Chapter 18 - England Swings

NOT LONG AFTER Chas was let go from Silverspoon, he went to the Rainbow Bar and Grille and ran into BJ now working as the DJ up in the Crow’s Nest playing early disco records. When I walked in I would always get a kick out of hearing him spin records like Wall Street Shuffle or Rubber Bullets by 10CC. I am pretty sure he was the one who introduced Chas to this big long-haired black dude waiting impatiently by the roaring fire downstairs. "I hear you're a pretty good guitar player and I'm leaving next week for Norway. Do you want the gig?" Chas thought he was being handed another bunch of the typical Hollywood bull and this was the place where the best musical BS was being dished up and served cold, but being in his position, nineteen years old, full of piss and vinegar with nothing really left to lose, he followed up on the lead. Plus, good old Beej could always detect super BS from the average run of the mill BS. 

A week later he was in Oslo with the big dude whose name happened to be Ric James. After the gig he flew down to London to meet up with some of his European friends and American transplants. Ric had promised he would be flying in to catch up with Chas and the rest of the musicians in a couple of days to continue the makeshift tour. He never showed up and Chas was stranded in London without a dime, or a shilling. He did wire home for some bucks and went on with his search for work as a guitar player in a new and strange environment. Now you must understand Chas, he is always right at the edge of disaster no, he is over the edge hanging by his fingernails and somehow he always manages to not only pull through but come through with flying colors and all of his sails intact. He figured he was an American in London, and the gigs would be flying off the table into his lap, but it wasn't that easy over there for a Georgia born Los Angelino boy; you had to go through proper channels. You couldn't just prance in off the street into some record exec's office and have your tape played. Somehow he got hooked up with some other American musicians at Island Records. Tony Braunagel on drums, "Rabbit" on keys and later a fantastic Welsh singer, guitar player, Michael Japp (Marmalade). They called the band Waterfall. Right around that time he and his mates had secured a gig with Valerie Carter and opened for "The Eagles" at Wembley Stadium in London. He was doing more than all right and was quoted as saying, "Getting fired from Silverspoon was the best thing that ever happened to my career." This all may sound a little like a "Monty Python" skit, but that's the way things felt sometimes.

I had no idea that seeds were being sown then that would come to widen my outlook, but I can see now that it was starting to show in my songwriting and day-to-day philosophy. I could for the first time see life for me outside of Silverspoon, not that I wanted to leave the band at this point, but I felt there were other things out there, other musicians to play with, and other experiences to write about. Stephen was now living with Robin Olson on Flores, sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Blair was still living at Mediterranean Village. Before a rehearsal one day, Stephen and I had cut out pictures of Cyndi Wood, a favorite Playboy centerfold of his, and pinned it up above the piano with everything nature had awarded her staring him right in the face. We did give him a tough time, but it was nice to see that he had a tender side— he really was, or thought he was in love with her.

As fate would have it, we were back at the Plant doing overdubs and Joey's brother, Jeffrey, and one time Spoon drummer John Marshall Battjes (who enters the story in more detailed later) had arranged for the real Cyndi Wood to come down to the session. Jeffrey was the younger of the same dynamic duo I had met when I first moved to LA, as I mentioned in chapter one. He was always around Silverspoon in the early days until he went to cosmetic school studying to be a Hollywood make-up artist. Carol Burnett, his stepmother said that as long as he kept clean, or at least under the radar, he was a shoo-in for a bright future in showbiz. Nepotism at its finest. I guess the same could be said about Silverspoon. We had every opportunity but, as Blair says now, we fucked every one of them up. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

It was hard to keep the secret, but who knew if Ms. Wood would really show up. In the studio, there was a Liberace style candelabra placed neatly on a lace doily over the Steinway grand piano. Blair must have known something was up when, as he sat down at the piano, we dimmed the lights. After the first take he saw some people enter the studio. He recognized Jeffrey but couldn't be sure about the young fox he was with. Either she looked identical or was none other than his dream girl from Playboy magazine. Speechless, he still managed to give the performance of his life with Cyndi swooning over the edge of the Steinway. That piano part was a definite keeper.

That amazing gesture was the first of many between Jeffrey and Blair, which cemented their relationship as best friends. It would continue until Jeffrey's passing at the tender age of forty-one twenty years later. Blair didn't go out with Cyndi after that, but soon he would meet another Cyndi (or Cynthia as the case may be), a pretty Farrah Faucett blonde who drove a late model Corvette Sting Ray. She would become a mainstay in his life and the life of future Spoon guitar player, Michael Kennedy.