Requiem for a sax player

There exists little trace of the Toys: The band didn't even release a single, appearing only on the FM102 (which would eventually become Q102) compilation Texas Refined Crude, released in September 1977. The record also featured such local forgettables as Lynx (featuring Beach Boy Dennis Wilson, no less) and Doug Simirl, whose claim to fame was that he once played in the Marksmen with Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs. The Toys provided the song "Why Don't You Hate Me Like Everybody Else," which the FM102 staff described in the album's liner notes as a "tongue-in-cheek punk rock tune of questionable social significance" that "caught everyone's attention." The band actually didn't much care for the punk label: "We feel the same frustration and closeness to rebellion as punk bands do," Faulkner said in 1977, "but I think we're more like an urban rock band."

But the Toys were punk enough to aggravate Will's father, who imagined that his son would become a pianist, an actor--anything other than a rock-and-roll musician.

"I was far more conservative in those years than I am now," says Jack, who mentions that his son often contributed scores to the plays he directed. "Living on the West Coast shakes out the conservative burrs. But William was quickly making a mark for himself in Dallas. While a lot of people knew who I was, a hell of a lot more people knew who William was in Dallas. And there was no way of stopping it. I recently told him I should have stopped him from playing in a punk-rock band, and he said, 'But I wouldn't have allowed it.'"

Sometime in the fall of 1979, Will left the Toys and ended up joining the Telefones, which then consisted of brothers Steve, Chris, and Jerry Dirkx, who were hardly punk at all, more like power-pop. But how he ended up in the band remains the subject of some dispute. Steve, the band's bassist, recalls that the Telefones were playing at DJ's on Lower Greenville Avenue with a band called Snakes (On Everything), which featured Clay on sax and keyboards. Looking to flesh out the Telefones' sound, Steve says, the brothers asked Clay to join up.

But Chris says Clay had begged the brothers to join the band, showing up one night at Gertie's on Lemmon Avenue with his sax, chatting up the boys between sets, and showering them with the plaudits of a true believer. Either way, Clay joined the 'Fones in the fall of 1979 and would remain in the band until 1981.

"We had just started playing, and the music then was real pop, but when Willie joined, it really got things going," says Chris, the Telefones' drummer (and currently a member of the Enablers). "He was real inspiration, a real driving force in terms of music and art. He was the first one to turn me on to the Residents and Split Enz and Talking Heads. He changed the direction of the 'Fones from a power-punk thing to a little more creative kind of thing, adding reggae and ska into the groove."

In December 1979, the Telefones recorded its first single, "The Ballad of Jerry Godzilla/She's in Love with the Rolling Stones," a radio kiss-off that even now sounds less like some dusty artifact than a bona fide lost gem. ("Jerry Godzilla" also appears on Tales from the Edge, Volumes 5 & 6.) A year later, the band won a battle-of-the-bands contest and used the money to go to Oklahoma City to record its first full-length record, Vibration Change, which received its fare share of kudos from the likes of Trouser Press and other national publications. Clay and the Dirkx boys then toured extensively, becoming hotshots on the regional circuit. (On January 6, the Telefones will briefly reunite at Club Dada to pay their final respects to Clay.)

Will and Chris became especially close friends during those days. For Chris, who was used to being in a band with only his brothers, Will sort of became the odd-man-out ally; whenever Jerry and Steve would have the sort of fight only brothers can have, Chris and Will would stand off to the side, laughing like bemused outsiders. Will would also teach Chris how to dress, buying their clothes at vintage thrift shops, and introduce Chris to oddball avant music coming over as imports.