IT WAS VALENTINE’S Day 1988. I had been broken up with
Maria, my punk-rock, Finnish born, German raised model, for over a year—but I
had still not gotten over her. After being sober for forty-five days and going
to AA meetings, I was at my Mom and Dad’s house on Canton Drive, playing the
piano and waiting for them to go out to dinner to celebrate their love. They
left and I noticed my father had left a half-finished scotch on the coffee
table. I wanted to alleviate my pain so I downed the drink and then thought—
what the hell, I had broken my sobriety so I might as well get wasted. I poured
another drink then went upstairs to my mother’s medicine cabinet and “borrowed”
a couple of her Ativan. I took one and stashed the others in a rolled-up piece
of toilet paper. I figured I would feel the effects when I got home which was a
fifteen-minute drive, so I piled my two dogs into my 1969 TR-6 and left. What
I hadn't figured was, being sober for more than a month my resistance
to drugs and alcohol was severely diminished. I fell asleep at the light at
Cahuenga and Vineland and crashed my sports car into a parked car right in
front of a playhouse with a crowd of people waiting in line to enter the show.
I was a mess, but not injured, but my car was totaled. I was slouching on the
curb waiting for the police and fumbling through my pockets to remove the pills
from the toilet paper when I heard a woman yelling, “He’s taking something out
of his pocket.” She might have thought it was a weapon. The cops came and
before they dragged me off to county jail, I begged them to call my friend Blair.
I said, “I don’t care what you do to me but please let me call a friend to pick
up my dogs.” Thank God they weren’t injured.
I spent a week in L.A.
County Jail, and when I got out I was back on the program. I felt I needed to
go back to my roots to trace the life I had led up until that point. I went to
New York and stayed with my parent’s longtime friends, the Meltzer’s again. It
was a beautiful March day, clear and cool, so I decided to take a walk. First I
headed up the west side and when I got to 96th and Amsterdam I
saw a sign that read: “Psychic Reader” on the second-floor window. I walked up
the staircase and buzzed the button. Less than a minute later, a voice that
sounded like sandpaper rubbing against an iron skillet shrieked out through the
two-inch speaker by the door. “Yes?”
“I came for a reading,” I said noncommittally.
She answered, “Go to 33rd and Madison.”
I didn't think
too much about it since I really wasn't sure I wanted to spend a
whole lot of money on a reading in New York where it cost almost fifteen bucks
for a couple slices of pizza, the best pizza in the world, mind you. I found
myself walking south, and before I knew it I was nearing the Empire State
Building which was very near the place where that scratchy voice told me to go.
I walked to the designated spot and saw the same sign in the window I had seen
a couple of hours earlier. I rang the buzzer and what I thought was the same
voice answered. “Yes,” Was this the same woman, and if so, how did she get here
so fast? These were the thoughts that circled through my head like smoke rings.
I was being buzzed in., I gingerly made my way up the stairs to apartment 1A
and knocked on the red door ornamented with Egyptian symbols and a wooden
cross. I could see a gray, clouded eye looking at me through the peephole and I
was asked to enter. I stood there frozen, being in two minds about what I was
doing. Did I really want to subject myself to what might be a rouse, or could
this person have some real insight? I chose the latter decision and entered the
apartment.
She was ancient woman,
about ninety or so with long, thin gray hair tied back in a ponytail. Her name
was Mama and she spoke with a thick Eastern European accent. She invited me
into her kitchen, and I sat down on a wrought iron chair facing her. She took
out an Aquarian deck of Tarot cards, lit a red candle and the first strange
thing I noticed was the flame. It was slanting at a ninety-degree angle to the
left. It didn't take her long to get down to business. “I see you
have two dark spirits that have been following you for some time now,” she said
as she closed her murky eyes while waving her arms over her head then cupping
them over her nose and mouth. “Do you ever notice that in your music you have a
little success and then it all falls apart after a while?” I nodded.
“In your love life, you
get together with a girl and then it also falls apart after a year or two. Am I
right?”
I was taken in by her
spiritual acumen even though I knew all about the parlor games psychics play,
but this woman was different. She was half Romanian and Iroquois Indian and I
had the feeling she was totally authentic—the real deal.
“Here’s what I want
you to do. Tonight, I want you to take a carton of eggs and put them under your
bed when you sleep. Tomorrow morning at ten, I want you to come back here and
bring the eggs. Can you do that?”
I said I would and
asked her how much I owed her for the reading. She said not to worry about it
today and I could pay her twenty dollars after the reading tomorrow. I wondered
down to a local deli on the East Side and bought a carton of eggs and a coke.
That night I slept with the eggs under the bed in the Meltzer’s guest room.. I
was glad the bed had legs since it would have been awkward to sleep with the
eggs stuffed between the mattress and the floor.
Back at 33rd and
Madison, I entered her apartment with the eggs tucked firmly, but gently under
my arm, then sat back down on the same iron chair in the old woman’s kitchen.
I couldn't for the life of me figure out how she did it.
I didn't see her get up from the table except to get a bowl from the
cabinet watching her every move like a hawk. She placed the bowl on the table
and cracked open the first egg. I could feel my hair standing up on the back of
my neck as I looked down into the bowl. The yoke was jet black. She took
another egg and broke it open into the bowl. It was also black. She cracked
open a few more eggs but they were normal, as yellow as the late winter sun
peeking through her small kitchen window.
“The two black yokes
represent those two evil spirits that have attached themselves to your aura,”
she said. I was flabbergasted—it was a shock to say the least. I wondered how
she was going to help me since I had to fly back to Los Angeles the next day.
She told me not to worry because she had a daughter, Paula, in Van Nuys,
California, who was also a psychic.
“Is that very far
from you?’ she asked. I told her it was relatively close, and it would be no
trouble for me to drive there—as long as it wasn't rush hour.
When I got back to L.A., I
would visit Paula and get readings from her while she lit special candles and
prayed for my career and love life. At that point in my life, I was more
interested in love. She said I was going to meet a pretty blonde girl with a
round face and blue eyes.
On the Fourth of July
1988, I got a call from Paula. “You have to get out of the house today. You are
going to meet her.”
“Her?”
“Yes her, the blonde with
the blue eyes and round face.”
I was living two blocks
down from the Hollywood Bowl on Camrose Drive. That day I met not one, not two,
but three women with blonde hair, blue eyes, and round faces. I went back home
to sort it all out. I had a 1958 Austin Healey 100-6 that I was restoring and
was covered from head to toe in oil and grease. My Grateful Dead T-shirt was ripped,
and my gray loafers had holes in them and were coming apart at the stitching. I
weighed about 130 pounds soaking wet, when normal weight for me was around 155.
It was starting to get dark, so I decided to go down to the Hollywood Bowl and
check out the fireworks. I was standing in the courtyard by the ticket office
when I noticed the sign read: sold out. I didn't really care since it
was Andy Williams performing that night. I only wanted to witness the fireworks
display and I could see that perfectly fine from the parking lot.
Suddenly, I heard a sweet
lilting voice speaking in a Scottish accent. “Oh no, Shelley, what are we going
to do it’s all sold oot?” I turned around and saw a young woman with blonde
hair, blue eyes, and a pleasing round face. She reminded me of Haley Mills.
“Excuse me lassie, where
are you from?” If she was all alone she never would have followed me, but since
her friend Shelley, a compactly built specimen, was with her she felt safe. I
said I knew a secret way into the Bowl, and I promised them I would get them in
to the show. All they had to do was walk right through the front entrance and
then get in line at the concession stand; if you have a coke or a hot dog in
your hand they are not going to bother you, especially on Independence Day. I
rushed ahead thinking they were right behind me, but they had slowed their pace
and were twenty feet behind me. I guessed they were discussing the situation.
They told me later they thought I was a homeless person sleeping on the benches
in the park, but they decided that I was harmless.
“Come on,” I said, “Just
act like a roadie.” The pretty blonde looked at me blankly and said,
“What’s a roadie?”
“It’s someone who carries
the equipment for musicians. Just act like you work here, that’s all.”
They followed along and
did what I had told then to do. We rushed to the concession stand and I bought us
all a hot dog and coke. Then we sat down in the middle section of the outdoor
venue and listened to Andy Williams sing Moon River, and a few
other of his hits. After the show, we wanted to get a drink. As we walked past
my apartment on Camrose, she noticed the lights were left on and it appeared
that the TV was on, too. I told her that my dogs felt less lonely if there were
human voices around and that’s why I had the TV on. I knew I had scored point
number one with her. The night was mild and clear, so we walked all the way to
The Cat and Fiddle and got a table outside in the courtyard. I ordered a gin
and tonic and she and Shelley ordered the same. While I was sitting, a scruffy
looking cat had wandered up to me and jumped on my lap. I was cleaning out its
ears with a napkin –I noticed they were in pretty nasty shape. Although she
thought it was a bit gross, I felt I had scored point number two with her. I
found out her name was Donna, and she was from Fife, Scotland, and had been
living in Joliet, Illinois for the last few months on a one year working visa
and was due to go back home to Scotland that December. I got the phone number
where she was staying in L.A. and I also got her home number in Joliet, in case
we didn't have a chance to hook up while she was on vacation.
On the day she was heading
back home, she called to thank me for the nice time on the Fourth and wanted to
say goodbye. I had to think fast. “You have a rental car, don’t you?” She said
it was Avis. I told her that Avis Rental place was over a half mile from the airport,
and I would be more than happy to escort them to the gate. She agreed. That
morning I took a nice, long, hot bath and washed up like never before. I clean
up well. Later that day, I pulled my TR-6 into the parking lot at Avis, and I
spied the two of them sitting on a bench outside the office. Squinting their
eyes at me, they probably wondered if I was the same guy they had met a few
nights ago. Donna had a stuffy nose, and we had a congested and awkward kiss
goodbye at the gate.
A few days later, I called
her, and we had a delightful conversation. She had a great sense of humor and
was worldly as any woman I had ever met at the tender age of twenty-four, like
most European women, not that most European are twenty-four but they are more
worldly and sophisticated than American women, in my humble opinion. The next
day she called then I would call her and it went on like that for a more than a
week. By the second week we were talking two times a day. She then said out of
the blue, “I am coming back out there to see you.”
“Come on, really,” I said,
“I’ll make a date with a girl to meet me at the local bar and they usually don’t
even show up, but you’re going to come all the way from Joliet after a month
and I am supposed to believe that?”
“Be there on August 20th,
American Airlines flight 1970 at 8 pm.”
I went there thinking she
might not be on the plane. But she was the second one off the plane, looked
great and seemed to have lost five pounds of baby fat, not that she was fat or
anything. I had put on about five pounds and was starting to look almost healthy.
We went to Magic Mountain,
(which I failed to get to three times with Marly) Catalina Island and the Queen
Mary, but it wasn't until we drove to the Laundromat on Fountain; the
mounds of dirty socks and holes in my underwear were piled up in the rumble
seat, I knew, yes I knew, she was the woman for me.
She went back to Joliet,
and I went to visit her there in September. We had decided that she was going
to move in with me at the apartment on Camrose, so I started cutting out
physical therapist job positions from the newspaper and would mail them to her.
This was the day before email and fax machines were only seen in office suites,
banks, and insurance agencies. She had contacted several physical therapy clinics
and had six appointments lined up by the time she got off the plane and decided
on Centinela Medical Clinic. Two days before the tragic incident at Lockerbie,
we, along with her best friend from Scotland, Irene, who arrived at Camrose
with her friend Fiona on the way to Australia, spent Christmas together. We all
wore funny paper hats, they called crowns, pulled Christmas crackers, and ate
our Yule Tide dinner from a blue table without legs on the floor since
there weren't enough chairs in my humble apartment.
The year before, I had
broken my ankle by sliding into home plate at a pick-up softball game at the
park right underneath the Hollywood sign. The doctors had put in a plate and screws,
and I had them removed right before Donna came out to L.A., so I couldn't drive
my stick shift car. Donna drove and did an exemplary job at it. After all, she
is from Britain and learned how to drive on a manual transmission.
I had sold my second TR-6
to John and Marion Hamilton and all I had left was my 1958 Austin Healey. I
used to drive the back road loop around Camrose without a valid license just to
keep it in good running condition. Other than that, Donna did all the driving
until I got my driving privileges back a few months later. Then tragedy struck
and my father got cancer in August of 1988 and was going downhill fast. He died
on November 18th and a week later I said: “Why don’t we go
downtown. I want to buy you a ring.” That was my marriage proposal. She said
yes, and we got married on June 9, 1990.
Although I have recorded
four solo albums, and finishing up my fifth, I still think about Silverspoon
and how it formed the basis of my musical education. I am happy to say that I
am still friends with Blair and Stephen, although they don’t speak to each
other over a falling out over a bad business deal. Stephen almost checked out
of life about a year and half ago and was pronounced dead, but somehow
survived, and is rehabilitating with Portia in Venice, the same house they have
lived in for more than twenty-five years. Although I have gone back to L.A.
many times in the thirty years since I left, nobody from Silverspoon has ever
come to Nashville to visit—but my door remains open.
It is sad that we had lost
so many members of Silverspoon along the way: Doug Fieger, Michael Kennedy,
Joey and Jeff Hamilton, Peter Gries, Mikel Japp, Marshall Battjes, Louis
Jordan, Richie Moore and many other colleagues and mentors: Tom Gries, Mal Evans,
Keith Moon, George Harrison and John Lennon, and all the friends and lovers:
Patricia Chilcote, Christa Helm, Caroleen Fisher and Carrie Hamilton who were
along for the ride. It was a great ride—the best and most unbelievable musical
and friendship experiences of my life. Although we never became famous—I still
believe that Silverspoon was the world’s greatest band that nobody, or at least
few people, ever heard, but we touched the lives of more people than I thought
possible, especially since I have heard from so many of you and your
recollections of those amazing and fabulous days.
When I think of
Silverspoon now, I see Stephen hiding behind his long, blonde hair and never
knowing what sounds would emanate from his screaming guitar. I think of Blair,
smoking his trademark Marlboro Red (which, by the way, quit smoking a decade
ago) and drinking a shot of Jack Daniels at the Rainbow. The night we sang
oldies in the Crow’s Nest on top of that infamous club with Keith, Ringo and
Mal and in the morning, after only two hours of sleep, I got the call from Mal
that Keith was doing an album at the Record Plant, and I (along with Stephen)
were to transpose the song, write the charts and lyrics out for the icons of
rock who soon would be entering the friendly confines of studio C. I think of
Bum and Super-bum (Stephen and Blair) sitting at the Old World restaurant on
Sunset and wondering if Stephen would still be wearing his gold ring or had
left it in the cash register in payment for a hamburger and gallons of coffee.
I think of Joey, poor Joey, who never did realize his potential as a singer,
but did have some glorious moments—the one where he sang Final Bow while
I accompanied him on George Gershwin’s piano in Rosemary Clooney’s living room,
and her telling him that his pitch was perfect. I think of BJ and all of our
escapades together—the wheel falling off of Rafi’s Porsche and rolling into a
supermarket. If it weren't for BJ, this story might have never been
told—he was the one who coerced me to write something about him which
eventually led to all this. I think of Miguel, and how I laughed when I heard
him playing his “Hawaii Five-0 drum fill on Be My Baby in Between.
I think of Chas and all of his parties and connections and how we went out to
the desert to find God, or desert women. I think of the Robins’ in our lives—
Stephen’s, Blair’s and mine with their countermelodies, timely influences and
momentary shelters from the storms, both external and internal. I think of all
the friends, the women, the drugs—some almost lethal—some very lethal, the
other-worldly experiences, the hanging out at parties with the cream of rock
and roll society and especially the music and the recordings of that music, the
comradely, the petty jealousies, the laughter, and the tears. It was a
privilege (and believe me, we felt privileged) to be part of a band that had as
its goal to be as great as The Beatles, at least in its songwriting and vocal
prowess. If we came close to that goal, reached one tenth, or even one iota of
the musical aptitude of our mentors, then we succeeded.
No, Silverspoon never made
it to the big-time, but if this story makes it to the “show” and if I did my
job properly and the fickle finger of fate points once again in our direction,
there is still hope and the music, which springs eternal will remain eternal.
The End for now—December
28, 2023.
