This Wheel's on Fire

by Levon Helm

  We kept on playing. Sonny Boy worked his harmonica like a damn brass section, backward and inside out. He played it sticking out of his mouth like a cigar! He put the whole harp inside his mouth and played. Then he’d spit in the can before calling another tune. In the end he about wrung us out, before inviting us to a local booze camp he liked to frequent. Before we left, Robbie happened to glance at the can that Sonny Boy had been spitting in. It was full of blood.

  The booze camp turned out to be some woman’s shack way up a dark lane in a bad part of Helena. She sold homemade whiskey, illegal bootleg stuff. She was cooking something over an open fire, and it smelled delicious. “Here, boys,” Sonny Boy said, dipping a teaspoon into a jar full of clear corn liquor. “She calls this stuff ‘Blind Tiger.’” The five of us each drank a spoonful, and in five minutes we were somewhere between stone drunk and flying on acid. Sonny Boy bought and guzzled this stuff by the pint, while we bought maybe a half-pint among ourselves. Each of us had no more than a sip and a half, and we could barely stand up! But Sonny Boy would laugh and talk and drink. He was getting more comfortable, and that’s what we were after. We just wanted to hang out with him. He told us about some English kids he’d played and recorded with over in London: the Yardbirds (with Eric Clapton), the Animals, Them (with Van Morrison), and many more, including Jimmy Page, then a busy session guitarist. Sonny Boy had gone to a tailor and had a few of these wild two-tone flannel suits made. He mentioned that he liked England but didn’t like the food. In fact, he’d almost burned down his hotel in Birmingham when he tried to stew a rabbit in an electric coffee percolator and blew out the building’s fuses and wiring.

  “Those kids over there,” he said with a laugh, “they loved me. They’d buy me things and treat me like I was God. Hah! They all wanted to play with me—paid good money, too. They love the blues, man. And some of those cats are serious players. That’s right. A few of those English cats surprised me. Damned if they didn’t. You might be hearing about some of them sons of bitches, damn straight...”

  By now it was eight or nine o’clock, and other people were coming in or just lurking in the shadows. Word of five white boys drinking with Sonny Boy spread around the area, and soon people were whispering to us to come outside so they could sell us some corn, or dope, or women. “Anything you want, man.” They wouldn’t come in because they were too scared of Sonny Boy. One guy did approach Sonny Boy and boasted that he was a harmonica player too. “You can’t play anything,” Sonny Boy growled. “Don’t pull that shit on me. Go to Chicago and make me some damn records if you’re so good.”

  Finally the local hustlers really got after us, and Sonny Boy said, “Fellas, let’s be on our way out of here. As you can see, there are some folks around here that don’t respect my position in the world of music. Why don’t we go over and get some barbecue.”

  On the way over to this barbecue place, Sonny Boy asked what we were doing, where we were going. We explained that we had some jobs up in New Jersey, but that if he was interested we’d come back down and play with him, be his band. Why shouldn’t we team up? With us behind him he could be one of the most powerful acts in the world. So we made some big plans to be Sonny Boy’s band and sat down to some good barbecue in a place I’d been eating in all my life in the black part of town. We ordered sandwiches, coleslaw, and some sodas. While we waited, someone asked Sonny Boy whether he’d known Robert Johnson. “Knew him?” Sonny Boy asked incredulously. “Boy, Robert Johnson died in my arms!”

  Just then three police cars roared up to the restaurant with their sirens going and their lights flashing. Just like that. They looked at our new ’65 Mercury out front with the Ontario plates, got out, hitched up their pants, and came inside. One of ’em demanded, “Just what the fuck is going on here?” This was during the civil-rights days of freedom riders and voter-registration drives and “troublemakers” and “outside agitators.” I whispered to the guys, “Be cool and let me handle this.”

  I got up to meet the cops, cursing myself because I hadn’t been thinking and didn’t want the guys to witness this kind of shit. “Good evening, officers,” I said. “Is there a problem?”

  “Oh, there ain’t no problem,” one answered. “Not as long as you don’t mind sitting here eating with a bunch of niggers, there ain’t no problem.”

  I tried to charm the cop. “Sir, my name is Lavon Helm, from over in Marvell, and my uncle is Deputy Sheriff Alan Cooper over there and—”

  “Well, I guess Deputy Cooper’d be real proud of you down here in niggertown eating with a bunch of goddamn niggers.”

  I looked at Sonny Boy, real embarrassed. But he kept eating and didn’t say a word.

  “Let me tell you something,” I said to the cop. “These boys here are from Canada. They don’t know nothin’ about the bullshit you’re trying to sell us. And anyway, we’re not breaking any law. We’re just trying to eat. Good barbecue is good barbecue.”

  “Now, you listen up,” the cop says. “Here’s what’s happening: You all are gonna get in that new car of yours, and you say you’re from around here, so you know the quickest fuckin’ way out of town. And we don’t wanna see you around here no more, because maybe they put up with this shit over in Marvell, but this is Helena, and we don’t like strangers coming down and eating with a fuckin’ bunch of niggers. Now, are we all agreed on this?”

  I lost it then. “Goddammit, do you know who this man is? He’s famous the whole world over! This is Sonny Boy Williamson, and it’s an honor for us to be in his presence!”

  The cop just kept looking around. “See that shiny car of yours? Well, maybe you all better do as you’re goddamn well told while it’s still shiny; while you still have that car …”

  It was a bit of a Mexican standoff. The guy that owned the place cussed out the cops and told us, “It’s all right, gentlemen. Just set and eat your sandwiches; ain’t nothin’ gonna happen.” But our appetites were gone. We mumbled around and finally got out of there, since the next step was to get the shit beat out of us by a bunch of cops. Three civil-rights workers had been murdered in Mississippi the previous summer.

  So they ran us out of town. We went back to the motel, got our stuff, and escaped up to Fayetteville, back into the mountains. I hated for the other fellas to see that kind of prejudice up close. We’d had such a glorious day, playing with Sonny Boy and listening to his stories. We’d had only another half hour to go, and everything would’ve been perfect. We felt bad about leaving Sonny Boy behind. We said, “Don’t worry about us, Mr. Williamson. We’ll stay in touch. We wanna be your band and have a great time doing it.” He smiled, because he wanted to play with us too. He knew we weren’t some little outfit that just wanted to jerk off.

  Instead of returning to Canada, we headed for the New Jersey shore and the Wildwood-Atlantic City summer circuit. During May and June we played Tony Mart’s Nite Spot in Somers Point, just south of Atlantic City. Bill Avis brought us over because he’d worked the Female Beatles there. Tony’s place was said to be the biggest teenage nightclub in the East: three stages, seven bars, and fifteen cash registers. There were stools around the bars, no chairs, and the capacity was supposedly thirteen hundred, but twice that many college kids crammed into the place on weekends. It was elbow to elbow. Tony would rotate three groups. As soon as one band finished, the next was supposed to pick up immediately on another stage. Tony didn’t want any time to go by between numbers, and if you could make the other band’s last note your first, well, Tony liked that. He also had go-go dancers Gail and Christine (advertised in the Atlantic City Press as “torrid television personalities” because they’d appeared on a dance show in Philadelphia once), as well as our favorite, Charlotte Kersten, or “Twistin’ Miss Germany,” as she was better known. We played there with some of the best groups in the country: the Skyliners from Pittsburgh (“Since I Don’t Have You”), the Fendermen (“Mule Skinner Blues”), Herb Lance and the Classics (“Blue Moon”), and countless others. We tried to to
p all of these, but then Tony would bring in Conway Twitty, and we’d have to button down our collars and try a little harder.

  We kept talking about Sonny Boy Williamson. How could we work with him? We talked to Colonel Kudlets back in Hamilton. What did he think? “It’s gonna be hard,” he said. “Where are you going to play? Not in the South. Not up here. Not in most places. It’s a great idea, but it’s before its time. No one’s done anything like it yet.”

  Late in May a letter reached us in New Jersey telling us that Sonny Boy Williamson had died at home in Helena. We felt terrible about it, and for me it marked the end of the era I’d grown up in.

  Back in Toronto we decided to record some demo tapes and send them around to some names we knew in New York that might help us get into the record business. We recorded something in a little studio in Toronto and sent off three, maybe four copies. In about a week we got a telegram from a well-known music bizzer we’ll call Eric Schuster.

  HAVE RECEIVED TAPE—CONTACT ME IN NY IMMEDIATELY.

  Oh, God, I thought. This is it!

  I called them up and spoke to Eric’s right-hand man, who’d sent the telegram. He gushed, “I can’t believe how excited Eric is about your tape. He’s in a complete state about it! How soon can you boys get here so we can meet you?”

  An hour later Robbie, Bill Avis, and I were on our way to New York. Richard and Rick took turns holding the phone in Toronto. We got to New York, checked into the Hotel Forrest on Forty-ninth Street off Broadway, cabbed over to Eric’s office near Columbus Circle, and met the guy I’d talked to on the phone. “I’m ‘The Ear’ around here,” he told us breathlessly. “Thank God you’re safely here! I’ve never seen Eric so psyched up about a group in my life! And the thing is, groups are supposed to be very ‘out’ right now.”

  We walk into the office. Eric Schuster is there with musician Al Kooper—who’d cowritten Gary Lewis and the Playboys’ recent No. 1, “This Diamond Ring”—and a couple of guys with that Greenwich Village Musician look: long, curly hair, pinched jackets, shades, tight pants, Cuban-heeled boots. They all give us the eye; to them we’re a bunch of greasers from Toronto in leather jackets. Eric is sitting behind this giant semicircular desk, smoking a cigar. We light up as well.

  He looks over at me and gasps in Brooklynese, “So how many ya got inna band?”

  “Well, sir, we got us a bass player, guitar player, drum—”

  Phone rings. “OH, YEAH? FUCK YOU TOO! I GOT GENE PITNEY MORE FUCKIN’ PUBLISHING MONEY THAN YOU RECORD GUYS EVER GOT HIM!” Wham! He hangs up and looks back over to me.

  “So whatta youse wanna do? Make a record or what?”

  “Well, sir, I’ll tell you want we want to do. We want to get in those old Atlantic Studios where Ray Charles cut ‘Hallelujah (I Love Her So),’ and we want to make some hit records too. That’s all.”

  Eric gets excited. “That’s right, goddammit, some hit records! And be on the Sullivan show. You wanna be on Sullivan? They owe me a favor over there. Hey! I made Gene Pitney a millionaire,” he shouts. “If you wanna be a millionaire too, just keep your mouth shut and listen. Are you all here in New York? Whaddaya mean they’re in Canada?! Get ’em down here right now, have ’em in my office tomorrow. We’ll sign the contract and be in the studio tomorrow night. I’m gonna make you the biggest act ever to get out of Canada.”

  Al Kooper and the others smiled at this. We were smiling too. It looked like our dreams were coming true. I called Rick, Richard, and Garth and told them to come on down. I even called a couple of buddies in Arkansas and told them to load up and head to New York to help us celebrate at Atlantic Studios the next night.

  Back at the hotel we started talking to Doc Pomus, the famous songwriter. He liked to hang around the Forrest because it was a musicians hotel, and he was always selling songs to people. He kind of had a little office at the end of the registration desk, and he’d be there on his crutches (he’d recently suffered a serious fall) with some coffee and sacks of donuts, working the telephone and conferring with people. I told him about our meeting, and he let me know that the gentleman we were dealing with wasn’t exactly burdened by a great reputation within the music industry. “Watch out, boys,” growled Doc.

  This made me remember back to 1959, when Ronnie Hawkins came back to Canada with his first Roulette recording contract. The Hawk hadn’t look as thrilled as he might have, and I’d asked, “How bad is it?”

  “Life, with an option,” he’d murmured. (Later, when he was pissed off at Morris Levy, Hawk would fulminate, “I’d give an inch of my peter to get out of that contract, and I ain’t got an inch to spare.”)

  Next day, everyone else came in. It was the five of us and Bill. At noon I went into Eric’s office. He wasn’t around, but The Ear was. I said, “I’m here to pick up the contract so we can have our attorney check it out. The rest of the band is asleep at the hotel so they can be fresh tonight when we sign.” I took the contract over to Henry Glover’s office in midtown. Henry was doing independent production work, and as a favor he said he’d look over the deal that Eric was offering.

  My heart sank as I watched Henry’s face while he went over the figures. Finally he threw the contract on the desk and said, “I told you boys, there’s these two words: ‘retail’ and ‘wholesale.’ Now, look at this right here, and right here, and again right here. This is an even worse deal than the one Morris Levy gave Ronnie, and that was pretty bad. You boys will have to pay each other because nobody else is going to be paying you! You’re going to end up paying Eric Schuster every cent you make.”

  It was life with no option.

  Henry gave us the hardest advice we could stand. The contract was a complete rip-off. I didn’t want to hear it, but I knew he was right. We all talked about it back at the hotel. We were so anxious—chainsmoking, pacing—because by that point we were ready to do anything for a chance to record.

  At four o’clock we all went to Eric’s office. The Ear is trotting about in excitement. Eric is behind his desk.

  “You boys have a chance to look over the contract?”

  “Well, actually, sir—”

  Phone rings. “TELL DICK CLARK I’M TOO BUSY. CALL BACK IN AN HOUR!” We noticed that Eric had these buttons at his feet. He’d ask you something, you’d be about to answer, he’d step on a button, and the phone would go off! Meanwhile, we’re trying to hold out some hope. Back at the hotel Richard had plaintively suggested, “Maybe he only wants half of it.”

  Big Eric is talking again. “Where were we?”

  I hear myself saying, “Look, Mr. Schuster, we can’t sign these contracts the way they’re written. Would it be possible—”

  “I don’t believe this!” he shouts. “Fuck this shit! You can fucking take it or you can fucking leave it! I don’t need this shit!”

  “Look, Eric,” I try, “we didn’t come all this way to Manhattan to be losers. We want to sign with you, but this contract would—”

  He gets up. “I ain’t got no fuckin’ time to argue with youse guys! You either wanna do something for your careers or you don’t!” And he walks out, slamming the door behind him.

  The Ear looks over sympathetically. “C’mon, guys,” he clucks. “Do you really want to blow this? Go back to Canada and play those silly clubs? Shouldn’t you be doing something for yourselves?”

  I tell him, “There’s five of us, and Bill here, but the papers say Eric gets everything while we get to go along for the ride. No, thank you, sir.”

  And we walk out.

  We slunk back to the Forrest. Doc Pomus was by the desk as we dragged ourselves through the lobby. He took one look at my face—I couldn’t say anything—and said, “Sorry, guys. Sorry.” Just then our Arkansas friends pulled in. They thought we were going into Atlantic Studios that night. We were all up in my room, talking it over, when the phone rang. Richard picked it up. It was Eric. Richard handed off to me.

  “You little punk!” Eric screamed. “You’ll never amount to spit in the
music business! Got it? I see better groups than you assholes come and go every fucking day. There are hundreds like you, only better!”

  “You big load of bullshit,” I told him. “You told me you had big ideas for us, but you didn’t have no idea except to horse-fuck us.”

  “You fucking little punk. You’ll never get a better deal in this town! You ain’t gonna be spit!”

  I lost my head. “Hey, fuck yourself, you cheap son of a bitch! Got no feelings about running right over people’s dreams and hopes and prayers. You oughta hop in a cab and get off at the Forrest Hotel and let me warp your goddamn ass to the sidewalk a couple of times!”

  Maybe that was too much, I thought. Eric wasn’t any water lily. He was a big guy from the Morris Levy school, this was his home turf, and now he was really screaming in my ear. “Ah, fuck you, ya little punk, I’m gonna—”

  I hung up on him. We were pretty shaken up by then.

  After the call we pulled out a couple of pacifiers that someone had laid on us, and we had a smoke to try to calm ourselves down. We were at a loss. Morris Levy was the only other name we knew in New York, and he had passed on our demo tape. A friend from Toronto, Mary Martin, worked for a guy named Albert Grossman, who managed some folk singers we were aware of, but we didn’t think our music was really his style. “Looks like it’s back to the bars for a while,” I told the others. “But we’ll get us another shot. I’ll call Henry Glover right now.”