by Paul Rowson
If you’ve seen the film you’ll know that somewhere between five hundred thousand and a million people trekked to the festival, forcing the site to be declared a disaster area. It rained heavily and although there was a lot of peace and free love around none of it reached the small group I was with, who were soaked and grumpy. The crowds thrilled to the likes of Santana, Crosby Stills and Nash, The Who, Richie Havens and Joe Cocker but we missed them all. The only musical recollection that I have is being told that the muzzy sound emanating from the stage about half a mile away was Ten Years After. We beat a retreat through the sludge, pausing only momentarily to gawp at three naked men too stoned to stand up straight.
By the time I landed in Boston in 1972 these musical experiences had been parked in some dark and dusty recess of my brain, because the most pressing issue was to get somewhere to stay and then a means of supporting myself. After several false starts and a great deal of pounding the streets I eventually got floor space in a house in Cambridge across the river.
It was a half hippy squat where two of the seven inhabitants had work. Dan, the younger of two brothers living there, was one of them. It was a rather loose interpretation of the word ‘work’ as it involved Dan leaving the house at about mid day and returning at two in the morning with his pupils dilated and slurring incoherently. One morning before departure he expanded on the nature of this ‘work’. He also let me know that there were vacancies which meant that I too could come home slurring and incoherent if I so desired. Only he didn’t quite put it like that.
Don Law was, and still is, a music impresario in the Boston area. In 1972 he used to promote rock concerts at the Orpheum Theatre. Things were going so well there that one of his minions took on casual labour for sell out concerts, of which there were plenty. I was just two joints away from being in the rock music business. That is how long it took Dan to finish telling me about his ‘work’ and offering to take me along to see if I would be allowed to mix with rock music’s elite.
It was a brutally cold day and we were glad to get inside the empty and quite dark theatre. It was just after noon and roadies were wheeling in the (quite modest compared to today’s mega tour equipment) amps and the mixing desk was being positioned at the back of the ground floor. Oh the glamour of it all. I had quite forgotten to ask how much, if anything, I would be paid for my efforts because for the first time in my life I was, after the briefest of quizzings, given a backstage pass.
It was rather arty, even ostentatious compared to the functional plastic neck tags that you get at Glastonbury these days – not that I’ve ever had one. Made of green silk it bore the words ‘Savoy Brown – Orpheum Theatre – Backstage Pass’ and I kept it stuck inside my wallet for thirty two years until I was relieved of it and the wallet while strolling through Serrekunda market in The Gambia.
Dan then gave me a detailed description of what the job involved. His first task was usually to go to the backstage toilets and roll a fat one (joint not roadie). This he did and we shared it before wandering around with what we tried to convey as a sense of purpose. Try as I may I cannot recall the name of the opening band that night although they were English and there were a lot of them. Second on were ‘Malo’, who I was rather self importantly informed by one of their roadies, contained Carlos Santana’s brother. Rock Music, like any other business, has a hierarchy and even at the bottom there were gradations of importance and seniority among the roadies.
Dan and I were miles away from reaching up to anywhere near the bottom but were quite content to smoke joints, lift the occasional amplifier into place and listen to the music. Quite soon I had, like Dan, mastered the art of arriving just as the heavy lifting of amplifiers had been completed. This gave me time to have meaningful stoner conversations with all and sundry. Third on the bill, that first night, was Long John Baldry and his band. I was chatting to one of his roadies who informed me in a world weary and serious tone “It’s been hard man and we don’t finish for another week man. I’m going back to Philadelphia man. I met this chick there man and she really sorted my head out man. I’ve got to see her again man, it’s freaking me out here man.” Now when you have been called ‘Man’ by Jimi Hendrix in person, this affectation from a Brummie roadie cut no ice. I nodded empathetically while mentally noting that his ‘head’ would need a great deal more sorting out than the ‘chick’ would probably ever be able to offer him.
The headline act was Savoy Brown who I had seen at the British Embassy in London getting visas and at the Boston Tea Party weeks after Woodstock. In the lead up to the evening’s concert all I can remember about their road crew was that one of them would not move more than a foot away from Kin Simmonds’ guitars which he had been charged to look after. At about five o’clock the bands did a peremptory sound check on a very crowded stage. About the only time we did any real work was later in the evening when we quickly lugged equipment off stage after each act had finished.
We were dispatched to get food for the band as the roadies were left to fend for themselves. On subsequent evenings there were bands who, according to their (often self perceived) status, would have ridiculously self aggrandising ‘riders’ in their contracts about specific and exotic drinks, and on one occasion a Persian rug in the dressing room. However tonight’s lot had not, apart of course, from requesting copious amounts of wine and beer. Dan and I made it a religious duty to tour the empty dressing rooms as soon as the bands went on stage in order to top up with drinks. We usually weren’t hungry having pilfered as much of the hot food, often Chinese, as we could manage after collecting it earlier in the evening.
So it was most nights that we were replete, pissed and stoned by the time the headline act came on. That first time however there was to be a special treat. In 1972 I had heard of cocaine but never taken any. In Long John Baldry’s dressing room I was chatting to his band members with the great man in attendance. Actually the late Long John had an authentic blues voice but was already singing soft rock and crummy ballads by this stage of his declining career. A roadie came in and produced a razor blade and then some white powder which he ‘cut’ in to lines on the table in front of me. Luckily I wasn’t offered any first, that honour going to Long John, because I would not have been quite sure what to do with it. However I took a huge snort when my turn came in order to give the impression of a man who did a line every evening at about this time.
Full of beer, wine, whisky, dope, cocaine and Chinese food I was ready to rock. How exactly I rocked remains a mystery to me because the next thing I remembered was walking round Boston at about one am in the morning, shivering in the freezing cold. My leather jacket, and the only protection I had against the sub zero temperatures of the winter there, had gone awol. Dan had also gone awol, as had my ability to think, or indeed walk straight. I made it ‘home’ where luckily I did not have to climb into bed as I was ‘crashing’ on the floor. The phrase ‘fell into a deep sleep’ was apposite in this instance, and it only took me a couple of hours to clean the vomit from my shoes and clothes the next morning. The leather jacket had disappeared forever, but that disappointment notwithstanding, it was the rock and roll career move I had been dreaming about.
A young body is remarkably resilient and after a slow start to the next day we rolled up at the Orpheum theatre to be re-employed as casual labour. Dan assured me that I had been given ten dollars for last night’s ‘work’ but there was no trace of it. Top billing on my second night in the rock business was Fleetwood Mac. At this point in the existence they were at relatively low ebb, and a long way off becoming the platinum selling soft rockers who ended up playing for Clinton in the White House.
In the mid/late sixties they were an out and out blues band. The usual ‘musical differences’, personnel changes and drug abuse had wreaked havoc with the original line up. That night in Boston they were Mick Fleetwood, Christine McVie, John McVie and Bob Welsh, some other guy and a drummer. They were dire. Two conversations stick in my mind with a clarity that I can on
ly put down to the absence of cocaine.
The first was with Mick Fleetwood in the wings before they went on, who told me and anyone within earshot that his preferred choice of drug was the painkiller Davron. Armed with that vital information I listened to their lacklustre and out of tune show while making a pledge to buy Davron in industrial quantities if I ever had to sit through a concert by Fleetwood Mac again.
It was fashionable and almost obligatory to refer to the police as ‘pigs’ in those days. I enthusiastically subscribed to this view having almost been savaged by a police dog in a student demo outside Harvard University three years previously. Even in my befuddled state I realised how ridiculous this generalisation was after spending most of the concert talking backstage to a friendly Boston policeman. He was a huge guy in his thirties and, although he had his night stick out, it was to enable him to sit down comfortably in a place where we could see both the stage and the crowd out front.
There was a presence about him that was reassuring without being threatening. He listened enthusiastically to me sounding off about the rock business which, if you count cleaning the toilets and humping amps, I had been in for forty eight hours. Most of the rest of that two day period had been spent eating, sleeping, pilfering drugs, drinking and vomiting. In responding to my inane drivel, he demonstrated knowledge and taste in his music recommendations, while quietly suggesting to a nearby roadie that he go out of sight to finish the joint dangling from his lips.
The thrill wore off at about the same time the drugs did and I only managed another week’s ‘work’ before deciding that my body was in danger of collapse through abuse and lack of sleep. I stayed at the squat for a couple more days and at party there met a black guy at it called ‘Cooley’. Just as I thought that I was leaving rock music I found myself in a band, even if it was a band without talent, instruments or bookings.
My first direct encounter with heroin was courtesy of Cooley but I didn’t know that when we met. He was from Baltimore and was at the party with a male friend. At three in the morning, when many had left, a few people were sitting round the kitchen table trying to raise the energy to go to bed. Cooley was charismatic and charming and said that Carl and he were heading down to Baltimore in the morning and then taking a little road trip to Miami and that I was welcome to join them - so I did.
The next morning we set off in Cooley’s old Ford Mustang with me squeezed in the back. It became clear before we had got out of Cambridge that what Cooley and Carl did for a living did not involve anything that could be called legitimate and I was in over my head. They were, however, engaging company and we passed the journey chatting away as they gave out little hints as to their professional skills, which mainly seemed to involve fraud and grand larceny.
On arrival we checked into an opulent hotel in Baltimore. Cooley used one of the many credit cards in his possession to check us in. Carl and I waited in earshot as Cooley flirted effortlessly with the receptionist. He pointed to us when she asked him what we were doing in town and without missing a beat said “We’re in a band”. The receptionist looked me directly in the eye and asked what we were called and where we were playing. Somehow, I recalled the name of a band in Yorkshire who I had seen before coming to the States. “Spiral Highway” I blurted out to Cooley’s obvious approval. Carl added that we were playing at a roadhouse some miles away and just wanted to rest after a heavy schedule, and with that she called the bellboy to take our minimal luggage to the room.
I was now officially scared but decided there was not much I could do. The boys were back in their home town and we drove round to Cooley’s brother’s house. It appeared that he was a hard working family man. I was the source of some amusement as ‘the English dude’ and while we had a couple of beers Carl went to see a nearby friend. After he returned we drove back to the hotel. Once back in the room, Carl put the TV on as Cooley reached for the phone.
“Paul” he casually enquired, “You ever balled a black chick?” Before I had time to reply that I had never ‘balled a black chick’, nor in fact a ‘chick’ of any colour for a considerable time and that I was hoping for a quiet night watching television, Cooley was speaking down the line. “Yeah Thelma honey, we got this cool English dude with us….sure….he’s real cute…sure….it’d be fun”. Thankfully Cooley had failed to transmit my allure via the phone and Thelma passed on the opportunity to ball a by now sweating and self evidently ‘un cool’ English dude.
With the evening’s entertainment options diminishing by the minute Cooley took off his belt and it soon became clear why Carl had gone to see a friend while we were at Cooley’s brother’s place. He was wrapping it round his biceps, and tightening it to bring up a vein, as Carl got out the heroin and needle. Years later I would recognise the scene in the film ‘Trainspotting’ where, after the heroin kicks in, the addict slumps back in semi conscious euphoria, which is what first Carl then Cooley did. I spent a very nervous and sleepless night before coming clean to them in the morning.
Throughout that long night, I thought of a million different ways I could tell them I was leaving. Next day when it came to it I just said “Cooley, I need to split”. I think they both knew that, were I to stay for much longer, I would become a liability. Cooley generously peeled off a couple of ten dollar bills from a wad in his jacket and we said our goodbyes.
So rattled was I by now, that I became a neurotic bag of nerves when walking past reception. It was the same women who had checked us in, and had she questioned me about the band or the bill I would have broken down in tears and confessed everything. She merely smiled in that ‘I know what you cool rock guys get up to and I’m envious’ sort of way as I held it together. Only when I boarded the bus back to Boston did I begin to relax. Spiral Highway, in true rock fashion, had imploded after drug issues and there was nobody more relieved than me.
Weeks later boarding one of the first 747s to fly out of Logan airport there was a bomb scare and we deplaned at the end of the runway and were then bussed back to the terminal. During the two hour delay the English guy that I had been sitting next to, having quickly established that I was broke, bought me several beers. I repaid this kindness by boring him to tears with my drug fuelled rock and roll adventures which he listened to patiently. When I finally realised that it might be polite to ask my new and generous companion whether he had done anything interesting recently he modestly replied that he had just been a member of the Oxford University crew for the Boat Race three weeks previously. I watched him get the beers in again and decided to shut up.
It may have been the end of Spiral Highway but in the course of travelling for work in I kept bumping into rock stars all over the place in a manner that suggested it was more than mere coincidence. I’ll leave you to decide from the seminal encounters detailed below. You might find this an obscure list if you are younger than fifty or a non obsessive human being with a life. When you have read it, you may feel that to know me would give you a whole new meaning to the word ‘shallow’.
1. Spencer Davies – I was using the next urinal to him at Leeds University and we certainly exchanged glances so it counts.
2. Gary Bennett – lead singer of BR549 – another urinal meeting at the Coal Exchange in Cardiff but this time with words. Gary, seeing me next to him offered “We’re playing Glasgow next”. He left to dry his hands after this gnomic utterance but I knew it was him for two very good reasons. Firstly he pronounced Glasgow ‘cow’ as in the animal. Secondly not many people in Cardiff wear snakeskin cowboy boots.
3. Bono – A major encounter in a lift while attending a travel conference at the Hotel Gresham in Dublin. This has added value as we travelled for four floors together. Also in the lift at the time were two large Bulgarian delegates there who could verify the meeting. Unfortunately they did not speak English and had no idea that they were in the presence of a rock god, albeit a little one. As I’m pretty tall as well, the three of us looked down at Bono’s bald spot which, since that day in 1991 has dis
appeared, proving that he does possess supernatural qualities. No words were exchanged but the length of time at close quarters makes it a qualifier.
4. Marc Bolan – On Harvard Common in the States when he was the diminutive half of Tyranasaurus Rex. They were playing a free concert in front of an audience who had never heard of him and were completely disinterested. That is why he was so grateful for my comment of “Great set Marc” when he passed me on the way to a waiting vehicle.
5. Carlos Santana – Firstly in a coffee shop in Cambridge Mass. The day after I had seen them at the Boston Tea Party (a club in Boston in 1969 as opposed to the execrable current political movement). I opened the door on the way out and he said “Thanks”. Secondly at the Fillmore West San Francisco in 1994. I had gone to see ‘African blues giant Ali Farka Toure’ as the local radio had billed him when, half way through the set, I noticed a group of middle aged hippy woman congregating close by, yet strangely unaware of my presence. That was because right next to me was Carlos Santana and we fell into a long and detailed conversation that went as follows:
Me. “Did you enjoy playing in the Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin all those years ago?”
Carlos Santana. “No, he was a real motherfucker”.
6. Roy Wood – At Curdworth village fete just outside Birmingham, as we were both wandering round the stalls. After our second circuit we met once more at the skittles. Roy looked up (or I think he did because this was during his ‘Wizard’ days when he had very long hair and purple lenses in his glasses), smiled enigmatically and said “We meet again”.
