guy recognized immediately that they were really undressed, so they weren’t letting him in. He immediately jumped into this, ‘Do you know who I am, I’m Mike Piazza, I’ll buy you, I’ll buy this club.’ Maybe he was drunk I guess. But yeah, they didn’t let him in and that was the end of it. I didn’t put it in the paper, I would have never put it in the paper. We left it alone and then the next day I get a call from a columnist who was saying that the Mets PR person called and claimed that I was discriminating against him because he was a Met.

SL: Which is silly.

NA: Which is stupid, right. He was saying it at the door like, ‘Well the Yankees get in here, how come I can’t come in here, da da da.’ Veruka was, as you know, very exclusive; we really ran by list. If you weren’t on the list, you weren’t on the list.

SL: Well let’s be straight. The Yankees, when they go out, they all dress. The Mets never dress. It’s a matter of class. The Yankees as a team dress very well. When you see Alex Rodriguez in a club, which you do occasionally, he’s wearing a beautiful double breasted suit. Jeter dresses very well. They make a point to be very well dressed.

NA: Except for Wells…

SL: Well, but Wells is a great guy, we love him. But the point is that you would let Mike Piazza, who is a hall of fame level kind of ball player, into your club and he’d treated very well under most circumstances.

NA: Right, but when it got back to me that he was really trying to get a negative item on me, on Veruka, that was when I told what happened.

SL: I remember that he drove by Life one day, he was in the car with his dad. They looked over at the club and it was like six guys at the door who said, ‘Hey Mike, don’t even think about coming here.’ Everybody just started laughing.

NA: I remember that. The best part is that about two years after that, I was in Veruka with Chuck Knoblauch and Mike Piazza walked in. I’m going, ‘Shit, here we go.’ And Chuck, being the wiseass he is goes, “Hey do you know that this is the guy who wouldn’t let you in?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh God.’ And to his credit, he came over and shook hands with me and said, ‘You know listen, I was really out of line that night. I was wrong, I was under dressed, and I really said a lot of things I wish I hadn’t said.’ He was actually a really good guy and I felt bad after that.

SL: He actually had a good reputation, I kept on thinking Mike was never a New Yorker. I mean he always seemed like he was rented. You know we both follow baseball…

NA: Actually, I don’t really love baseball.

SL: You don’t?

NA: I’m not a baseball man, no one realizes.

SL: Then let me have your tickets, I need tickets always.

NA: The funny thing is everyone thinks I’m a baseball fan. David Wells is one of my best friends. I’ve gotten friendly with Jeter and Giambi and Alex. I became friends with them because I’ve met their friends and it just fell into place. You know, the first time I met David Wells I didn’t know who he was. We met when he played for the Tigers and a friend of mine was like, ‘You guys gotta meet, because you would be best friends immediately.’

SL: I was called in to a very famous pop star’s apartment, and when I got to L.A. I was really nervous about this big celebrity…

NA: Who was it?

SL: I can’t tell you.

NA: Come on tell, who?

SL: I can’t, I was sworn to secrecy, even off the record I haven’t told anybody. So I went there and I was sitting with her for a little while when finally I said, ‘Look, I’ve got to tell you, I have no idea who you are.’ She goes, ‘Oh, that’s great!’ I told her what I thought she does, and she explained to me her career. I had no knowledge of anything she had ever done, I had never seen anything she had ever done. I had no idea. I knew her name, but people always assume that when you’re in this business that you know everybody. You just don’t have time for TV or movies, or to know all of these faces.

NA: But you always could pick out the celebs….

SL: Oh yeah I know them, but because I have a great eye for people and celebrities. I do scan magazines and the papers. That is one of the things you do when you work the door of clubs for a long time. But about the Plumm, what most people don’t know is when you did Plumm, you actually hired me to do the layout. You hired a designer cause I couldn’t design if it was between your mother and myself, one of us would have ended up dead. Tell me about your mom’s role at the club. I remember your mom always looking over my shoulder while I was designing the place and she’d be going, ‘Why on earth…..’ She’s difficult, let’s be real, she’s your mom.

NA: She’s my mom. Well, it’s a funny thing cause when I first opened, which the space was actually NA first…

SL: Let’s talk about NA for minute. Is the NA for Noel Ashman or is it Nell’s Again?

NA: I’ll never tell.

SL: Ok. Or was it Not Again?

NA: Not telling. Everyone agreeing on a name was one of the biggest challenges I had doing this club.

SL: Isn’t it the most ridiculously hard thing in the world to pull off?

NA: Oh it’s crazy.

SL: You can open up a club, that’s the easy part. Naming the club is the hardest.

NA: It’s even harder when you have fifteen celebrities who all have their exact idea of what they want the name to be.

SL: Who are the people involved with the club, who are the owners of the club?

NA: I always miss people, I’ll try, but I always miss people, it’s bad.

SL: You know what we’ll do, you’re going to name them right now, and if you think later that you missed anyone, you can just call up my editor Jessica right here and you guys can fill in the blanks. Ok, who’s the celebrity owners of Nell’s and he’s going to get it right, ok…

NA: Ok, here we go… Chris Noth, Jesse Bradford, Joey McIntrye, Simon Rex, Ethan Browne, Damon Dash, Samantha Ronson, Jason Grimsley, Ross Robinson, Bo Deitl, Ann Dexter-Jones, and David Wells of course.

Good Night,

Mr. Lewis

Interview conducted and written by Steve Lewis.

Interview has been edited and condensed by Jessica Tocko.

Check back on Thursday for the final installment of Steve's conversation with Noel Ashman as they discuss how he and his crew came up with ‘The Plumm’, as well as his thoughts on the bubble that needs to burst in way of NYC nightlife.

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