by Richard Cole
In one memorable series of dates with Black Uhuru built around the Ruffles Reggae Festival, we began in Argentina and then spent time in Brazil, including performances in Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Brasilia. At Rio’s Copacabana Beach, the dark-skinned, topless girls on the sand were absolutely gorgeous, and were only too pleased to entertain us. Nearly every band on the festival tour took time for a bit of girl watching and sunbathing.
Leaving Brazil, we headed to England and then Holland to start the European tour. Our flight to London’s Gatwick Airport arrived late, causing us to miss ferry connections to the continent. That left us with some unexpected time to drive to Brixton, a Jamaican community where we could purchase some of the Carribean island’s imported goods and vegetables to take with us to Europe (it also gave me a chance to visit my mother for about an hour before heading off).
Touring with Black Uhuru was quite rigorous, and we barely had time to catch our breath. There were shows in Vienna, Brussels, and several cities in Holland, then we moved on to Oslo and down to Berlin (which had changed so much since I drove Ronnie Wood of the Stones there on a Creation tour in 1968—most notably, that awful wall had disappeared). From Berlin, the band traveled to many other European cities, including Hamburg and Florence, and then we headed back to London before jetting to the U.S. for shows in Washington, D.C., and Nashville, followed by dates in the Carolinas, Wisconsin, and Thunder Bay, Canada. We were always moving at breakneck speed, and by the time the band completed its last show of the tour in Chicago, we had covered thirteen countries, sixty-six cities, and 53,000 miles. But before we could even catch a good night’s sleep, Terry made an unexpected announcement: He had scheduled more shows for us, forcing us to head immediately for San Juan, then Albuquerque and a long list of other cities and finally end up in Hawaii for a couple performances and a little time to swim and sleep on the beach. I still get tired just thinking about it!
There were more tours with Black Uhuru over the next couple of years, and there was never a scarcity of surprises. At a date in Paris, our soundman never showed up, so we had to make the best of things ourselves. I paid the musicians a little extra cash to set up their own instruments, which kept their moaning and complaining to a minimum.
By the time we reached Toulouse, Terry called with some very bad news. He said that a protracted legal dispute over the ownership of the name Black Uhuru had finally been settled—and not in the current lineup’s favor. Duckie Simpson, one of the original members of Black Uhuru, had been awarded rights to the name—forcing an abrupt end to the tour. It was a sad evening for all of us.
When I returned to the States, it finally hit me how much I would miss the boys in this band, who had become such a joy to work with. I still keep in contact with some of them, and occasionally hear from Prince (the band’s drummer) and receive photos of his son, who is my godson and growing up wonderfully.
Before long, I went on the road with Miriam Makeba, a dignified artist who was respected worldwide both as a singer and a human-rights activist. In her home country of South Africa, she was considered royalty, and rightfully so. Miriam’s band was composed of talented and professional musicians from various parts of Africa, and they put on a wonderful show. It was a pleasure working for her.
But when the tour reached San Jose, I received a message from the hospital in England where my mother was being cared for. When I returned the call, I learned that Mum had passed away that morning, just a few hours after I had tried unsuccessfully to reach her by phone. I flew to London immediately, leaving the Miriam Makeba tour, which was nearing its end anyway, behind me. In London, accompanied by my friend Jenny Fernando, I arranged for a mass to be said for my mum. It was attended by friends, neighbors, relatives, and the kind people from the home who had taken such good care of her during her last years.
In 1997, I received an unusual request: Would I keep an eye on Robert Downey Jr. on a movie set, making sure he complied with a judge’s order to refrain from any drug use? Robert had signed an agreement with the court to have someone trustworthy with him at all times, who would inform the judge if he violated any of the drug-related restrictions placed on him. A member of Robert’s staff told me that if Robert drank or used drugs, and I didn’t report it to the judge, I would go to jail for protecting him. Not a pretty thought.
I caught a plane to Boston, where Robert was about to begin filming a Neil Jordan picture, In Dreams, with Annette Bening and Aidan Quinn, in Northampton. It was my first time on a film set since Zeppelin made The Song Remains the Same about twenty-five years earlier.
Robert turned out to be as pleasant as anyone I ever worked with. True, the early morning starts on the set were not my idea of a good time, and the weather was pretty miserable. But Robert was a joy to be around, and he and I soon reached an understanding of what my job would entail. I gave him a first-edition copy of Stairway to Heaven and told him, “As you’ll read in my book, I’m not someone who’s going to be fucked with. Even though it’s not in my nature to want to contribute to putting anyone behind bars, if you start drinking or using drugs, just remember that I’m not going to jail for someone else’s mistakes. So make sure you behave yourself while I’m with you, or I’ll have no choice but to call the judge.”
Robert was very professional on the set, always polite, always kind to fans, often signing dozens of autographs at a time. Everyone in front of and behind the cameras liked him. But it was hard to enjoy the experience too much once I had come down with a bad case of the flu. To compound my own misery, Northampton is not the most exciting town on the map; when I used to visit it with touring bands, we tried to leave as soon as possible after the show to find some happier hunting grounds. Fortunately, after a couple weeks—and quite a few sobriety meetings, which Robert and I attended together—the film’s cast and crew moved to the next location, Fontana Village, North Carolina. No one was happier about that change of scenery than I. Next we left the Carolinas for San Diego, where we met up with Robert’s wife, Debbie, and his son, Indio, and we settled in for a couple days of rest and relaxation before traveling to Mexico to complete the filming at the same studio where Titanic had been shot. Robert and I shared a two-bedroom suite at a Marriott hotel south of the border, and got to know each other a little better. He continued to be enthusiastic about going to sobriety meetings and staying on his recovery track. I was so pleased that he seemed determined to get it right this time. At the end of our trip to Mexico, early in the morning on Thanksgiving Day 1997, I delivered Robert to a treatment center in Malibu, where he would be living until his court appearance the next month.
More than a year later, I worked with Robert again. He called one afternoon to ask if I could travel to Pittsburgh, where he would be working with Michael Douglas on Wonder Boys. “I like working with you,” he told me, adding that he needed me on the set for about two months. Because the music-touring game had become so slow in early 1999, I figured, Why not?
I flew to Pennsylvania, and checked into the royal suite at the Westin William Penn Hotel, which was certainly much more luxurious than our digs in Northampton in 1997. Our suite had two bedrooms, a lounge, a large dining room, and a kitchen equipped with two coffee machines and a shelf brimming with Starbucks coffee. In those first hours in Pittsburgh, I had forms to fill out and phone calls to make, checking in with the insurance company that had covered Robert for the film. Until the movie was finished, I had to check in with the insurers every week, reporting on whether he was still clean (which he always was).
There wasn’t much to do in Pittsburgh except endure the freezing weather during the shooting of the night scenes, which often dragged on until the early hours of morning. Robert and I often slept late, but awoke in enough time to attend sobriety meetings held just a five-minute walk from the hotel.
Michael Douglas was always the gentleman, and on Robert’s birthday threw a dinner party for him at an elegant restaurant. At the end of the meal, Michael offered Robert a three-picture deal
with his production company as a birthday present—if Robert stayed sober. He handed Robert a beautiful ostrich-skin folder containing a copy of the deal, which was quite a generous and inspirational gift. While I was with him, Robert kept his commitment of sobriety.
When the shooting of Wonder Boys finally came to an end, spring had arrived and I was glad to be flying back to Los Angeles. Robert and I caught an 8:30 P.M. flight home, and that was the last time I saw him to this day. He is such a talented actor, has a wonderful sense of humor, and loves his son, Indio, dearly. But I know how difficult it can be to keep this awful disease under control. I wish him well in maintaining his sobriety.
In recent years, I’ve toured with a number of other musical groups—or at least was prepared to do so in one memorable instance. Eric Wasserman, Diana Ross’s business manager, called shortly after an announcement that Diana would soon be touring with two new Supremes. He asked me to shepherd the new girls on the tour, beginning with pre-tour rehearsals at a studio in the San Fernando Valley, and I agreed. (The nicest part was that the rehearsals were next to a studio where Ozzy Osbourne was preparing for his next tour—and Ozzy always had a cup of tea brewing, which was a nice way to start the day or evening.)
During the Supremes’ rehearsals, I kept hearing reports that ticket sales for the upcoming tour were lagging behind expectations. Still, it was a job, the money was good, and it sure beat being out of work.
As it turned out, I worked for the girls for only a few days before Diana and the other singers dropped a bombshell: They had decided that they wanted a woman to replace me. I got a call from Lars Brokar, their production manager in London, telling me that Diana had just agreed to a female tour manager for the girls and he would have to let me go. He offered his apologies.
Not long after my ties with Diana Ross and the Supremes were abruptly severed, my friend Jack Carson suggested that I call Dan DeVita, who managed Fu Manchu and needed a tour manager for the band’s European concerts. At almost the same time, I was also asked to work on Paul Rodgers’s tour. In looking at their touring schedules, it was clear that I could handle both gigs with no overlap of dates, so I accepted both.
Paul and I had known each other for many years, going back to the days of Swan Song Records and shared management with Peter Grant. It had been at least twenty years since I had last heard Paul perform with Bad Company. I let Chris Crawford, Paul’s current manager, know that I had been sober for fourteen years by then, quieting any anxieties he may have had that I was still the wild man of old. But although I took the job, I also felt disappointment knowing that we’d be touring during Claire’s graduation from high school. Claire understood that there was no way I could get home, and this was where the money for her future education would come from. (I was able to speak with Claire by phone when she graduated, and she was thrilled with the flowers I had sent; I was clearly a proud papa, with Claire not only winning many first-place awards upon graduation [for English literature, creative writing, and journalism], but also earning a scholarship to a top art college in Los Angeles.)
The dates in Paul’s tour were pretty much London-based, so to reduce hotel costs, my ex-wife Marilyn let me stay at her London home. (Most of the band members, including old friend guitarist Jeff Whitethorn, stayed at their own homes, and I would usually rent a car to take us to most of our performances in and around London.) There was plenty of nostalgia on that tour, including a show at the Cavern Club, the old home of the Beatles and a place I had not played since 1965 with the Who (when their incredibly loud music caused plaster to fall off the walls and ceiling!).
The day after Paul Rodger’s last performance, I got some rest and then headed for my gig with Fu Manchu and its tour of Europe, making some last-minute changes in hotels and travel arrangements during my first hours on the job. From the start, there were the usual snafus that seem part of any major tour, and that are well beyond anyone’s control. Early on, all nonlocal flights in and out of the London airports were canceled due to a major breakdown of the radar system, so the band couldn’t make its way to London from the U.S., necessitating canceling the opening show in Manchester. Fu Manchu ended up catching a flight to Dublin, and then boarding a commuter plane to Gatwick Airport, where I met them and got the gears in motion for a show in Southampton. Before long, we were in Germany, after which we drove over the Alps to the Milan airport to catch a plane to Lisbon. Thank God we used two drivers for this leg of the tour, or it simply couldn’t have been done safely (as it was, the bus broke down once during the trip).
Fu Manchu eventually made its way to Switzerland for a festival, then on to Bonn, Leeds, Liverpool, and Belfast. We had plenty of good times on that tour, but it wasn’t all fun and games. We were in Belfast at the time of the Orange Day parade in Northern Ireland, and there were bonfires in the street and extra police patrols right in front of the club where we were playing. In fear for our safety, the police closed the club early, cutting our set short for fear that the show would be impolitely interrupted by a petrol bomb thrown through a window. So it turned out to be an early night for us. All in a day’s work of a rock and roll tour manager.
Not long thereafter, I went to work for the Gipsy Kings, a group of brothers and cousins hailing from the South of France. On the tour, I oversaw their road transportation and hotels, and made sure all of their needs were met. It was a great five weeks living it up at the finest hotels—Ritz-Carltons, Meridians, and Four Seasons—not to mention almost a full week at the Rihga Royal in New York. I certainly enjoyed working with the Gipsys, even though they did not speak English very well and thus it was a challenge for us to communicate.
It took a little time for the Gipsy Kings to develop trust and faith in me, but after the first week, they asked Pascal, one of their managers, why they hadn’t had me on their team in the past, since under my guidance, their life on the road ran very smoothly. Pascal also asked me to look after their merchandise—a part of the job that I always found thoroughly unenjoyable—but almost everything else on the tour worked out fine. I was sorry it didn’t last longer.
By the way, it was amazing that I didn’t lose control of my waistline during the tour, since Pascal often had me take the band members to lunch before their siesta—and then there were dinner parties after each show that were always held at the best restaurants in town. It’s all part of the job.
As I write these final pages, I’ve been working as the tour manager for Crazy Town since the fall of 2000. My friend Tony Morehead had done a couple shows for this Los Angeles band, but had made a commitment to another group, so he asked if I’d be interested in taking over. The band’s manager, H. M. Wollman, a charming young man, seemed delighted when I spoke with him and told him about my fifteen years of sobriety. After all, some members of Crazy Town were newly sober, and he hoped I’d be a positive influence on them. So with his blessing, I went to work preparing for a tour set to begin in November. At the time, I knew almost nothing about Crazy Town, including the type of music they played.
Nevertheless, the band seemed pleased that I was on the job. Only a week earlier, I had spoken at a sobriety meeting that the recovering band members attended, so when they heard that I had been hired, apparently no one complained.
A week later, I went to the rehearsal studio to meet the band. But as I shook their hands, my first thought was, “What have I gotten myself into?” The band members had so many tattoos on their bodies that it was hard to see any skin. When they started to play, the music was so loud in that small room that my ears began to ache. I finally excused myself and left to get a cup of coffee, all the while wondering if I was really up to this anymore.
An hour later, I went back to the rehearsal studio, where only two of the band members—Squirrel (the guitarist) and JBJ (the drummer)—remained. We chatted for a while, and I gradually got to know them and the other boys. They were a few days away from shooting the video for their new single, “Butterfly,” and then we’d be heading for Oklahoma, the
first stop on their tour.
In that initial concert in Tulsa, Crazy Town was very impressive. I remember thinking, “I don’t know anything about hip-hop or whatever kind of music they’re playing, but the audience sure loves them.”
On the band’s website, one of the vocalists, Epic Mazur, says, “I don’t know what you would classify our music as. Sometimes you may think it’s purely rock, sometimes just hip-hop. But listening to the whole album, we’re expressing whatever kind of music through a hip-hop mentality. We’re some hip-hop kids that needed to rock, rather than some rock kids that needed to rap.”
That first tour with Crazy Town went smoothly from Tulsa to Atlanta, to Norfolk, supporting Orgy, and then on to Knoxville where we started a headline tour with Shuvel and Slaves on Dope. Crazy Town turned out to be a great bunch of guys, and the newly sober musicians among them went to meetings with me regularly. They seemed to get along well with one another, and would sometimes write and practice music in a studio set up in the back of our bus. Although I learned that the band hadn’t earned any gold stars for congeniality and good behavior on their previous tour, those antics had occurred when the group was using drugs, before they cleaned up. Since I’ve been with them, I’ve had no complaints about their behavior, nor has anyone else.
Next, the tour arrived in Lawrence, Kansas, which turned out to be a sweet little town with a sobriety meeting just minutes from our hotel that got us all on the right track. Then we moved on to a concert in St. Louis, which was the hometown of Trouble, one of the band members. While we were there, Trouble got to spend a few hours with his dad and show him how sobriety had changed him. I could see how proud his dad was (that’s always nice, since most of us junkies and drunks always end up hurting the ones closest to us).