A Stray Cat Struts (15 page)

One memorable night was when Dave Edmunds played the Palace in Hollywood. Brian Setzer, Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, Duane Eddy, George, and I were all in the balcony watching. There is a perfect dressing room rock pic in existence of this night. Everyone is drinking a Corona and looks cool. It's not always important to have the hard proof, but in this case it's a good one.

The last time I saw George, we bumped into each other at a recording studio owned by Dave Stewart, where I was doing a session and he had an appointment. He came into the session and made it a point of saying hello to me. He picked up a guitar and strummed a little. We went outside and had a nice chat. When I went back into the session, I felt some pride and got a bit of “Wow, man, you
know
him?” from the other musicians and the engineer. “Oh, George, yeah, he's my buddy,” I answered coolly. I was still feeling special. George did have that effect on people.

Then George got sick, and I didn't see him again. It's too sad, and everybody knows that story. I still get weepy if I think of it. After watching the excellent documentary
Living in the Material World,
I learned that it turns out George had a similar relationship with quite a few people all over the world. He would just call and made it seem like you were the only one he did this with. Finding this out made it even cooler to me, like being in an exclusive club where you didn't know who the other members were.

A few years ago, I went to a gig that my son, TJ, was playing drums on. He was in a band that was opening up for a band with George's son, Dhani Harrison. I watched proudly, as always, while my son nailed his gig. I stayed and watched Dhani. He sang and played great. I, of course, noticed his strong resemblance to his dad. Afterward, I told Dhani that I'm sure he hears it all the time, but his dad and I were pals in our own way. He said, “Yes, I heard him mention you.” I introduced him to my son, and there's the circle.

 

10

Lemmy

A typical night off in London in 1981 would usually start with going to a gig. There always seemed to be a show, and I quickly got used to just walking straight in. The Nashville, Golden Lion, Fulham Greyhound, the Venue, Hope and Anchor, Hammersmith Palais, Hammersmith Odeon, Camden Palace, Dingwalls, the Lyceum, and the Marquee in Wardour Street were the main places. The Clash, the Pretenders, the Specials, Motörhead, and Madness are memorable ones. Someone you knew or wanted to know seemed to be playing every night.

We were admired and respected by all the bands in town. The Cats seemed to be the one band that everyone in tribal London could agree on. The fashion and music from the original American rock and rollers has never gone out of style, never will. A T-shirt, jeans, and motorcycle boots will always be the official uniform of cool. We were young enough to put a colorful new spin on it. The Cats had that basic look down and mixed it in with a lot of the current trends in London, creating our own style. It was embraced by all the trendsetters of the time. Since we were Americans and not bound by any official membership to a tribe, we could appeal to everybody. In the past, any attempt to revive the style and music from the '50s had come out looking corny, and I'm not sure if the musicianship was that great. No one had really nailed it. We didn't have a theory about this; we just instinctively knew it. We could all really play. The other two are natural virtuoso musicians; that was the bottom line. If you looked outrageous and did crazy things, it didn't matter if you couldn't back it up onstage and in the studio. If there was any doubt about the buzz going on around us, once anyone saw Brian play, all doubts quickly vanished. I could keep up and was doing something totally new on the drums. We also brought a few guaranteed hit songs and a louder, faster approach to rockabilly. It wasn't a rehashing of some old records. We had a very funny New York charm about us, and I ably and happily represented us on the nightclub scene. I liked and felt equal to all these musicians and characters.

After the gig, I'd usually meet Lemmy downstairs at the Embassy Club around midnight. I met Lemmy, the legendary founder of Motörhead, at one of the first Stray Cats shows, and we became fast friends. We liked all the same stuff and had a laugh right away. The Embassy, on Old Bond Street in Mayfair, was an oldie-worldie ballroom with a tragic faded-glory feeling around it. Miles of ornate, smelly carpet, thick Regency-print wallpaper, and chandeliers conjured up classic visions of 1930s prewar London. I once mentioned to a taxi driver that New Bond Street was still older than anything in my neighborhood in New York. He drove me around Piccadilly showing me all the stuff he thought I'd be into. London cabbies are an extraordinary breed. I've given them half the money I've ever earned in my life, and they've given me a deeper understanding of the city and a few shortcuts that few Americans know. They have a complete knowledge of the streets and charming personalities, and all claim to have once been teddy boys.

Everyone went to the Embassy. Rock royalty, punk rockers, drag queens, and Hooray Henry, country club types could all be seen drinking together at the downstairs bar. Drinks were pretty expensive. I never knew or thought about how anyone afforded anything, myself included. Like everything else at that time, it just seemed to happen. The place was owned and operated by Stephen Hayter, an openly gay, public school type who loved entertaining and the whole idea of celebrity. He let anyone he recognized stay after hours to continue partying. He was a bit over the top and flamboyant in a conservative kind of way. He dressed like a yuppie on his way to the golf course, but his speech and mannerisms were overtly gay. He was a character, and I liked him. I met Bowie on a quiet night there—Pete Townshend and Freddie Mercury, too.

Lemmy loved playing the slot machines. He was an expert and connoisseur. There were two at the Embassy. We'd stand side by side until after closing and pour fifty-pence coins into them. The bartender had an unlimited supply of little sealed plastic bags with ten pounds' worth of coins in each one. After each empty bag of coins and ten pounds I'd never get back, Lem and I would retire to the gents' to refuel. As I took out my bindle, Lem asked, “What's that?”

“Coke,” I answered with a “What else?” tone.

“Coke is for chicks. Do this!”

I took a sniff of the crystalline powder off the tip of the buck knife he always carried on his belt. It felt like someone had shot an orange-flavored metal arrow up my nose and through the top of my head. I was frozen. I couldn't talk. I couldn't even blink. I made it back into the club on two frozen-stiff legs. Two regular-looking customers were at our machines, celebrating a big jackpot.

“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 three 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.