Frank & Charli

by Frank Yandolino

  I did the same thing for Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys for the event I produced at Caesar’s in Atlantic City in 1983. There, too, we locked Brian in his room, with a doctor next door on one side and a nurse in the opposite room, but he still got out.

  I suppose I shouldn’t have even bothered with Brian, since I’d already learned with Joe that the idea doesn’t work. Joe not only got out, he walked all the way to the Statue of Liberty and back in a torrential rainstorm. How did we know he did this? The phone in his room kept ringing from girls that Joe met along the way. He invited them all to the show and he showed up hours later, completely soaked from the rain. We rushed off to rehearsal at Rockefeller Center, NBC Studios. At this point we are live on TV, show time, with host Eric Idle from Monty Python. Imagine, Stuff is on stage, Joe is introduced, and he comes out wearing a Stuff T-shirt. Joe starts to sing “A Little Help from My Friends,” it’s going great, then out of nowhere, John Belushi comes out. Unlike rehearsal, this time he’s dressed exactly like Joe, who was very surprised but kept his cool. Belushi’s hair was all messed up, sticking up and out. He was holding and sipping from a beer can with a crazed look on his face.

  Unbelievably, he looked just like Joe at Woodstock. He even mimicked and exaggerated all of Joe’s moves. Even though Joe was taken aback and surprised he kept right on singing as Belushi sang back to him sounding and looking like Joe Cocker. Then Belushi threw himself on the floor in a spastic fit. Joe finished the song and Belushi offered Joe the beer, which he graciously refused.

  Strangely enough, even though Joe loved to drink, especially beer, he said no to any offers we had for him to endorse or do a commercial for any alcoholic product, no matter how much the offer. He did not want to promote or condone a drinking lifestyle to kids.

  It was during that time that we realized John Belushi could really sing and so could Dan Aykroyd, who also played the harmonica. They both performed regularly at Aykroyd’s blues club. The Blues Brothers Band was born, and records and movies were made. One night Belushi asked to borrow some money. I wrote him a personal check for $175. I found out he then used the money to buy drugs. John Belushi died a short time later, after a speedball injection in Los Angeles. Several people I know have died there. I call LA the elephants’ burial ground of creativity.

  John Adam Belushi. Died: March 5, 1982. Shit. Location of death: Bungalow #3, Chateau Marmont Hotel, Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, California. Cause of death: accidental drug overdose of the combined injection of cocaine and heroin, called a speedball. Catherine Evelyn Smith, described as a groupie, backup singer and—at the time—drug dealer, was with him in his final hours and, later, in a National Enquirer story headlined “I Killed John Belushi,” she talked of injecting him with drugs. As the Times reported in 1985, Smith told the Enquirer: “John supplied the coke. I was Florence Nightingale with the hypodermic.” She was known as Judy Silverbags because she kept her drugs and dealt them out of a silver bag. The $175 John borrowed from me that day was to pay her. I still have the canceled check. I had no idea what he was into.

  I’m the line between love and hate; when I walk into a room it parts like the Red Sea.

  The Rolling Coconut Review: Save the Whales

  In early 1977 we were helping to organize one of the first major benefit concert tours in Japan along with Green Peace and the Seas Must Live organizations to celebrate whales and dolphins and to stop their illegal killing in Japan. The Rolling Coconut Review tour was presented by the Dolphin Project, headed by Rick O’Barry and Mark Lavelle. The concert was held at the Harumi Dome in Tokyo, with acts including Jackson Brown, Richie Havens, Stuff, John Sebastian, JD Souther, Fred Neil, Country Joe McDonald, Paul Winter, Terry Reid, Mimi Farina, Danny O’Keefe, Warren Zevon, Eric Anderson, and several other famous Japanese performers. Stuff was the only group paid a fee, the only act paid to do a charity event. That’s how they are. How embarrassing. When we told the band they were chosen to do the tour and that it was for charity their answer was, “We are the charity.” That was the attitude I had to work with for fifteen years.

  I see that same attitude today in those who have been trained to believe they are the charity and always will be no matter how much they’re given. They have a sense of you-owe-it-to-me entitlement. I have found this attitude in most musicians I have worked with and that it’s more prevalent in today’s society than when I was young, when we were taught you had to work hard to make money for your future and especially for your family. My father had two jobs when I was growing up before he finally opened his own business. When it failed he tried it again. I can’t help but think this sense of you-owe-it-to-me is partly the fault of our government and many governments worldwide that give you guarantees and money for doing nothing, feeding into the “poor me and my ancestors” mentality. General laziness also has a lot to do with it.

  It must be this same attitude that created “a’kees,” a saying and belief from my youth in Brooklyn. If you said “a’kees” to someone who just found or bought something, anything at all, you were entitled to half of what they have. I grabbed that ball as fast as I could. I always said “no a’kees.” Saying that allowed you to block them before they could even have the thought. I think I will produce a T-shirt with a message to the 51 percent of you who don’t work or pay taxes, those who expect entitlements and to get half of what I worked hard for and expect me to give what I have. It will read in big letters: No A’kees.

  Anyway, this was the same bunch, Stuff, who wanted someone to pay them for their band rehearsals. Imagine wanting to be paid to write and rehearse your songs. “Nothin’ for nothin’ is nothin’.’’ The word got out on tour that Stuff was paid to perform and it didn’t sit well with Jackson Brown. His crew, especially, was pissed. After the tour was over, at a post-celebration press party, their road manager hit Michael Lang in the face with a whipped cream pie. Not one to forget anything, Michael retaliated. On the return trip he hid a cream pie on the plane, and once back at the airport in New York, he smashed the pie in the face of the same crew guy, who was six-foot-six, three hundred pounds, and now more pissed than ever.

  As luck would have it I happened to be standing next to him. He thought I did it and started to choke me to death. Charli was trying to pull him off me when Wavy Gravy slid in between us and began licking the cream off his face, defusing his anger. Only Wavy could do that.

  CHAPTER 15

  Japan the Tour

  “Paid for It, Didn’t I?”

  During the Rolling Coconut tour Stuff became very popular and got a lot of press. I had made a few Japanese contacts, both in New York and Japan, and I saw the opportunity to grab the ball and take Stuff back to Japan and the Far East. When I presented my idea to our record company, Warner Brothers Records, to pay for a promotional tour of Japan, they laughed at me, saying there was no market in Japan. I was dreaming, they said. If I wanted to take the band to Japan I would have to pay for it myself. Well, I knew I wasn’t dreaming so I put it on without them. I was free to do it all myself, including touring fees, ticket sales, merchandising, advertising fees, sponsorships, endorsements, recordings of live shows and records, and booking all the tour dates. We kept all the money. Charli as usual took care of transportation, accommodations, and domestic disputes.

  The immediate scent upon arriving in Japan was jet fuel vapor and car fumes. The airport is two hours away from Tokyo, on a totally congested highway packed with cars, limos, trucks, vans, motorcycles, and taxis. We had six private limos that took us everywhere.

  For our first Japan tour, I designed tour jackets for the band, special guests, and crew, a classic fifties baseball jacket retro look with white leather sleeves and blue cloth, adorned with a Stuff logo, New York Yankees emblems, Japanese and American flags, and embroidered personal names. We looked like a gang from Brooklyn, and that we were. The first-class flight was a movie in the making. All thirteen of us took over the entire first-class section on the upper level of a 747. Some of us were playing c
ards, drinking champagne, smoking cigars and joints in the bathroom. It was so intense the stewardesses were reluctant to come near us. During one card hand, I noticed two members of our crew—my road manager and his brother—were cheating. I don’t like cheats. Without exposing them, I clicked into attack, determined to teach them a lesson. By the time the game ended, they’d lost all the money they were to get from the tour. We arrived after a fourteen-hour flight and were greeted on the tarmac by hundreds of people, mostly kids with banners, signs, photos, and every album cover the members of Stuff had ever recorded on, screaming and yelling, waiting to take pictures and get autographs. I was in shock, having no idea for sure except my gut feeling that there was even a market in Japan for Stuff. My dream and inclination came true. I was not just dreaming. The Japanese respect real talent and they truly love Stuff to this day.

  The first Stuff press conference was packed with one hundred media outlets. During the interview, Steve Gadd was asked on national live TV and radio how he felt about his first trip to Japan. He looked right in the camera and answered, “Remember Pearl Harbor,” a saying used by Americans after the Japanese attack. That set the tone for the tour. Stuff now had a bad boy, tough reputation, luckily backed up by great performances to sold-out venues.

  We returned to Japan two times a year for ten years. On the road with Stuff was always an experience. During the second time we toured, I realized the promoters were selling a ton of merchandise—posters, programs, photos. Before our next trip, I negotiated so we would receive a commission on all merchandising sales, and that we must approve in advance what the product would be. I had come to learn you can’t trust promoters of venues when it comes to being paid, especially after your final show. They always get tricky with creative bookkeeping. So I developed my own payment plan with advances and guarantees. We were to be paid an advance—one half of our fees plus airfare and all travel expenses—up-front before the first show, then after every three shows we’d receive additional payments, with all payments paid prior to the last two shows.

  As an example, after receiving a very small amount from the merchandise sales of the first three shows, I questioned the promoter, Mr. Sato, on why the payment was so small. His answer was sales were not good. So for the next performance, I bought a Polaroid camera and took pictures. I showed him at least 75 percent of the audience holding posters, photos, and programs. Trying to swindle me, he said not to be fooled by this. In Japan, he went on, people don’t have money, so many of them buy the used merchandise from the people who sell it from the last shows. What an ingenious answer. But I did not buy it.

  He then gave me a few more bucks to shut me up. It didn’t. Days later we were in Kyoto, shopping at a small shop, when I noticed Stuff merchandise I hadn’t approved or ever seen before. I purchased a few things and brought them to my hotel room as evidence.

  At the venue, I confronted Mr. Sato, who adamantly denied my accusations and refused my demands for more money, no matter how I threatened him.

  “Okay,” I answered. “Then Stuff won’t go on and I will cancel the last three shows.’’ I knew we’d been paid for them in advance, and of course the band couldn’t care less about skipping some shows. He threatened me back, saying prove it, and agreeing to go to my hotel to see the product, hoping to bluff me out. I held a meeting with the band and crew to explain what was going on, instructing them not to go on stage until I got back and gave the OK. They loved the drama. On the way to the hotel Sato and I almost came to blows. He fought me all the way to my room, saying the band must play now or the crowd will riot because the trains would stop after eleven o’clock and they will be unable to get home. He was relentless, calling me crazy and telling me I’d be held liable. I showed him my evidence, to which he coolly replied, “Oh, these.” I’ve learned the Japanese will go to the end no matter what the consequences in order to save face.

  This guy was like others I have come across who will go all the way, risking everything, and, as the old saying goes, cutting their nose off to spite their face. He finally agreed to pay me more at the end of the shows, but I wasn’t going for that. “No,” I replied, “Let’s go to the box office now. I’ll take yen from sales.” He had no choice. When we got there, I began to fill a large bag with handfuls of yen I took from the cash registers, not knowing or counting how much, just stuffing it in until I couldn’t put any more in the bag. I ran out and as I left the room to head down the hall to the backstage area, I couldn’t believe my ears. I heard the band playing. I began running, yen falling out of the bag, and Sato was chasing me to get it back.

  By the time I got backstage and locked the door behind me the band and crew were there for the intermission break. I went berserk. “What the fuck? Why are you playing? I told you not to until I got back.” They were surprised and explained our road manager said I called to say it was “OK to go on.” I hadn’t called anyone. Chris the road manager explained how he was threatened with the same things Sato said to me and he decided to have the band play. “Really, you decided? Do you have the money to pay the band? I don’t think so. By the way, you owe me money from the card game you were cheating at.” I fired and sent home the whole crew and finished the tour myself with Charli’s help. Stuff was impressed and rarely questioned me again.

  In Charli’s Words

  Once, during our several weeks in Japan, the Japanese promoters and Warner Brothers/Pioneer Records invited all of us to a lavish banquet dinner. By this time, after several successful tours, Stuff in Japan seemed as popular and as famous as the Beatles in the United States. Wherever we went there were hundreds of people waiting to greet the band with flowers, signs, records, and photographs, all wanting autographs. The band had girls everywhere, like sailors in every port, in addition to their wives.

  The band members demanded private limos everywhere, and refused to share them even among themselves in order to invite the girls they picked up. Six or seven limos, each costing around $200 an hour, was a lot of money in 1978 Japan.

  On this night there were a lot of people in the beautiful and classy restaurant waiting for the band to arrive. Many sat around a fifty-foot table decorated with bouquets of flowers, crystal, and hand-painted Japanese dishes, some filled with huge platters of sushi and rare cuts of sashimi. It was a truly beautiful banquet. And then the band arrived with what looked like several hookers, except this band went for the heavy-set, bowlegged girls of Japan. I swear, somehow they found the worst girls in the country. Although Eric Gale did marry a very nice educated young girl, Myoko, who never got in the way like other hip-hugging members’ wives and girlfriends.

  The promoters were not used to a band like Stuff. One of the executives politely said to Frank, referring to the girls, “Frank, for this we need limos? These are not nice girls,” to which Frank answered, “These are not nice boys.”

  Eric looked at a strange-looking piece of sushi served to him and said “Frank, what is this?” Frank answered, jokingly, “Scalp.” Eric said, “Will it get me high?” Frank said yes and Eric ate it. These guys were like no one I have ever known.

  We traveled first class all over Japan by air, bus, and bullet train. It was spectacular. Whenever we would arrive at a hotel (usually four star), the band went directly to their rooms and never left, ordering room service and watching American basketball and Sumo wrestling. No sightseeing apart from the few minutes spent outside before arriving to the venue. They never rehearsed, never spoke about music, they just went on and played. They were naturals, really great musicians who could play anything. The Japanese bands and famous musicians tried to copy them but they never could. They all acted like children around Stuff, standing in awe.

  The Japanese knew they were among great talent and had the utmost respect for Stuff, and deservedly so. I know Richard Tee was a Julliard student, a true musical genius. Any time you heard him, you could recognize his distinct sound. You just knew it was him. The same was true for all the members of Stuff. Steve Gadd, for instance, w
as the most amazing drummer of all time, with no practicing. They just knew what to do. Jazz, rock, rhythm and blues, pop. It just came out of them. Cornell Dupree and Eric Gale were untouchable on guitar. They had the respect of all musicians anywhere in the world. If I said I was touring with the band everyone would say I was so lucky, and I was. I lived a charmed life, handed to me by Frank. Other women would have done anything to be among these guys touring the world. At the time I never fully appreciated what was going on, but I do now.

  At one point in Hiroshima the press was interviewing Steve Gadd, who was a little out of it. The reporter was missing his arm, and Steve said, “Where’s your arm?” I will never forget that.

  Later that day, Gordon, Frank, and I visited the bombsite of Hiroshima. It was quite a place.

  As far as the eye could see it was flat. They say there were seven rivers there before the atom bomb fell. Even today people walk around with masks on their faces praying.

  As I said before, these were not nice guys. Frank had tour jackets made for the entire band and crew with American Flags on the front and on the back a Japanese flag, which looked like a target with its red circle. Gordon stopped directly on the spot they say the bomb hit and took a drink from a water fountain. Frank said, “What are you, crazy? That’s where the bomb landed.” Gordon freaked out and he would not stop spitting all day.

  China

  Charli and I took a brief vacation from Japan and left Stuff on their own. Landing in China in the middle of the night was spooky. It was dark and looked like every Charlie Chan movie coming to life. The immediate sense I got when arriving to Hong Kong was the density. Wow, I remember thinking, look at all these buildings and houses stuck together, just filled with people. We were excited to be there even though it was three or four in the morning. Charli and I decided to leave the Excelsior Hotel and go for a walk to check things out. Once on the dark streets, we realized you could not simply make a left and walk a few blocks to leave Chinatown and end up in Little Italy like you could in New York. No matter where you turn, you see what seems like millions of Chinese people, laundry hanging everywhere, accompanied by the pervading smell of fish, salt water, seaweed, garbage, cats, and dogs. It’s all Chinatown. No matter how far you walk you can never get out of Chinatown.