A Stray Cat Struts (10 page)

In 1997, Michael was in LA making a solo record. I was already seven years sober by then. I went to visit him in the studio a couple of times; he was in pretty bad shape the last night I saw him. He did a few songs at the Viper Room. I heard about and was shocked by what happened to him just a couple of days later. The rest of the sad story is easy enough to look up.

My girlfriend at that time was Claudia Cummings, a former Alabama beauty queen. She was gorgeous and talented, too. It was one of the few times when I've ever seen a girl and just walked straight up to her cold without introduction and told her I would like to get to know her better. The scene was the old Hollywood Athletic Club, and Claudia was the attractive spokesmodel assistant on a billiards-themed game show. She racked the balls and smiled at the camera. My old buddy Tom Salter was one of the owners of the club and had invited me over to watch the pilot and be a face in the crowd for the TV show. Claudia was also a background singer in Jimmy Buffett's band, and I used to go to the shows. His crowd and band thought I was the punk rocker from Mars. The audience was the stoned, drunk, and higher-paid professional meathead types with their ties around their heads, giving each other frat boy high fives every two minutes. Meanwhile, I was sober, the squarest guy in the room who had a babysitter watching TJ back at the ranch on Doheny Drive. One night at a gig in Orange County, they all had to stop, stare, and comment about my quite ordinary blue suede shoes. Despite that, I have positive memories about that time.

But back to 1983, when that day at the U.S. Festival belonged to the Stray Cats. Looking back on some press clippings and reviews of the show confirms this.
Time
magazine gave a favorable review to everyone and the gig as a whole and singled out the Cats' performance as the day's best. I dug the early sets and wasn't as nervous as I would be now. I was caught up in the moment and had total confidence in our band. Everything clicked for us on that set. I think that we were always the best live band on any bill, but that day stands out because of the strength of the lineup. These were all world-class acts. If you look at the day's bill now, with the Divinyls, INXS, the English Beat, Flock of Seagulls, Men at Work, and the Clash, it becomes clear, though we didn't really know it at the time, that the Stray Cats were also representing the USA in our own backyard. We had already played a lot of big shows but were very confident that particular day, as we had a hit in the USA and were household names at the moment. The timing of the day worked in our favor, too. We strutted onstage, me carrying a bottle of Jack Daniel's, to a thunderous applause from an estimated three hundred thousand people in the daylight. During the show, the sun went down and the huge lighting rig was turned on for the first time. Seeing the film now, I am struck by how cool our little setup was. We had this huge stage around us and had, by then, learned how to work it. The core of our setup, the tiny drum kit and two amps, looked very classy and retro-revolutionary in the days of big drum kits, keyboard rigs, and amplifier stacks. We didn't have to waste time convincing this crowd. We had a double platinum album under our belts. I think we opened with “Rumble in Brighton” and did “Runaway Boys” in the set. The audience sang all the words on “Stray Cat Strut,” and the call and response on “Rock This Town” was the biggest noise from an audience I've ever experienced. The footage of the gig was recently on TV, and the Cats' performance really holds up; the look and the music are timeless. As the show went on and it got dark outside, the show had highs and lows to coincide with the change of atmosphere. Especially when it is very hot and crowded, you cannot overwork the crowd too early, but you need to keep the intensity level up and keep them focused and interested during the whole show. I see a perfectly played and paced show from three guys all under twenty-five. After having not seen it in a long time, I was impressed with the onstage maturity and, as always, quality of the playing. This was a wild show that ended with me jumping off the bass drum as Lee held and pounded the double bass over his head and Brian threw his prized Gretsch in the air and caught it on the downbeat as I hit the last cymbal crash. All the while, we were under control. It was wild abandonment, but it wasn't frantic. We knew where we were at all times and were very comfortable up there. We had done it—this was the peak of the mountain we had told everyone we were going to climb. We had brought rockabilly music and style all the way back and beyond anywhere it had been before.

After this show, it was a perfect time for basking; it wasn't the day for splitting right after the show. My band had just done what would be the show-stealing set; I had my glamorous wife by my side and half a bottle of Jack Daniel's left. My best pal for the day was Eddie Van Halen, who was playing the next day and had come early to hang out and party at the festival. We nipped from my bottle and chased it with tall cans of eternally cosmopolitan Schlitz malt liquor. We'd hang out once in a while over the years to come. He's one of the best musicians and coolest guys in the biz. We have always had a good connection. We took some classic backstage pictures together that appeared in a few magazines in the day and still pop up sometimes online. I look pretty tweaked; I guess I didn't want to miss anything.

The Clash was definitely one of the best bands around then. I had seen them play a number of times, including three nights in a row in 1981. They were doing a run at the grand old Lyceum Ballroom on the Strand, London, WC1. I turned up at the stage door and was welcomed by Big Ray, their security guard. I stood at the side of the stage, loved the gig, and went back the next night for three nights running. They always had a cool conceptual part to their shows. These featured a graffiti artist on a ladder, armed with cans of spray paint in crossed bandoliers and wearing a gas mask, who did a huge mural behind the band as they played. By the end of the show, there was a one-of-a-kind backdrop. I remember going into the dressing room right after the show and seeing Mick Jones sitting and eating his dinner off a plate on his lap while still all sweaty wearing his stage clothes. He was and is a supercool rock-and-roll guy whom I see when he comes to LA. I've rehearsed, played, and made a video at his studio / groovy hangout place in Acton, London, W2.

Nicky “Topper” Headon was the drummer in the band at that time and was on their best records and gigs. He played a dozen classic drum licks on
London Calling
alone, and I've studied his playing. He was my genuine drummer buddy, and we hung out, talked about drums, and partied a bit. I was lucky in that I never got into the dark side of drugs like he and a couple of other buddies from that time did. We bought the same pink suits from Lloyd Johnson and wore them when he sat in with the Cats at their legendary 1980 New Year's Eve show at the Venue, Victoria, London, SW1. I saw him a couple of years ago; he's doing okay. I'm happy to have had some quality time with him.

Joe Strummer was at a few of the early Cats shows and really helped the cause when he said some truly nice things about us in one of the big weekly rock papers. His word was respected, and it went a long way when he told the
NME
that we weren't a hype. That was one of the worst things a band could be called at that time; it suggested a lack of substance. Our rapid rise and seemingly overnight success had caused a little jealousy, and the word
hype
was floated around in an attempt to hurt us. Joe batted that down in an interview. He didn't have to do that, and I'll always be grateful to him for it.

The Cats had done our own run at the Lyceum at the end of the first English tour. We also filmed the video with Dave Edmunds for the song “The Race Is On,” recorded during the making of the first Cats record at Eden Studios, Chiswick, London, W4. We did it in one or two takes. This version of the George Jones classic was a top-forty hit in England and features a perfect rhythm track from the Cats and two of my favorite guitar solos, first one by Brian and then one from Dave.

The Clash had some problems on the day of the U.S. Festival. Topper hadn't been doing too well and didn't make the trip with them. There was a replacement drummer, and he did the best he could. I think the guys were all fighting, and it famously was the last gig that Mick Jones ever played with his own band. After a set by Men at Work that was good but left the Cats' set unchallenged, I was leaning on some road cases and noticed some kerfuffle behind the stage. The roadies from the Clash, having heard how much the band was being paid for the performance that day, were going on strike and refusing to move their equipment onto the stage and set it up. They were laying down their demands to the flabbergasted manager.

That's the dichotomy to punk rock band / road crew politics, the “we're all in it together” versus “worker's rights against the boss” argument. Certain punk rockers had preached about poverty, and when they found themselves successful with a little money, they were embarrassed and tried to hide it. That's a very hard thing to pull off; it always shows through in some way. I never thought there was anything wrong with success. Unless you give it all away, there's no way to hang on to the original ethic. I've never known anyone who really did it that way. The Clash road crew were that certain breed of professional English roadies in the 1980s who had nicknames and thought they were rock stars, too. From where I was standing, it looked like they were promised more money and started setting up the stage.

Just when the manager thought he was safe, Joe came up to him with a new problem. As part of the technology theme behind this show, the organizer had arranged for a few minutes of the show to be simulcast to the USSR using some type of satellite technology. Through a Soviet/USA agreement, coupled with the wizardry of Apple, a certain weather or military satellite passed over the concert site and would be taken over for five minutes and used to beam the gig to the whole of Russia. The only catch to this experiment was that it had to happen at an exact time. Whoever happened to be onstage at the time of the satellite passing was the band that would be shown on Russian TV. That day, it happened to be Men at Work, and I suppose that the Russians who tuned in thought it was cool for five minutes to see any band from a big concert in the USA. I'm not sure if the Clash had been promised that slot and the timing of the show prevented it, but when Joe found out he wasn't going to be on Russian TV, he went ballistic. I was still leaning on a few cases, taking nips from my bottle while keeping an eye and ear on what was going on. He was screaming at the manager to get the satellites back and wasn't having it when he was told that to do that would be impossible. A few of the technical people from the festival were brought in to try to explain it. It wouldn't have mattered who the band was; once that moment passed, that was that. I guess there must have been more stuff going on in their dressing room, because they looked a bit out of sync and distracted onstage that night.

I, however, enjoyed the rest of the night. We all watched from the side of the stage and walked around the grounds a little. I drove home with Britt and Nicholai and stayed in my own bed. It was truly a special, magical twenty-four hours in my life and career.

The next day was another day on the road for us. We had a couple of other big outdoor shows in California as the opening act for Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers. These were big shows too but not quite the magnitude of the U.S. Festival. We were taking a helicopter again; we were old pros at it by now. A car picked me up; we stopped at the hotel to pick up the others and went to the airport. I got out and went into the lobby. I saw Joe sitting there by himself among a bunch of luggage. He said that they hadn't had so much fun the night before. I told him he should hang around for a few days and goof off in LA. I said we'd be back the next day and we could hang out. He told me that he had to get back to London “like my ass was on fire.” I asked him why, and he told me, “To vote.” There was a national election the next day in England, and he wanted to cast his vote against Thatcher. That cat really walked the walk on this one. He was flying all the way back to London from LA to cast a vote in an election that would result in a 99 percent victory for the bad guys, but he went anyway, to have his voice heard. That's dedication.

The next few days, I'm sure, were good times. The whole week of the U.S. Festival was good times. I do wish someone had offered me stock in Apple instead of the money we were paid, which I've definitely blown by now.

 

7

The Killer

The first time I ever met the Killer was in Beverly Hills in 1983. The scene of the encounter was at the old Beverly Theatre on Wilshire Boulevard. I'd been to see him play before at the Palomino, another legendary venue that was an authentic juke joint in North Hollywood on Lankershim Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley. As the crow flies, it wasn't that far from the Sunset Strip, but by that time, it was a different universe. Every country music artist from the 1960s through the 1980s played there. I saw many shows there featuring the original 1950s rockabilly stars, including Wanda Jackson, Carl Perkins, and bawdy rockabilly queen Janis Martin, who called me up onstage, where she was smoking a lipstick-stained, superlong cigarette and drinking a light beer, to announce me to the audience. By then, I was pretty much immune to any public embarrassment. I had already fallen off the drums and down enough staircases in nightclubs and had said enough stupid things in interviews to be thick skinned enough to take a little ribbing onstage from an old gal. In this instance, though, I did feel the back of my neck getting hot when she pulled a makeup pencil out of her handbag and wrote her hotel name and room number on a napkin. All of this was happening while I was standing on her stage with the band sitting behind me waiting to do the next number. I'll bet I still have that napkin somewhere in a box in deep storage.