“Those guys got our money,” Lem growled. “We can’t leave the machines again!”
“What are we gonna do?” I was thinking more about all the beer I was drinking, not about the next bump. I was pretty sure that Lem’s special brand would see me through the immediate future. I knew I’d have to pee way before the rush wore off. He wasn’t going to lose another payout. He had a genius, tweaker-inspired, fully covert solution. He left the bag of speed open in the pocket of his leather jacket. He worked out a system where he could take his buck knife out of its sheath, snap it open, reach it into his pocket, give himself and then me a perfectly measured hit, snap it back closed, have it back in the sheath, and never break the rhythm of the pull on the one-armed bandit. It was beautiful to watch. Speed-freak ballet. Around three, we’d excuse ourselves from the club. Any girl that had come with me was long gone by now. The owner would disappear into his office with a few young men. I never wanted to see what went on in there.
Lem lived in a house in Battersea that he shared with a Hells Angel and a few other nefarious characters. There was a disassembled motorcycle in the living room, up on blocks with an oil pan underneath, and always a few passed-out bodies scattered around. It was an accidental living art installation. His room was in the basement. It was a concrete bunker with a gold record screwed to the wall with industrial bolts. All his clothes, belts, hats, and boots were strewn about with a haphazard flair and organization. Lem would dig around in a large cardboard box filled with cassettes. He always found exactly what he wanted. This time it was a live BBC show from Gene Vincent in the ’60s that he had recorded by holding a microphone in front of the radio. I had never heard a few of the songs. He knew every detail about the players and the set list. We’d play a few games of chess in which he’d slaughter me in five moves. We’d have long talks about the impact of rock and roll on the culture, how it really did save our lives and gave us a chance to travel, mixed in with our shared love of the details, liner notes, and photographs from the original rock-and-roll artists.
At some point after sunrise, I’d have to split. I always found a black taxi on the main street, and with the help of an old teddy boy cabbie, I’d make it back to my place in Bayswater. The driver never complained about me paying with two handfuls of change.
11
A Few Stories with Keith
I had not become friendly with Keith like I had with Bill, but I have had a few memorable encounters with him that make for a good rock-and-roll story.
“The only thing we ever did, man, was sell your music back to you!”
Those were the first words I remember hearing Keith Richards say in person. It was perfect right away. The boozy, smoky English drawl I had heard on rock-and-roll interview shows was right on cue. We were sitting at a drinks- and ashtrays-filled table in the Venue, a nightclub in Victoria Station, London, in the later part of 1980. The Stray Cats had just played a scorching gig and had been whisked right offstage for an audience with the Stones. Mick, Ronnie, Charlie, and Keith were all there. They obviously loved the show. Before we even sat down, Keith stood up, knocking the chair over in an elegant way, and embraced Brian with genuine affection—must’ve been a guitar player thing. Everybody was all smiles.
We all sat for quite a while and yelled at each other in a noisy nightclub while paparazzi snapped away. I had paired off with Charlie, and we talked about our favorite jazz drummers. The whole scene was a bit of an unreality. The Rolling Stones had come and were all together at a club to see us play. That can’t happen very often. We had met and hung out in the pubs and clubs with a few well-known people by then, mostly from other bands that were currently popular, but not of this level of legend and celebrity. They wouldn’t have been in this joint if the Cats hadn’t been playing. They had all come to see us. It was pretty flattering. We all sat around drinking and shouting about rockabilly music and how much the early Stones were influenced by American rock and roll.
They left when the other band started playing. The funny thing is that we were the opening act that night, and the headliner had the chance of swapping slots and would have had the Stones watch them before us, but they refused to switch and missed out. Too bad, guys, whoever you were—bad choice. That doesn’t make for a good story thirty-five years later.
I heard afterward from people who really knew the Stones that it was the first time anyone could remember all those guys had been hanging out together, especially in a nightclub, in quite a while. I also heard that they were passing coke under the table during our set and that when I stood up on the bass drum, Charlie exclaimed, “Brilliant!” and dropped the vial. I gotta think they had more. We met with Mick at the Stones’ office a few days later and talked about being on their label, and Brian went down to Redlands, Keith’s infamous house, one time, but that was the last I saw of Keith until we did the shows on the 1981 Tattoo You tour. In the meantime, I had met Bill Wyman at a different Cats show in the South of France and become very friendly with him.
When we did the shows on the 1981 Stones tour, I didn’t really see much of Keith. I think he was partying heavily on the part of the tour we were on. We had total all access and roamed about the backstage as we pleased. Like us, those guys didn’t have any preshow ritual or band meeting; they just met by the stage stairs, walked up, and started the first number. I stood off to the side and watched them loosely gather, kind of say hello to each other, and then do the gig.
Before one of the shows, Keith was the last to arrive on the side and seemed in pretty rough shape. He was wearing an untucked white dress shirt over the same torn T-shirt, leopard jacket, and jeans from the last few days, half walking and half being dragged by Big Jim Callaghan. I thought he looked supercool but was a little worried he wasn’t going to make it. The others didn’t seem that concerned, and Bill gave me a little smile like he knew what I was thinking. All of this was happening at the bottom of the stage stairs while the intro music was blasting over the huge PA. The lights were down, the audience was going crazy, Mick was jumping up and down, running in place, Charlie was twirling his sticks, Bill was quietly dragging on a cigarette, and Ronnie was coolly pacing a little. They walked up the stairs, and Keith came up last, being helped and hanging on to the railing. As he hit the last stair and stumbled forward toward the stage, his roadie had his guitar waiting. In one motion, he walked under the strap, the roadie let go, Keith slammed into the opening riff of “Under My Thumb,” and away they went. He was totally awake and in control as he stomped over to the drum riser and locked in with Charlie. It was truly a rock-and-roll transformation. Here was a cat that was completely comfortable on a stage. I watched the rest of the show from the side and then walked out into the audience for the last part of the set. I dug it; I’m a fan. It was a memorable Stones show with an extra peek behind the scenes.
In 1985, I was with Lee and Slick in New York City mixing the Phantom, Rocker & Slick record at Media Sound. We had recorded it at Capital Studios in LA in the previous weeks, and in typical, spendthrift rock star fashion, we had to go somewhere else to mix it. We might as well tack on a few plane tickets and two weeks’ stay at the old haunt, Le Parker Méridien; just put it on the bill that you have to pay back, anyway. Earl Slick, longtime David Bowie guitarist and one of my best pals of all time, got a call from producer Steve Thompson to put the guitars on a duet he was doing with Mick and David. It was a cover version of the Martha Reeves and the Vandellas’ Motown classic “Dancing in the Street” and had to be done quickly because it was to be put out in conjunction with the Live Aid charity concerts that were looming. Slick has a special talent where he comes in at the last minute, plays the right stuff, and saves a session that looks grim. He’s done it a hundred times. As a result, we all got invited to Mick’s birthday party at the Palladium on Fourteenth Street. It was a big bash. In keeping with the times, the three of us retired to the men’s room for some extracurricular nasal activities. It was the 1980s, and there was nothing wrong or strange with thre
e guys sneaking off into a stall in the gents’. I’m sure there were clubs where anything went, but we were there to do some coke. As we were crowded into the stall, passing an unfolded bindle back and forth, just a nose appeared over the side wall. It was Ronnie Wood.
“Aha!” he said. So he stepped around and joined an already crowded stall; there was no one else in the bathroom. As we were all chatting and sniffing away, the door opened, and I heard a pair of boots clicking on the tile floor. I looked down under the stall and saw a pair of battered black suede pirate boots and knew right away who it was: it was Keith. We opened the door, and it became clear that we should all go out into the bathroom rather than trying to squeeze one more into the stall.
So we were all standing around the sink now. Slick had an eight-ball vial and was pouring out bumps onto that little spot between your thumb and forefinger that’s formed when you make a fist. We were all talking, reminiscing a bit about when the Stones first saw the Cats, the gigs we were on, and how cool Gene Vincent was, when I impulsively suggested to Keith that he come into the studio while we were mixing and add a guitar on a song. We had a song called “My Mistake” that was perfect for that Keef, country rock, signature sound. I figured you cannot win if you do not play. It’s the same reason the hottest chick in class has no date for the prom; everyone is afraid to ask. There was a split second of silence before he agreed. As I’m writing this, I’m wondering why I didn’t ask Ronnie to play, too.
We went back into the club and had a few drinks. Keith’s wife, Patti Hansen, was there; she was gorgeous and very cool. At some point during the night, I noticed that Keith and I were wearing identical black-and-white polka-dot scarves. I said something about trading, and before I knew it, I had his scarf on, and he had mine. We traded scarves; it seemed like a good idea in the moment and makes for a good story now, but at the time, Britt chided me because it was her designer silk scarf, and the one I got from Keith was cotton. I wore it on the album cover and still have it in one of my drawers.
We agreed to do the session over the next few days. We would be there for a week longer. Eric Gardner is important in this part, as he stayed in touch with Jane Rose, Keith’s ultrahip, tough, New York gal manager. This was pre-cell-phone days, and I doubt Keith would have one even now. A few days later, we got a call in the daytime saying Keith would come in that night to do the track. Sure enough, he turned up that night with his longtime tech and famous roadie Alan Rogan. We had Jack Daniel’s in the studio, and everyone loosened up before we got down to playing. Keith was the one holding that night. He carried a black bag. Rogan attended to tuning a white Fender guitar and Telecaster.
The session itself went along very nicely. The producers, Steve Thompson and Mike Barbiero, got along with everybody. As I thought, the song was right up Keith’s alley. He picked it up very quickly, and we had multiple good takes in an hour or so. We spent the rest of the night talking, drinking, dipping into the doctor’s bag, and listening to the rest of the album, which he seemed to like.
I had a leopard-skin jacket of my own, inspired by the one I had seen Keith wearing a few years before. It had velvet cuffs and collar, black silk lining, and my name embroidered in the inside pocket. A real custom piece of proper tailoring by bespoke rock-and-roll tailor Glenn Palmer. Glenn is a real artist, a Yorkshire man, straight out of Dickens. He trained in traditional tailoring in Savile Row in the 1960s and brought the legendary Kings Road clothing line Granny Takes a Trip to LA in the 1970s. He could make a suit for the Prince of Wales and then make a costume for a metal band. He makes stuff for me still today. He’s the best there is at his game. Keith mentioned that he liked the jacket, and I insisted he take it as a token of my appreciation for doing the session. He, of course, hesitated, but I persisted. When he tried it on, the sleeves were too long, and there was no way he was going to take it. We had a fun rest of the night, and when he split, I knew I had just had a special night—and to prove it, I had a killer guitar track on a song that I wrote. I think Keith had a good time, too.
Lee and I started thinking about a cool way I could offer some type of payment. I didn’t expect to get an invoice or a statement from the Musicians’ Union, but wanted to do something to show we were thankful. I thought about my jacket and how he had liked it so much. The plan unfolded. We would get Glenn Palmer to make an identical leopard-skin jacket as a gift for Keith. A cool rock-and-roll gesture as payback and thank-you for a job well done. Glenn is a real artist, and things needed to be right. Jane Rose waited until Keith was asleep on the couch of her office and then measured his sleeve and neck size. She relayed the info to Eric Gardner, who relayed it to me; I gave it to Glen, and he started working on the jacket. He had it done in a couple of weeks. We shipped the jacket to the office and were told he received and dug it. A fitting end to a good story!
It was 1988 in Hollywood, and the Cats were making the Blast Off album at Ocean Way Recording on Sunset with Dave Edmunds. It was a good time, as the Cats were recording and touring; I think it may have been the time when everyone was getting along the best. We had proved ourselves, and now we were just working. Keith had just done his first solo album with his band the X-pensive Winos and was doing a tour around the USA. His excellent band included friends Steve Jordan and Ivan Neville and true pal Charley Drayton. The LA gig was at the Hollywood Palladium, a classic ballroom from the 1940s on Sunset Boulevard that had hosted all types of gigs and TV shows from the likes of The Lawrence Welk Show to riotous punk rock shows in the 1970s. The Stones had played there in the 1960s, and the Cats did an unheard-of three-night, sold-out stand at the Palladium as part of our first USA tour.
On the night of Keith’s gig, Brian, Dave, and I took a break from the recording, walked across the street, and went to the show. We went into the raised balcony on the side and watched the show from there. I remember meeting Michael J. Fox and Woody Harrelson. Michael J. yelled at a female fan who interrupted him and asked for his autograph. They were both nice to me. Keith and his band were great; he always brings that loose tightness or tight looseness with him wherever he goes. They played a combination of songs from Keith’s fine first solo album Talk Is Cheap, featuring super first track “Take It So Hard,” some covers, including family favorite Eddie Cochran’s “Somethin’ Else” and a few Stones numbers. They did one of my all-time favorites, “Connection,” and powerful versions of “Time Is on My Side” and “Gimme Shelter” with Sarah Dash trading lead vocals with Keith and really killing it. Charley and Steve switched back and forth between the drums and bass.
I really enjoyed the show and wanted to go backstage to say hello. Brian and Dave went back across the street to the studio. The Palladium is an old-timey venue, and there are a series of small dressing rooms behind the stage, real vaudeville style with round lightbulbs around the mirrors and small dressing tables. The headliner has a slightly bigger dressing room that has a small bathroom attached. The size of the room and the fact that it was Keith’s first solo gig in LA meant that this tiny dressing room filled up real fast, and being Hollywood, everybody was somebody. It was really crowded and hard to get to the back of the room to say hello. I squirmed toward the back and squeezed myself into the mini bathroom for a badly needed pit stop after drinking a few pints out of plastic cups on the balcony during the gig. I’d zipped up and was starting to open the door back into the madness when I heard, “Everybody get the fuck out!”
There was a little murmuring and crowd whispering, and then again, “I mean it! Everybody get the fuck out! Jane, get ’em all out of here! I don’t care who it is! Out!”
This was unmistakably Keith’s voice. He’d just finished his show, had had it with the backstage moochers and scenesters who always made it back there, and had just thrown everyone out of his dressing room en masse. I heard the sounds of grumbling, shuffling of feet, fifty people complaining under their breaths all at once, and then the slamming of a door. Then nothing but silence. Everyone was gone. I understood his move, but I was in
a tough spot; I was stuck in this little adjoining bathroom and had to get past him to get to the door that led out of there. I didn’t want to be the last guy in this room who caught the “I told everyone to split” hell that was sure to follow.
So I was panicking a little, and I thought of Bill, who would have chuckled at my predicament. I eased the door open a crack and saw Keith sitting in a folding chair by himself in this now empty dressing room. To add to the scene, he was looking down, expertly playing with a big butterfly knife. I made my move, slowly opened the door, and eased myself out and headed toward the hallway door. Keith sensed the movement in the room and growled, “Who’s that? I thought I told everybody to leave!”
“It’s me—Slim Jim. Erm, hi, Keith. Great gig, man. I was just leaving, too,” I answered meekly, remembering that although I had hung out with the guy in the past, it had been a couple of years since I’ve seen him last.
“Wait a minute. Where you going? Sit down,” he said.
“I’m splitting. You just kicked everybody out; I thought you wanted to be alone,” I responded.
“That’s okay—you can stay. All those fuckers were making me crazy. Pull up a chair,” he told me.
“Okay, cool!”
So I looked around the room that was filled with luggage, guitar cases, and an ironing board, found another folding chair, and saddled up next to Keith. We chatted away about the gig, how cool Eddie Cochran was, and our shared history with the Hollywood Palladium. TJ had just been born a few months before; I told him about that and asked about his wife and kids. All pretty normal stuff. During our talk, Keith had reached into one of bags on the dressing table and pulled out a nice, big pharmaceutical vial. My eyes were lighting up as he dumped out a healthy-sized pile onto the ironing board, flicked his big knife open, and carved out two thick lines, each the length of the ironing board. With no interruption, we chipped away at these long rails and talked for half an hour or so in backstage peace and quiet. The sounds of a rock show being torn down and packed up could be heard in the background. At some point, Jane Rose came and got him, we said our good-byes, he told me to say hello to the guys, and I made my way back across Sunset Boulevard to the studio with a fantastic story to tell the others.
A Stray Cat Struts Page 12