The Last Holiday (20 page)

Sure enough, things quickly got organized. Ed agreed to donate the venue and we got in contact with WHUR to spread the word. But late January and early February is when Washington gets its
harshest weather. The night before the benefit, a snowstorm hit the District and continued through the next morning, forcing us to delay the show until the next night. I had to hastily reorganize
things for various members of the Midnight Band whose flights in from New York and Boston had been cancelled.

The next night the crowd came tiptoeing carefully through lanes cleared through the accumulated snow plowed to the sides of Georgia Avenue. The supper club was not a huge place, but some of my
favorite places to play were smaller, more intimate venues, like Ed’s or Blues Alley in D.C., Al Williams’s Birdland West in Long Beach, S.O.B.’s on Varick Street in New York, and
First Avenue, the Minneapolis club Prince later made famous. We played two sets, and at the end of a successful evening we stood in small clusters of five and six while Ed and the hosts shuffled
through the cash, deducting the expenses for the service staff and cleanup crew. They finally emerged reporting a clear profit of $2,300 for the defense of Miss Little.

Something real good happened then. Two hustlers, street brothers who will remain nameless, though they were recognized and answered to fairly descriptive nicknames, came out of their huddle
briefly. Each of them had a hundred dollar bill in his hand.

“Make it a straight up twenty-five hundred,” one of them growled as though raising the bet at a poker table.

Ed took the bills they offered and called for the bartender to pour them another as they put their heads together again in their corner.

There were a lot of things that a lot of diverse people had in common in those days. Russell Means, who was head of the American Indian movement, had a lot in common with Joan Little, who had a
lot in common with Inez Garcia, who had a lot in common with the San Quentin Six; all of them were symbols of how America needed to change but had not.

The reality, of course, was that the people were not helpless or defenseless or without the means to effect change. It was just that nobody was going do everything; we were trying to say to
brothers and sisters,
Let’s pool our energies and talents and try to get all of this here, instead of the little bit you might be able to get on the corner
.

I was trying to get people who listened to me to realize that they were not alone and that certain things were possible.

I had continued teaching through the end of 1974. But Brian and I had started working on a new album to follow up
Winter in America
. And we played a lot of live
shows.

Dan Henderson invited Clive Davis to come to a show at the Beacon Theater in New York City. We’d heard that Clive was starting a new company called Arista. What we didn’t know was
that Clive was already scouting us for the label—turned out he really dug “The Bottle.” I had never met the man until he walked into the Beacon.

Dan was just salivating—and nervous. He was like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs, and the guys in the band were all talking about it before Clive’s arrival. You
had to know Dan to know how unusual it was for him to be excited or nervous—anything except extremely fucking cool.

Clive showed up at the Beacon and saw what we did and how we did it. Physically, he was not imposing. But there was definitely a power there, a magnetic shimmer. He was an Aries, and maybe it
was nothing more than an extra luster to the aura of the fire at his core. In reality, I don’t know what it was; maybe he only seemed to have that something to me because his history preceded
him and caused the curious—like me—to look for it. But it was there when he mixed with other people and the world.

He looked different from Bob Thiele, whose wardrobe was casual without looking hippie or bohemian—jacket but no tie, cords not jeans. Clive Davis was always dressed and pressed: tailor
made, expensive materials, understated but obvious at the same time, and even after hours he dressed nine-to-five. Also, unlike Bob Thiele, whom everyone called Bob, Clive was always Mr. Davis.

I think Clive had already made up his mind, because talks progressed quickly after the show. The music trade papers made a big deal of the fact that we were the first act signed to Arista,
because they were all waiting to see what Clive would do when he got back into the business. But I don’t think it was too significant. We were available and we had been working on new
material.

Graduating from Flying Dutchman to Arista meant an elevation to another level of visibility. I went to a couple of concerts with Clive during the next few months. Very early on in our
relationship he took me to see Elton John at Madison Square Garden. I think he was trying to show me what he saw me doing without making that speech.

The first time I went to his office, it was still down at 1776 Broadway and posters of Tony Orlando and Al Wilson—remaining traces of his previous label—were still on the wall. He
had his feet up on the desk, talking freely about the future of his new company. By the next time I visited him, he was up at 6 West 57th Street, a street as closely associated with the music
business as Madison Avenue was with advertising. Clive’s new offices occupied an entire building as far as I could tell, and they were also fully staffed, with all the clamor of a big city
newsroom, bright as daylight with fluorescent tubes running the length of the pathways between cubicles. Clive was still at ease.

I was the de facto leader of the Midnight Band, but that was a longer way than anyone seemed to understand from 57th Street. The band members felt I had talked my way into publishing houses with
my manuscript; I had talked my way into Flying Dutchman and a record deal and I had talked on my first record; I had talked my way into Johns Hopkins and a masters degree. As far as they were
concerned, all I needed was someone’s attention for a few minutes and I would talk them into anything. While I appreciated their confidence, I felt it was misplaced. My most outstanding
liability was that I was naïve. In my life, I was appreciated for my honesty. However, in the record business I was finding that honesty was a missing component.

On 57th Street, which was supposed to be the new launching pad for my career and for the Midnight Band, I came to see how most artists were viewed: expendable, easily replaced by others. At the
Arista office I could hear and feel that I was around music people; they liked music and gave you a feeling about what their homes and lives were like. At other places, like the Copyright Services
Bureau, an office full of entertainment lawyers Clive approved of, the atmosphere was totally different, with the
click-clack
of typewriters and the hum of copier machines. All those lawyers
and managers and accountants were as thoroughly plugged into the music business as the aorta is to the heart, but with a cynicism and disdain that made me think at times that they didn’t care
for either singers or music.

On 57th Street, they could see money coming. See it the way a trainer can see a colt’s time for one and a quarter miles when it first puts its weight on legs as wobbly as wet straws. Smell
it the way farmers can smell rain that’s still two days in the distance. Feel it the way a grandma can feel that same rain from an equal distance in the marrow of her bones. And even taste it
the way standing outside a bakery makes your mouth water. If you were part of a record company on 57th Street, you were on the money, part of the bedrock of the biz. Or at least you were eligible.
This was the inside of the inside.

I didn’t feel like a part of a profession—not one that mattered to the busy folks with briefcases banging their knees and thighs as they half-walked, half-trotted everywhere they
went. It wasn’t just that I was Black, though that was never far from my consciousness; I felt like an undercover man who had shown up without his cover. Even anesthetized by good Colombian
weed, I felt tense and out of place, and it was because I really was. I wasn’t unfamiliar with New York—just this part of New York, midtown. I had a house in Virginia, roughly three
hundred miles south of 57th Street. In Virginia I could think. I could sit in the yard with a glass of tea and a book in the afternoon. In Virginia I could continue to write the songs and poems
that people enjoyed and made me happy.

But whether I liked it or not, I began to have to spend more time on West 57th Street. More than a certainty that I had the business expertise to direct our group, the band members figured I was
the only one who really had the time. After all was said and done, I was the one who essentially had no life. The New York guys, Adenola, Bilal Sunni-Ali, and “Cosmic” Charlie, all had
families and other vocations. There had never been any commitment on their part to full-time pursuit of positions in the record business. They all loved to play music. They made as many concessions
as they could to band rehearsals, making the gigs, and teaching us all what the rhythms meant and how they could be used to help us say things. Victor Brown lived and worked in Boston. Brian, Doc,
Danny, and Bob Adams lived and maintained their lives in and around D.C. They were all intelligent, with degrees and other professional expertise where college degrees would not benefit you, but
none of them had either the interest, the expertise, or the independent image separate from their contribution to the group to be recognized as a spokesperson for all of us. Especially to speak for
me.

Arista started releasing records on January 1, 1975, and brought out our album
The First Minute of a New Day
on January 15, 1975, making it the first minute of a new day for Clive Davis,
too.

I had to take a leave of absence from Federal City College, which eventually became permanent. What I had once dreamed about—contributing to the Midnight Band when I could free myself from
my teaching and writing—was impossible. I had mixed feelings about leaving the place just as it was combining with D.C. Teachers and the Washington School of Technology to become the
University of D.C., but the problem was success.
The First Minute of a New Day
hit the charts and remained on them for weeks and months.

While our new lawyers at the Copyright Services Bureau negotiated a deal for me to do a movie score not long after the release of the album, I was back in New York, staying at the Salisbury
Hotel. After a day of trying to satisfy the brilliant choreographer George Faison with rhythm for a proposed dance number, I stumbled back to the hotel and almost had a heart attack.

I had already turned the key to let myself into the room when I realized several things: (1) Someone had been in my room, (2) Someone had been smoking marijuana and (3) They were still there. I
felt like a cheap, condensed version of “The Three Bears,” some production that could only afford one bear.

I wasn’t in much of a mood for figuring shit out but I figured that if they were Spirits I could negotiate with them because they smoked reefer. (It did cross my mind that I had left some
excellent reefer in a shoe box under my bed. But no matter.)

I decided it was either Manny Lopes or Norris Little, the head of Charisma, because whoever it was had to have heard me turn the key in the lock and heard me come in and there hadn’t been
any response. So I turned the corner into the main part of my living quarters where four dread brothers were busy with a great quantity of reefer on a newspaper in the middle of the floor. They
barely noticed me come in. One of them, the one I recognized, was Bob Marley.

The dread brothers were fairly cordial. Truth was, they didn’t know whose room it was. Or that it was the room of one particular person. Nor did they particularly care. They had been out
in Central Park playing soccer until their package arrived and were offered the key to this hotel room until their rooms were ready. I had the impression that I could join them if I wanted to, and
would be welcome to share a little herb; but that was all. I never got the impression that they gave a damn that it was
my
room. And they probably shouldn’t have. After all,
wouldn’t I have said, “Make yourselves at home”? And hadn’t they? Was there a rule that said they had to ask first? Did it matter which order the making-yourself-at-home
thing had to follow? Evidently not.

I did notice a nasty looking gash on Bob’s toe, however, and spoke on it. “Seems like you need to do something about that toe, my man.”

I just kind of threw that out there as the first wave of making-yourself-at-home crept into my attitude.

“The doctor give him somethin’.”

One of the brothers offered around a joint as thick as a sausage.

“But him ol’ head too hard to use ‘im what it got.”

Bob was sprawled across the floor, propped on one elbow. He waved his man off.

“Jah heal,” he assured me. “Jah put t’ing for healin’.”

“Jah might’ve put that doctor here for healing,” I offered. “Jah’s gotta be mighty busy.”

“Jah heal,” was Bob’s last comment on the subject.

And for whatever reason my mind works the way it does because I found myself looking at their soccer ball and thinking,
He takes a licking and keeps on kicking
. And then my mind moved
on.

Less than a year after Clive had decided to start the label, Arista was the fifth biggest music company in the world. So in September 1975, the Midnight Band played two shows
at Madison Square Garden as part of a celebration of the label’s successful first year of operations. It was as if Clive had decided to let New York celebrate his anniversary. To cover the
whole day he planned one show in the afternoon and one at night.

I used to minimize the importance of playing at Madison Square Garden and swear that it was no big deal. It was a big deal. I was forced to face that long before I stepped into the place as a
piano-playing band leader. The first time had been as a basketball player in my last year at Fieldston. What I most remembered about that season was that we should have been conference champions.
But we weren’t.