I stuck with my health kick, yet everywhere I went in LA there was a certain ceremony one had to go through. Instead of being invited to have a beer, your host would offer up a line of coke.
Diane and I went for a meeting with a certain LA producer. We met in his studio on a beautiful Los Angeles afternoon. The producer offered Diane and me a line of LA’s finest. Initially I declined; I was still very wary of this stuff. But I caved in and after two or three lines I was telling the big time LA producer my life story. I couldn’t stop babbling.
I finally ended up meeting Dallas Smith and decided that he was the right man for the job.
Dallas had worked on all the big hit singles for the blues band Canned Heat, along with an impressive résumé of prestige acts. He ‘got’ musicians; all the top players in LA loved him. Dallas introduced me to some of his mates—Bill Cuomo, who had co-written the number one ‘Bette Davis Eyes’ and was the top keyboard player in America; Ralph Humphrey, drummer for jazz great Chick Corea; Jerry Weems, Edgar Winter’s guitarist; along with Dennis Belfield, who’d played bass with soul diva Chaka Khan’s band Rufus. Gary Mallaber, currently Van Morrison’s drummer, who’d played on Steve Miller’s hits, also joined up. All big names, all great players.
I was happy to work with this bunch of Americans and see how my music would develop. Given that I had a lousy budget of 36 grand, most played for pocket money. Because I was a bit over-awed, I let go of the reins and the project took off on a course of its own. Despite this, Hearts on the Nightline was one of the happiest recording sessions of my career.
These guys were true musos, the real deal. For them, it wasn’t about the money—luckily for me. They realised that anything could happen with the recording; it might be a hit, it might be a flop, but they were in for the ride. These players instilled the best values in me.
On Michael Hegerty’s advice, I imported an Aussie keyboard player called Bruce Haymes. Eccentric didn’t do Bruce justice. The day he arrived in Los Angeles, we were all busy in the studio and couldn’t catch up with him until later. Bruce opted to do the tourist thing and took himself off on a bus trip to see the sights. From his seat at the back of the bus, he began to notice that white people seemed to be disembarking and more and more black people were boarding. He wasn’t sure if he was imagining it, but ripples of laughter seemed to be directed at him by the other passengers.
Finally, a black dude down the front yelled out: ‘Hey, ya honky motherfucker! Ain’t you on the wrong bus?’
‘Who me?’ Bruce replied in astonishment.
The black passengers broke into hysterical laughter. Why wouldn’t they? The bus had just rolled into Watts, the infamous black ghetto and sometime racial battleground. Bruce finally found his way back to the relative safety of the city.
Back at the studio, someone gave me a joint of Mexican weed.
‘Be careful,’ I was warned. ‘It’s absolute feeelth.’
I waited till late that evening, when the band had gone, lit up and settled in to watch the late movie. The dope was so strong I was almost hallucinating; I was glad to be in the security of my living room. Then a strange light, like an alien spaceship, enveloped the block where I lived. I heard the sound of a helicopter getting closer. Suddenly, two uniformed cops kicked in my front door and held pistols to my head. I almost had a cardiac arrest.
‘You fuckin’ motherfucker, get down on the floor!’ they screamed at me. ‘Get down on the floor, you fuckin’ fuck!’
There was pandemonium; it felt like the helicopter was 2 metres above the house. There was a lot more screaming and swearing, before sanity prevailed.
‘Oh, sorry,’ the two dumb cops said to me, as they ran through the kitchen, across the backyard and over the back fence. Turns out I wasn’t the armed burglar they were chasing; just some seriously stoned muso watching TV.
Chuggie’s housemate Kevin Borich, meanwhile, was finishing a night of recording at Cherokee Studios in LA. Everyone was wired; they had to wind things up that night. Kevin had an American keyboard player, Rick, rushing through final keyboard parts and mixing the record on the run. Rick was out in the studio when a strange portly man, unshaved and looking like hell, walked through the front doors of the building and out into the studio. Rick immediately recognised Beach Boy legend Brian Wilson, and greeted him accordingly. He was royalty.
Wilson stood out there in the studio with glazed eyes staring straight at Rick. He muttered: ‘Do you wanna do it?’
‘Sorry, Brian—do what?’ Rick replied.
‘Do you wanna poo?’ asked Wilson.
This turned out to be some illogical ‘poo’ game, but hell, it was Brian Wilson.
‘Okay,’ said Rick.
‘POO!’ Wilson yelled back. ‘Now you do it.’
Rick and Brian played this weird game while Kevin’s band rolled around the control room in hysterical laughter. After about 20 minutes, Wilson turned and calmly walked out of the studio.
Only in LA.
As you would imagine, living in Los Angeles for any extended period takes on an air of fantasy. Even a 3 a.m. trip to the supermarket is like a ride at Disneyland; there’s plenty of fascinating characters to be found 24/7.
We got quite a gang happening during our American sojourn. Ian Smith, who managed Australian Crawl and had tour managed me in Australia, was there, along with Noddy O’Donnell, my lighting roadie. We’d head off to Disneyland and jump on the thrillseeker rides; the Space Mountain, an indoor rollercoaster, was a particular fave. We used to love having ‘greenhorn’ visitors over from Australia and introducing them to these wild rides. Then we’d introduce them to the grub in the bottom of a tequila bottle. My specialty was a Pina Colada, which the Aussies would swill, unaware that the local Bacardi rum was 180 per cent proof.
Photography had become a real passion for me and I began experimenting with infrared nighttime photography. Diane and I would drive up to Zuma Beach or Laurel Canyon, and diligently set up a tripod and take weird photos with extreme exposures. We took a shot of me looking out over the San Fernando Valley from the Hollywood Hills. In the pitch black of night the lights of Los Angeles shone right through me; it was a fantastic, surreal concept.
When the shot was developed I contacted Graeme Webber in Melbourne to come over and take the shot professionally. Graeme had never been to the States before and we spent a few fun days running around LA. We did the whole Kerouac thing, getting stoned and driving around the city looking for B-grade movie scenarios and eating grubs out of tequila bottles. A very exhausted photographer came away with the photo that can be seen on the cover of Hearts on the Nightline, an image I love.
Michael Hegerty, Diane and I decided to live permanently in Los Angeles. Chuggie had returned to Australia, as had KB and his band, and we became more estranged from Australia as the weeks grew into months. Chuggie would call and suggest coming home, but we were now comfortable with Merv Goldstein and Peter Burke and had started to network around the LA scene. Rick and Michael were earning good money playing in various bands around LA and I was feeling very much at home.
I had a meeting with Clive Davis, the industry immortal who had discovered Aretha Franklin, Paul Simon and many others. Clive was staying in a bungalow at the legendary Chat
eau Marmont—aka the ‘Hotel California’—and Merv dropped me off with my guitar, on Clive’s request, and directed me to the bungalow. I sat nervously in the elegant living room; Clive was on the phone in the bedroom. When he finally made his grand entrance, all he wore was a very elegant, expensive dressing gown, so short it could have been a gentleman’s smoking jacket. Way too much of Clive was exposed.
Okay, I thought to myself.
‘Play some of your songs,’ he requested.
This would have been a perfectly good idea except for Clive’s constant interjections. He happily told me he did this with all his acts; in fact, he’d just dumped a major act from Arista who failed to follow his musical directions. The poor bastards. I wasn’t stupid and was less than impressed by Clive Davis, as famous as he was. I left the bungalow feeling rather indifferent about the whole thing.
Merv was waiting for me in the lobby with an old friend of his, Don Adams—yes, that’s right, Maxwell Smart, Agent 86, the TV star. We had drinks and a hilarious ride home with Don, who was the living embodiment of his alter ego. He was incredibly funny. He kept asking me deliberately inane questions about Australia and, I suspect, cocking up Australia’s geography. Imagine having that conversation with Maxwell Smart and you’ll understand how funny it all was.
Money started to become a real problem by mid-1979. Something of a cold war broke out between Goldstein and Chugg, leaving us all in a very uncomfortable position. Chuggie returned to LA and invited Diane and me up to our favourite spot, an A-frame holiday house on Big Bear Mountain, just south of LA. It was snowing and Chuggie seemed in an especially affectionate mood. I’d soon find out why.
I became ‘Rich’ and he became ‘Chuggo’ and I felt myself getting suckered once again. After a bit of a drinking session, ‘Chuggo’ thrust a contract at me. It was an arrangement with Zev Eizik, a Melbourne promoter. The plan was for me to do a short but lucrative tour of Australia, a high-profile run of dates, with a guaranteed profit of 100 grand. I was tired, a little drunk—and broke—and reluctantly agreed.
I was going back on the road.
As I began to audition back-up singers and guitarists, I realised just how awesome LA really was. It was a musical Mecca. Merv lined up the finest female singers for me, all these amazing women, including Claudia Lennear (who’d been on Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour) and the two women from The Babys, who’d just had a smash with the song ‘Isn’t It Time’.
Somehow, they were all ready, willing and able to come to Australia with me for just $A150 per week.
As tempted as I was, I decided to take a different approach, and hired Chris Pinnick, an LA native who’d played guitar on ‘Ace of Hearts’ on my album and would soon join Chicago, and a well-known sax player. Diane would stay as back-up singer, just as she’d done back in Australia.
We fitted out the garage and began daily rehearsals. I continued to write and also did a bit of recording on a primitive four-track machine.
Very reluctantly, we all began to pack up the house and prepare for the long journey home. It may well have been the worst move that I have ever made.
Arriving back in Australia in winter 1979 felt very strange. Chuggie put us into a hotel in Macleay Street, Potts Point, and we were introduced to ‘Scrooge’ Madigan, our tour manager, who I suspect was employed more to look after Eisek’s and Chugg’s interests than ours. On the advice of Michael Hegerty and Diane, I set up a company called Gypsy Music. The three of us were directors.
Chris Pinnick, the American guitarist, became a rare highlight on one of the most traumatic tours of my life. He’d never set foot outside LA before, and quickly decided all Aussies were ‘bozos’ (as in the clown). Just shows how tolerant we are—the reverse would get you killed in the States.
Thankfully for good ol’ Chris, not only did he get away with his outlandish behaviour but somehow he endeared himself to every Australian he met. Except for Scrooge, as it transpired.
After endless ribbing from the Australian contingent about dangerous crime in California, Chris would usually awake around midday with a big hangover, then bang on my door carrying a newspaper. Every day it seemed that Chris would find a story about a headless corpse in Sydney Harbour, or a torso in the boot of someone’s car—ghastly crimes being committed right here in our home town.
I’d met the sax player in Los Angeles. I’d never worked live with a sax player, and I just didn’t realise until he arrived in Sydney what a handful he was; he’d kept his bad habits well hidden back in the States. Now he was disappearing every night and zeroing in on the seediest haunts all over Kings Cross.
Chuggie decided to hire bodyguards, as the sax player was turning very self-destructive. But while two burly men guarded his hotel room door, he crawled down a drainpipe from many floors up and escaped back to the Cross. The man was out of control.
On the eve of my first sell-out concert at the Sydney Opera House, Chuggie convinced me to have my hair quite short and dress in an elegant white suit.
His intention was to promote me as a serious ‘adult contemporary’ artist, back from LA with a whole new persona. I went along with his plan.
The sax player seemed fine during the afternoon soundcheck; we all crossed our fingers, hoping the show would be problem-free. Indeed, the concert started in a very sophisticated fashion; everyone, including the sax player, behaved themselves impeccably. Yet somehow he managed to find drugs and booze somewhere. He bounded back out on stage about an hour into my very polite concert and started abusing the audience.
‘C’mon—pretend you’re all hippies and hold your hands above your head and clap your hands!’ he yelled, berating the Opera House crowd.
I found the whole incident very embarrassing—I was a hippie and so was my audience. He was sent packing back to America the next day.
American singer/songwriter Tom Waits was at the Opera House show. I bumped into him backstage, a full bottle of Scotch in my hand. I moved to shake his hand but he grabbed the bottle instead, sculling the lot. Tom then proceeded to talk to me very articulately about how much he’d liked the show, about life, songwriting and the whole damned thing, without showing the effects of the bottle he’d just demolished.
The sax player wasn’t the only drama I had to contend with on my return to Oz. I began a feud with Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum. I’d never been a darling of the Countdown mob. I had no respect for the local pop marketeers; I just couldn’t forgive them for feeding Australians a diet of pure pop candy and rejecting any music with credibility, intelligence and validity. Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Steely Dan and to a lesser degree, the Eagles, the Doobie Brothers and even Fleetwood Mac were given relatively scant regard by the Countdown mafia.
I think pop music is lots of fun, but watching Countdown was like going to the Easter Show and eating only fairy floss. I may have had my disagreements with Festival Records, but they wielded a lot of power and Countdown was forced to accept me on the program. Reluctantly.
The band and I were staying at the Southern Cross Hotel in Melbourne and we were scheduled to appear on the show. We’d played a fantastic sell-out gig the night before and Chris Pinnick had had a huge night out. It was Countdown time and Scrooge the tour manager was losing patience trying to wake Pinnick. We arrived late for rehearsal, about 2 p.m.
Molly was waiting for me and launched into a tirade before I’d even located my dressing room.
‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he screamed at me. ‘You’re fucking fired, and we will never have you on this show again!’
I did my best to placate him. I agreed that we were less than professional being late for rehearsal and deserved to be axed from the show. I hoped that when this had all calmed down we could reschedule for a later date. But the more I tried to placate him, the more hysterical he became. I left the ABC studios thinking I’d never play Countdown again.
Just as I was leaving my hotel room that night, a journalist friend of mine, the music writer for the Age, phoned. He started pushing me for a comment on the drama.
‘I just want to let sleeping dogs lie,’ I replied. ‘Let it go.’
I was late for the gig and finally, out of exasperation, I launched into a tirade of my own, a savage indictment of Countdown. I challenged their right to ignore rock, a genre of music that had the biggest audience of all, bigger than pop, classical and others combined. Countdown virtually ignored all credible music. Unfortunately, my rant hit page two of the Age.
A short time later, Molly, to my surprise, asked to have me back on the show. When I arrived, Meldrum came out to greet me. He said he’d been very upset by the stories in the press and insisted that I owed it to him to do a live interview on that night’s show. I resisted initially and, in the nicest possible way, suggested that any further aggravation would stir the tabloid press up even more.
The Best Years of Our Lives Page 13