We were now back off to the north-east and caught a flight back up to New York. I had a great take off as someone snapped a popper under my nose just as we left the ground. Yes, we were really rolling now, except Bob who kept to himself. I was quite pleased about this because, having seem him manic, it was safer this way. You see the song Death Trap, which was first played by Sonic Assassins and in which I played a part in its arranging, was based on an episode from the autumn before. Bob took a quite fast car on a trial run, with Jenny, a nice lady from our North Devon crowd. He drove it into a tree, wrecked it, and Jenny ended up with a badly damaged neck. In the dispute with the car seller which followed, Bob went round to his place, totally manic and threatened him with a gun, thankfully only a starting pistol. He was very lucky to escape arrest and a prison sentence and, it was a good song.
We landed, loaded into a couple of station wagons and set off for Long island where we were to play at My Father's Place in Roslyn. Now, this was a leafy suburb, quite historic, on the north shore of Long Island, quite different from other places we had been in and the venue was quite famous. It only held 400 people but over the years everybody from Springsteen to U2 played there. I managed to get a single room again and prepared for a good night.
I had slowly been upping my alcohol intake which, didn't mean spending much. I had discovered the art of getting fans to buy me drinks and was going for spirits rather than beer. Equally, I was managing to grab a bottle of bourbon from our free drinks package in the dressing room. As my alcohol (and drug) intake increased, my phone calls home decreased from one a day when we were first away to one a week by now. I explained to my wife that calls from hotels cost a bomb and she actually sent me some money to help me out. I can't remember how she did this but I think she phoned the band management office and asked them to give me one of my week's pay in cash rather than putting it in the family bank account back home. What a nice lady!
The actual gigs were also becoming a bit of a blur too, merging into each other, though I do remember arguments about the set list with the record company guys wanting us to concentrate on the last album and the band generally wanting to play what felt right on the night.
Hells Angels turned up at this gig, like they had at the Bottom Line. We had a lot of biker fans and they were sometimes quite scary people, not like bikers back in the UK. I remember in the dressing room at the Bottom Line. sharing a spliff with some Angels who were talking about how they threw a guy off the roof of a 4 storey building because he was from another gang or chapter. But here, they were more friendly-looking. After the gig, most the band were in discussions with such fans but a couple of us who had lined up groupies, grabbed one of the cars and set off back to the hotel in a white fairy land of frozen trees, rooftops and roads. I managed to do a huge skid with the car ending up facing in the other direction and then we decided I had to try and do it again. Fun and jinks in this middle class neighbourhood.
Breakfast was hard as I nursed a hangover and wished the girl I was with would shut up. In future, any such would not be invited to breakfast!! And, we had to hit the road to drive to Philadelphia where we would be staying just outside the centre. On the drive I remember this long discussion about a previous US tour when the band had had its lighting rig stolen from the truck it was in, a minor disaster. Then they had been offered a lighting rig for sale at a reasonable price and it turned out to be the same rig. But they had to have it. The burning issue was, how involved was Barney Bubbles who'd created and worked the rig? No-one could agree on his total innocence or vice versa.
We drove slowly down the turnpike (toll highway) to Philly and quickly found our hotel, another almost identical Holiday Inn with the usual electric shock you got when you put your key in the door due to the static from the poly-something carpets in the halls.
It'd become a habit for some of us to set out for the venues in one of the cars before we could be organised by Jeff Dexter, who by now was the subject of much of the banter and had been forced to back off from being too managerial, even with the crew. We got hold of a map of the city from the receptionist and drew a straight line from the hotel to Tower Theatre, our destination. I was driving and getting directions from whoever was holding the map. US city streets tend to be straight, mile after mile and you just get held up by red traffic lights and we were, at a crossroads in a crowded street where it suddenly registered that all the people on the street were black. And it quickly registered with them that we were white!! Teenagers started banging on our windows and the body of the car and we quickly locked all the doors. Some men then started yelling at us through the windows telling us to open up and some even started rocking the car. We could see a cop car parked up on the other side of the junction with 4 white cops watching what was happening but not moving. Then the lights changed and I put my foot down shooting off, clipping some of the men as I did so and we all laughed with relief and started joking as if we had not had our hearts pumping hard with fear.
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| Inside Tower Theatre |
We got to the venue with no more incident and it was the best since Chicago. It seated just over 3000 people and was clean and cool, with proper dressing rooms backstage. We were the middle group on the bill with a group called Godz on first and headliner's playing after us, the bombastic ANGEL, a group sharing management with KISS and seemingly on the verge of being huge. Neither of these bands seemed to want to mix with us and they both had so many keyboards it was ridiculous. And getting ready the Angel's stage set, including a large angel's head, meant a long delay between us finishing and them starting.
But it was a good gig for us. We had several people from the record company with us and they were saying we were going to blow everyone off the stage. I watched the Godz from the side of the stage and they were so pathetically ordinary, I knew we would be loads better. And we were, and we got a great reception and having left the stage the record company gave us all two lines of fantastic coke and we were back on again for an encore, and we didn't want to stop, and the crowd were going berserk, and I seem to remember the fire curtain being dropped to get us off. Absolutely brilliant!! I
was wired and having had a big glass of bourbon I went out front to watch Angel, being shepherded and protected by a very large, black bouncer with a contagious smile. The beginning of their act was quite spectacular and their light show was good but the music was too bombastic and I noted the keyboard player only touched 2 of his 7 keyboards.
Suddenly they were over, there was no encore and I was glad of the large and friendly bouncer as a crowd of people came towards me. I was off.
I think most of us got totally ripped together that night and I also discovered for the first time that excessive alcohol and cocaine didn't lead to good sex. No comment.
TO BE CONTINUED. Part 7. More sex, drugs and rock and roll in Boston.
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