WHILE WE WERE waiting for the release of Helter Skelter,
Ric had decided to go on the road with some guy named Steve Starnes, another
singer/songwriter from Oregon. With Michael Kennedy leaving so abruptly, it was
back to square one again and now no drummer, which was another thorn in our sides,
especially for Stephen. He seemed to take it the hardest and had thoughts of,
God forbid, going out on the road with Ric and Steve. Although we felt Ric did
an admirable job on the soundtrack, Blair and I really felt ambivalent
about his leaving. The most important thing now was to get tight as a unit,
write some more songs, hit songs, with hooks and great lyrics and audition
another drummer.
I felt that Stephen and I had
the guitar parts covered. All he had to do was learn them, which may sound
simple enough, but Stephen never plays the same thing twice. Sometimes it is
completely brilliant but other times, he is out there in the ozone. It was
completely frustrating and sometimes I wanted to swing my guitar at him. Thank
God I could see that movie to its conclusion in a matter of seconds and then
decide what action to take.
It was a lot harder for me
to control my temper then, but usually the only one I ended up hurting was
myself. I don't know why I felt so responsible for the band's lack of success.
Maybe it was because I wrote most of the songs, some with Stephen and less
with Blair, or maybe because I was the second lead singer after Joey, and
my voice was not as good as it should have been, as Jon Marr would remind me on
more than one occasion.
There was one time at the
Rainbow. I was a bit drunk on my usual, Bacardi 151 and coke and Blair had
his usual Jack Daniel's straight up. We were playing this game of one-upmanship
with our cigarettes - who could take it the longest with the lit end of the
cigarette on the back of the hand. I won and had scars on my hands to prove it.
I think they have faded now or only blended into the lines and cracks which time has marked them.
It was that confrontation
with Stephen in the lounge at "The Village" that was the last
straw. Blair wasn't living there anymore but a fellow musician and
songwriter named Bobby Bruce had an apartment on the first floor adjacent to
Cynthia St. He lived there with his dark-haired beauty of a girlfriend and soon
to be wife, PJ Russomano. We did a lot of demos over in that apartment and this
was the night where Stephen and I played the latest and most intense version of
the blame game.
Nothing was happening with the band.
Joey was doing his usual escape act and disappeared somewhere into his dark
abyss. Stephen had to relegate the blame for all the mishaps in our relatively
short-lived musical career, and this time it was me. I was being attacked by
another crazy Scorpio and it was not pretty. All this was happening while we
were playing a game of eight ball on the pool table. It was a real bitch-fest.
He had his pool cue aimed at my left eye and mine was pointed at his right eye.
It was a Mexican standoff. There was a palpable tension in the room that seemed
to last forever. That's when I turned my body to the south wall where I smashed
my fists into my 1964 Rickenbacker 12-string case which was steel reinforced. I
went outside to the swimming pool and the only thing I could think of doing was
to jump in with my black velvet pants and long leather coat to distract myself
from the pain. It did help for a while, until I couldn't take it anymore and ended
up taking a bus west down Sunset Blvd. to the UCLA emergency room where I was told,
as I said before, that it wasn't broken only the ligaments that were torn,
which can take even longer to heal. I still feel it when it rains and a bit of
arthritis has set in which is a reminder, a not so pleasant one of the past. I
don't think Stephen and I spoke to each other for a few months after that. The
band was officially broken up and I went back to the sanctity of Oakhurst Drive
to recuperate with my tail between my legs and my wrists wrapped in ace
bandages.
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