Fort Lauderdale Beach Legend Mickey Clean Really Was a Famous Punk Rocker

By 6:30 p.m., he's usually done ten or 12 portraits and bikes home for supper, picking up vegetables at the grocery store on the way. By 8, he's back down at the beach, making his same loop over and over. By 11 p.m., he's swaying and slurring and has beer stains on his shorts, but he still keeps most of the drunken bar patrons amused. By midnight, he looks something akin to a cartoon mouse that's fallen into a beer. On a slow night, Mickey might collect other people's half-finished, left-behind draft beers into a single cup, then down it in one swig.

One night at the Pirate Bar, Chrys the bartender and a pair of yacht salesmen try to estimate how much he earns. "He works from 10 a.m. to 3 a.m. sometimes," Chrys says. "You figure three or four dollars per picture. Sometimes double on weekends. He does at least 20 or 30 a day."

Photo courtesy of Mickey Clean

A teenaged Mickey poses next to a wall of skulls during a trip behind the Iron Curtain.

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One of the salesmen does the math in his head. "I wish I made that kind of money."

Mickey, however, won't discuss numbers. He says he doesn't consider himself a caricature artist. "I'm more of a comedian or a philosopher," he says.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of Mickey's crayon drawings dot the walls of bars up and down the beach. On a windy day, his sketches blow around sidewalks and onto the floors of beachfront stores.

But Mickey has ambitions well beyond this place. He has ideas. He has a CD he recorded nine years ago. He wants to play music again. He wants to sell a comic strip character he created — named Rodney the Rodent, it's a vulgar, crudely drawn, standup comedian version of Mickey Mouse.

"It's not too late for me to make it big," he declares, stopping to add the word "again."

Fort Lauderdale's Victoria Park is a quaint, picturesque neighborhood just a mile or two west of the beach. Its blend of unique and historic architecture attracts young professionals, well-heeled families, doctors, and lawyers. The home next door to Mickey Clean's is a massive, multimillion-dollar mansion. Comparatively, Mickey's house is modest: a single-story turquoise structure with white trim and a lush yard. The paint on the picket fence is chipping, and the ornate tiles in the front yard are faded and dirty.

He lives with his wife, Cathy, a former model and actress. They've been together for four years, but she's known him for decades. "I'm his biggest fan," she says one afternoon at their house.

In the living room, a ray of sunlight shines over a flickering black-and-white TV, old Christmas lights, a ruffled sofa, and dusty photos on the mantel. The house smells a little like cats.

If Mickey Clean is to be believed, 40 years ago, he was an art prodigy in Boston. Then he fronted one of the first punk bands, rocking audiences, owning the stage like nobody had before, inspiring the likes of Steven Tyler and Iggy Pop. "They know who I am," he says. (Neither musician's representatives could confirm this.) To hear him tell it, he was a pioneer of punk.

"I was big," he says. "I was huge. We were headlining at the Rat in Boston — that's the birthplace of punk in America." His words come out in a swaying, manic procession as he leans over a dirty canvas with a broken frame sprawled out in the backyard near five empty beer cans and a blooming tomato plant.

Born 60 years ago in the Bronx, Michael Cleanthes was the youngest of four siblings, eight years younger than the next oldest. His father, a Greek real estate magnate who had a lot of government contracts in New York, and his mother, the daughter of Greek immigrants, divorced when he was young. Mickey could barely read or write, but he could draw and paint better than any kid in school.

As a teenager, he fell into the drug scene in New York, doing more acid than pot, he says. At 15, he ran away to live in an ashram in Greenwich Village. When Mickey was 16, his father sent him to live with his mother in Greece. He says he took a school trip into the Soviet Union, where he was nearly detained by Soviet soldiers with machine guns. He says he even handed out American rock 'n' roll albums to some of the Russian kids when the guards weren't watching. The entire story sounds like a typical bullshitter's yarn — but then Mickey produces a few old photos of his teenaged self with friends and a teacher, standing next to murals of Soviet propaganda and young soldiers holding Kalashnikovs.

After high school, he says, he studied art at the prestigious School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and graduated the five-year program in less than three years. (The school confirmed his attendance in the late '60s.) Then he says he taught at Harvard University. (A university representative confirmed he was once an adjunct instructor.) He was offered an artist's grant to tour Europe, but instead, he used the money to buy instruments.

"I had just got back from Europe," he says. "So I started a band with my friends."