In 1971 I gave up my brownstone in Chelsea and bought a lovely house in Corte Madera, a few miles from Janis’s place in Larkspur. Actually, once we were neighbours we saw very little of each other. We were both on tour constantly in those days. We were seldom home at the same time, and I was more likely to run into Janis out on the road somewhere. But there was always a party going on at Janis’s house in Larkspur whether she was there or not. Her doors were never locked and no one really knew who was living there and who was just passing through. Janis was a very insecure girl. She needed constant reassurance and had to have people around her all the time. She couldn’t say no to anyone, and the local dirtbags took advantage of her generosity. Janis’s place became a hangout for Hell’s Angels, homeless Haight-Ashbury types, drunks and drug dealers. They stole her memorabilia and smashed her furniture, hocked her gold records, trashed her cars and conned her out of money. In the end she was a prisoner of her own entourage. I visited her in Larkspur one more time but it was an ugly scene. I never went back.
The Bay area was a lovely place to live in those days, still relatively unspoiled, with rolling hills stretching up into the wine country of Napa, Sonoma and Mendocino. Corte Madera sat on the slopes of Mount Tamalpais just a few minutes from the redwood trees of Muir Woods. I loved the redwoods. In the muted light of the forest, the ground soft and spongy underfoot, I found quiet and solitude. The gigantic trees seemed to put everything into perspective, dwarfing the troubles of the high-pressure world that I now lived in. The view from the deck of my house was spectacular, with the Golden Gate Bridge and the city of San Francisco looking like something from a picture postcard. I would drive up to the top of Mount Tamalpais and spend hours gazing out over the incredible vista stretched out before me. I found a measure of peace there, far removed from the madness that had exploded around me in New York.
California is car country. In New York a car was unnecessary, an expensive nuisance. Parking was always a problem. Cabs and the subway were far more practical. In Toronto I had never been able to afford anything more than an old beater. But in California a car is not only a necessity, it’s who you are. You’re known by what you drive. Here I developed a passion that would be with me for the rest of my life, a love affair with high-performance automobiles. I once joked to a Toronto newspaper, “I fell in love with fast cars from the first time I stole one.” Just a joke, but not far from the truth. I can chronicle my life by what I was driving at the time, and my cars became an integral part of my life story. It all began with my first sports car, purchased soon after I arrived in San Francisco. It was a green 1969 Jaguar E-Type, a British racing coupe with a saddle-leather interior—a perfect car for northern California, nimble enough to handle the winding mountain roads and fast enough for the freeways. I was hooked. My favourite pastime was exploring the California countryside in my sleek Jag. Coming home after a whirlwind tour, it was a perfect way to unwind, and I loved driving. I even took a few courses in high-performance driving at the Bondurant School.
Then one day, while shopping in Mill Valley, I saw the most beautiful automobile I had ever seen, and my passion became an absolute addiction. It was a 1957 Mercedes Benz 300SL roadster. Sitting at the back of a dusty used car lot, a little banged up, covered in dust and with spiderwebs lacing the interior, she had obviously been abused and neglected—a queen who had seen better days. The graceful lines of the car, the aggressive stance, the huge white enamel steering wheel ... I knew that under the dirt and neglect she was still royalty. It was love at first sight. I bought the 300SL on the spot for $5,000 and limped her home, misfiring and spluttering. She was hopelessly out of tune and only firing on about four cylinders. I shipped her down to Barris Kustom Industries in Riverside, California, and had her completely restored to her former glory. Three months later I flew into LA and picked her up. The car was like new, the body cherried up and repainted, the engine totally rebuilt, new upholstery, convertible top, carpeting, everything done to factory specs. The queen was ready to rule the road again. She was a royal beauty turning heads wherever we went, but under that regal exterior beat the heart of a full-blown race-bred high-performance car. On the road she turned from an elegant queen into a snarling animal.
In addition to the five grand I originally paid for the car, I had spent over $10,000 on the restoration, a lot of money in 1971. I drove that car all over California. I’d come home from the road, throw an overnight bag in the 300SL and take off, tooling the powerful roadster along the winding highways of wine country or down Route 1 to Los Angeles. The car had no AC or power assist. Windows, top, steering, brakes, everything was hands-on manual. There was an AM radio but I never used it. With the top down and the wind whistling in my ears, the sound of that finely tuned engine was all the music I needed. A few years later, when I left California for Toronto, I knew the car would be impractical in Canada. The road salt and the harsh winters would ruin the beautiful roadster, so I reluctantly sold the Mercedes for $35,000 to actor Steve McQueen, who had a stable of 300SL roadsters and gullwings. When he died she went into the Harrah’s auto museum in Reno, and I visited her there a few times. Thirty years later I came across the car again, at a classic auto dealer in Nyack, New York. They were asking $275,000 for her.
Jim Fielder, Fred Lipsius and I moved to San Francisco around the same time. We all bought homes in Marin County. Freddie, Jim and I were close friends, and we all wanted to get away from the pressure cooker that was New York City. The band had grown up fast in those first few years. All our illusions about show business had been shattered. That didn’t mean we loved it any less—we were all hooked on performing—but we had become cynical about “stardom.” These guys were serious musicians. The glitz and glamour of rock stardom was embarrassing to most of them. We were surrounded by bullshit and politics, and these were smart guys. They hadn’t gone to Juilliard to be rock stars, but the money and the acclaim were hard to walk away from. The only thing that remained untainted by the business was the music, and we made some of our best music at that time. We clung to the music like a drowning man clings to a life preserver.
The next album was recorded in San Francisco in 1971. BS&T 4 was considered by even our harshest critics to be our best ever. With Freddie, our arranging genius, Jim, the rock of our rhythm section, and me, the principal songwriter, already in California, and with the band battered by three years of high-pressure touring and intense media scrutiny, bringing the boys out to San Francisco to record seemed like a great idea ... and it was. We couldn’t be touched out there. Even the native New Yorkers were ready for a break from the city. We enjoyed the laid-back feeling of San Francisco and even stopped the relentless touring while we were recording. The album was produced by Bobby Colomby and engineered by Roy Halee, the technical wizard behind Paul Simon’s records. It contained another hit single, “Go Down Gamblin’.” I played lead guitar on that one. The guys felt the tune needed a raunchy blues guitar, and Steve Katz couldn’t play the blues to save his life. It was the last time I would ever play guitar with the band.
Again Katz and I would butt heads. I think one of the underlying reasons for the friction between us was that we both played similar roles in the band. We were both songwriters, but I was writing the hits. We were both singers, but there was no doubt in the public’s mind who the voice of Blood Sweat & Tears was. We were both guitar players, and now Katz felt I was stepping on his toes in that role also. I was having enough problems with him as it was, so I gave up playing guitar with the band. I was much more useful as their lead singer. I enjoyed the freedom of being able to roam the stage and work the audience without being tethered to an amp. Besides, I was basically a blues guitarist, and the music of BS&T was now reaching far beyond the blues. I could carry my load as the lead singer, but the truth was I just wasn’t versatile enough to be the full-time guitar player with a band who played everything from Monk to Mozart. Even though he’d never admit it, Steve Katz wasn’t the right guitar player for the band either. H
e was way over his head musically. The band needed a Larry Coryell or a Mike Stern, but Katz owned the name and you couldn’t argue with that.
We had a great time recording BS&T 4. The band was focused on the music and sheltered from the furor that raged around us in New York, but all too soon the album was done and the record company wanted us back on the road to promote it. The band was now under the direction of Larry Goldblatt, a smart and savvy business manager who had replaced the original managers, Bennett Glotzer and Dennis Katz. I was never privy to exactly why Glotzer and Katz were let go. There were stories swirling around the band about mismanagement of money, but that, like much of the band’s business, remained between Katz and Colomby. Goldblatt presented us with a deal to play a week in Las Vegas, something that no rock band had ever done. With our counterculture status in tatters anyway, we all said, “What the hell, let’s go for the money,” and we signed to play Caesars Palace, the pinnacle of big-time show business. Rolling Stone again howled in protest, screaming “sellout.” Most of us didn’t give a damn. Caesars was offering us a huge amount of money, and by this time the so-called underground press was beginning to bore us. We had taken so much abuse from them that it was becoming a joke. We just couldn’t take it seriously anymore.
Go Down Gamblin’
Born a natural loser, can’t recall just where
Raised on pool and poker, and a dollar here and there
Blackjack hand, dealer man, better pay off that last bet
A two-bit hand of twenty-one is all I ever get
Go down gamblin’, say it when you’re runnin’ low
Go down gamblin’, you may never have to go
Down in a crap game, I been losin’ at roulette
Cards are bound to break me, but I ain’t busted yet
Cause I been called a natural lover by some lady over there
Well, honey, I’m just a natural gambler, but I try to do my share
Go down gamblin’, say it when you’re runnin’ low
Go down gamblin’, you may never have to go
Words and music by David Clayton-Thomas and Fred Lipsius. © 1971 (renewed 1999)
EMI Blackwood Music Inc. and Minnesingers Publishing Ltd.
15
VEGAS AND SAMMY
Las Vegas in the sixties was a different place. The mob ran the town, and say what you will about “the boys,” they ran the town with class. Frank and the Rat Pack ruled the showrooms, and you didn’t get in to see Mr. Sinatra without a jacket and tie. The Circus Maximus room at Caesars was the most prestigious showroom in town. There had been a few attempts to introduce rock on the Vegas Strip, but to date they had never been successful. Rock acts may have been big with the young people, but they didn’t bring in the high rollers, and that’s how success in Vegas was measured in those days. The showrooms seldom broke even and they weren’t expected to. The house count was all that mattered. The casinos made their money on the tables and they paid huge dollars to the acts who brought in the big money gamblers.
Show people were treated like royalty in Vegas. The top floor of the hotel was always the entertainer’s suite. Artists in those days were booked into the casinos with long-term contracts and lived in those opulent suites for months on end. Anything the entertainers wanted was on the house … women, food, booze, everything was available on room service courtesy of the boys. We were even given money to blow in the casino. The bosses knew the presence of a celebrity at the tables would attract the high rollers.
Tickets for the showrooms were hard to come by. Not everyone could get in to see the big names. You had to know somebody and have the means to tip the maître d’ generously. The best tables went to the highest bidders. There was real prestige in having a ringside seat at Caesars. The town catered to the rich and famous, and those lucky enough to get tickets for a show dressed for the occasion. The high rollers wore tuxedos and evening gowns. No T-shirts and flip-flops at Caesars. It was glitzy and glamorous, and the town will never be like that again.
In the late seventies Vegas went corporate. It became a big family-oriented theme park. Large corporations like Disney and MGM now owned the casinos and they ran the town with a different philosophy. The bottom line was all that mattered and even the showrooms had to earn a profit. Dress codes were dropped to sell more tickets, and today the once-glamorous showrooms are full of tourists in baseball caps and cut-offs. The high rollers gave way to old-age pensioners gambling away their Social Security cheques at the slot machines. The floor space taken up by a high-stakes baccarat table could be occupied by a dozen nickel slots. It’s all about the numbers. In the old Las Vegas they didn’t care if the showroom was full just as long as the high rollers were happy and blew big money in the casino. In this new Las Vegas they catered to the tourist, and show tickets were given away with the price of the junket. A million people dropping a few bucks each was worth more to them than a big spender dropping a few hundred thousand. We played Las Vegas in the last days of the golden era. It may have been sneered at by the underground press, but to headline at Caesars Palace meant you had arrived.
The engagement at Caesars was a complete triumph. On opening night the royalty of show business were present. For six nights we lived in a dream. The band was unbelievably hot and I was in my glory. Every night the audience was dotted with the faces of legendary actors, musicians and entertainers—Frank Sinatra, Bill Cosby, Dean Martin, Elizabeth Taylor, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Sammy Davis Jr. Hollywood turned out in droves for BS&T at Caesars Palace. Backstage I was hobnobbing with people I had known only from the movies. Every morning my message box was filled with congratulations from the biggest names in show business. We were the hottest ticket in town. Conventional wisdom of the day said that rock & roll would never sell tickets in Vegas. That week changed the town forever. It paved the way for Elton John, the Rolling Stones and countless other rock acts to play Las Vegas showrooms.
I first met Sammy Davis Jr. during that great week at Caesars Palace. He was not exactly considered to be hip by the young people of the seventies, and when he came backstage after the show at Caesars I wasn’t all that impressed. I knew he was a big Blood Sweat & Tears fan and performed several of my songs in his show, but everyone was doing BS&T songs in those days. A few weeks later the band got an offer to play the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, co-billing with Sammy. The show was to be billed as “Mr. D and BS&T.” Some of the guys, especially our resident radical, Steve Katz, were dead set against it. “Sammy Davis just isn’t cool, man. For Christ’s sake, he hugged Richard Nixon. We don’t need any more publicity like that.” Most of the band felt that it was a great honour to co-bill with such a legendary performer. Sammy really wanted to make this show happen and he seemed like a nice guy, so I thought, “What the hell, let’s do it.” After Eastern Europe and Caesars Palace our underground image was shot anyway.
The agreement was for two nights at the Greek, equal billing. One night Sammy would open and the next night we would. The first night I didn’t really get to see his show. I arrived forty-five minutes before BS&T was to go on and was immediately surrounded by press and celebrities. Sammy’s show had just finished. We went on last and brought the house down. We had just come off a record-setting gig at Caesars and a sold-out concert tour across the States, and the band was hot. We did two encores that night, and when I came back to the dressing room Sammy was waiting. He had watched the entire show. He gave me a big hug and said to me, “Wow! Thank God you can’t dance.” We laughed about that but I guess I was a little full of myself that night, with the dressing room crowded with movie stars and media. The next night we went on first and again tore the place up. After another killer show, again with multiple encores and standing ovations, I was thinking, still full of myself, “Let’s see you follow that, little man.” I decided to stay and watch Sammy’s show from the wings, and I watched a miracle happen right in front of my eyes. That “little man” grew into a giant. He had the audience in the palm of his hand. He h
ad complete control of the stage. He was unbelievably poised and graceful. He could dance, he could sing, he could act. Each song was a dramatic performance of heartbreaking intensity. He was magnificent. He was Sammy Davis Jr., and now I knew what that meant. He had spent his entire life on the stage, and he handled it like a master. He closed with “Mr. Bojangles.” As he tipped his hat and struck a pose, the single spotlight faded to black and there was a split second of silence. The entire audience caught its breath. Then the lights came up and he was gone. It was a moment of exquisite theatrical timing, and it hit me right in the heart. The Greek Theater erupted in a tumultuous standing ovation and I found myself applauding and crying uncontrollably, the tears pouring down my face. Next to him I was a bumbling amateur with too high an opinion of himself. I had just watched a consummate entertainer at work, and it was a humbling experience. I stumbled back to his dressing room, pushed my way through the crowd of well-wishers and grabbed him in a bear hug, still crying. “My God,” I said, “that was amazing. You were incredible.” I was probably a little over-thetop but I didn’t care. I had just witnessed something very special and I had to know how he did it. Sammy freed himself from the embrace of this big awkward Canadian, smiled that lopsided Sammy Davis Jr. grin and said, “Come up to Vegas next week and we’ll talk.”
I did just that, the next week and many times thereafter. I sat in the audience at the Sands and watched the master at work. I got to know his musical director, George Rhodes, and Murphy Bennett, his stage manager. Most of all I got to know Sammy. He was a wonderful, generous man and he spent hours with me talking about the craft. I learned more in an hour watching that “little man” onstage than I learned in all my years of performing before or since. He invited me to his palatial home in Beverly Hills and we would spend hours watching old films of people I hadn’t even been aware of. Sammy as a child with the Will Mastin Trio. The Nicholas Brothers, Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly and Judy Garland. Singers like Mel Tormé, Nat King Cole and Sinatra in his prime. We would study those films, with Sammy interjecting comments like “See, look how he moves, effortless. If you work too hard, you’ll make the audience nervous. It’s all got to look easy.” Or about Sinatra he’d say, “Listen to his phrasing. He learned that from the horn players in the Dorsey band. You’ve got a great horn band. Listen to them. Learn to breathe with them.”
Blood, Sweat and Tears Page 13