I just don’t know, everything I say is wrong
What can I do when you don’t understand a word
I’ll sing for you the sweetest song you ever heard
And I know it’s just a fantasy stage
And I know I should be actin’ my age
But oh everybody wants to belong
Lyrics by David Clayton-Thomas. Copyright © Clayton-Thomas Music Publishing Inc., 1980.
19
AMSTERDAM
It was 1978 and the psychedelics and the relatively harmless pot of the sixties had given way to a nasty intruder—cocaine, the party drug of the seventies. It had crept quietly into the band and into our lives, taking over everything without our really knowing it. It was everywhere, and with the money we were making it was all too readily available. Cocaine is a seductive drug. At first just a little toot at a party, and before long your life is revolving around it. We were spinning out of control but we were having so much fun that no one really noticed. Then disaster struck.
The band was touring Europe, playing prestigious concert halls like the Olympia in Paris, the Berlin Symphony, and Royal Albert Hall in London. On the last leg of the tour we were to play Amsterdam, the drug and party capital of Europe. Gregory Herbert had joined the band earlier that year, a thirty-one-year-old saxophone virtuoso who made his name with the Duke Ellington Band. He was a gifted young musician with a wife and child in Philadelphia and a baby on the way. I loved Greg, as did everyone else in the band. He was a great guy and one of the most eloquent sax players I’ve ever heard. On the road he and I and Tony Klatka, the trumpet player, were inseparable. We were only a couple of days from finishing the European tour when we arrived in Amsterdam with the night off.
Early that evening Tony, Greg and Larry Willis knocked on my hotel-room door. They said, “C’mon, man, we got the night off, let’s party.” I knew what that meant—they were going out into the city to score some coke. It wasn’t hard. Drug dealers were everywhere in Amsterdam, and somehow word seems to travel when you’re rich and famous and do coke. Sometimes the coke dealers would be waiting for us at the airport. Most nights I might have gone with them, but I was expecting a call from Terry, it had been an exhausting tour and there was a big concert coming up the next night, so I decided to pass and get a good night’s sleep. To be honest, I had done my share of coke, but I was never into it the way some of the guys were. My main concern on the road was my voice, and that required some maintenance—proper sleep and voice rest. Coke was just too hard on the pipes. Larry Willis also decided not to go out that night, since I wasn’t going—a decision that undoubtedly saved his life.
About 1:00 a.m. I was awakened by someone banging on my door. It was Tony. He was ashen and in shock. “Clayton,” he cried, “it’s Greg, in my room. I can’t wake him up.” Still halfasleep, I stumbled down the hall to Klatka’s room and found Greg lying on his back on the bed. I frantically pounded on his chest and tried my best to clear his airways, but he wasn’t breathing. I yelled at Tony, “Get a doctor, fast!” but it was too late. Gregory Herbert was dead. Tony Klatka was in a state of panic, but a strange calm came over me. I knew I couldn’t lose it now. I’d cry for Greg later. Right now my priority was the band. We were a long way from home and this was a dangerous place. Someone had to take charge. I woke Larry Willis and told him to get everyone out of bed and to warn them, “If you have any drugs in your room, flush them, now! The police will be here any minute.” The Dutch police arrived with the paramedics and everybody was dragged out into the hall. Our bags were turned inside out and we were all taken in for questioning.
The next several hours were a nightmare. The entire band was held as material witnesses then released when no other drugs were found. When we got back to the hotel we discovered that everybody’s suitcases had been looted. Cash, jewellery … gone. The police had robbed us. Fred Heller had retained a Dutch lawyer, and when the guys started to complain about the missing money he told them to shut up or we might not be leaving Amsterdam for a long time. The lawyer advised us to pack up and get out of the country as quickly as possible.
We found out later what had happened. Greg, a diabetic, took insulin every day so he was no stranger to needles. He and Tony had scored a “cocktail,” a heroin and cocaine mixture, and had come back to Tony’s room to get high. Greg had shot up some of the mixture and Tony snorted it. That and the vodka he had been drinking that night probably saved Tony’s life. He went into the bathroom and threw up, then passed out on the bathroom floor. When he came to, he tried to arouse Greg. When he couldn’t, he stumbled next door to my room for help. The autopsy showed that the dope was laced with strychnine. It was no accident. Someone wanted to kill them. Greg and Larry Willis were both African Americans and I think they felt safe hanging out with the brothers in Amsterdam, but this wasn’t Philadelphia. Many of the “brothers” in Holland were Moluccan terrorists, and they hated all Americans, black or white.
Gregory Herbert was loved and respected by everyone in the band. I’ll never forget the sight of all the musicians sitting in the hotel lobby as the sun came up, sobbing quietly to themselves. We were in no shape to perform, so we cancelled the remaining two concerts, Amsterdam and London. Larry Willis and Greg had been friends for years. Larry had brought Greg into the band and now had to call his wife in Philly and break the news to her. Fred Heller and the Dutch lawyer made arrangements to get Greg’s body home. That night on the bus, as we made our way to the airport in Amsterdam, I finally lost it. I had been steely cold and totally in control for nearly twenty-four hours, and now that it was almost over I broke down and cried, big racking sobs that hurt deep in my chest. Larry Willis sat beside me, his arm across my shoulders, staring grimly into the night, tears rolling down his cheeks.
That night left an enduring mark on me. I would never do drugs again. It became my mission to keep the band clean. It was the hallmark of BS&T bands for the next twenty-five years. When we travelled overseas I was obsessed with bringing everybody home safe. The guys in the band knew that the boss wouldn’t tolerate drugs on the road. Anyone who jeopardized the band’s safety would be fired on the spot. I never again wanted to go through the agony of bringing a friend home in a body bag. It was the end of that edition of Blood Sweat & Tears. We returned to New York a broken band. Tony Klatka went to New Orleans and climbed into a bottle for the next ten years, blaming himself for Greg’s death. It wasn’t his fault, but the pain we all felt was almost unbearable. The rest of the guys went back to their hometowns to deal with it, each in his own way, but one thing we knew for sure—we would never make music together again.
I returned to Toronto and ran head-on into another calamity. Within days after I got home from Amsterdam I found out that the Toronto attorney I had trusted to keep the books had been robbing me blind. Now that there was no more Blood Sweat & Tears, I needed to know where I stood financially. I was shocked to find I was almost broke. The lawyer had been living the life of a rock star and, like the rest of us, had been sucked into the glitzy world of celebrity and cocaine. He had been travelling all over the world with Fred Heller, flying first-class and staying at the best hotels, all at my expense. The lawyer had taken to affecting capes, $2,000 suits and gold-headed canes. He drove a Mercedes and lived in the most exclusive part of town. Becoming my lawyer had made him a superstar in the Toronto legal community, and he represented many prominent Canadian artists. When I demanded an accounting, the floodgates opened and everyone wanted to know where their money was. The lawsuits flew for the next several years, but most of the money was gone—spent on his lavish lifestyle or blown up his nose. Everyone was grateful that I had exposed this crook, but that was no comfort to me. I had problems of my own. There was a lot of money missing, my taxes hadn’t been paid in three years and the government wanted their money. It’s easy to say “How could I have been so stupid?” but when you are on the road year-round generating millions of dollars, the cash flow is bewildering. When you’re caught u
p in the pressures of travelling and performing every night, it’s difficult to keep track of the money. Even the guys handling the money didn’t know where it all was. Once when a tour manager was let go they found over $50,000 in unused airline tickets in his desk drawer. In the blur of constant travel arrangements, he had simply forgotten about them. The cash coming in and going out was impossible to monitor. You had to trust somebody to keep the books.
I felt cornered and betrayed by everyone. I blamed Fred Heller and the crooked lawyer, I blamed Terry and I cursed the government, but I knew in my heart that I had fucked up. Money and excess, booze and drugs and my own out-of-control ego had done what an abusive father, the brutality of prison and the years of struggle couldn’t do. It broke me. Fuelled by years of drinking and drugs and high-powered living and still suffering from post-traumatic shock from the tragedy in Amsterdam, I hit the wall … hard. I had what I now recognize as a complete nervous breakdown. I withdrew from Terry and began sleeping on the sofa downstairs. I’d wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat with the image of Greg Herbert dead in that hotel room in Amsterdam still haunting my dreams. I would wake from one nightmare to face another, the stark reality of financial ruin. I was nearly broke, and except for my ongoing royalties I had no income. I had no bookings to fall back on. Blood Sweat & Tears was shattered and I didn’t know if it would ever come back from the devastating blow it had suffered in Amsterdam. I just couldn’t face anyone. My entire self-worth had been wrapped in the protective mantle of stardom, and now I was stripped naked. Bill offered to help me out financially but I had too much pride to accept his help. Terry tried to get me to see a psychiatrist but I never kept the appointment. Our marriage couldn’t survive these multiple catastrophes. My entire world had collapsed and I was not fun to live with anymore. Terry left me and filed for divorce. I had no choice but to sell the house and file for bankruptcy.
Being famous is a double-edged sword. When you’re on top, everyone knows about it, but when you fall, you fall hard and there’s nowhere to hide—you fall on your ass in front of the whole world. The press, of course, delights in this kind of story, and my troubles were splashed across the newspapers in my hometown. My mother had to read about her son’s fall from grace in the local papers. “Ex-convict David Clayton-Thomas, lead singer of Blood Sweat & Tears, whose saxophone player Gregory Herbert was found dead of a drug overdose in Amsterdam, today declared bankruptcy in Toronto. Mr. Clayton-Thomas’s wife, Terry, has filed for divorce.” That’s what happens when you become fodder for the scandal sheets. Everything negative in your past becomes a part of the story and it snowballs. I had come to believe that fame and money could control everything, and now it hit me: the accomplishments of the last ten years meant nothing. The Grammy Awards and the gold records meant nothing. Now the story was all about drugs and divorce, my prison record and the financial scandal.
I put the house up for sale, put my furniture in storage and made arrangements with a musician friend of mine to care for Casey. He had a house up in the lake country with acres of fields and woods, and I knew the big high-spirited dog would have a good home. I tossed a bag in my ’74 Porsche Carrera and started driving. I had no destination in mind. I just wanted to drive until the pain went away, until I could figure out how the hell this could have happened. I drove blindly all summer, checking in to a motel when I needed sleep, driving aimless and alone all over North America. I had a well-known face and name, but for that entire summer few people knew where I was. I grew a full beard and spent most of my time in the Porsche. I drove clear across Canada to Vancouver, down to San Francisco to stay for a few days with Forrest Buchtel, then to Los Angeles for no reason at all. There would be no answers or comfort in that pitiless town. I drove to Miami to visit Bobby Economou and to New Orleans to see how Tony Klatka was doing. It was as if I was reaching out to the guys who were there that terrible night in Amsterdam, as if someone might have some answers. They didn’t.
I spent the summer of ’79 driving alone in the little Porsche with only a CB radio for company. Four months of driving, trying to get my sanity back, trying to forget the memory of Greg Herbert in that hotel room in Amsterdam, trying to figure out how I could have fucked up so completely. I had been given a second chance and I’d blown it. It seemed like one day I had it all—money in the bank, a lovely home, a career, a beautiful wife—and the next day all I had was this battered old Porsche. Driving has always been therapeutic for me. There’s just something reassuring about being out on the highway, winding through the countryside in a fine-handling piece of machinery. You can’t be touched out there, and I guess after spending so much of my life in the public eye this was my way to escape, to re-examine, to just be alone and think. By the end of the summer, now straight and sober for the first time in years, I had begun to make some sense of it all. There was no one else to blame. Not Terry—she did the best she could with an out-of-control maniac for a husband. Not the crooked lawyer—I didn’t take care of business, and there will always be sharks around if there’s blood in the water. Not even the coke dealers—it was my choice to let those slimy bastards into my life. No, what I learned driving across America that summer was that there was no one to blame except that face I saw in the rear-view mirror every day for four months. I had abused the blessings I had been given, and it was up to me to make it right again. I still had my God-given talent and a lot of people out there who for some reason still believed in me. With a little luck and some serious self-discipline, I just might put my life back together again.
Redemption
Toil and labour on the ark, Noah, God meant it
Scorn and pity’s all the world around, you’ll ever know
Rain and thunder in the dark, Noah, God sent it
Sing redemption everywhere you go
Praise the Lord, he has led you … Noah
Thirst and hunger on the rock, Moses, God gave you
Pain and sorrow’s all the world around, you’ll ever know
Fire and fury in your talk, Moses, God save you
Sing redemption everywhere you go
Praise the Lord, he has led you … Moses
Cold and lonely in the dark, Joseph, God left you
Greed and hatred’s all the world around, you’ll ever know
Pull your coat of colours round, Joseph, God blessed you
Sing redemption everywhere you go
Praise the Lord, he has led you … Joseph
Words and music by David Clayton-Thomas, Richard Halligan and Steven Katz. © 1971 (renewed 1999) EMI Blackwood Music Inc.
20
THE CANADIAN BS&T
If I was going to reclaim my life, the only things I could build upon were my voice, my songs and the great show that had died that night in Amsterdam. Driving across the country that summer, I had come to the conclusion that it was the musical standards that defined Blood Sweat & Tears, not the personnel. Any team of great musicians could be Blood Sweat & Tears. There were no original guys in the last band, and no one seemed to mind. There was a fine musical community in Toronto and I knew everyone up there. I came up with a crazy idea: maybe I could build a new BS&T made up of Canadian musicians. Would anyone really care where they came from as long as it was a great horn band and it had that Blood Sweat & Tears sound? The sound was in the charts, not the players. Of course they had to be great musicians to play those difficult arrangements, but Toronto had a fine musical community and there were lots of great players up there.
I headed back to Toronto, but on the way I stopped in New York for a meeting with Fred Heller. He invited me to have dinner with his family that evening, and for several hours we talked it out. We talked about how the band had controlled everything in the past and how ludicrous that was. Nobody gave a damn who played second trumpet, and to give that guy an equal say in the running of the band’s business was crazy. A nineman democracy just didn’t work. When push came to shove everyone would vote according to his own interest. A great ban
d needed leadership and direction. Heller and I had both come to the conclusion that the flower-power commune concepts of the sixties just didn’t work in the big-money world of the music business. The truth is that it’s easy for everybody to be equal when you’ve got nothing, but throw millions of dollars on the table and the alpha dogs come out. We had a chance to turn the tragedy in Amsterdam into something positive. The old BS&T had been totally destroyed and now we had the opportunity to build a new one from the ground up, to learn from the mistakes of the past and form a band with strong leadership. But Heller was emphatic about one thing: if I was to be the leader of this new Blood Sweat & Tears, I had to lead by example. There would be no drugs, no booze and no doubt about who was in charge. Heller did not want to deal with another out-of-control bunch of prima donnas who thought they were all superstars. We had already proven that the public didn’t really care who was in the band as long as they were great players and I was the lead singer. I had a proposition for him: if I could put the BS&T show back together with Canadian musicians, could he book it? “No problem,” he told me. “If Bobby will let us use the name, I’ll handle the bookings.” I said, “Okay, let’s do it.” It was the beginning of decades of renting the use of the BS&T name from Bobby Colomby.
We shook hands and I headed home to begin assembling a new band. I knew the Toronto music scene well: the best players in town were Doc Riley’s people. Doc was the major contractor in Toronto for everything from jingles and film scores to serious jazz and rock recording sessions. All the top players in town worked for him in one way or another. As soon as I hit Toronto I called Doc and told him about my idea. He loved it. A Canadian Blood Sweat & Tears, eh? Doc knew just the people to pull it off. If you worked for Doc, you were a team player, and I knew we wouldn’t have the ego problems that had plagued the New York band. He suggested I call Bruce Cassidy, a brilliant trumpet player/arranger who had played with Doc’s band, Dr. Music. Cassidy would be musical director for the new band. Two talented brothers, Rob and Dave Piltch, played guitar and bass. Another Riley protégé, Lou Pomanti, handled the keyboard chores. The only musician from the previous band was Miami drummer Bobby Economou. He had married a Canadian girl and was living in Toronto now. Bobby had been with me that terrible night in Amsterdam and we would always share that bond. He and I had toured the world together for two years, and he gave me a rock-solid foundation to build the new band on. Two fine sax players, Earl Seymour and Vernon Dorge, completed this Canadian edition of the group, and Blood Sweat & Tears was back in business again.
Blood, Sweat and Tears Page 17