Speaker 1: When you pair your skills with our spices, you get
Speaker 1: a very potent combination. No matter what's on the menu,
Speaker 1: McCormick Culinary has the power to make your flavors stand out.
Speaker 1: A lot of people are afraid of crawl. I'm in
Speaker 1: New York City, afraid that there's no such thing as
Speaker 1: a safe neighborhood anymore. It's the mid seventies in New
Speaker 1: York City. Graffiti covered subway cars rattle through wormholes beneath
Speaker 1: the streets. New Yorkers saw one result of the city's
Speaker 1: tight new by Jackman, garbage began to pile up in
Speaker 1: the streets. The city is bankrupt, and drugs and violence
Speaker 1: are destroying people's lives. To find them, I'm afraid to
Speaker 1: be able on the street. And then there's the music scene.
Speaker 1: Downtown bars with sticky floors like CBGBs and Max's. Kansas
Speaker 1: City explode with sweat and filth and energy, the birthplace
Speaker 1: of many a rock legend. And also this guy, everybody
Speaker 1: think Billy Balls, dead set on making a name for himself.
Speaker 1: Billy had a girlfriend named Rebecca. She was bleached blonde
Speaker 1: in a bombshell. You think I'm pretty huh? You think
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sugar. I'm one of the few nuts you'll meet. Man.
Speaker 1: She took no ship from anyone. Rebecca and Billy were
Speaker 1: crazy about each other, living in a converted storefront in
Speaker 1: the East Village. Then one night in the summer of
Speaker 1: Rebecca came home to find their front window blown out
Speaker 1: and cops everywhere. Baby boy Billy had been shot right
Speaker 1: could neighbors said the guy who did it? They'd never
Speaker 1: seen him before, A mystery man in a cowboy hat.
Speaker 1: Billy died. His body was sent to a city cemetery,
Speaker 1: buried in a mass grave. Rebecca never had a chance
Speaker 1: to say goodbye, and she never got any answers about
Speaker 1: why Billy was murdered. I'd like to read you. As
Speaker 1: the years went by, the injustice and unanswered questions turned
Speaker 1: to an addiction and explosions of rage that would nearly
Speaker 1: tear her life apart. Now, almost forty years after Billy
Speaker 1: was killed, it's time to get Rebecca some answers from
Speaker 1: crime town. I'm io till it right, and this is
Speaker 1: the ballad of Billy Balls. I'm nowhere. You know, one
Speaker 1: of our best friends was all of a sudden murdered
Speaker 1: and was dead and it seemed really suspicious. It seemed
Speaker 1: more like an execution to me. It was fishy from
Speaker 1: the start. They were coming in to raid for I
Speaker 1: think drugs. You know, he was accused of litting somebody off.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It was some political thing, and I
Speaker 1: don't know if if it was terrorists. Some bigger pieces
Speaker 1: missing here, and I think it lies in what the
Speaker 1: fuck was Billy up to? Chapter one, Billy Balls and
Speaker 1: his baby girl. Alrighty, I think we are good to go.
Speaker 1: All right, all right, I'm gonna follow you on a
Speaker 1: mild day in December. It feels like it warmed up
Speaker 1: a little bit. Yeah, My producer Austin and I head
Speaker 1: off to meet Billy's girlfriend Rebecca at her apartment. She
Speaker 1: still lives in the East Village. All right, we're on
Speaker 1: Third Street between second Half in the Bowery. This was
Speaker 1: a gas station. It's now the Bowery Hotel. Things have
Speaker 1: changed here. Rebecca has not How about a whole light?
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, you can't see is that? She just turned
Speaker 1: on a lamp and pointed at a disco ball that's
Speaker 1: installed in the ceiling. Rebecca is tall, rail thin, with
Speaker 1: sinewy muscles wrapped around her bones. She's dressed all in
Speaker 1: black with tattered cargo sweatpants and a ripped tank top.
Speaker 1: A high ponytail dangles down her back. She crosses her
Speaker 1: small apartment to a pot simmering on the stove last
Speaker 1: night in the middle of the night. Take a look.
Speaker 1: Come on, it's it's the direct Blood Transfusion and it
Speaker 1: has Spanish smoked popers. Well, let's let's do you want
Speaker 1: to sit down? And Rebecca doesn't own a couch, so
Speaker 1: we sit on a futon and she pulls out an
Speaker 1: oversized brown leather folder. What is this? This is Billy's portfolio? Yes,
Speaker 1: oh shit? Should I open it? You want open up?
Speaker 1: You can open it? Oh my god, this is Billie's
Speaker 1: resume is William Heightsman and then there's his phone number.
Speaker 1: He was William Heightsman on paper, but around town he
Speaker 1: was just Billy Ball. She played in CDGS Lots and
Speaker 1: Max's that's Billy. He played rock and roll piano, saying
Speaker 1: like a motherfucker, and he dressed the part. Guy wasn't
Speaker 1: a big fan of wearing shirts. Huh no, because that's
Speaker 1: his stage, of which she wears just skin. Okay, look
Speaker 1: how hot he is. He's so fucking sexy. So this
Speaker 1: is a picture of Billy, uh was his hand and
Speaker 1: his parents. I don't know what he's doing, scratching his balls,
Speaker 1: no doubt. And he's got a cigarette hanging out of
Speaker 1: his mouth. Oh god, I can't even points his photograph.
Speaker 1: It's sacrilegious. Okay, look at him. Oh he's so hot.
Speaker 1: Another photo, this time Billy's joined by a bleached blonde
Speaker 1: who carries herself like Grace Jones, statuesque and glamorous. That's
Speaker 1: me scratching the bottom of my nose and that that's
Speaker 1: my that's my ass. You know. The scird photo shoot
Speaker 1: of you guys together, you know, Billy together. You know
Speaker 1: it's great. Yeah, I'm not kidding, right, you look delirious
Speaker 1: happy in this picture. Yeah, m hmm. From I Gotta
Speaker 1: tell the Storm now, Yeah, I came here when her sixteen,
Speaker 1: Rebecca's story begins with her driving clear across the country
Speaker 1: towards the big city lights of Broadway as a teenager.
Speaker 1: It's just like a little very tuned antenna, a little
Speaker 1: wild animal with just an instinct that I gotta go.
Speaker 1: Coming around Fort Street, tenth Avenue, where you take the
Speaker 1: curve from the Greyhound bus station with and you see
Speaker 1: the curtains. Everybody has the windows open, you know, coming
Speaker 1: in and the thickest, stickiest, sweatiest part of the summer,
Speaker 1: there's a height of healths kitchen. You can hear all
Speaker 1: the music coming out in The music is plumped and
Speaker 1: hiluptuous by the wet humidity in the air, and the
Speaker 1: sound is in the air. What's hanging in the full
Speaker 1: up suousness of the sticky humidity and the stickiness and
Speaker 1: the sweat. Those hot skinny man with the A shirts
Speaker 1: leaning up the window with the anemia and their black beard.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm like, oh my god, shouting some ship
Speaker 1: to bring up the fucking bread or whatever, shouting down
Speaker 1: at your wife, you stupid idiot, or throwing the flower
Speaker 1: pot out the window to clunk. Some jerk on ahead.
Speaker 1: People swag walking down the street. They'll kill you. And
Speaker 1: they're on fire. They're angry about some ship. And then
Speaker 1: there's a little preteen prostitutes and gay prostitutes. And on
Speaker 1: the sidewalk the black DRDs have like tent maybe three
Speaker 1: ft high for turning tricks. And that inside the town
Speaker 1: is mattresses where they're going in and charging people money
Speaker 1: to go and fuck, we'll get a blowjob. It's undeniable.
Speaker 1: It's all part of each other, the sounds, the whistling up,
Speaker 1: shouting down, the anger, the sacks, the emotions, the sweat,
Speaker 1: like all this ship, the cycle at the stew of life,
Speaker 1: and that's just so refreshing. Were you ever scared? Scared?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding? There's a hair raising place. Some dude
Speaker 1: came behind me on seventy second students said, I'm gonna
Speaker 1: kill you, you know, and I don't know how to
Speaker 1: watch your back and your shoulder and all that ship
Speaker 1: and people would chase you into doors with the intention
Speaker 1: of raping and stabbing your robbing you. The whole place
Speaker 1: was hair raising. So I just I think I might
Speaker 1: be one of those people that comes alive in definitely
Speaker 1: danger and romance. I rented a room for a month
Speaker 1: and it was in a drummer's empty cement loft. It
Speaker 1: had a box springs on sculpted olive green, really disgusting,
Speaker 1: tacky carpet, and that was a no blankets now nothing.
Speaker 1: In the next little abandoned office was a pair, a
Speaker 1: little teenage pair, a little white girl and a little
Speaker 1: black boy that were porn workers, and he would wear
Speaker 1: his bathrobe, you know. And that's where one weekend a
Speaker 1: man showed up named Billy Balls. That's after the break.
Speaker 1: I met him one Saturday afternoon. It's and twenty one
Speaker 1: year old Rebecca is living in New York City. She's
Speaker 1: about to meet the love of her life, the wild musician,
Speaker 1: the disruptor, Billy Balls. I'm wearing, by the way, black
Speaker 1: velveteen step up the side torito or pants, kind of
Speaker 1: capri length, and a red swede kind of fifties jacket
Speaker 1: with some paint splattering on it and short bleached blonde hair.
Speaker 1: And uh, the elevator opens as it's becoming early dusk,
Speaker 1: m and off the elevator comes Billy Balls, wearing knee
Speaker 1: pads and black leather roller skates and a black leather jacket.
Speaker 1: And he has a Sicilian aninia his black hair and
Speaker 1: pale skin and a little razors stubble on the chest
Speaker 1: and a pinch to the devil right here on the chin.
Speaker 1: You know. We take one look at each other and
Speaker 1: my god, that was fucking it. That's it. It's called love.
Speaker 1: It first sight, like a landslide. Just overwhelming magnet attraction,
Speaker 1: like a magnet cling and he says to me, to
Speaker 1: a cigarette, And we made our way a couple of
Speaker 1: floors up to an abandoned garment floor with couches and
Speaker 1: garment degree and we got it on within twenty minutes
Speaker 1: of setting eyes upon each other. And that was it.
Speaker 1: You know. He was there for a rehearsal with Roy
Speaker 1: the drummer, and he's put a chair in front of
Speaker 1: his electric piano which was on a ironing board, you know,
Speaker 1: and proceeded to play and sing. For me, this is
Speaker 1: Billy just too much. He was so fucking real and
Speaker 1: so talented and a sad get up. And I was
Speaker 1: like my cheeks were like flushing across. It was like
Speaker 1: I'm naked under the spot, like like embarrassment, the nakedness,
Speaker 1: the revealing this, you know. And I remember thinking, oh
Speaker 1: my god, you know, because I knew with just my instincts,
Speaker 1: this is deciding fate for eternity, moments of am I
Speaker 1: going to be with this person or not? And I
Speaker 1: I joined him, No, I'm with this person for eternity.
Speaker 1: You're saying, I have a question about this. It's a
Speaker 1: piece of paper, This looks like Billy's handwriting. This is
Speaker 1: a song we wrote together in the bag that winter.
Speaker 1: Can you read it? Yeah, man, it's his handwriting, alright.
Speaker 1: This is the words to the song we wrote. He
Speaker 1: goes hot flashes, hot flashes. It feels more like waves
Speaker 1: of heat. The words hot, hot flashes, hot flashes feels
Speaker 1: more like waves of heat up my spine, into my head,
Speaker 1: hot flashes. It's a sexually explicit song totally about or
Speaker 1: gas mouse and the hallucinations during or gas. Most because
Speaker 1: we've got it on five times a day, every single
Speaker 1: day modus operandi. I gave forty pounds in one month
Speaker 1: from that period of holding up in the bed and
Speaker 1: only eating olive oil and the black Jewish Ukrainian bread
Speaker 1: from the bakery on the corner right there, and basically
Speaker 1: never leaving the bed m Eventually, Rebecca and Billy got
Speaker 1: their own place, a converted storefront under a flophouse called
Speaker 1: the Valencia Hotel. Thirteen third Avenue was pretty modernistic at
Speaker 1: thirteen third Avenue. You know, he had no heat, he
Speaker 1: had no water, I had no kitchen, but he fixed
Speaker 1: it up. He put sheet rock on the walls and
Speaker 1: five layers of soundproofing on the floor, and and the
Speaker 1: soundproofing was for the because the rehearsal studio is underneath
Speaker 1: and the cella, so it was loud anyway. And the
Speaker 1: captain's bed near the back with a little bar refrigerator
Speaker 1: and a hot plate made of nice baths hub for
Speaker 1: me and made me a nice makeup mirror with big
Speaker 1: light bulbs. He drilled the holes to put the sockets,
Speaker 1: and he made me a beautiful makeup mirror sliding glass doors.
Speaker 1: But you can tell she gets lost in memories of
Speaker 1: this place, a popper's palace that Billy built just for her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's pictures right there in the house. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: picture that let's just see it. It's a polaroid in color.
Speaker 1: Come on. In this photo of Rebecca and Billy in
Speaker 1: their storefront, sheet rock covers the walls. A single abstract
Speaker 1: painting hangs above their bed, and Rebecca has a very
Speaker 1: particular look, no eyebrows at all, eyebrows painted on. Really
Speaker 1: was showing me how to do my eyebrows to flatter
Speaker 1: my features. It sounds like Billy showed you a lot
Speaker 1: of stuff in their new home. Billy pushed Rebecca to
Speaker 1: chase her dreams of a life in show business. He
Speaker 1: is a master showman, and I was going to be
Speaker 1: a fashion model and better actress. I knew that when
Speaker 1: I was a kid. And all the things that you're
Speaker 1: talking about have to do with some form of show business,
Speaker 1: like for photography, the eyebrows or you know, singing. This
Speaker 1: is gonna pick that bab He told me his the
Speaker 1: technique to learn to sing, you know, correctly. He's kind
Speaker 1: of tall. He's really fine. Someday I hope to make him.
Speaker 1: Rebecca found her person. There was no one else on
Speaker 1: earth for either of them, and they knew it. He
Speaker 1: was Billy Balls and she was his baby girl. But
Speaker 1: like when you and Billy were alone, like we were
Speaker 1: alone a lot. He made a point of it, who
Speaker 1: lock the door and we will be alone? What would
Speaker 1: you do that one we were in love? What do
Speaker 1: you think we did? The bed was the heart of
Speaker 1: the home. You know. He had a TV and we
Speaker 1: were watched nineteen forties Hollywood movies from the bed all
Speaker 1: night sometimes in between being in love and uh, we
Speaker 1: just talk. When I've been around birds, you said, why
Speaker 1: because all my life, when I was growing up, my
Speaker 1: brother had birds always and you have a tape one
Speaker 1: of those intimate conversations, mostly harmless, little birds, all of them.
Speaker 1: Where did you keep all of those birds? Isn't that
Speaker 1: pronounced a vary? Yeah? I don't know. Maybe I've been
Speaker 1: playing it wrong all my life. Where was that avery? Yeah?
Speaker 1: In our backyard? Wherever was you mean he had covered
Speaker 1: with glass or so there? Yeah? Wiing like sounds like
Speaker 1: Rebecca and Billy were together for years five years common
Speaker 1: law changed from seven to five. We legally fell into
Speaker 1: the common law married category, even though he proposed to me, wait,
Speaker 1: can you tell me that story when you when did
Speaker 1: that happen? Is this baby? Girls, you want to get married,
Speaker 1: if you want to have a baby, whatever you want
Speaker 1: to do. And it says when you make a first
Speaker 1: million dollars? Yeah, after the break the day that changed everything.
Speaker 1: First of all, it was two right, uh huh. And
Speaker 1: it was a summertime. Any idea of the month? Yeah,
Speaker 1: like me, June, you don't know the day. I've blocked
Speaker 1: it out to fully that My mind just blocked at
Speaker 1: the funk out And uh I was visiting Jade that evening.
Speaker 1: Rebecca remembers that in the early summer she was visiting
Speaker 1: a friend on set, and that she walked back almost
Speaker 1: four miles to the home she shared with Billy. And
Speaker 1: I come up to the storefront on Avenue where we lived,
Speaker 1: and there's orange, the orange tape all over and somehow
Speaker 1: it's open, as if a window is broken or something
Speaker 1: like that, because it was all open, and there's like
Speaker 1: twelve or thirteen overcoated dicks rummaging around in my house.
Speaker 1: By overcoated dicks, she means, the police. You could see
Speaker 1: them mealing around in our house and tossing ship and
Speaker 1: turning shipped upside down, our furniture, all our things, all
Speaker 1: our things is really every little thing is a very
Speaker 1: special thing, you know. And uh. I went to red
Speaker 1: on the corner of the news stand, the gay dude
Speaker 1: with the glasses and the red hair, with the cut
Speaker 1: off sleeve jeans jacket, and I says, what the fund
Speaker 1: is going on? And he says something happened and there
Speaker 1: someone was shot. And I went in there and I
Speaker 1: crossed the tape and they says, you can't come in here,
Speaker 1: and I says, this is my house. I need to
Speaker 1: change my shoes, and he says, you can't come in here.
Speaker 1: I felt like, I was so fucked up. I didn't
Speaker 1: know what was going on. And I went around the
Speaker 1: corner in our car, hit his car to Mercury and
Speaker 1: there's men crawling around in there. They were undercover dicks,
Speaker 1: and I said, I ran down the street. I said,
Speaker 1: get the funk out of our car. And says William Heinzman.
Speaker 1: Shot is shot five times and he's in such and
Speaker 1: such hospital. And I ran from one hospital to the next.
Speaker 1: I was on warrior mode, you know, in high warrior mode.
Speaker 1: I was really on a war path to get to
Speaker 1: Billy and to find out what the funk was going on,
Speaker 1: you know. In the next chapter of The Ballad of
Speaker 1: Billy Balls, Rebecca says goodbye to the love of her
Speaker 1: life and goes looking for answers. Crime town is Zack
Speaker 1: Stewart Pontier and Mark smirlin The Ballad of Billy Balls
Speaker 1: is hosted by me Io Tillet Right and made in
Speaker 1: partnership with Cadence thirteen. The show is produced by me
Speaker 1: Kevin Sheppard and Ryan Swigert. Our senior producer is Austin Mitchell,
Speaker 1: editing by Zach Stewart Pontier and Mark Smirling, fact checking
Speaker 1: by Jennifer Blackman. This episode was mixed by Sam Bear.
Speaker 1: Sound designed by Ryan Swigert and Sam Bear. Music by
Speaker 1: Kenny qc Yak. Our title track is Dark Allies by
Speaker 1: Light Asylum. Archival research by Brennan Reese. If you want
Speaker 1: to know more about my story, you can pick up
Speaker 1: my memoir Darling Days, or find me on the internet.
Speaker 1: Um Io loves You Everywhere Thanks to Drew Nellis, Jesse Rudoy,
Speaker 1: Ula Culpa, Jamie Raisin Wade Slipkin, Daniella Aria, rachel Leie Wright,
Speaker 1: Emily Wiederman, Green Card Pictures, Alex Weinberg, Alessandro Santuro, Bill Clegg,
Speaker 1: Shannon Funcius and Bruno Coviello, Ben Davis, Orn Rosenbaum and
Speaker 1: the team at Cadence thirteen, and of course, Rebecca, without
Speaker 1: whom none of this would be possible while and spout
Speaker 1: the thoughts out