The band and crew, unaware of my distress, were having a merry time when a second fight broke out, this one involving two bouncers, culminating in them standing on me as they waited for the police to arrive.
Handcuffed in the back of the squad car, I forced my hands out of the cuffs, rolled down the window as the officers were taking down details from the security, and said, “Excuse me, officer, I believe these are yours.”
The Memphis Police, not known for their ribald sense of humor, dragged me out of the car, recuffed me with my hands behind my back, and put my ankles in shackles too. It was all a bit of a frenzied blur after that, but I guess I freaked out and kicked the windows out of the back of their cruiser.
The night in jail ended with Stan bailing me out in the morning, with Scotty in tow. Dave Hill came to my room, where I was feeling remorseful, my wrists swollen and bruised very badly.
“We’re not going to mention this ever again,” he said. That sounded fine to me. I wanted to forget about it myself.
I did the show that night, tail between my legs, and, thankfully, nobody mentioned it—or looked at me, for that matter. I think the whole band thought it was bang out of order, as it would have been the first show we would have ever canceled. (I say “would have”—I never cancel.)
But the next week, the incident was reported in Rolling Stone magazine for the whole world to see, and I found out that, in the crazy world of rock and roll, embarrassing incidents like that actually bump up your rock credibility and add mythical status to a reputation.
(The most embarrassing part was going back to Memphis for the court case. They dropped the “drunk and disorderly” charge, leaving me only with “destruction of public property.” Now, I ask you, why would I have done that if I wasn’t drunk? It gave the wrong impression altogether.)
The good thing to come out of that night in Memphis was someone putting “Brass in Pocket” (never my choice) on the jukebox, despite all the mayhem in the bar; I realized that, once again, Chris Thomas was right—this time about keeping the vocal up in the mix, something we’d argued bitterly about. It really did cut through and you could hear it over all the bar noise.
Scotty didn’t last much longer. I watched him a few nights later through the back window of the bus, getting smaller and smaller, waving frantically through the falling snow in the dark where we left him on the side of the road at the Canadian border.
33
THE LAST SHOW
We went back into the studio with Chris Thomas, a little less the fresh-faced bunch than before. We’d taken a battering in all the obvious ways—a bit ravaged from all the touring—but it was still early days and we still wanted it. We recorded some songs in Paris, among them “Message of Love” and “Talk of the Town.” I felt at home in Paris.
Dave Hill was panicking, desperate to get a second record out, but I didn’t have the songs written yet. I hadn’t had the time. I thought writing on the road would have happened, but it never does. Every songwriter thinks touring is the place to write and will often set up the back lounge on the bus for it. Never happens.
I rarely ran ideas by the band at soundchecks because I was too neurotic about strangers listening—I’d even had policemen thrown out of the venue before. Unless we were faced with the actual audience, I hated having an audience in or out of the studio.
The management was so desperate to get a record out that they jumped the gun by releasing an EP of the stuff we were working on for the second album. Americans had never heard of EPs (a record with about five songs on it), which were common in the UK. We released it in the US and called it Extended Play to let the Yanks know that it wasn’t an album, but it was a mistake: they thought we’d gone soft in the head by releasing our much-anticipated second album, Extended Play, with only a handful of songs on it.
The band had befriended tennis-player John McEnroe, who was taking Wimbledon by storm. I never joined them, not being a sports fan, so I hadn’t met him myself, but knew he was a rock fan and always up for hanging out with musicians—especially the Pretenders, who really were a riot.
One morning, in a cab on my way to Wessex Sound Studios in Highbury, I heard an English news presenter report one of John’s outbursts on the radio. He’d shouted at the umpires, saying, “You guys are the absolute pits of the world!” I thought it was funny hearing the very American rant spoken in a proper English accent, and walked straight into the vocal booth and started the song “Pack It Up” with it. John thanked me for it later. Apparently, it cheered him up after getting fined $1,500.
—
The second album cover caused a ruckus between me and Dave after someone at the record company airbrushed the cover photo. I hated how it looked so glossy and fake. But all the airbrushing in the world couldn’t conceal the green pallor of smack that had claimed the face of our soon-to-be-defeated bass player.
After we’d released “Stop Your Sobbing,” a publisher sent me a cassette of “I Go to Sleep,” the original demo, just Ray Davies singing and playing the piano. None of us had heard the song before. We were enthralled to hear the nineteen-year-old Davies singing this early offering. We recorded it, adding the sultry French horn.
Lisa Robinson and her husband, Richard, were American journalists for Hit Parader, and they knew everyone. When we were having “our fifteen minutes” in New York, Lisa called me in my hotel room and asked if there was anyone I wanted to meet while I was there. Earlier the same afternoon, I’d spoken to Dianne on the phone. She’d moved to New York around the time I’d taken off to the UK. She’d been sitting at a table next to the window in a pizza joint enjoying a slice, when who should walk by? Ray Davies. Well, why not? Lisa was delighted to assist. She arranged a rendezvous in a place called Tracks. Later that night, he and I met in the noisy club. He asked if I wanted to go to a newsagent with him, as he wanted to know Arsenal football club’s results. I saw him every day after that, whenever we were in the same town, but we were not suited to each other.
We’d always laugh after the fact about the absurdity of our fights, but there was nothing funny about them. We went in New York to Peppermint Lounge one night to see Junior Walker & the All Stars and walked out after a bout of jaw-dropping proportions.
We went to see Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton onstage doing Private Lives. Compared to the two of us, Liz and Dick’s onstage outbursts seemed like the picture of compatibility.
I kept going back into the ring, so to speak. After all, he was handsome, funny as hell, smart and interesting—he was Ray Davies!
One day, in a rage, I threw some new shirts I’d just bought him, still in their wrappings, out the window. We both leaned out the window and watched as they descended the five floors and hit the ground, bouncing across the pavement below, beautiful pin-striped shirts with white collars—the kind he looked so good in. I suppose one of us would have traipsed down the stairs to retrieve them, but before we got the chance an old tramp appeared, stopped in front of the scattered, unopened packages, stooped over and popped them under his tatty old mac and kept walking, now with a little bounce in his stride.
Ray often likened himself to a tramp, so it was particularly apt to watch this comic drama from on high. I tried my hardest to remain angry but the tears of laughter came. Ours was a battle of wills.
—
If the band were playing near Akron the band and I would stop by my parents’ house, and my dad and Martin would go for a walk out in the woods to look for hawks. Martin was an authority on any kind of wildlife and my dad was happy to have someone to take out in a field with a pair of binoculars.
My mom would make a carrot cake and everybody had a good time. Although I knew the Herefordian accent was barely decipherable to them, my folks beamed at this validation of my success. But I was always in a nervous state when I went home, knowing how much my folks hated it if they read any press with me swearing in it. Their disapproval was now mixed with pride. It was all too weird. Doing shows anywhere near Akron wa
s nothing short of traumatic; they were always in the audience and I felt so self-conscious that I’d slip up and couldn’t be my usual obnoxious self.
When we’d first started there was no MTV, but all that had changed and our profiles went skywards. The celebrity culture hadn’t yet enveloped every aspect of modern life and I actually thought I could remain low-key and avoid the fuss. It just wasn’t going to work out that way.
There was more touring: I was thrilled every time we got to a new place, my ambition to see the world coming to pass, but when a band is rolling out of a bus or airport and into a van, it’s not with the same wide-eyed delight as that of a backpacking reveller. I’d always thought traveling meant having no agenda, and that to see the world you had to be free to roam, as in my old Beat-informed romantic view of the hobo. The regimented routine of touring seemed unimaginative, and I would refer to it disparagingly as “the Boy Scouts.” Days off were more often than not spent in a hotel room with the curtains drawn, trying to recover from alcohol excess and the fraught attempts to sleep.
There is simply nothing worse than a band member bringing a “significant other” into the fold. It’s even more destructive than the general stupidity and absurd egos. When the dreaded outsider shows up, the whole dynamic gets thrown and everybody hates it, no matter what they say. (Remember those pictures of Yoko knitting in the studio and the look on the faces of the other three?)
Ray admired Jimmy and referred to him as “the Hook Man,” a veiled compliment meaning that Jimmy provided the hooks that transformed my otherwise ordinary songs into something else. Meanwhile, things were going downhill; the clichés were coming fast and furiously.
Stan Tippins knew more about the pitfalls of touring than any of us, having been in Mott the Hoople, but it must have been quite grotesque and depressing for him to see his young lads becoming depraved drug fiends in front of his eyes. And I was, surely by tour number two, a complete pain in the ass, the likes of which he had no experience of dealing with.
When we arrived at a hotel in LA and I couldn’t block the light out of my room, I ran down the corridor, screaming, “Get me out of here!” Stan had to usher me out and find a hotel where I could sit crying on the floor in the dark, surrounded by my notebooks.
Stan couldn’t understand the need for us to get so loaded and was often heard to say, “There’s nothing better than a nice, juicy pear.” We all laughed at him like he was “some dumb farmer” (as my father would say), but the truth was, we were getting worse.
I was a total prick when I was drunk; not a jovial, good-fun type, but a loudmouthed sadist who would taunt anyone before passing out, then wonder why everyone was keeping their distance the next day. Keeping tabs on me was probably as rewarding as stepping into a steaming dog pile, and you just never knew what I might drag home.
Pete was steadily getting worse and I just ignored his heroin shenanigans, regarding them as attention-seeking and pathetic. The guys were also appalled by his excesses and started to keep a wide berth. I discovered that guys never confront each other, preferring to say nothing—the opposite of girls.
Martin remained steady and tried to arbitrate as best he could, but he was chain-smoking, not great for the physical demands of a rock drummer, and he liked a drink too. Because he was thoughtful and a bit of a farmer himself at heart, the other two would habitually walk away from him mid-sentence, which they found hilarious. They could be mean fuckers. Dave would take them aside regularly and tell them, “Back off from Martin; he’s getting depressed.”
Jimmy was vulnerable to any pretty girl who wanted to latch on. He had an underager on the bus crossing state lines for a while, which could have jeopardized the whole tour. He was even more vulnerable to anyone who had drugs. He abhorred Pete’s fascination with smack but liked to get wrecked himself on whatever was going. Like all of us, after a few drinks—and Jimmy was always after a few drinks—he’d take anything offered him.
He was increasingly disgruntled with the tension between Pete and me. Every soundcheck became a battle for dominance, which I usually won. Pete would turn up the volume and I’d shoot him down in humiliating fashion. “Join a fucking heavy-metal band, for fuck’s sake!” We were at odds day after day, show after show—a soundcheck could leave him in tears.
There’s no way to undo things that have been said; time can’t heal everything. Jimmy hated it. He hated anything that got in the way of the music.
Everyone was getting out of control, and even our steady-handed leader Stan wasn’t impervious to the excesses of the road. He could often be found slumped over in a chair in a hotel foyer after a night of drinking. He’d have to check out the band, corral and get us into the van while brutally hungover, which turned the whole lot of us into sadistic little shits, as if he were headmaster and needed torturing. We even used a photo of him in a terrible state on our access-all-areas laminates.
Another one of the band’s favorite catchphrases was Stan’s oft-heard explanation: “Must ’ave been summut I ’et.” (Must have been something I ate.) But Stan wasn’t someone to cross if he was in an ornery mood. I remember him more than once standing at the top of the aisle on a flight, angling for a fight if an Elvis song came on the in-flight entertainment. Stan would be out of his seat faster than a dog, ready to sniff out anyone who might react favorably, because there was only one band you could truly love in Stan’s book, and that was Johnny Kidd and the Pirates. He saw Elvis as someone who had usurped Johnny Kidd. It was actually kind of scary to see him standing next to the toilets, foot tapping, just waiting for someone to sing along to Elvis so he could thump them. Jimmy would watch this display with rapturous admiration.
As far as rock bands went, it was all textbook stuff. But the fact that everybody in every band in history had gone through the same things didn’t make it any easier to assimilate the horror show of drug addiction. Alcohol was always in the mix too, the lethal ingredient, portal to the dark side, ever-lurking. The only reason we were still standing is that we had youth on our side. But as always, time was running out.
Making a point of never reading the press, I didn’t know how the second album was reviewed. I knew people still liked us and we were getting airplay with “Message of Love,” “Talk of the Town,” “I Go to Sleep”—and we had rockers like “Bad Boys Get Spanked,” which were the heart and soul of the band.
Jimmy went from strength to strength, and every guitar player in the world was aware of this new, rare talent. Nils Lofgren came to our shows to hang out with him, and Jimmy loved Nils, another guitar bore to clear a room with. Jimmy attracted them in every town. (It’s a shame he never got to meet Billy Gibbons of ZZ Top, because if those two had ever got in the same room together no one would’ve ever heard from them again and their conversation about string gauges, effect pedals, fret height and valve amps would probably still be in progress.)
We were doing a TV show in Germany and Van Halen was on the same bill. Jimmy and Eddie Van Halen talked guitars all afternoon, boring the pants off anyone still in the room. Jimmy was so excited to have this new guitar-slinging buddy that he insisted Stan get the organizers to arrange a hall—somewhere they could jam later that night. It seemed like Eddie had been guarded by his brother and his band, and didn’t get off the leash very often, so he was as excited as Jimmy by the idea of the jam.
We were all hanging around the suite in the hotel when we overheard Eddie on the phone to his wife, saying something that would elevate him in the eyes of the band for its definitive catchphrase content: “No, I’m not having a good time!”
The band loved that, and it was referred to endlessly from then on. It was always necessary to play down any merriment when a guy called home to an overworked wife dealing with the domestics on her own.
“No, I’m not having a good time!” was a classic.
As evening approached, Stan had it all arranged, a hall secured for the night. Eddie was primed and ready to go in for the historic jam session as promised, but b
y then Jimmy had passed out in a chair and couldn’t be roused, his tooth dangling and mouth gaping, snoring like an old man.
I wasn’t in better shape than the rest of them, I must admit. Once, in New York, after crashing a Johnny Thunders show, where I ended up on the floor of the stage crying and calling the audience complacent hippies (which they weren’t), Thunders collared me the next day and told me, “Chrissie, man, you’d better do something—get your act together.”
Thunders himself had a big purple lip at the time, having fallen down a flight of stairs. I knew I was in trouble if he, of all people, thought I was.
—
After a show in LA, on our final American tour together, the guys went off to party with John McEnroe while I stuck around, talking to John Belushi, the beloved comedian who came backstage to tell me that his mother was from Akron.
I told him I was having trouble dealing with all the attention I was getting, and he tried to convince me that if I wore sunglasses in a photo, the press wouldn’t use it. That sounded a little far-fetched to me, because in every picture I’d ever seen of him, he was wearing sunglasses. He asked if I wanted to hang out with him for the night, so we climbed into a white limo together and took off.
Our first stop was in some bar on the Sunset Strip, where he introduced me to Jack Nicholson, who was lovely—exactly the Jack Nicholson you’d expect. It was very low key, not a crazy party, so we had a few drinks and I relaxed. The next stop was up in the Hollywood Hills.
“You gotta meet Tim,” said John.
Timothy Leary answered the door naked. Most guys would have reached for a pair of shorts, but not Leary; he ducked into the next room and came back buttoning up a shirt, still sans pants. He walked around like that until it just seemed normal. The last thing I remember about that night was swallowing a pill he gave me. C’mon! It was Timothy Leary—to say no would have been out of the question.
Reckless : My Life As a Pretender (9780385540629) Page 26