by Rick James
When the dope ran out, the dealer told me he’d give me a free resupply if I helped him break into this super-hip boutique. He knew where we could fence the mod clothes for good bread. My man promised there wouldn’t any problems—the back window would be easy to unlock and there were no alarms. All that proved true. I did the job, copped the clothes—keeping some choice items for myself—and stayed stoned for another week. After the high wore off, I hit a new low. I wanted to play music but it seemed like the city that had once been in love with Little Ricky, the Sailor Boys, and the Mynah Birds no longer gave a rat’s ass about me.
“Home so soon?” said Mom when I returned from Canada after just a month.
“It ain’t happening there,” I told my mother.
“Then where is it happening?”
“L.A.”
“Oh, baby, California is such a long way off. How about New York?”
“Well, maybe I’ll try Florida first. Maybe I’ll take a run down to Miami.”
“What’s down there?”
“A buddy from high school—you remember Big Red—he’s living down there and says he can hook me up at Criteria Studios. Aretha’s been recording there. So has James Brown. It’s a hot spot.”
“Just be careful.”
“I always am.”
I never was. Big Red, an albino brotha, was a major coke dealer who supplied the superstars in Miami. He had the run of all the studios and the minute I got off the Greyhound he took me to Criteria. First cat I met was Sam Moore, who was doing a solo album. When his bass player didn’t show up, I asked the producer if he had an extra axe. He did, Sam liked my playing, and suddenly I was gainfully employed. Criteria became my hang.
I crashed at Big Red’s oceanfront crib. I liked the beach scene. Big Red had all sorts of hot bitches, righteous blow, and mellow weed. He was convinced that his homeboy from Buffalo was gonna be bigger than Sly Stone. I loved his support. He’d never let me pay for a thing. Big Red was proud that his childhood pal could hang in the studio with the big dogs. At Criteria I got to play with Duane Allman and Steve Cropper, two superbad white-boy guitarists who showed me a slew of new licks. They were both brilliant. So was Cornell Dupree, maybe the slickest R & B guitarist ever. I spent days in the studio studying Cornell’s style.
Looked like Miami might work out. My chops were getting sharper, producers started calling me on a regular basis, and I figured soon I’d be able to bust out with my own material. Being a sideman was cool—but it wasn’t me.
Just when I thought I’d found a home in Miami, Big Red got popped. It happened on a Saturday. I’d been at Criteria and didn’t get back to the crib till midnight, when I saw four or five cop cars parked out front, their lights flashing. Man, that was a scary sight. I figured it was best not to go in. I figured right. That night I went to stay with another friend of Red’s, who told me it was a bad bust and that the police, who had the place under surveillance, were looking for anyone associated with Big Red. Since I’d been living with him for over a month, that meant me.
“What do you think I should do?” I asked.
“Get out of Dodge.”
Next day I was back on the bus to Buffalo.
“What now?” Mom asked when I got home.
“Not sure.”
“You’re still thinking California, aren’t you, baby?”
“You know me.”
“Well, if you gotta go, you gotta go. Just wish it wasn’t so far.”
Much to Mom’s credit, she didn’t try to hold me back. She cared more about my career than keeping me close to her.
“I’ll send for you soon as I get settled and get me serious money,” I promised.
“I know you will.”
“You’re just going to have to be a little patient.”
“I’m not worried about my patience, son. I got lots. I don’t mean this harshly, James, because you know how much I love you—but you’ve got the patience of a butterfly. The second you land on one flower, you off looking for another.”
CALI
Even though it was the end of the sixties when I got there, L.A. felt like the beginning—the beginning of something new and wonderful in my life. The hippie vibe had spread to L.A., where it took a different form than I’d seen in Buffalo, Toronto, and New York. To me, L.A. was Hippie Land. Hippies gave the city its flavor. There wasn’t the tension I’d felt back east between the hippies and the squares. Here the hippies blended. Maybe because L.A. was laid-back, everyone left the hippies alone. They were part of the landscape—like the palm trees and the hills, like the beaches and the valleys—man, the hippies were everywhere, especially on the Sunset Strip and along Hollywood Boulevard. Laurel Canyon looked like a camp for hippies. The cats had longer hair than the chicks; hardly any of the chicks were wearing bras under their tie-dyed tops; stoned-eyed guys were offering up free joints; stoned-eyed gals were offering up free love. Free joints and free love, not to mention the warm Cali sunshine, had me believing that the world was really changing. I was in a better place. All the bitterness I’d felt in prison, all that resentment built up during my days as a half-ass hardened criminal—it all lifted. L.A. was taking me to another place where it was all about peace and love.
My first day in L.A. was one mellow surprise after another. Bruce Palmer picked me up at the airport in a red Mustang convertible. The joints were rolled and ready to light.
“You need to meet Stephen Stills,” said Bruce. “Stills is the magic ingredient in our new band.”
I didn’t know whether I was included in the “our” or not. But the weed had me kicked back until I didn’t need to ask. Time would tell. It was just cool to be floating through the L.A. afternoon, feeling the mild ocean breeze and sweet sunshine in my face. I felt at peace.
“Peace, brother,” Stephen Stills said to me when he greeted me at the door of his house. “Heard good things about you.”
“Same here,” I said.
Another band member called Richie Furay approached me.
“You’re the famous Little Ricky from Toronto,” he said.
I said, “Not so famous and not so little.”
He laughed and offered me more killer weed. He talked much shit and we got along great. I liked Richie a lot, a happy-go-lucky cat with no attitude.
Couldn’t say the same for Stills. He didn’t engage me in conversation and wasn’t the least bit interested in learning anything about me. Underneath his silence, I felt the presence of a big ego.
“We need to see Neil,” said Bruce. “He’s been asking for you.”
We all hightailed it to Neil Young’s log cabin in the hills. He greeted us in full Indian regalia. We hugged like long-lost brothers and shot the shit for hours. He wanted to hear my war stories and I was eager to tell ’em. Neil and I had a great rapport—two wild artists who understood each other on the deepest level. As we spoke, I saw Stills watching us out of the corner of his eye. Instincts told me that all was not cool between Neil and Stephen.
All was completely cool when we arrived at David Crosby’s. David had the kind of smoke that melted tension and turned antagonists into allies. This smoke had me loving on the world. Like me, David was a storyteller who liked to entertain his guests. “Got some clear acid for you,” he offered.
“Thanks,” I said, “but I just got here. Gonna wait a minute or two to get my bearings before I start tripping.”
“Can’t wait no longer or we gonna miss the Daily Flash,” said Bruce. “They’re playing the Whisky.”
More joints, more cruisin’ down the canyons, more cruisin’ up the Strip. Got to the Whisky A Go Go and I realized I didn’t have the bread to get in.
“Don’t even think twice about it,” said David Crosby. “This is your welcome-to-L.A. night. The champagne’s on me.”
The first act, the Daily Flash, sounded like a second-rate Jefferson Airplane. The next act, though, took me by surprise. They were a mixed group—leader singer Arthur Lee and guitarist Johnny Echols were
black, and the other cats were white. They played in an acid folk-rock style that had the place jumping, but I wasn’t impressed. I was thinking, If these L.A. hippies are going nuts over this shit, wait till they hear me. I’m gonna tear this town apart.
Maybe Arthur and Johnny sensed my attitude when Bruce introduced me to them, ’cause they were a little standoffish. They were like gunslingers looking over the new kid in town.
That night I crashed at Bruce’s. I closed my eyes and thought back about why it had taken me so long to get to Cali. This was the state of my mind; L.A. was the city of my soul. I felt right at home here. Musically, I knew just what was happenin’. I wasn’t in the least intimidated, just frustrated that I had gotten a late start.
In spite of our initial standoff, Johnny Echols of Love became a good friend and took me to some slammin’ Hollywood parties. At one of them I met a sista named Jade. She told me that she’d been living with Donovan. Naturally I knew Donovan’s “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow Yellow.” Cute stuff, but not my thing. I told Jade that I considered Donovan the poor man’s Bob Dylan.
“You always so opinionated?” she asked.
“Always—at least when it comes music and women.”
“What kind of opinions do you have about women?”
“That you are by far the most beautiful I’ve ever met.”
“That’s an opinion I like.”
We loved that night and for three nights after.
Bruce was good to me, and so was Stephen, although neither one invited me to join their band. No matter, I was still happy to be invited to Stills’s house, where I’d go to jam. Sometimes I’d crash on his couch. Stills’s place was a great spot for meeting musicians and chicks. It was at Stills’s that I met Donovan, Jade’s ex. Naturally I didn’t say a word. Stills’s crib was a strange but fascinating scene.
The start of the extreme strangeness happened the night I awoke to see a young dude sitting on the floor in the lotus position, stoned as a motherfucker. Nothing unusual about that except for the blood dripping from his wrist. He seemed hypnotized by the flow of his blood, saying things like, “Isn’t the blood beautiful? Isn’t that the deepest red you’ve ever seen?”
I got scared he was gonna bleed to death and ran to get Stephen out of the bed he was sharing with his girlfriend, whom I’ll call Perfect.
“Oh, fuck,” said Stephen, “he’s doing it again.” Stephen gathered up bandages and gauze and took care of the guy, who remained passive through the ordeal. When Stephen was through, he said to me, “Ricky, meet Jim Morrison.”
Morrison was one far-out cat. He was the first sure-enough poet I’d ever met. He didn’t speak or act like the rest of us. He spoke and acted poetry. He started reading me something he’d written about the dead angels of history returning as groupies. He started singing a song about love among the ancient Indians who worshipped the sun. I didn’t think he could sing worth a shit, but his lyrics were enchanting. You had to listen to this guy. When he asked about my past and I mentioned my stopover at Motown, he bombarded me with questions about Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye. He called them great poets—and he was right.
Next day, his wounds healed, Jim joined the rest of us on a trip to Disneyland. I was excited to see the place. We ran down the freeway in Stephen’s wooden station wagon but were turned away ’cause our hippie threads were too far-out for white-bread Disney. Fuck Disney. We went to some dumpy bumper-car place and had a ball. The more I hung, the more I was digging L.A.
The big night was when the Doors, the house band at the Whisky, opened for Buffalo Springfield. I know that the Doors became one of the biggest bands in history and Morrison, like Dylan, influenced the world. I also know Jim was sincere, and that he was one of the inventors of theatrical rock. Until Jim, I always thought a singer had to be a guy with a great voice. Jim showed me that attitude was as important as voice. In years to come, David Bowie and Lou Reed would also get by on attitude and theatrics. All that’s fine, but, far as Morrison went, I got a little bored. I needed more fire in my rock and more funk in my folk. The Doors were weak tea.
After the Doors’ set I was hanging with Morrison in his dressing room. We were sharing a joint and shooting the shit when he asked me if I wanted a mint. “Sure,” I said. He popped this little blue mint into my mouth. I didn’t think anything of it. As I picked up one of his acoustic guitars and started to strum, the mint tasted sour, but then turned sweet.
“What is this?” I asked Jim.
“Happy sailing,” he said.
Acid. Oh well, it was going to happen sooner or later. Now was as good a time as any. Soon I started feeling a little strange. My fingers numbed out and the world turned extra bright. That’s when Jade appeared.
“You look fucked-up, Ricky,” she said.
“Morrison slipped me acid.”
“I’m tripping myself. Mind if I join you?”
“Let’s take off together.”
I’m an uninhibited guy, but I usually don’t start balling a chick in a dressing room with the door unlocked. But that’s the first thing that happened on my maiden acid voyage. Jade and I melted into each other. We went down to the bottom of the mystical sea. God knows how long we were down there. Later Morrison told me that people were passing through the room while we were fucking, but damned if I knew. I was swimming through a sea of love I had never seen before. If LSD opened the floodgates of this kind of loving, I wanted more. I officially became a love child.
Because I was too busy tripping-fucking, I missed hearing Buffalo Springfield that night. I did, though, get a chance to hear them many times after that. I heard them as good, not great, but I’m sure my opinion was prejudiced by the fact that they still hadn’t asked me to join them. With me as their lead singer, I was convinced the band would improve by at least 50 percent.
After several months in L.A., I saw that I could hang with the heavyweights. The only thing they had that I lacked was money. And I knew it was only a question of time before I’d get mine. Meanwhile, I was honing my music hustling skills, an essential for success in the record biz. I was meeting all the right people. I got lucky when Stephen Stills didn’t wanna take Perfect to a fancy party thrown by Jay Sebring, a cat who’d made millions selling hair products.
“You take Perfect,” said Stephen. “You get along with everyone. I’m fed up with that Hollywood crowd.”
Well, I was just getting started with the Hollywood crowd and jumped at the opportunity. It felt a little strange to be trusted with Perfect, who was super hot, but she was game and so was I.
Sebring was cool. He turned out to be one of the era’s slickest movers and shakers. He took a liking to me and I saw he took an extra-special liking to Perfect. Everyone was blowing cocaine and dancing to Marvin’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Jay saw that me and Perfect were the ideal party people and a week later invited us back. Naturally I asked Stills if it was okay. He had no objections and we went back over to Sebring’s place several times. That’s where I met Sammy Davis and Steve McQueen. It’s also where I saw Sebring making a move on Perfect. The truth was that Perfect had the hots for me, not Jay, and, man, I had the hots for her. Yet I restrained myself. I didn’t want to betray Stephen. I also didn’t want to hurt her budding friendship with Sebring because I saw how much he respected her. Perfect had a brilliant business mind and was starting to give him advice about his products. That’s when I got an idea.
Before we walked into one of Sebring’s high-time parties, I said to Perfect, “Get him to back a band for me. Tell him I’m the next Sly Stone.”
“You are,” said Perfect.
“Get him to believe that. Get him to give me some bread. I know the musicians I need. They’re in Toronto. I could fly there and within a few weeks get a band together that would tear up this town. Will you talk to him?”
“I will.”
She did—and guess what? Jay Sebring sprang for the bread—with one condition: that Perfect accompany me
to Toronto and supervise the operation.
How lucky can one man be? My glow was getting brighter by the day.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
The future was staring me in the face—and her name was Perfect. Perfect was perfect in all ways—luscious lips, big tits, long legs, sculpted booty, smiling eyes, high cheekbones, bubbly personality, and super-sharp mind. Our relationship began in honest friendship. I thought she was cool and vice versa. When she started balling Jay Sebring behind Stills’s back, we’d laugh about it. She trusted me with her most intimate secrets. The hottest secret, though, was that we were falling for each other. Because she was juggling two powerful men at once—both of whom could help my career—I had good reasons to keep my hands off Perfect. And because Perfect hardly needed to contend with another lover, she had also decided to keep our thing platonic.
Yet the second the plane took off from Los Angeles and we found ourselves alone on the flight to Toronto, something shifted. A restraint lifted. We felt free. After the jet leveled off, she glanced over to the bathroom and then glanced back at me. She got up and began walking to the back. I waited a few minutes and followed. She’d left the door ajar. I walked in and locked the door behind me. She laid out two thick lines of blow. We snorted them up in a second. She lifted up her skirt. Nothing underneath, just her fluffy moist bush. I crunched myself up on the floor so she could crouch down over my face. I tongued her until she came. Then I lifted her onto the sink and fucked her until she came again. I exploded seconds after that. We cleaned ourselves off, went back to our seats, and, halfway through the trip, returned to the bathroom to repeat the operation. She came another four or five times. I’d never been with a bitch this hot.
When we checked into our hotel suite in Toronto, the bellhop was barely out the door before we tore off our clothes and were at it again. In contrast to the tiny airplane bathroom, the king-sized bed gave us a feeling of incredible freedom. We fucked our brains out. We added our own chapter to the Kama Sutra.