As soon as I got back to Bean, I could hardly contain myself. I must have looked like a little kid at Christmas with the urgency to talk to him right away. No time to waste. I had already run some preliminary numbers and it looked like a very profitable idea, especially if the trial went on for a long period of time. When I finished my presentation, we went back over to Capitol Avenue to measure the streets and sidewalks to be sure we could build something special.
CSS started business in Little Rock and had a good working relationship with the city. The company had even custom-built the area in front of the Arkansas Old State House, where Bill Clinton gave his acceptance speech after being elected president in 1992. I wasn’t in Little Rock that night but watched all the festivities on TV and could see the great job the company had done. This was just going to be another feather in both our caps. Within a few weeks, Bean had approached the right city people with our idea. They gave us a permit to block the street and build a media compound. A day later, our phones started ringing with news outlets discussing our contraption.
I was in Bean’s office after lunch one day when the secretary came in and said there was someone on the phone from Australia wanting to talk to someone about the media compound. Bean told me to deal with it.
“Hello, this is Jerry. Can I help you?”
I noticed his accent right away and noticed some tiredness in his voice. A 17- hour time difference made it in the morning hours where he was. After my sales pitch, I started receiving calls from as far away as Tokyo and London. I was giving them all the same line. “Prices were coming soon along with diagrams of the compound. We will have a place for you,” I would say. If all conversations went this well, this could be better than I had imagined. I gave everyone the dimensions, explained there would be a roof to protect against weather, security, port-a-potties, etc. With the layout, we had more room for two separate towers similar to what CNN had requested.
Yeah. CNN. Forgot about them.
All seemed to be going well when I received a call from some lady from CNN headquarters in Atlanta. She was real pissy from the start of our conversation.
“Hello.”
“Do you have any idea what the hell you are doing?” she firmly asked.
I resisted being a smart ass.
“I’m not sure what you are talking about.”
“You don’t control the media. NO ONE CONTROLS THE MEDIA BUT THE MEDIA! You can’t charge space on your little riser for this! You’re not going to be able to build a riser when I am through with you!”
“We do have a permit, and we are providing a service to the media. We’re not trying to control them—”
“You don’t know who you are dealing with!” Click.
She hung up. “For fuck’s sake!”
The phone rang again. Someone else from CNN wanted to meet with us. The phone rang again. It was the New York Times wanting a quote about the battle to control the media at the trial. A couple of days later, the Times ran a little story how a scaffolding company was ripping off the media in Little Rock, Arkansas. That story got picked up by news services and sent around the world. Bad news for Little Rock. Bad news for us. One day, we were building stages and media risers and the next we were being chastised by the national press in our own hometown.
If the trial had actually come to pass, every news agency would have had a place on the riser. We’re talking more than a 100 anchor positions. They would have stood on a safe, engineered structure with safety rails and weather protection. And most important, everyone would have had a camera angle of the front door of the Federal Courthouse.
In the middle of this mess, Bean and I were then invited to dinner with a media representative by the name of Bill Headline. Seriously! Bean told me he was some bigwig media rodeo person that corrals the press when there’s some sensational event that draws worldwide attention. The guy who rodeos the media is named Headline. “Ironic,” I thought.
Hearing that name reminded me of a funny story centered on another name. A friend of mine who worked in a record company office in New York City once told me they got calls every day from people saying they had a demo and wanted to be the next big star. It was kind of funny at first, she explained, the things people would say to try and get the record company’s attention. But having to deal with it every day, all day long, it gets annoying. They had a code word they laughed about: Mercedes. They would tell these goofballs to send their stuff to Mercedes. Apparently, someone had made a comment about buying a Mercedes when they became famous, and it had stuck. So I was laughing at Bean telling him Headline is a “bullshit” name. He was swearing he’s a real person and smiling back at me. Sure enough we ended up at a table in an upscale pizza place on Kavanaugh in Little Rock with a man that was insisting his name was Headline. Bill Headline.
He was a nice enough fellow, but after we ordered he told us how it was going to be from his perspective as if he was already in charge.
“The media was not going to be corralled by you or anyone else, for that matter,” he explained to us.
We sat there and listened.
“I like your ideas, and maybe we can use some of your equipment, but definitely not on this scale.”
He said everyone would have a good camera angle, but no one would be able to rush to the door every time it opened and that had to be a possibility.
“That’s how the media get their stories,” he said. “By pressing the subjects. Putting pressure on them yelling obnoxious things to get them to respond with the wrong answers so the media can get more dirt.” He smiled as he finished.
He definitely didn’t like the idea that gave everyone an equal chance to hear everything. Only the major networks would have access to that sort of thing.
CSS still had the city permit. The city people could easily see how things were being manipulated. Between having all these media people dancing in the middle of Capitol Avenue every day during rush hour for who knows how long or having an organized event, we felt we knew where the city stood.
The garbage continued, and on Tuesday, March 10, 1998, a story ran on the front page of the B section of The Wall Street Journal. Right there in the same article was my name next to the Pope, Mother Teresa and Princess Diana. The article explained how the media were suffering financial loss and cutting back on expenses, and “Jerry Fitzpatrick, a scaffolding company manager,” was ripping them off believing they had bottomless pockets. Apparently, the American media had closed their offices in Paris for financial reasons, and it cost them an arm and a leg to go back and cover the Princess Diana story. Then they had been shamed into covering Mother Teresa’s funeral because they had gone overboard with the Princess Diana funeral. There were also the millions and millions of dollars the media lost when they had suddenly left Cuba after paying the Cuban Government for the rights to cover and broadcast the Pope’s visit there. Was that legal? The article itself explained how each of the networks had lost over $2 million they had paid the Cubans. To me, that was one of the biggest stories of my life. My dad had spent countless hours on alert status because of the Cuban Crisis, and the thought that Cuba might be loosening up its stance and allowing someone like the Pope to visit was very interesting to me. For the media to pull out and run to D.C. to cover a blow job story seemed pretty ridiculous in my opinion.
Sometime during the process, we were called into a conference with the city of Little Rock and Dale Nicholson, the top dog of the local Little Rock ABC affiliate KATV Channel 7. We being myself, Bean and Red, another guy who has worked production events in Little Rock. Dale had been a familiar voice at the affiliate for years and had worked his way up through the ranks. He had this deep baritone voice that is soothing and easily recognizable to everyone who has lived in Arkansas.
Dale walked in, avoided handshakes, sat down and got right to business. According to him, we were, as he pointed his finger at us, “ruining the city’s reputation” with the plan to corral the media. Over and over came freedom of the press
issues. Bean and I responded several times that we weren’t trying to control the media, only provide a service to them. Then he hit the exclamation point.
“No one works in my city without my approval. Period!”
Years ago, a couple of brothers started a sound company. Bean started the staging company, and a good friend named, Byl (pronounced “Bill”) Harriell had started a lighting company. All these guys knew each other and worked events and shows together for years. One day, rumor had it, Byl was arguing with someone over a bid dispute when he said, “No one works in my town without my approval. Period.” Occasionally, someone would make reference to it in a joke about something, asking if Byl knew of it or had given his approval. This is Byl’s town, so watch out. Byl even joked about it. So as soon as Dale said what he said, Bean, Red and I looked at each other and almost busted out laughing. I could hardly hold my tongue.
We all thought, “Does Byl know that?!”
What made it funnier was that Dale was so intent on himself and his point. I don’t even think he cared if we were in the room — after all it’s his town. He just kept explaining it was going to be his way in his town or no way. The city decided to take back our permit. It had become a public relations nightmare. A few days later Federal Judge Susan Webber Wright dismissed the suit when a settlement was reached between the parties. The trial never came to pass, after all.
Not long after that, the office pressure was getting to me, and the road was calling. With a pregnant wife and the possibility of seasonal lower wages, I hit the road to escape from the pressure. A coach company offered me a run with the first call. Getting back on the road has always been a good way to relieve life’s pressures.
Chapter 14 The Missed Beat
I never know where an entertainer or passenger might have me stop and what we might encounter.
Many types of people lease custom coaches and use them for different applications. Surprisingly, many folks use them because they won’t fly. It’s not uncommon for actors to take a custom bus when they travel across country from L.A. to New York City and back. John Madden, an NFL commentator, stayed away from airplanes and went via coach all the time, as do other prominent figures and Hollywood stars.
Such was the case with Lenny Kravitz. I had the opportunity to move him across country several times from Los Angeles to Miami, to New York and back to his various homes. On one drive to New York in the same Marathon coach that caught Mary Chapin Carpenter’s eye at the KSCS Country Fair in Dallas, Lenny requested we detour through Dallas. He went shopping in Deep Ellum and found a couch for his New York flat in Soho. It was a royal pain to try and figure out how to get a couch into the bay of a bus. It was even more of a pain to get it out of the bus while blocking a street in Soho in Lower Manhattan. The trip up the stairs and the elevator to the floor to Lenny’s place was not fun either.
One day on a ride, Lenny came up to the jump seat beside me and called Robert Plant to discuss Robert’s opening act position on an upcoming European tour. I couldn’t believe Lenny was talking to one of my heroes. Even more, I couldn’t believe Robert Plant was going to be opening for Lenny. In 1991 that was crazy to me. On another ride from Los Angels to New York City when we had taken a more northern route, Lenny came up to me as we neared Detroit and said, “Let’s go to Toronto.”
I took the necessary turns and crossed the border at Windsor to head for Toronto. Upon arriving we checked into a hotel and stayed until the following day. As we were leaving town and driving on Young Street, there was a young man with his drums set up on a street corner. The setup was similar to how a horn player or guitarist plays on the street with cases in front of them to collect tips. It was hard to miss the man’s music as he pounded on his drums. We headed up the street and Lenny yelled, “STOP,” as he came up from the back of the bus to investigate the rhythms.
I pulled over at the corner and put my flashers on. Lenny got out of the bus and went over to listen to the guy. He walked around the street man, putting his hand on his chin, standing, looking and listening. He would move to another angle and assume the same stance, hand on chin, looking and listening. After a few minutes, Lenny spoke to the man. The guy didn’t have a clue at the time who Lenny Kravitz was. I was sitting in my seat watching for the police to come and tell me to move. Parking on Young just south of Bloor Street is very limited, and I was thinking of things I could tell the police to stall them while Lenny did his thing. Suddenly, Lenny came back into the bus and as he passed me sitting in the seat, he said, “Help him get his drums in the bus. He’s going to New York City with us.”
He then disappeared to the rear lounge, his favorite riding place. I followed orders, helped the guy pack up his things and found a place for them in the bay. There was no tour manager to assist with any of the questions I had like whether this guy had proper credentials to cross the border. As we started to head out, Lenny came up to the front lounge and gave the guy a tape of a song and told him to learn it, that when we arrived in NYC he was going to have to play it, and if he did well he might be considered for Lenny’s touring band.
I was confused about Lenny’s intentions. I already knew that Cindy Blackwell was Lenny’s drummer for the upcoming “Are You Gonna Go My Way” tour. But that’s not my business. As we made our way out of Toronto after eating dinner, it was a little after 7 p.m. I headed for the border at Niagara Falls where I had made many successful crossings. The drive to NYC from Toronto is almost 500 miles. Driving at a comfortable speed would get me there around five or six in the morning before rush hour. Just the way I prefer it. That night, the border was no hassle. I think it was close to shift change. We showed our IDs and were allowed to pass without a major inspection. This was pre-9/11.
After Lenny gave the guy the tape of the song, he had retired to the back lounge again. The man put the cassette tape in the machine and started listening to the song. Within a few minutes he had gathered some of the pillows on the couch and started banging out the beats to the song. He sat on the couch in front of the stereo/cassette machine and played the song over and over and over trying to learn the licks. He finally passed out by 4 a.m. and I was happy to have some peace for the last few miles of the ride. More than 400 miles of “Are You Gonna Go My Way” being started and stopped over and over while this guy beat on the pillows was enough to drive me crazy for the night.
As we approached the city, I called back to Lenny and told him our location. He came up and sat in the jump seat and called Craig Ross, his guitar player, and Tony, the bass player, and directed them to meet him at the rehearsal studio where the band was practicing for the upcoming tour. Several techs were called to get the equipment fired up. The studio was in Hoboken, New Jersey, just outside the Lincoln Tunnel and traffic was picking up as we arrived just before 6 a.m. Craig and Tony arrived within a few minutes of our arrival, as did the techs. I went into the studio thinking this could be one of the greatest Rock ’n’ Roll stories in the making, a guy being a street player one day and the next drumming for one of the biggest rock stars in the world. And it was unfolding right before my eyes.
The guitar players warmed up a minute while the drummer did a couple of rolls on the kit that was already set up in the studio. Drums are like cars, I guess, and it seems strange to sit at a kit that is not yours, no matter who you are.
Lenny said, “Lets do it!” and started the intro to “Are You Gonna Go My Way.”
In my experience with Lenny, I had learned he could be a bit moody once in awhile, and as the guy missed the first intro everybody stopped playing. Lenny took his guitar off and slung it across the room and into a case that was sitting next to the wall. Several parts of the guitar broke off.
He screamed, “Fuck this shit.”
He yelled for someone to send “this motherfucker” home. Soon after, Lenny headed toward the bus and said for me to get him to his home in Soho. I never saw the guy again and have often wondered if he realized that he was one beat away from the big time and just how
big of a chance he had missed.
Chapter 15 Run For The Border
You never know when you’re going to get to work on a tour with someone you admire, but it happened to me when I landed the Lou Reed tour in 1989. I had been a fan of his hit “Walk On The Wild Side,” and “The Last Great American Whale” is one of my all time favorites. I also was excited to watch Rob Wasserman, who was going to play bass for him. Watching Wasserman up close was always a treat. The end of the run was going to culminate at Alpine Valley with a mini-festival featuring Cowboy Junkies, Edie Brickell and Elvis Costello.
The tour would only be about 35 days or so, and I knew some of the crew guys from other treks, so it looked to be an easy way to make some money and have a good time. We were going to start in the south and work our way toward Canada. I got to Atlanta in an older model Eagle bus the day before the first show at the Civic Center. Although Lou was a big star, he was working under some tight budgets this go round, so we had older model buses for the crew. Lou and the band would fly for most of the dates, and the crew would take to the road. Two drivers dropped out, and Jerry Harris and I were picked up. Harris was a good driver and a good friend and that made things even better.
After Atlanta, we actually took a dip south before heading up the East Coast. We headed to Orlando and then to Sunrise for a day off. With most groups working on a budget, the hotel rooms aren’t ready until at least after noon. Sometimes they can work you in. Most times they can’t. Corporate policy! It can be a pretty horrible wasting a day off waiting on a hotel room in Florida.
When we got to Sunrise, it was about 4 a.m. — no way we were getting in our rooms yet — so I headed over to the beach. Most of the guys on the bus were still trashed from drinks and drugs when we arrived at the beach, so we just hung out there until late morning. Watching the sun come up over the ocean made up for no hotel bed.
Tales from the Trails of a Rock ’n’ Roll Bus Driver Page 11