One crazy weekend I took Suzanne with me to Nevada for a gig at Harrah’s and we got married on the spur of the moment in one of those “Elvis” wedding chapels in Reno. I don’t know, maybe I thought that would make her happy. The next day I called Ashleigh in Newport and told her we were married. She broke into tears and cried, “Oh no, Dad, you didn’t.” Yes, honey, I did … What was I thinking? It lasted a hot three months. It was a volatile, sexually charged relationship and it burned out fast. The constant emotional turmoil was hard on Ashleigh. At the time she was an impressionable thirteen-year-old. It must have been difficult for her to watch her dad making a fool of himself over a manipulative little sexpot half his age. Young women were not uncommon in my life. I lived in a young rock & roll world. At concerts I was still hooking up with sexy twenty-five-year-olds even when I was in my fifties, but this wasn’t out on the road. I had brought this foolishness home with me.
Finally, in the midst of one of Suzie’s temper tantrums, I walked out without a word. I got in my car and drove eight hours to Bill’s house in Toronto, called my lawyers and told them it was over. A price was agreed upon, nothing I couldn’t handle. Suzie took the money, signed the divorce papers and went on to marry a Baptist church deacon in Indiana. She was way too young for me, and I was way too old for all the drama.
After Suzanne I finally realized that marriage was something I just wasn’t good at. I once told Deering Howe, who was also a multiple-divorce survivor, “I just can’t respect a woman who is dumb enough to put up with my shit.” It was meant to be funny, but maybe there’s more truth there than I like to admit. I have always had problems with intimate relationships. When other kids were learning about sex and dating and high school proms, I was getting my master’s degree in the merciless ass-backward world of prison, where the only person who wanted to date me was a guy with twenty-two-inch biceps and jailhouse tattoos. From there I leaped headlong into the world of show business and suddenly people were calling me a “star.” Beautiful women were everywhere and readily available, and I’ll admit I didn’t know how to handle all this attention. Emotionally I was still a horny sixteen-year-old, and I had to make up for lost time.
My love life consisted mainly of one-night stands on the road. It was all part of the game. I’d be gone in the morning and they’d probably never see me again. It’s the way the game is played in the world of rock & roll, and they knew the rules. They just wanted to snuggle up to someone famous and I just wanted to get laid, to escape for a while the dark hours between the last encore and the 3:00 a.m. wake-up call. The loneliest time in a performer’s life is the hours after the show, when you go from the incredible high of being adored by thousands of fans to the depths of loneliness in a hotel room. You feel like you’ve given everything to the crowd. They all go home smiling and happy, and you go back to watching late-night TV alone in your room. You’re still pumped up from the show, the adrenaline is flowing and you can’t sleep. This is the time when rock stars crash and burn. They turn to drinking and drugs and meaningless sex, anything to ease that crash landing.
I never really trusted those girls backstage who now suddenly found me so irresistible, but what the hell …They were gorgeous and I was lonely. It’s hard to tell the girls who really care from the groupies just looking for a thrill, and it seems like you’re never around long enough to learn the difference. In my younger days, when I fell in love, I fell hard, but it always came down to a conflict between love and career and I was addicted to my career. In my mind it was the only thing standing between me and where I came from, and I wasn’t going back.
Doubletalk
Big tobacco wants to save my life, by tellin’ me I never should smoke
Petro money wants to save the world from pollution, people ain’t that a joke
Big brother wants to let me know that he cares about this family of mine
And big trouble’s waitin’ for the guy who gets himself a little bit outta line
So the river flows, runnin’ down the mountain to the sea
So the story goes, I’m drownin’ in the river and it’s washin’ over me
Misdirection makes the world go round
And nothin’s ever what they said it would be
Mud splatters when it hits the ground
And makes the picture so much harder to see
Doubletalk turns me upside down
It’s got me goin’ back and forth in my mind
Bullshit follows me around
And nowadays I’m just so easy to find
Takes a talkin’ head to figure out what a politician has on his mind
Takes a better man than me to know how to listen in between the lines
Takes a poll to tell me where I stand, I make my mind up instantaneously
If my opinion’s what they really want
I’m sure there’s someone who will give it to me
Lyrics by David Clayton-Thomas. Copyright © Clayton-Thomas Music Publishing Inc., 2007.
24
INTO THE DIGITAL AGE
The little studio in the spare bedroom at the house in Pomona would now begin to dictate the course my life would take. I had pretty much stopped writing new music in the eighties. There was no time to write and no motivation, surrounded as I was by people who were earning their living by touring. I became fascinated with the emerging technology called “midi,” using musical instruments interfaced with a computer as a composing tool. I used to write my songs by recording my guitar and vocals into a tape recorder. Every writer has his own process. Some begin with a drum groove and build on that. Others have notebooks full of lyrics looking for a melody. I tend to write a chord structure first, then find a groove that fits. Often I sketch in the melody using a scat vocal. This enables me to find a melodic structure that feels comfortable for my voice and my range. Then comes the lyric. This is the fun part for me. Once I’ve established the subject matter, the lyrics fall into place pretty quickly.
This new technology completely changed the way I looked at songwriting. Because everything was built on a digital time code, the drums always came first. They were the framework you could hang everything else on. Then came the chord structure. At first I’d write the chords on guitar, as I had always done, but soon I realized that the keyboard was a more efficient way to input data into a computer so I began to teach myself to play piano. It was a little late in life to master a complex instrument like the piano, but the technology was growing by leaps and bounds and before long, with the advent of digital audio, I was able to program my Mac with my guitar, my voice or virtually any instrument the composition demanded. Now there were no limits to what I could do in my little home studio in Pomona. Soon the spare bedroom was overflowing with electronics—keyboards, drum machines, midi gadgets, computers and mixing boards. Ashleigh used to say it looked like the deck of the starship Enterprise.
By the early nineties I was experimenting with digital audio programs, samplers and analog drum loops. I sensed that this was just the beginning of a massive explosion of digital technology that would revolutionize the music business, and I wanted to learn everything I could about it. This was exciting stuff and the possibilities were endless. I could record new compositions with real instruments directly into my computer, writing melodies and lyrics, editing, cutting and pasting. It was like fingerpainting with music. I could create new songs and arrangements right there at home, then take the demos into a professional studio and give them to live musicians. Most of the young guys in the band had grown up with this stuff, so it was important that the “old man” could communicate with them on their level and knew what he was talking about. Frank DeGennaro kept himself up on the latest developments and was enormously helpful in building my home studio. I realized early on that my programmed bass lines and drum tracks would never replace live musicians, but it was a way I could get my ideas across to the band. This process fascinated me, and I began writing again after several years of creative drought. I discovered some
thing about myself in that little home studio in Pomona. I was still a pretty good songwriter, and this new technology had lit the fire again.
Being a songwriter and a performer is a somewhat schizophrenic existence. Finding a balance between these two sometimes conflicting lifestyles is the secret of survival in this game. As a performer you are out there surrounded by people. It’s a high-energy contact sport, and I love it. Songwriting is a more reclusive exercise.
The long hours in my home studio were beginning to pay off. I had a large stash of new songs and more on the way. The joy of creating new music is indescribable. Each song is your child, and like any proud parent you want everyone to know how special your child is. I was writing new music and it had to be heard.
There lies the rub. New York studio time is expensive, and New York musicians don’t come cheap either. Since the current band had no record deal, the sessions would have to be paid for by the BS&T road show, meaning we had to tour even more to meet the expenses of recording, leaving even less time to focus on the writing and recording of new music … Catch-22. For Larry Dorr and the band, this was a gold mine. I needed money to record my new songs, so I couldn’t afford to turn down any dates, which meant more work for everyone. In addition, I was giving the guys a lot of work in the studio. My insistence on recording new music was a pain in the ass and a drain on the cash flow, but what the hell, I was the franchise and, bottom line, I was paying for it. From my point of view, if I had to drag my ass through a dozen airports and play a dozen oldies shows to pay for the recording of one new song, it was well worth it.
I recorded a blues album at Ornette Coleman’s studio in Harlem. Frank DeGennaro had done some engineering work for Ornette and we had a chance to get some cheap studio time. We didn’t spend a lot of money on the album. It was mostly just for fun, and I was hungry to get back into the studio again. It had been a long time. Doc flew down from Toronto and we put together a small band made up of a few blues players I knew from around town and some of the guys from my road band. The record was called Blue Plate Special. It was a tribute to my blues idols. It contained some classic blues tunes that I had always wanted to record and a few of my new songs written at the house in Pomona. There were no charts—it was just a blues jam, but it turned out great. The tunes are funky and soulful and you can tell the players are having a great time. A year passed, and when Larry Dorr couldn’t seem to find a distributor for the album, Doc stepped in and arranged to have it released on a Canadian blues label called Stony Plain Records. I wasn’t upset that Larry couldn’t find a deal for this record. I figured it was a pure blues album, and I didn’t have much credibility as a blues singer after the pop success of BS&T. I was just happy to be in the studio again and to see the record released, even if it was on an obscure little roots blues label in Canada.
The Blue Plate Special experience got my creative juices flowing again, and I began to put together a new project at a studio in Rockland County called Beartracks. It was home base for the jazz fusion band Spyro Gyra. Just a few minutes from my house in Pomona, it had a beautiful, rustic 150-year-old farmhouse with a large stone barn that had been converted into a modern state-of-the-art recording studio. The new project was entitled Bloodlines. I was touring with Blood Sweat & Tears and I figured Larry would have a better chance of shopping a deal if we made an album that had something to do with what we were doing onstage. The fans were constantly asking about a new BS&T record, and I wanted to give them one. I knew I couldn’t use the name Blood Sweat & Tears without Bobby’s permission, but I figured this was a way to pay tribute to the rich musical history of the band and to record with some of the guys who played with me in concert every night. The project would be a collection of all-new, original songs featuring the current members of BS&T, along with some of the band’s illustrious alumni. Most of the A-team musicians in New York had been in BS&T at one time or another. Soloff, Lipsius, Bargeron, Mike Stern, Don Alias, Randy Brecker—they were all BS&T alumni. In fact, it was hard to call the top players in New York without including ex-BS&T members. I had a world-class studio just a couple of miles from my house, with top-notch engineers and a great recording environment. I had access to the top musicians in New York City, and Doc would fly down from Toronto in a heartbeat any time I called. I started making calls, and when I explained the concept behind the Bloodlines album, everyone was enthusiastic. I had some great new tunes and three talented arrangers in Doc, Tony Klatka and Fred Lipsius. This would be the coda on my career with Blood Sweat & Tears. One last album with all the great players I had worked with over the years, and then I could move on.
We worked on Bloodlines for the better part of a year, with Doc flying in from Toronto, Klatka from Denver and Freddie from Boston. They would stay with me at the house in Pomona. We’d get to hang out for a few days of swimming, cooking out on the back deck and working on the charts in my little home studio. Then we’d take the tunes in to Beartracks, where we’d cut the tracks. We basically recorded two or three tunes at a time, squeezing recording dates into our busy tour schedules and arranging sessions around the availability of our all-star cast of guest musicians. Every session was different and fun because you never knew who might show up. As word spread around town about what we were up to, ex-BS&T members began to call me. “Hey, man, I hear you’re doing a session with Freddie and Lew. Need a guitar player?” We had a great time recording that album. Every session was like old home week. Many of us hadn’t been in the studio together for years, and it felt good to be making music with all these old friends again.
I paid for the album myself, close to $100,000, and when Bloodlines was completed I again turned to Larry Dorr. As my business manager, it was his job to find a record deal. I didn’t figure there’d be a problem. The album was a killer, and some of the biggest names in jazz were playing on it. I had printed up a couple of thousand CDs and they were selling like hotcakes out on the road. The BS&T fans loved this record. A year passed, and when the album hadn’t been released I began to wonder … Maybe Larry had no interest in getting record deals for my solo projects. His money came from booking BS&T on the oldies circuit, and my insistence on writing new music was a threat to his income. Maybe he didn’t want a new record release by me. A new album might enable me to strike out on my own and, oops, there goes the franchise. He knew I’d never be content to just ride off into the sunset as an oldies act. I was too driven by my own creative demons to settle for that. He also knew that I was actively looking for a way to put my dependence on the Blood Sweat & Tears name behind me once and for all. I was terribly conflicted about that name. On the one hand I was so proud of what it represented in terms of its musical legacy, but on the other hand I resented the control it exercised over my life. I knew I would never have ownership in the name, and Bobby Colomby could revoke the licence any time he wanted to. You can’t run a business or ever feel secure with that sword hanging over your head. When we took on the name, Larry and I had agreed that it would just be for a couple of years until we could establish my name and launch my long-overdue solo career, but what I had feared was now a reality. Nearly ten years had passed, and the BS&T name was generating so much money that it was controlling everything. Any thought of a solo career was long forgotten.
Bobby Colomby wasn’t interested in endorsing a new BS&T album and a David Clayton-Thomas album with the original BS&T members playing on it … Never! It was the kiss of death for Bloodlines. I should have realized that Colomby would not allow Dorr to shop a deal for Bloodlines, but I had naïvely believed that Larry Dorr was his own man. I thought that he was my friend and my manager and that he had my best interests at heart. Now the truth finally hit me. Larry Dorr may have been working for me, but he rented the use of the name from Bobby Colomby and he was taking his orders from him. Once more the ownership of the BS&T name would jump up and bite me in the ass.
I confronted Larry about his failure to find a record deal for Bloodlines, but he told me that Colomby had killed th
e project and there was nothing he could do about it. Bobby had apparently threatened to revoke the use of the name if this record came out, and Larry wasn’t going to risk that. I can’t blame him for this decision. Had Bobby pulled the name it would have put twenty-five people out of work—good, loyal people, some who had given twenty years of their lives to our company and had families depending on us for their livelihood. Larry and I weren’t willing to risk that, so I suggested a compromise. There were several record companies interested in a new BS&T album, so how about we call Bloodlines a Blood Sweat & Tears album and cut Bobby in for a share? It made sense. It was a damn fine recording, most of the original guys were playing on it, BS&T still had a huge fan following and Colomby was still making a ton of money from our concerts. It seemed to me that everybody’s interests would be served by releasing this record. Colomby wouldn’t even consider it. He still maintained that there was no legitimate Blood Sweat & Tears without him. Of course, he was still receiving cheques every week from this band that according to him didn’t exist. I was disgusted with this hypocrisy and told Larry Dorr that I couldn’t live this way. I had to put an end to my dependence on Colomby and the BS&T name once and for all. If he couldn’t do it, I’d find a manager who could. I told Larry that he was fired, contacted our agency in LA and told them I was coming out there to shop for new management. This move blew the lid off everything and the truth came out. Since Colomby had leased the name directly to Larry Dorr and Larry had signed the name to the agency, it now became apparent that I couldn’t fire him … He didn’t work for me. He worked for Bobby Colomby. I signed his paycheques, but Bobby gave the orders. That goddamned name again.
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