Stairway To Heaven (42 page)

There wasn't much to do in Pittsburgh except endure the freezing weather during the shooting of the night scenes, which often dragged on until the early hours of morning. Robert and I often slept late, but awoke in enough time to attend sobriety meetings held just a five-minute walk from the hotel.

Michael Douglas was always the gentleman, and on Robert's birthday threw a dinner party for him at an elegant restaurant. At the end of the meal, Michael offered Robert a three-picture deal with his production company as a birthday present—if Robert stayed sober. He handed Robert a beautiful ostrich-skin folder containing a copy of the deal, which was quite a generous and inspirational gift. While I was with him, Robert kept his commitment of sobriety.

When the shooting of
Wonder Boys
finally came to an end, spring had arrived and I was glad to be flying back to Los Angeles. Robert and I caught an 8:30
P.M
. flight home, and that was the last time I saw him to this day. He is such a talented actor, has a wonderful sense of humor, and loves his son, Indio, dearly. But I know how difficult it can be to keep this awful disease under control. I wish him well in maintaining his sobriety.

 

In recent years, I've toured with a number of other musical groups—or at least was prepared to do so in one memorable instance. Eric Wasserman, Diana Ross's business manager, called shortly after an announcement that Diana would soon be touring with two new Supremes. He asked me to shepherd the new girls on the tour, beginning with pre-tour rehearsals at a studio in the San Fernando Valley, and I agreed. (The nicest part was that the rehearsals were next to a studio where Ozzy Osbourne was preparing for his next tour—and Ozzy always had a cup of tea brewing, which was a nice way to start the day or evening.)

During the Supremes' rehearsals, I kept hearing reports that ticket sales for the upcoming tour were lagging behind expectations. Still, it was a job, the money was good, and it sure beat being out of work.

As it turned out, I worked for the girls for only a few days before Diana and the other singers dropped a bombshell: They had decided that they wanted a woman to replace me. I got a call from Lars Brokar, their production manager in London, telling me that Diana had just agreed to a female tour manager for the girls and he would have to let me go. He offered his apologies.

 

Not long after my ties with Diana Ross and the Supremes were abruptly severed, my friend Jack Carson suggested that I call Dan DeVita, who managed Fu
Manchu and needed a tour manager for the band's European concerts. At almost the same time, I was also asked to work on Paul Rodgers's tour. In looking at their touring schedules, it was clear that I could handle both gigs with no overlap of dates, so I accepted both.

Paul and I had known each other for many years, going back to the days of Swan Song Records and shared management with Peter Grant. It had been at least twenty years since I had last heard Paul perform with Bad Company. I let Chris Crawford, Paul's current manager, know that I had been sober for fourteen years by then, quieting any anxieties he may have had that I was still the wild man of old. But although I took the job, I also felt disappointment knowing that we'd be touring during Claire's graduation from high school. Claire understood that there was no way I could get home, and this was where the money for her future education would come from. (I was able to speak with Claire by phone when she graduated, and she was thrilled with the flowers I had sent; I was clearly a proud papa, with Claire not only winning many first-place awards upon graduation [for English literature, creative writing, and journalism], but also earning a scholarship to a top art college in Los Angeles.)

The dates in Paul's tour were pretty much London-based, so to reduce hotel costs, my ex-wife Marilyn let me stay at her London home. (Most of the band members, including old friend guitarist Jeff Whitethorn, stayed at their own homes, and I would usually rent a car to take us to most of our performances in and around London.) There was plenty of nostalgia on that tour, including a show at the Cavern Club, the old home of the Beatles and a place I had not played since 1965 with the Who (when their incredibly loud music caused plaster to fall off the walls and ceiling!).

The day after Paul Rodger's last performance, I got some rest and then headed for my gig with Fu Manchu and its tour of Europe, making some last-minute changes in hotels and travel arrangements during my first hours on the job. From the start, there were the usual snafus that seem part of any major tour, and that are well beyond anyone's control. Early on, all nonlocal flights in and out of the London airports were canceled due to a major breakdown of the radar system, so the band couldn't make its way to London from the U.S., necessitating canceling the opening show in Manchester. Fu Manchu ended up catching a flight to Dublin, and then boarding a commuter plane to Gatwick Airport, where I met them and got the gears in motion for a show in Southampton. Before long, we were in Germany, after which we drove over the Alps to the Milan airport to catch a plane to Lisbon. Thank God we used two drivers for this leg of the tour, or it simply couldn't have been done safely (as it was, the bus broke down once during the trip).

Fu Manchu eventually made its way to Switzerland for a festival, then on
to Bonn, Leeds, Liverpool, and Belfast. We had plenty of good times on that tour, but it wasn't all fun and games. We were in Belfast at the time of the Orange Day parade in Northern Ireland, and there were bonfires in the street and extra police patrols right in front of the club where we were playing. In fear for our safety, the police closed the club early, cutting our set short for fear that the show would be impolitely interrupted by a petrol bomb thrown through a window. So it turned out to be an early night for us. All in a day's work of a rock and roll tour manager.

 

Not long thereafter, I went to work for the Gipsy Kings, a group of brothers and cousins hailing from the South of France. On the tour, I oversaw their road transportation and hotels, and made sure all of their needs were met. It was a great five weeks living it up at the finest hotels—Ritz-Carltons, Meridians, and Four Seasons—not to mention almost a full week at the Rihga Royal in New York. I certainly enjoyed working with the Gipsys, even though they did not speak English very well and thus it was a challenge for us to communicate.

It took a little time for the Gipsy Kings to develop trust and faith in me, but after the first week, they asked Pascal, one of their managers, why they hadn't had me on their team in the past, since under my guidance, their life on the road ran very smoothly. Pascal also asked me to look after their merchandise—a part of the job that I always found thoroughly unenjoyable—but almost everything else on the tour worked out fine. I was sorry it didn't last longer.

By the way, it was amazing that I didn't lose control of my waistline during the tour, since Pascal often had me take the band members to lunch before their siesta—and then there were dinner parties after each show that were always held at the best restaurants in town. It's all part of the job.

 

As I write these final pages, I've been working as the tour manager for Crazy Town since the fall of 2000. My friend Tony Morehead had done a couple shows for this Los Angeles band, but had made a commitment to another group, so he asked if I'd be interested in taking over. The band's manager, H. M. Wollman, a charming young man, seemed delighted when I spoke with him and told him about my fifteen years of sobriety. After all, some members of Crazy Town were newly sober, and he hoped I'd be a positive influence on them. So with his blessing, I went to work preparing for a tour set to begin in November. At the time, I knew almost nothing about Crazy Town, including the type of music they played.

Nevertheless, the band seemed pleased that I was on the job. Only a week earlier, I had spoken at a sobriety meeting that the recovering band members
attended, so when they heard that I had been hired, apparently no one complained.

A week later, I went to the rehearsal studio to meet the band. But as I shook their hands, my first thought was, “What have I gotten myself into?” The band members had so many tattoos on their bodies that it was hard to see any skin. When they started to play, the music was so loud in that small room that my ears began to ache. I finally excused myself and left to get a cup of coffee, all the while wondering if I was really up to this anymore.

An hour later, I went back to the rehearsal studio, where only two of the band members—Squirrel (the guitarist) and JBJ (the drummer)—remained. We chatted for a while, and I gradually got to know them and the other boys. They were a few days away from shooting the video for their new single, “Butterfly,” and then we'd be heading for Oklahoma, the first stop on their tour.

In that initial concert in Tulsa, Crazy Town was very impressive. I remember thinking, “I don't know anything about hip-hop or whatever kind of music they're playing, but the audience sure loves them.”

On the band's website, one of the vocalists, Epic Mazur, says, “I don't know what you would classify our music as. Sometimes you may think it's purely rock, sometimes just hip-hop. But listening to the whole album, we're expressing whatever kind of music through a hip-hop mentality. We're some hip-hop kids that needed to rock, rather than some rock kids that needed to rap.”

That first tour with Crazy Town went smoothly from Tulsa to Atlanta, to Norfolk, supporting Orgy, and then on to Knoxville where we started a headline tour with Shuvel and Slaves on Dope. Crazy Town turned out to be a great bunch of guys, and the newly sober musicians among them went to meetings with me regularly. They seemed to get along well with one another, and would sometimes write and practice music in a studio set up in the back of our bus. Although I learned that the band hadn't earned any gold stars for congeniality and good behavior on their previous tour, those antics had occurred when the group was using drugs, before they cleaned up. Since I've been with them, I've had no complaints about their behavior, nor has anyone else.

Next, the tour arrived in Lawrence, Kansas, which turned out to be a sweet little town with a sobriety meeting just minutes from our hotel that got us all on the right track. Then we moved on to a concert in St. Louis, which was the hometown of Trouble, one of the band members. While we were there, Trouble got to spend a few hours with his dad and show him how sobriety had changed him. I could see how proud his dad was (that's always nice, since most of us junkies and drunks always end up hurting the ones closest to us).

Next it was on to Cincinnati, and then for a couple of days to Detroit, where I had hoped to see Kate, my old girlfriend, but she was at an ashram for the
weekend. Of course, when you're young, you have plenty of girls to choose from on the road if you so desire, although some band members are quite content just calling their girlfriends back home in Los Angeles or wherever they're living. As for me, my days of chasing and catching women like I used to are over, unless a blast from the past shows up and rekindles the old days. It's usually off to bed early for me, unless I break down on the odd occasion and accompany some of the guys to a strip joint—but not getting much attention from the strippers, I often wonder why I didn't just put the money toward a new pair of Gucci loafers or something else I wanted. (The boys in Crazy Town sometimes called me “Dad”—what does that say about my age?)

Crazy Town continued to play major cities through the East and Midwest, including Cleveland, Philadelphia, Boston, Hartford, Pittsburgh, Columbus, Baltimore, and Milwaukee. Most days seemed like the one before, with a slew of phone-ins, visits to radio stations, press interviews, and anything else to get the band in the public eye and ears. When we arrived in New York, I made some time for a visit to Saint Patrick's Cathedral, where I lit candles and said a few prayers for my family.

As the tour continued, “Butterfly” was getting more and more airplay, and the crowds grew in size. Some promoters asked us to headline shows, even when we had originally been scheduled to open them.

During that particular tour, one of the biggest challenges was the weather. Guided by forecasts on the Weather Channel, I realized we might have a harrowing drive from Chicago to Portland, Oregon, with a major snowstorm predicted on part of the route; Chicago itself was nearly snowed in, and making it to the West Coast for the Portland show appeared doubtful. Production manager Eddie Oetella and I, along with our bus driver, decided to go south, look for a clearing in the weather, and then head to San Francisco. But once we hit the road, even that route was treacherous, although our driver, Jim Wiggins from Coast to Coast Coaches, did a great job of keeping the bus on the icy roads.

The good news was that the “Butterfly” video was getting played on MTV, and the single was selling extremely well—and still growing in popularity. The band's CD was selling about 3,000 copies a week when the U.S. tour started; by the end of 2000, sales had soared to 75,000 a week. The band played its last three shows of the tour—San Bernardino, Fresno, and its hometown, Hollywood—to large, enthusiastic crowds. Because L.A. was our home base, families and friends of the band showed up at the Hollywood show at the Palace, which was a wonderful way to finish the tour.

Crazy Town had worked very hard, never complaining about the early morning wakeup calls and all the promotion we had them do. For me, returning to the Hollywood Palace was rather nostalgic, recalling 1967 when I had
arrived there with the New Vaudeville Band, appeared on
The Milton Berle Show,
and spent time on the corner of Hollywood and Vine at Wallach's Music City, where you could listen to albums in a private booth to see if you liked the tracks before making a purchase.

 

I had a month off before Crazy Town would begin touring again, and I spent time with Claire as well as some friends. Meanwhile, “Butterfly” was spreading its wings on TV and radio, and earned the band a platinum album. The band got short-notice calls to perform at Universal City Walk, as well as in Hollywood and Denver, and they headlined at the Hard Rock Hotel, where we were accompanied by a
Rolling Stone
writer and photographer.