by Steve Miller
Alice Cooper: He said, “I’ll produce the album, but we have to relearn everything.” And it was like what? He said, “Everyone likes you guys, but you don’t have a signature,” and we didn’t know what that meant. He said, “When you hear the Doors, you know it’s the Doors, and when you hear the Beatles, you know it’s the Beatles. When you hear Alice Cooper, you could be any psychedelic band. There’s no signature to anything.”
So Bob came in and we went out to the barn every day, rehearsed for ten hours a day.
Dennis Dunaway: There was a hospital for the criminally insane across the road from us. You could throw a rock and hit it practically. On a decent day we’d open up these big gigantic doors to the barn we practiced in, which was part of the deal we got for the house. They didn’t clap at everything. But when we played something that we really nailed, you’d hear them at the prison farm cheering. The song “Dead Babies” never would have happened if that prison farm hadn’t cheered for it. The verse was from a song that had kind of a crappy chorus. And so even though it was a good verse, the song fell by the wayside. I was trying to talk the guys into putting the good verse with the good chorus, and they weren’t going for it at all. I wrote a bass part to tie it all together, and I finally got it. We had a rule that you couldn’t throw out anything until you actually tried to play it, so the doors were open and I got them to play it, and the prison farm cheered like crazy, so that was it. That was the stamp of approval.
Alice Cooper: We pretty much were the pretty entertainment for this hospital for the criminally insane. Perfect for us. We would rehearse ten hours a day, and they would sit and listen to us rehearse all day.
Mark Parenteau (WABX, DJ): We went to the house on Brown Road in Pontiac, which was farm country. Gail, my wife at the time, knew Alice Cooper and all the guys that were in the original band as well as their pet snake, Katrina. I’m sure now it’s all suburbs, but then it was pretty far out there. The place was like a scene out of a horror movie. It was this house, which was a crash pad. It had no real furniture in the living room or anything. And they would go out and Michael Bruce would shoot chipmunks and squirrels so they could feed the snake, which was fun. Alice would sit, and there was a black-and-white console TV in the living room of this house with a couple of folding chairs. Alice sat in one chair surrounded by a huge amount of Budweiser empties. Alice had a gun that had those suction cups on it, like the little bullet would fly out and had the suction cup. Every time he would see someone on TV that he didn’t like, he would shoot one of those suction cups, so the front screen of that TV was covered with like fifty or sixty of those little suction cups that were stuck to the glass.
Bob Ezrin: I froze my ass off in that house when it got to be winter. During that time I actually spent a couple of those nights in—you know those Christmas tree lots that have the trailers that always have a trailer outside? That’s where I spent a few nights because it was warm in there; there was actually heat. Alice’s girlfriend’s girlfriend had this Christmas tree lot.
Neal Smith: First time I heard “Fields of Regret” on the radio, it was the first night we played in Detroit. I was stoned out of my head on acid and I just heard “I Wanna Be Your Dog” by the Stooges. At that time I had never heard the Stooges. I put the radio up to my head, and I’m listening to it like it’s the fuckin’ nastiest song I’ve ever heard in my life, and it’s drivin’ like a mother fucker and I loved this song. It’s as loud as it can be on the radio, pushed right up next to my ear, and then all of a sudden it stops and it goes [imitates chords], two big power chords and then my head just suuucked into the radio. Then [imitates the music] it starts firing up again and then it goes [imitates music again], and my head gets sucked back in there again, and then I go “Who the fuck is this band?” I’m sitting there and the next song comes on, “Holy shit, that’s us!” It was “Fields of Regret.”
Dennis Dunaway: We got played on the radio before, but not on pop radio. The first time I heard “I’m Eighteen” on the radio we were all in the living room at the Pontiac farm, and it came on a crappy little transistor radio. It about knocked me over. We were yelling, and Neal came running down the stairs. Glen was there. By the time the song was halfway over, we were all in there, just ecstatic.
Russ Gibb: I made a mistake one day booking a show at the Grande, and instead of putting B. B. King on as the last act, as the headlining act I put Alice Cooper there and B. B. was the second billed band. Usually we had three bands. When I realized I said, “Oh, shit.” So I call up Alice, and I say, “Vince, I’m sorry. I made a mistake. You’re going to have to play second. It’s B. B.” He said, “No, no, we’re the top of that bill, Russ. I got the contract.” I said, “Vince, I made a mistake.” He says, “Well, I gotta hold you to it.” He was polite about it, but he was saying no, you’re not gonna move me, and that’s a union contract, Russ. And I knew the union would back him. Now I gotta let B. B. know. So I call him. He was staying somewhere in Detroit, and I call him up. I said, “B. B., I got a mistake here. You’re supposed to be the top of the bill, but I made a mistake in a union contract,” and I told him. He said, “Well, I’ll be over before rehearsal and we’ll talk about it then.” So around 2:00 in the afternoon in comes B. B with his guys. I bring them in the office and said, “Look here’s the problem I have.” He said, “What are you saying to me?” I said, “Well, instead of coming in at 11:00 to play at around 11:30, you’re gonna have to come in around 8:30 and be the middle band.” He said, “You mean I’m not gonna be top of the bill?” I said, “That’s right, and there’s nothing I can do about it. If you want out of the contract, then fine, I will let you out.” He said, “Who’s going to be the top of the bill?” I said, “Alice Cooper.” And he said, “Who is she?” Yeah, yeah. He said, “Who is she?” Well, I said, “That’s some guy in a band who thinks he’s a girl,” or something, I forget. We talk and talk, and he says, “Now what time will I be going home then?” I said, “Well, you’ll probably be out of here by 11:00.” He says, “You mean I’d get back to the hotel by 11:00?” He said, “That’s great with me, Russ.” And as he left he picks up Lucille. He’d done his rehearsal and we were in talking again, and he says, “By the way, who was that girl?” I said, “No, no. Guy, Alice Cooper.” He said, “What kind of music does he play?” I said, “Well, mixture of rock ’n’ roll blah, blah.” He said, “Well, Russ, I will blow him off the stage. I’ll see you at the show.” And he did, of course.
Rick Stevers: We were playing with Alice Cooper on some bill, and we pulled up and our crew was loading in. So the bass player and I went backstage to check things out, and we walk into the dressing room, and there was a girl with her back facing us. She had really long hair and a bra on, and we were like, “Cool.” But it was one of the guys in Cooper. We were like, “Oops, sorry ma’am, never mind.”
Jim Kosloskey (Frut, guitarist): Alice’s girlfriend in Detroit was Cindy Lang. She got around a bit.
Stirling Silver: Cindy and I were backstage someplace where there was hors d’oeuvres and crap like that. Alice wasn’t there at that moment, and I made out with her, that was it. I had her phone number, and I was living in the basement at my parents’ house. She gave me her number to the house on Brown Road. You know, I’d call and say, “Is Cindy there?” No matter who’d answer, I’d always go, “Is Cindy there?” Maybe Alice even answered, I don’t know. And I’d talk to her. She was kind of flirty on the phone. I drove out there. Cindy was kind of the hostess of the house. That monkey must have masturbated a lot over Cindy Lang. That girl was so sexy.
Neal Smith: We had played at the Eastown or the Grande, and there was a party afterwards, and this was, again, one of the first times we had been to Detroit, early on. And we walked into the party, and I remember Cindy coming up and meeting everybody. Pretty much after that first night that they met Alice and Cindy were an item.
Jim Kosloskey: Cindy was very attractive, very nice. She had a reputation for liking guys in bands. One night I went
out to the farm, typical party stuff. But I had been with her before and she was worried. She looked at me and said, “Don’t say anything to me.” She didn’t want to make Alice jealous or something, you know. She was later trying to sue Alice for palimony because he never married her.
Patti Quatro: Cindy was just a piece of work. Is she still alive? She wanted to marry Alice—that girl was so after him. She was what I would call the old word, a gold digger. She wanted to do that with a rock star; she started hanging on to him.
Neal Smith: Yeah, Alice had Cindy, so we had somebody who lived at the house when we were gone. Then Glen had his girlfriend, this Canadian girl that was living with him, but it was off and on. I had a girlfriend there in Detroit for a period of time, but most of the time I was in Pontiac I was by myself. There were a lot of girls, and unfortunately, I had to go to the free clinic a lot of times. But back in those days you get a shot of penicillin and it would cure whatever was ailing you.
America’s Only Rock ’n’ Roll Magazine
Dan Carlisle: I lived for a year in the Creem commune, this big house on Cass. After a year there I kept an apartment out and kept renting a place at the Creem house since it was convenient when I was working downtown. One of our roommates was the son of the governor, William Milliken. He was a heroin addict, and one day I woke up with a horrible hangover and my bedroom was right off the kitchen, and I walked in and sitting at the kitchen table was the governor, reading the riot act to his son. I thought, “How could this be?” I suppose to the governor we all looked like Satan.
Dave Marsh (journalist, author, Creem magazine, Rolling Stone): Creem evolved pretty quickly. A British guy named Tony Reay had a vision and Barry Kramer had a vision, and they started it.
Tony Reay (cofounder, Creem magazine): Jeep Holland had suggested to me that Russ [Gibb] might want someone to do PR for the Grande and that I might be able to parlay my current writing outlets with the Fifth Estate and the Detroit News into a viable PR company for Russ and the Hideout/Palladium axis of teen clubs as well as the other bookers of teen clubs and dances. So after some late night brainstorming, Jeep and I decided that what the area needed most was a calendar with comments, editorials, and maybe even a few ads to offset the costs. So we would mimeograph a small flyer with a calendar of local events for the upcoming week, maybe a few words about a particular club or band, maybe a small ad on the back to cover costs, and put a coupla hundred at each venue. And that was the beginning of Creem. I told Barry about it, and he laughed at me and said he had zero interest in such a thing.
Dave Marsh: I came along fairly early. I went to Kettering High School in Waterford. I wrote a little bit in high school about various things. I think I wrote about Blonde on Blonde. I had bad experiences in high school, and I had a bad home experience.
Tony Reay: Russ, always with his ear to the ground, heard of my idea and started to talk first to Jeep and then me about maybe getting financially involved and expanding the scope of the flyer/calendar. When I mentioned that to Barry, he suddenly got quite interested.
Robin Sommers: I used to drink at the Decantur Bar at Palmer and Cass, and next door was Mixed Media, this head shop. Barry Kramer had worked at a place down the block called Cambridge Book Stall, and Barry knew about head shops because he would travel around a lot. He’d been to England and Carnaby Street, and he had some friends with money and talked about opening a shop. So here it was—he opened Mixed Media. It was going to be called Live Poultry, but then they changed it to Mixed Media. They sold records, books, candles, papers, pipes. No bongs back then; it was a bongless period in our lives. Eventually someone brought in this incredible machine—it was a motorized pipe with two chambers and a pump that circulated the smoke; it was like $200. I worked at Ford for a while and I also worked at Mixed Media there when I had some spare time, and I was just hanging out. One afternoon I went in there and Barry had to go somewhere, and he asked me to sit at the register and sell stuff and talk to people. There were some people who were friends of Barry and this girl Edie Walker—her dad owned a jewelry store; they were rich folks. Her best friend was Gilda Radner, and she started to hang out with us a lot. We used to all hang out and smoke dope together. She was in her early twenties, and we had this chair with a ladder back with a rattan seat, and Barry would make her sit in it if she got too wound up.
Dave Marsh: I went to Wayne State for a few months, and in the middle of one of John Sinclair’s trials they were needing some help in putting out Fifth Estate, the first nationally distributed issue, which also included a program to the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival. I agreed to help them out on that. By then I was living at the Creem house on Cass. Barry lived there; Charlie Auringer, John Angelos at some point. Danny Carlisle lived in the separate apartment downstairs.
Robin Sommers: Barry was the rich Jewish kid I would never had known unless I walked into a situation like that. Then Barry asked me, because I had done all the artwork for the Five, if I wanted to work for Creem. So I started working there, and we moved to this huge house on Cass. It was a business, with big open spaces to have writers come in with desks and big layout tables. And a practice room on the third floor, where Mitch’s band, Detroit, practiced.
Dan Carlisle: Barry Kramer owned the Creem commune and Mixed Media, which was a hippie shop. Barry gave Tony Reay the money to do the magazine. You could see right away that Tony wanted to do a fanzine and Barry wanted something like Rolling Stone.
Robin Sommers: Creem was to be the alternative to this hokey magazine from California called Rolling Stone. It was about hardcore rock and roll rather than what was going down in California. It was the real deal about the music—that’s what got Lester Bangs and these guys. It was no bullshit.
Dave Marsh: Tony wanted Creem to be more local than Barry did. I had a vision, but it was transplanted onto someone else’s root stock.
Tony Reay: Something that gets lost in all the retelling is that Barry and I were good friends from the very first day we met. We had a lot in common, attitudinally. He was best man at my wedding, and we fought like an old married couple about damn near anything, but there was never, until the last few days, any real animosity between us. And after the smoke cleared we remained easy friends. He continued to steal my ideas even years later and admitted it readily to me. The only time we really battled during my Creem days were when he wouldn’t pay R. Crumb the $50 he asked for the “Mr Dreemwhip” cover and only authorized $35. I paid Crumb the $50 anyway out of store petty cash, and Barry took the difference out of my pay.
Dan Carlisle: So Barry got rid of Tony because he owned it. I would write for Creem occasionally the first year. Then there was no need for me to be scribbling away; they got some real writers. Living there, I was a rock-and-roll DJ, and I could come home at night and there would be a party. Lester Bangs came along; he was different. You could sit down with Dave Marsh, who also lived at the Creem house, and while I didn’t like all his ideas on music, we could have a genial conversation, something intellectual. With Lester, if I told Lester, “You are full of fucking shit,” Lester would see that as a declaration of war. He was on a crusade twenty-four hours a day.
Dave Marsh: I was so ambitious. I could do what I said I could do. There was not lot of demand for credentials back then—it was so different from now. We got amazing access right away.
Mark Parenteau: I met Dave Marsh and thought, “This is the most cocky arrogant kid I’ve ever met.’
Jaan Uhelszki: I knew Creem right from the first issue because they used to sell it right next to the bar at the Grande. So I would get them free. Tony Reay and I were friends, and I said to myself, “Well, I wanna write there,” and he said, “Come on, just come on down.” It took me some time before I was a writer. First I was the subscription girl.
Leni Sinclair: I never liked Creem—Lester Bangs and all those cynical people. I had a bad run in with Barry Kramer one time that really disappointed me. The Blues and Jazz Festival owed him some money for an ad th
ey ran. And we didn’t pay it, and when it came time for the next festival I was sent to the Creem office with the check for what we owed and a request for a picture of Ray Charles. I handed him the check and he said, “Just so you know what it feels like to be an asshole”—something like that—“I’m not going to give you the picture.” I thought he was joking. When I realized he was serious, I just dashed out of there crying. Maybe he was crazy in the head at that moment from doing something or just vindictive, but later on he gave the picture to somebody, but not me. I don’t know if he had anything against me personally. I mean, we used to hang out together and smoke DMT together at the house on Cass.
Dan Carlisle: I would sit in that office at Creem, and there would be ten hippies trying to do business with Barry. He would light up a joint and pass it around, and I would notice that he would never take a hit off it. So by the time they got to business everyone was blasted except Barry. He knew he was in a business of people who liked to be high and weren’t really business oriented.
Dave Marsh: Barry wanted to be Jann Wenner, the publisher of every successful publication, an economic and mass-cultural success. I wasn’t against any of that—in fact I was for it. But my way of executing it precluded it from happening. Barry wanted to be a marker, and there was a thing between Creem and Rolling Stone; we wanted to be as good as they were and they didn’t know we existed. In our recreational time we made fun of Rolling Stone. I’m sure Lester and I sat around and made fun of Rolling Stone with James Taylor on the cover, but as far as we were concerned, that’s what James Taylor had been born for. Even when I went to Rolling Stone, I felt like a fish out of water the whole time. I was a rock-and-roll guy from Detroit. I wanted to be respected, but didn’t know how to be respectable.
Kim Fowley (musical raconteur from Los Angeles): Barry Kramer called me on the phone and declared me God. I said, “Do you have an album out called Love Is Alive and Well on Tower Records?” He said, “Yeah. I like some of it, but I hate some of it. But you seem interesting. When you show up on your promo tour, I will drive you around.” So he meets me at the airport. And he said, “You have normal boring clothes. We gotta put you in some love-in stuff because you’re doing Robin Seymour tonight.” It was at CKLW Television. So I said, “Well, let’s go somewhere.” Dearborn, of all places, he took me to. And both of us were looking for what we thought would be love-in, hippie garb. So there was this bright thing, and I put it on. I didn’t know that it was an Arab woman’s outfit. So when I went on CKLW, there was a bunch of people from the Mideast who live in Detroit, suddenly they’re watching TV, and here comes some white guy, who’s like Ichabod Crane, bouncing around to a song called, “Funky Flower Flower Drum.” So many people called up to complain that they blew out the switchboard. Linda Ronstadt was on the show that night with the Stone Poneys, and she fell in love with me that night. That was Barry Kramer. He helped me out.
