AFTER THAT MEMORABLE ALL-NIGHTER
at the House of Dolenz it was back to business as usual and besides the
partying and general carrying on it meant finishing our record at the Plant. We
were like kids in a candy shop, and we wanted all the sweeties we could manage
without making ourselves sick. We spent hours and hours on this one song, Shades
of You, which had this duck synthesizer battling a fly Stratocaster. One
night Joe Walsh was hanging around outside studio B, then popped his head in
after hearing pop sounds leaking out from the control room. In his opinion the
song needed a synth, so he generously donated an Arp Odyssey and thus a duck
was born.
Joey sang the lead vocal, and I was singing
the low harmony, but I knew there was something intrinsically wrong with the
lyrics, the main problem being - it didn't rhyme in the verse. A few
minutes later after a little chemical inspiration, I burst into the control
room and said, “Bob, turn on the microphone I am going to change these lyrics
right here on the spot”. I came up with all this rubbish but inside the garbage
was a touch of brilliance, or so I thought. Blair was saying, “either this guy
has the biggest ego in the world or is really a f****** genius.” I think it was
mostly the drug, some kind of THC powder I snorted, but my ego was out of
control in those days. It’s a lot smaller now, but it’s still there.
I don't think Bob Merritt
will ever forget having to sit behind the board watching this menagerie of
man-child’s antics through the thick glass window. At least he could turn it
down or off but out there in my sea of Silverspoon I felt like I was swimming
against a riptide. Where was Mal our supposed co-producer through all this? I
didn't know at the time but there was plenty on his plate.
Mal was involved with The Beatles from the get-go and was accustomed
to having everything complimentary. The price he paid for this was more than he
had bargained for because he was paying his own way now. He had written many
lines from actual Beatle songs that he never got credited, and now he was
writing songs on his own that nobody seemed to pay any attention to. He had
this one song that was kind of cool called I'm Not Going to Move about
meditation. It seemed our band was going to back him up and record this song,
but it just wasn't in the cards. It did get on a Ringo album after a co-write
with George Harrison, later going by the title You and Me (Babe). Not
only was Mal having to deal with his own demons of depression and anxiety, but
there was also a rift on the Two Sides of the Moon record. A battle for
control of the project was being waged by the dark side and they were
influencing Keith and his entourage to make a change.
Mal was living with his
girlfriend Fran, a red-headed, freckled-faced woman fourteen years his junior, who
worked in the accounting office at the Plant. She was a single-mom renting in a
nice two-bedroom duplex apartment on Fourth Street just down the road from her
work. She had a two- or three-year-old daughter Jody, with the same red hair
and freckles as her mom. I used to be amazed when Mal would invite us over to
the apartment. One time we were all watching Yellow Submarine and Jody
said. “Look it's Uncle John and Uncle George. Look, daddy, it's Uncle Paul and
Uncle Richie”, She knew enough about the Beatles at that age to know Ringo's
real name, which is of course Richard Starkey.
Stephen tells of a time when he and his
girl-friend Robin, the barely legal enchantress, went over to Mal and Frannie's
place to baby-sit for Jody. Mal had mentioned that he was in possession of the
letters from Hamburg from the "boys" and he kept them in a suitcase.
I am not sure how they found these letters or if they were out in plain sight
but there they were. There were letters from John, in his early twenties,
complaining about the horrific living conditions and wanted to come home. George,
at the tender age of nineteen, said that he was starving to death and couldn't
take one more day living on uppers and cigarettes. There were heart-felt
letters from Paul, Stuart Sutcliffe and Pete Best; Ringo wasn't even in the
picture yet. I am sure they read every word of every letter that night in total
awe and amazement. I would have.
Weeks later Mal got fired
from the project and Darth Vader and his fellow Storm Trooper took over the
production of the album. Everything went downhill fast from there. Mal sank
even deeper into his depression then locked himself in his room with nothing
but his Elvis records and western gun collection. In the studio things started
changing for the worse. I was in the hallway frantically pacing back and forth
like a wild man while my bass part was being replaced by a "professional
bass player". I wanted to storm into the control room like a Holy Crusader
and demand that my part be saved. Luckily, I was restrained by my cohorts and
after calming down decided to leave it alone. I was learning the ropes now in a
new and painful way. It was a tremendous blow to my ego, and it hurt me to the
core but after a few more of these kinds of episodes I realized that was
"show biz" and I shouldn't take it personally. Even now, it still
hurts a little. Later, I heard my bass line mysteriously show up in the string
arrangement of the song. Sure, I was being used without credit, but still felt
vindicated knowing that my bass part was hooky enough to be used on a record. I
took that as a sign of good things to come.
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