Glow

by Rick James

  “I guess not.”

  “You don’t have to guess.”

  “Then what do I have to do?”

  “Go west, young nigga.”

  “With what money? You just hustled me out of mine.”

  “I’ll give back enough for bus fare.”

  “I’d rather fly.”

  “Tough shit,” he said.

  With that, Whit handed me fifty bucks and left me sitting alone in the pool hall.

  SPICE

  Summer of ’69 was all about Blood, Sweat & Tears’ “Spinning Wheel.” That song had me spinning. I was back in L.A., giving the wheel another spin while remembering that only a couple of years ago David Clayton-Thomas—the Blood, Sweat & Tears singer—had been playing the same club circuit as me in Toronto. If David could do it, why not me?

  I arrived back in California with Greg Reeves, a bass player who’d been mentored by the great James Jamerson. My notion was that I could front a group with Greg, a white boy who could bring the funk, and call it Salt ’n Pepper, corralling that crossover audience Norman Whitfield had talked about.

  My first move was to approach Motown. But Whit’s warning proved accurate. Not only couldn’t I get to Berry, I couldn’t get to the assistant of Berry’s assistant. Ironically, the first connection I made was a Berry Gordy nemesis, Eddie Singleton. According to Eddie, who had spotted my talent back in Detroit, his career as a music producer had been stymied ever since he married BG’s former wife Raynoma.

  “You can stay in my place in the Hollywood Hills,” said Eddie.

  “Cool.”

  Turned out Eddie’s brother booked the talent for The Dating Game, so you can imagine the beautiful bitches running through there. I found myself back in the showbiz circuit, where I met two wonderful women, Pam Louise, a tall black model, and Nancy Leviska, a fun and foxy white chick. Pam considered herself a witch and Nancy saw herself as a free spirit. I loved them both. They became my tripping partners and lovers. I ran back and forth between the two of them. If they minded sharing my love, their protests were mild. I would have not minded a ménage à trois but unfortunately that never happened. It was a period when free love was flowing in many directions. Another irony was that while Berry Gordy gave me no attention, he wound up lavishing attention on Nancy, a lovely lady, and together they had a son.

  Pam was deep into tarot cards and astrological projections. I was deep into acid and orgies. In the midst of the sexual madness, Salt ’n Pepper was born. We found a manager, a gay boy from Beverly Hills with taste and money, and we found a groove but never an audience or a big-label deal. The excitement of sex and drugs overwhelmed my career ambition—at least for the moment. Then something else happened that, in this world of multiple partners, I hadn’t expected—I fell in love.

  It happened at a wild party where I was looking for lust, not love. Romance was the last thing on my mind, and yet there she was, seated in a chair, a portrait in quiet femininity, her eyes catching the moonlight shining down from the skylight above her. Our eyes locked for a long, long time. When we spoke it was brief, just a few words. It was one of those moments when words were beside the point. Our hearts did the speaking. Later that night we made love in the literal sense—the act itself created a deep loving feeling. We went way beyond lust to something mystical. Her name was Seville Morgan and she became my first live-in lover. We set up house in an apartment on Alta Loma with high wooden beams and a heated pool. I was living the life.

  But the life costs money, and because Greg Reeves had moved in with us and slept on the couch, the food bill alone was considerable. Salt ’n Pepper was gone. For a minute I had a group called Heaven and Earth that RCA Canada thought might work. They put a single out but the single flopped. My musical income was zilch. I was living on love and the generosity of my white rock-and-roll friends. Understandably, that generosity had run its course. And then another friend appeared.

  “What’s happening, Rick?”

  I looked up from my stool at Duke’s coffee shop on Sunset and saw Jay Sebring standing over me. My first reaction was that he’d be pissed. I’d taken his money and blew it in Canada, where I wound up in jail. I’d also fucked his girl Perfect.

  “Hey, Jay,” I said.

  “Where you been hiding?” There wasn’t anger in his voice, just genuine curiosity.

  “I’ve been back for a while.”

  “I never knew what happened to you in Toronto.”

  “Perfect didn’t tell you?”

  “Perfect disappeared. Tell me the story.”

  I told him, and amazingly, he wasn’t at all pissed. He was understanding. Jay was a jewel. You had to love the guy.

  “What a lousy break,” he said. “I hope things have gotten better for you since you’ve been back.”

  “Got a cool apartment with a cool chick, but right now I’m tapped out.”

  “Right now I’m flush. Let me give you a couple of grand to get you back on your feet.”

  “Wow. What can I say?”

  “You don’t have to say a thing. When you blow up, just get me front-row seats to all your concerts.”

  “Every single one.”

  With a big smile on his face, Jay handed me the bread. What a guy! His faith in me was a beautiful reminder that the glow was still there.

  Friends who’d become stars were all around me. I figured that it was a matter of time. Meanwhile, I had a little bread to buy a little weed and chill with my woman Seville, who turned out to have chops in the kitchen that rivaled her skills in bed.

  Greg and I spent lots of time figuring out a new musical direction that combined white rock and black funk. Two new albums really got to us—Poco’s Pickin’ Up the Pieces and Crosby, Stills & Nash. I knew all those cats—Richie Furay had helped start Poco after Buffalo Springfield got unsprung. His country/rock thing was hip. Stephen Stills had also busted a hip move with those thick harmonies. When “Marrakesh Express” hit, I felt happy for the guys. Before I knew it, they’d become one of the biggest bands in the world.

  I was buzzed when Furay called to invite me to a Poco gig at the Troubadour. Backstage I ran into Stephen Stills. Big hugs.

  “Hey, Ricky, you gotta come up to my new crib. I bought it from Tork.”

  Our mutual friend Peter Tork was one of the Monkees. Naturally I’d never pass up a chance to hang with Stills and see his new pad. So Seville, Greg, and Greg’s old lady went up there with me. Good vibes, good smoke, good times. Good to be back in touch with Stills.

  “You could do me a favor,” said Stephen.

  “Name it, man, and you got it.”

  “Bruce is in bad shape.”

  “Palmer?” I asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “He sounds great on your record,” I said.

  “Since then it’s been downhill. I think it’s hard drugs. Bruce Palmer is one of the best bass players ever, and I hate to see him that way—especially since we got this huge Woodstock gig coming. Before that we’re doing the Greek with Joni opening for us. Bruce has gotta get himself together before all this happens.”

  “What can I do?” I asked.

  “Talk to him, Ricky. He loves you. He respects you. You’re his man.”

  “Where’s he living these days?”

  “Up in Topanga.”

  “I’ll do what I can,” I told Stephen, feeling funny about talking to a cat about drugs when I wasn’t exactly abstaining myself. On the other hand, I didn’t consider myself addicted. I was mainly smoking as opposed to coking.

  Topanga was a hippie haven. It was only a few miles from the smoggy Sunset Strip, but it seemed like another world. The counterculture musicians were there in droves. Bruce’s place was a log cabin. I went up there with Greg Reeves, who wanted to meet the great bassist.

  The reunion was sweet. Bruce called me his brother and said how much he missed me. He talked about how beautiful it was to be in a famous rock group. His eyes told me that he was definitely fucked-up, but somehow I didn�
�t have the heart to get into his drug problem. We were having too much fun reminiscing about Toronto. Later that night we went over to Stills’s, where we all jammed for hours. Out of respect to Bruce, Greg played guitar, not his normal instrument. Bruce’s bass licks were off, but hell, it was only a jam.

  Next morning I was awoken by a knock on the door. Standing there were Stills and Graham Nash.

  “Why don’t we get a little lunch?”

  “Great.”

  We went to the Source, a health food restaurant on Sunset. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I halfway wondered if they were going to ask me to join the group. Crosby, Stills, Nash & James didn’t sound bad.

  We ordered carrot juice and soy burgers topped with sprouts.

  “What’s on your minds?” I asked Stephen and Graham.

  “Music,” said Stephen. “Always music.”

  “I hear you, man.”

  “Always thinking of ways to make the band better.”

  Maybe I was right. Maybe Stills and Nash had invited me to lunch to make me an offer.

  “I’ve heard you and Greg jamming,” said Graham. “You guys are great.”

  “Thanks, man,” I said.

  “We wouldn’t want to do anything to break up your duo thing,” said Stephen, “but we were thinking . . .”

  He hesitated.

  “Thinking what?” I asked, convinced he was about to pop the question.

  “Thinking whether you’d be bummed out if we asked Greg to audition to replace Bruce.”

  What! They wanted Greg, not me!

  “You look surprised,” said Nash.

  “I am,” I said without telling them why.

  “I can understand,” said Stephen. “You guys are so tight.”

  The burgers arrived. Seeing the sprouts didn’t make me happy. The Stills/Nash offer didn’t make me happy. Going with their group would have meant big money. And if they’d put me in the starting lineup, it would have meant fame. It would also have meant stretching their musical boundaries, but why not? Like me, these cats were experimenters. They needed a brotha like me. On the other hand, I could see why they didn’t want a brotha like me. They already had their thing together. They were afraid Bruce would mess up their upcoming big gigs and had to make sure the bass parts were covered. Bruce had been my man. Now Greg was my man. I had love for both these guys. But I also had some jealousy. Sitting there, staring at the sprouts, I made a quick decision—I wouldn’t let my jealousy get in the way of helping a friend.

  “Sure,” I said. “Audition Greg. Greg’s the bomb.”

  When I gave Greg the news that night, he couldn’t have been cooler.

  “I want to keep our thing together, Rick,” he said.

  “Our thing ain’t going nowhere, Greg.”

  “It will in time.”

  “But right now it’s Crosby, Stills & Nash’s time. Those motherfuckers are huge. You’d be crazy not to jump on this.”

  Greg knew I was right, and a few days later we were at Stephen’s house for Greg’s big moment. We went to the rehearsal room, where Dallas Taylor, the group’s badass drummer, had set up his traps. Stephen sat down at the organ and Graham grabbed his guitar. Then David Crosby arrived. It had been a while since I’d seen him, and he greeted me with a big bear hug. I introduced him to Greg. They shook hands before David took out his guitar and began to tune.

  “I’m nervous, man,” Greg whispered to me as he broke out his bass. “These guys are serious.”

  “You gonna kill it, bro,” I said. “You’re the fuckin’ star student of James Jamerson, the king of ’em all.”

  They started kickin’ it and Greg fell into a nice groove. At first Greg was mainly supporting. Nothing fancy. He laid down a solid bottom that felt good. But after a few minutes, he started breaking out his artillery. From Jamerson he learned that the bass could be melodic as well as percussive. Jamerson was a very free player, not restricted to any written line. He knew how to make the funk fly. Greg had that same gift. It didn’t take him long to lay some shit on their ass they’d never heard before. Greg was bad. There was no doubt—not for a second—that he could cut it. Besides, he had memorized that first Crosby, Stills & Nash album and knew all the changes better than they did. In the middle of the jam, Stills broke into a broad smile and threw me a vial of pure pharmaceutical cocaine.

  “Thanks, man,” was what he said, indicating that Greg had the gig.

  The blow felt fantastic. Things couldn’t possibly get any better—except they did. The door opened and Neil Young walked in.

  “Ricky!” he said. “Great to see you, man.”

  We shot the shit for a few minutes before Neil took his guitar out of his case and joined the jam. I didn’t realize it then, but this was the birth of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young—with Greg Reeves on bass.

  When I went home to Seville, she asked how it went.

  “It was beautiful,” I said. “Greg killed ’em. He’s in.”

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “Sure.”

  Except I wasn’t that sure. I had done my brother a solid, but I have to admit that I also felt left out—plus I had lost my bass player. There was no compensation, either monetary or emotional. But, on reflection, maybe there was. I had learned that I could be selfless. That was something new. I could help someone without demanding anything for myself. Even in the cutthroat music biz, there was room for kindness.

  Norman Whitfield, thought to be a killer competitor himself, had taken the time to school me. So why couldn’t I take the time to help a good guy like Greg? I could and did, and although I was still broke, I felt better about myself. When I called Mom—the only person in the world with whom I could be completely honest—and told her the story she said, “I couldn’t be prouder of you, son. Didn’t I say that you have a heart of gold?”

  I felt the glow washing all over me.

  FEAR

  The long summer of ’69 seemed like it would never end. Greg moved out to go off with the group to be known as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young. The first album he’d record with the group, Déjà Vu, was a brilliant classic. Poco continued to gain popularity. Rumors were going around that Billy Preston, who I knew from the R & B circuit, was cutting tracks with the Beatles in London. The Stones were working on Let It Bleed. It was all cool, it was all interesting, was all something I felt connected to. And yet the connection never really worked.

  My plan to break into the big time through the world of white rock and roll hadn’t happened. I’d always thought that if Hendrix, who went from straight-up R & B to white rock, could do it, why not me? We were both black hippies. Naturally I wasn’t a guitar genius like Hendrix, but like Jimi, I was an innovator. I felt like I could lead the world in new musical directions. And yet there I was, living on Alta Loma with my thumb up my ass.

  Maybe it was my anger or resentment of my exclusion from white rock that got me to fall in so easily with a light-skinned black cat I’ll call Mike the Mack. Mike was a mack daddy from Chicago, a serious gangsta who lived in a mansion on Mulholland with a bevy of gorgeous white women. He wore a black leather cowboy hat, red leather pants, and rhinestone-encrusted high platform shoes. He wore gold chains around his neck and diamond rings on both hands. He reminded me of the baddest cats I knew back in Buffalo, the brothas with the balls to compete with the Mafia dons who had employed Mom as a numbers runner.

  Mike the Mack liked me and I liked the fuck-you-white-world attitude he represented. He’d built his own empire on his own terms. Sometimes he’d have me up to his palatial pad, just to hear me sing. He bought me a guitar, bass, and electric piano just ’cause he got a kick outta watching me play all the instruments. His instruments were coke, smack, and counterfeit money. Knowing that my money was funny, he’d throw me a grand now and then to keep me and Seville in groceries. While in Mike’s company, I also had free access to anything in the drugstore. At this point in my life, my thing was mainly weed. I dug coke but not to the point of excess
. And heroin was off my menu completely.

  I was Mike the Mack’s music man, the entertainment at his all crazy parties. He trusted me completely. When he went off on a three-week business trip, he asked me to hold a large quantity of blow and heroin. “Don’t sample any,” he said. “It’s all promised to a customer who’ll be in L.A. when I return.” Being a fool, I sampled some of the coke and sold some of the H to musician friends. I knew that was wrong but needed the money. Mike got back and saw that I chiseled some of his drugs but didn’t say anything. I was relieved. I thought we were still cool.

  With that thought in mind, I called Mike when my weed dealer Junior said there was a pot drought in L.A. and he desperately needed a major shipment. Mike, with his access to major suppliers, said it was no problem. Junior agreed to the ten thousand dollars. I was at Junior’s house when Mike came over with the packages neatly wrapped up in cellophane. He gave us sample joints and, man, after one hit I knew the shit was the sure-enough bomb. Junior forked over the ten Gs; Mike thanked us and left.

  Turned out that five of the packages contained grass—not get-you-high grass but mow-the-lawn grass. Mike had ripped off Junior for five thousand dollars, approximately the dollar amount of the coke and heroin I’d chiseled from Mike. Drug lord justice. Junior wanted to go after Mike, but I convinced him that this was one drug lord he didn’t want to fuck with.

  With Mike out of the picture, I had to shift gears. Fortunately there were other party scenes where I was still welcome. The most welcoming of all was Jay Sebring’s. In my early California adventures, Jay was probably my most loyal and supportive friend. He loved Seville’s home cooking and would often come over for dinner. He never needed an invitation and never failed to leave us with a little weed or cash to cover that month’s rent. He was a cat you could talk to—a big-time music lover and a super-hip patron of the arts.

  One early afternoon, Jay came over. I was still asleep. Seville woke me. I was glad to see Jay but was nursing a wicked hangover. Jay was in a great mood and wanted to take me and Seville to Roman Polanski’s crib, where the actress Sharon Tate was living. There was gonna be a big party and Jay didn’t want us to miss it. Sharon had once been Jay’s girl. Even after Sharon married Polanski, who’d just done Rosemary’s Baby, she and Jay stayed friends. Polanski had rented a huge house on Cielo Drive in Benedict Canyon that Jay said was incredible.