Running Wild : O.C.’s Godfather of Punk Isn’t Slinging Bull in His Tales of Daring Adventures at Pamplona Festival

There might be some city councilmen, not to mention a few punk rockers and journalists, who would enjoy having a framed copy of the photo Jerry Roach was handing me. It shows Roach, the onetime Orange County Godfather of Punk, running while looking back over his shoulder with a harried look, as well anyone might with 1,100 pounds of charging bull a few yards behind him, its horns slinging another poor human out of its path.

In the ‘70s, Roach owned the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa where the local punk scene exploded, much to the consternation of local authorities. Between the slam-pit action of the club’s impact-pocked dance floor and his contentious, ultimately futile, battles with City Hall, Roach led a pretty intense lifestyle. It didn’t relent in the ‘80s, when he opened the metal-music Radio City in Anaheim, whose city fathers greeted him with equal warmth.

Though many bands appreciated Roach’s efforts to give them a place to play, some also groused about his reluctance to pay them better. And pity the journalists who had the job of reporting on Roach’s endeavors: If you called him for a simple quote, you’d likely get a tireless 20-minute spiel, causing some writers--and I make no admissions here--to just hold the receiver out at arm’s length until he’d finished.

But you also couldn’t help liking the guy. He had the sort of brazenness that made things happen, and this county’s local youth culture would be dimmer but for those things.

So what had this bull got against him?

Nothing personal; it’s just that Roach likes to get in their way. Every year that he’s able, he heads to Pamplona, Spain, for the town’s running of the bulls. This year Roach ran with the bulls six of eight possible times. “I used to tell people this is how I relaxed,” he quipped.

Popularized by Ernest Hemingway in his 1926 “The Sun Also Rises,” the event, which commences July 6 each year in the 2,000-year-old northeastern Spanish town, sees thousands of the brave and foolhardy running a course through its streets, followed by a herd of feisty bulls. The encierro , as it is called, has taken place since 1717, when the bones of a hometown saint, St. Fermin, were returned from France. Sure of the saint’s protection, town youths ran along with the bulls being driven to the bullring.

Roach and I spoke last week on the ocean-view deck of his South Laguna home. Now 50, he’s somewhat more reserved than in his godfather prime and he’s just a tad stockier. He doesn’t court anymore the high anxiety lifestyle that came with his club-owner days. In Pamplona, however, “Every year I tend to get closer and closer to the bulls. I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting slower or just dumber,” he said, chuckling.

He first went to Pamplona in 1963 when he was 19, with a friend who was lured by Hemingway’s book. What they found was a far cry from Roach’s Tustin upbringing.

“It was just like wild anarchy, everybody celebrating, dancing, singing. It’s like New Year’s Eve, only it goes on for eight days. It’s the most joyous place in the world. Each night it goes ‘til dawn, and at dawn, they run the bulls. And it’s pretty weird with bulls running down the street, too,” he asserted.

That first year it took Roach several days to work up the courage to run. “When I finally did it, it didn’t seem like that big of a deal, probably because I played it really safe. I think I beat the bulls to the ring each time,” he said.

When he next went to Pamplona in 1966 he became friends with Matt Carney, a semi-legendary expatriate featured in James A. Michener’s “Iberia.” Roach believes Carney, who died in 1990, was the model for vagabond Harvey Holt in Michener’s “The Drifters.” (Roach also was interviewed at some length by Michener in 1966, and says he sees bits of himself in the book.)

Roach says Carney was a fearless runner and the “spiritual head” of the English-speaking people who sojourned to the event. He schooled Roach in the art of the run.

After that year, though, Roach got on with his life at home and Pamplona just became a part of his youth.

“Then I ran into Matt here on the West Coast in 1983. And he said, ‘Are you going this year?’ And I hadn’t even thought of it. He said, ‘You deserve it,’ and it hit me. So I told my wife (they have since divorced), ‘Don’t throw a party for my 40th birthday; I’m going to Pamplona.’ I went back, and I didn’t expect much because it was 20 years later and I wasn’t a kid. But I was floored that I had just as much fun as I did when I was 19,” he said.

He has gone five times since then, including the last two years. Though these days he says he chiefly goes for the camaraderie of seeing old friends, he inevitably winds up in the street with the bulls.

Despite the spirit of revelry the night before, the mood can be far different in the crowds waiting for the run to begin at 7 a.m.

Roach said, “You’re not supposed to run before a certain time, but people break and run. Some of them make it to the ring before the bulls even start running (at the other end of town), because they’re so panicked. It’s like a river of fear. Everyone’s totally scared out of their minds, running as fast as they can.”

Roach says it’s a different experience if you wait until the bulls are nearer.

“When you’re waiting you’re thinking, ‘Why am I doing this?’ But when the moment comes it’s like a heightened form of reality. Once the bulls are in the street the fear seems to subside, and you’re so into running and looking that you don’t think about anything. You’re totally focused.”

There’s reason to pay attention. Roach pointed out one newspaper with front-page photos of a fellow who looks like a young Regis Philbin, except he has a bull’s horn sticking in his chest. A number of people do get gored, sometimes killed, and the local paper revels in graphics that denote the location and number of injuries on the bulls’ route. The paper listed 26 injuries at the plaza where Roach starts his runs.

One day’s paper had a photo with Roach in it, gathered with others around the hospital bed of a head-bandaged acquaintance.

Roach said, “He’s got some great pictures of when he got it . He got into a pileup, and was knocked out. He might have got kicked in the head by a bull. He was little goofy for a while, but the next day they let him go.”

Roach has developed various strategies and rules for doing the run.

“I always make sure I’m sober when I run. I might be a little hung over from the night before, but I try to have a clear head and have all my faculties.”

For readers who might have occasion to have a bull bearing down on them, he advises, “If he’s really coming down on you, the thing to remember is they’re on four legs and can’t turn their body like you can. If you turn in a tighter circle they they can, you can get inside where they can’t get at you. That’s what matadors do.

“Bulls also have a blind spot about eight to 10 feet directly in front of them where they don’t see you. That’s considered the ultimate, to run in that zone. I’ve never done that and never will, I don’t think. Though sometimes; at 7 in the morning, who knows what you might do?”

Roach usually doesn’t get into the fray until he sees the bulls coming 50 to 100 yards away. He usually starts his run at the last leg of the course, near the bullring. There, he says, the bulls have been running uphill and into the sunlight, “so they’re not at their most aggressive.”

But they’re also not entirely at their most pacific. This year as he ran into the ring, Roach noticed he was being followed.

“We’re coming down the ramp and everyone splits, and I realized that the one bull was after some of us. At first I looked back and there were a lot of people between us, but then I looked again and thought, ‘Oh, God, there’s just one guy.’ I didn’t see him get hit, but I heard him. It sounds like a football hit,” he said.

The bull was distracted by others after that, so Roach only has a photo, instead of scars, to show for his close encounter.

He’s had one or two other brushes in his workaday life as well, such as the time someone from a neighboring business threatened him with a .44 magnum outside the Cuckoo’s Nest. Things could get pretty antic inside the place, too.

“One night there the Adolescents were playing and they got into their hit song ‘Amoeba’ and the slamming in front of the stage spread like a gas, everybody pushing and shoving. The whole place went like it was a controlled riot. I was always relieved when a show would be over,” he said, adding, “That’s all ancient history now.”

Roach says that after Costa Mesa and Anaheim closed his clubs, he was wiped out financially, and that he was forced to get a “real” job selling real estate. Then three years ago he took over a chimney-sweeping business, and says he cleaned a few hundred chimneys himself.

“That’s very humbling after being Jerry Roach . Sometimes people have asked me, ‘Are you Jerry Roach?’ I say ‘Yeah, I used to be.’ ”

He thinks he’s on the rebound now. Next week he’s opening a Mexican restaurant called Old Town in the old section of Capistrano Beach. He promises there will be no punk music this time, just “the lowest prices and more food, to make it so affordable that people would lose money by driving by,” he said, never missing a chance for a plug.

He claims he still has “a rebel streak” and got a lot from his days as the local punk godfather.

In the Pamplona newspaper article about Roach and his friends, it quoted the foreigners on their motives for running. “Everybody has their own reason for doing it,” Roach said. “In my quote, I borrowed my reason from the punks. I said, ‘Because it makes me feel like I’m alive.’ ”