Out on the street for a living
11.
Gene Klein lived with his mother and her husband in Bayside, Queens. She called me “the bum.” The three of them lived in a three-story house: a tenant lived on the ground floor, and Gene and his family lived upstairs. One day I was standing in the front yard talking to Gene, who was hanging out the window. His mother leaned out and, in her thick Hungarian accent, said, “Stan, please, this is a quiet neighborhood.”
In other words, I was from the wrong side of the tracks and didn’t understand that things were different here in this nice area of town.
In his mother’s eyes, Gene could do no wrong. If I happened to call when he was in the bathroom, she would say, “the king is on the throne.” Even when he was on the toilet, she believed he created masterpieces. I, on the other hand, couldn’t get a compliment out of my parents if my life depended on it. They went out of their way not to compliment me—I think they thought they were toughening me up that way. Gene could do no wrong; I could do no right.
Of course, when you considered the particulars of my situation, it wasn’t so surprising that Gene’s mom thought I was a bum.
My sister and her boyfriend drove around in a van apparently selling drugs and also dropped acid daily, sniffed glue, and did whatever else they did. Ultimately she got pregnant, but by the time she gave birth, she had separated from the guy. I was at the hospital with my parents when my niece, Ericka, was born.
My sister was in no shape to raise a child. She was still struggling with mental illness and still heavily self-medicating. One weekend my father and I rented a van, drove to Boston—where she lived in some sort of commune—loaded all the baby things into it, and carted it all back to my parents’ apartment. The baby was already living with my parents anyway.
From that point on, interaction with Julia almost completely stopped. There was still fear and uncertainty about whether she would try to take Ericka back or start a custody battle with my parents. Once, Julia came to the house to visit and was clearly not well. She was holding Ericka, and suddenly I heard the front door bang open and saw Julia running down the street with the baby. We had to run after her and grab Ericka back. It was terrifying.
As part of my parents’ philosophy of not acknowledging problems, my niece grew up calling my mom—her grandmother— “Mom.” And because my dad wasn’t comfortable choosing what to be called, he became by default “Honey,” which was what my mom called him.
Whereas Gene was a college grad earning good money as an assistant teacher or a clerk—he held several jobs during the first few years I knew him—I had bounced from gas station to deli and dropped out of college. Now I was getting ready to take the exam to become a part-time New York City taxi driver. While other kids in our neighborhoods were studying to get credentials for long-term careers, I had left myself no alternative but to succeed in music. I had no choice but to spend twenty-four hours, seven days a week, plotting how I was going to accomplish that. For me, it was all about work. You can gauge how important something is to you by how hard you are willing to work to get it.
Fortunately for me, despite his mother’s opinion of me, Gene seemed to agree that he and I were better together than on our own. I think our partnership meant more to me at the time, though. With a modicum of approval and somebody to hang out with, I eventually stopped going uptown to see my psychiatrist, Dr. Hilsen. Gene, on the other hand, seemed to have more going on in his life than I did, whether it was girlfriends or jobs or whatever. On the surface, he also seemed more content than I was, more happy-go-lucky. From my perspective, I saw Gene as important to the plan—and the plan was all I had in my life. I had realized after being rejected by publishing companies that I needed a band as a vehicle to get my material out there. On my own, I was at least three people short of the team I needed. In Gene, I felt I had found another key member of the team.
By that stage I had met or seen a lot of people who wanted to be musicians and said they were going to be stars, but most of them didn’t have the discipline and weren’t willing to commit to doing the work. Talent was all well and good; the people who won, however, were the people who worked the hardest. Gene had a work ethic like mine.
Once I landed a job driving for a taxi company called Metro, based near Queens Plaza, I had money when I needed it but still had near-total flexibility. I drove a big Dodge sedan with a flimsy partition between me and the backseat. The business was at a turning point at the time, with fewer and fewer classic cabbies. The old guys with cigars were being displaced by people like me—actors and musicians, people who needed a source of income and a certain amount of freedom. I quickly figured out what the company looked for as a minimum take for a shift, so I could work to the minimum if I felt like it—basically, how hard I worked determined how much I made. I also figured out where the wires were that lit up the bulb in the rooftop “for hire” sign. I learned how to twist it apart without looking under the dashboard. That meant I could take a fare off the meter without risking being caught by a taxi inspector who might see passengers in a cab with the “for hire” sign still lit up—a giveaway that you didn’t have the meter on.
Gene and I rented a rehearsal space on Hester Street in Chinatown, just above Canal Street, in lower Manhattan. The building was what we called “tender wood”: if you lit a match, the whole thing would have gone up. But it was great because we could leave our gear there instead of lugging it around all the time. The full band—me, Gene, Steve Coronel, Brooke Ostrander, and drummer Tony Zarrella—rehearsed there three times a week. But Gene and I were there a lot more than that.
Although I hadn’t initially been too impressed with Gene’s songs, as we gelled, we started to write very effectively together. It was exciting to have a collaborator, someone creative and intelligent to volley ideas with. A writing partner! I didn’t feel alone anymore.
Gene was also a terrific bass player. He could play intricate, interesting runs and sing at the same time—something most people couldn’t do. And his ability to come up with melodic parts to complement chords was a huge plus. Still, although I valued the partnership, I didn’t necessarily value the way he dealt with things. He showed up late to rehearsal a lot of the time and never apologized. It wasn’t unusual for me to wait more than an hour beyond our scheduled meeting time at a subway to go together to the rehearsal space. He was very much about himself.
It could be maddening, but I paid him back sometimes. We often ate at a cheap Chinese restaurant on Canal Street where you could get a scoop of whatever dish you selected from the menu over rice or noodles for $1.25. One afternoon Gene and I ordered plates of food and cans of Coke. The place was empty. When Gene went to the bathroom, I grabbed the squeeze bottle of hot mustard and squirted a big dollop into his Coke. When he returned, he put the straw to his lips and took a big swig. I just waited. All of a sudden, his eyes bugged out of his head and started watering, and he screamed, “Oh my God!” He was three years older than I was, and I played pranks on him like a pesky little brother.
Our funds were limited to a few dollars each back then—at most. One day we wanted to get some food while we were practicing but didn’t have any money between us. So we took our guitars and went out onto Hester Street in front of the loft and played Beatles songs. The bucket filled up quickly, and we had our meal ticket. We made so much money that day we figured we’d try again. But the next day, almost as soon as we started to play, the cops chased us off. That was the end of our busking career and our dream of unlimited moo shu chicken.
I realized early on that Gene had been taught to value and appreciate money. Sometimes it worked out nicely—I often gave him my old shoes, for instance. Other times, I stirred up shit. I threw pennies into the street in Chinatown because I knew he would run out and retrieve them. I used to just stand on the curb and fling them. And he would run into the gutter to get the coins.
Whatever the disparities in our lives, Gene and I found common ground. We shared some touchstones
—we both came from Jewish immigrant families, we both lived in Queens—but I think it had mostly to do with our style of work. He and I both gave 100 percent. The other guys in the band didn’t seem driven in the same way. Tony, the drummer, was in the band for one reason only: he was a dead ringer for Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath. He wasn’t much of a drummer, but he had a huge set of Ludwig drums and looked the part. He viewed himself as some sort of intellectual. He once came to rehearsal with a drawing that he thought would be perfect as a record cover if we made an album. The image showed the earth and a flower in outer space, crying. He looked at me and said, “You get it?”
“No,” I said.
“Yeah, you get it.”
“I have no idea what that is. A flower crying on the earth? Okay.”
Because Brooke Ostrander played flute as well as keyboards, the band worked out a cover of “Locomotive Breath,” a brand-new song by Jethro Tull. But Brooke sometimes had a problem when he sang—saliva would go down the wrong pipe and he would double over coughing. He might be singing one second and then suddenly drop out. I’d turn around and see him choking.
Lead guitarist Steve Coronel and I didn’t always get along. After one argument, he started yelling at me. “Do you think you’re special or something?” he shouted.
“Yeah, actually I do,” I said. “I have an aura.”
From the look on Steve’s face you would have thought I had just shot his mother. “You think you have an aura!?”
Steve was incensed. Then Gene spoke up.
“He’s right, Steve,” Gene said. “He does.”
12.
We played a gig in early 1971 billing ourselves as Rainbow. A community college in Staten Island hosted the gig—and I got crabs for the first time.
You can get crabs from a bed. You can get them directly from a person. But I didn’t get them from a bed or a person—which might have helped make it at least a little worthwhile. Instead, I got them from a toilet seat at that community college. Soon after the gig I started itching, but it took a while before I put two and two together. I finally realized I had crabs when I found what looked like bread crumbs in my underpants. Upon closer inspection, the crumbs were crawly things. There must have been a hundred of them. It was revolting thinking they had been living on me, feeding off my body. It was the middle of the night when I figured out what they were, and I woke up my parents and told them I was going to the emergency room. I wasn’t going to wait an instant longer to get treated—and it wasn’t like there were twenty-four-hour pharmacies back then.
My mom was horrified that I might spread them though the house. “Honestly, Stan,” she said, “what kind of dogs are you sleeping with?”
Once I had overcome my revulsion to the critters, I found it all very funny. And the fact that my parents were disgusted and revolted by my lifestyle was a source of pleasure to me. I might never get the approval and support from them that I so desperately sought, but hey, at least I was getting a rise out of them.
In April 1971 the band played another show up in the Catskills, about two hours north of New York City, this time with a new name: Wicked Lester. We played fewer covers and more of the songs Gene and I had written.
Back home in Queens, one day I popped into Middle Earth to say hello. The owner pulled a piece of paper out of the register and handed it to me. “A guy from Electric Lady was here, and we got him to leave his number,” he said. “Electric Lady” meant Electric Lady Studios, the facility built by Jimi Hendrix on Eighth Street in Manhattan. To a musician it was like Israel to the Jews. It was hallowed ground.
I examined the note, which had the name “Ron” and a phone number scrawled on it. I couldn’t believe they’d gotten this number for me.
I dialed it and said, “Can I speak to Ron, please?”
“Which Ron? Shimon Ron or Ron Johnsen?”
Well, Ron Johnsen sounded more promising somehow. “Ron Johnsen.”
“Please hold.”
Ron Johnsen was a producer at the studio. I was connected to his secretary and left a message with her about my band, his leaving his number at Middle Earth, the whole spiel.
I called back the next day. Same story: Ron wasn’t available. I called back over and over again, day after day, until finally I told his secretary, “You tell him that it’s because of people like him that bands like mine break up.” That got him to the phone. And he agreed to come to our rehearsal space to listen to the band.
Only later did I learn that the person who had left his number at Middle Earth was actually the other Ron, Shimon Ron, who was head of maintenance at Electric Lady.
When Ron showed up, he liked what he heard. “You guys could be as big as Three Dog Night,” he said. There might have been a tiny morsel of truth to the comparison. We played a hodgepodge of styles. So, sure, one song might sound like Three Dog Night. But the next sounded completely different. To be honest, Wicked Lester had no real style, no real focus.
Even so, Ron Johnsen said he would record us and then shop the tapes to get us a contract with a label. He presented us with something called a “producer’s agreement.”
Things were suddenly happening fast.
I took the contract to Matt Rael’s dad. He was a businessman and I trusted the family. “This is a completely one-sided contract,” Matt’s dad told me, “not in your favor.”
We signed it anyway. This was a chance to get a record contract, to record at Electric Lady, to put out an album. We were not going to mess it up.
Once we signed the production deal with Ron Johnsen and started to record our songs, he began to line up auditions for record labels. One was with a newly formed label called Metromedia. Afterwards, Ron came to us and said, “They passed.” We broke into huge grins and gave big thumbs-up. “Yes! We passed!”
“No,” said Ron drily, “they passed.”
Finally Epic Records told us they would sign Wicked Lester on one condition: we had to get rid of Steve Coronel. It was the first instance when we had to decide whether this was about friendship or about success. We decided to let Steve go. It fell to Gene to tell him.
The label replaced Steve with a session guy named Ron Leejack. And then Epic signed us to a record contract. We were going to put out an album! For a major label! We even got a modest advance. I bought my parents a washer/dryer with my share of it. I was still living at home, after all.
Ron arranged for us to record cheaply, taking advantage of unbooked time at Electric Lady. If a band’s session ended at noon and another band wasn’t coming in until later in the afternoon, we went in and worked on our record. Often, we waited around late at night, hoping a band might pack it in by one or two in the morning, giving us time to record. It was always a bit of a crapshoot—sometimes we sat around for an entire day before getting a chance to work for a few hours.
The first time I ever saw cocaine was during those sessions. An extremely well-known band was recording in studio A one night when we were in studio B. I managed to talk my way in to hang out while they worked. At some point one of them said, “I need some fresh air.” The guy pulled out an Excedrin bottle, poured some powder out of it, and snorted it.
Later the same guy came into our studio to listen to a playback of something we had just put vocals on. Since his band was known for its stellar vocal harmonies, I was hoping for some advice on our track—the harmonies on our song were questionable and clearly needed work. He still had his Excedrin bottle with him. He listened to the song and said, “Man, that sounds good.” He came down a few pegs in my mind that night because I knew it wasn’t good. Maybe it was the blow talking. I don’t know.
Then one of his bandmates came in and asked whether any of us could set him up with a girl. I couldn’t believe it. These were major stars. One was asking random people at a studio to find him a date, and the other had a vial of coke and couldn’t tell that a tune was crap . . . this was the life of a rock star?
Once we started recording—albeit sporadically—we di
dn’t need to rehearse at our own space as often. But one afternoon we all dropped by the Chinatown loft. “Where’s the mic stand?” I said. “Where are the amps? Where are the drums? Holy shit, everything’s gone!”
We knew people sometimes got into the building. We’d even had a huge, wild-eyed mental patient in a green hospital gown and no shoes barge in on a rehearsal one night after escaping from a local facility. But we didn’t expect someone to jimmy open the metal cover over the window leading to the fire escape. A plate steel cover and padlock protected that window. Or so we thought.
The air went out of the room. I don’t know what went through the heads of the other guys, but all I could think was, Okay, how do we get past this?
Was this a setback? Sure. But I never lost sight of the bigger picture.
We don’t really need that stuff anyway—we’re in Electric Lady Studios making a record! We’re lucky!
We could borrow guitars if we needed to. We could use cardboard boxes as drums. We didn’t need to rehearse at the moment anyway. We were at the studio all the time, using equipment that lived there.
I definitely needed more money, though, to replace all that gear. Gene and I also wanted to buy our own PA to be able to play live shows on our own terms. So I started working more taxi shifts. One of my favorite fares had always been dropping people at Madison Square Garden, the legendary arena in midtown Manhattan. As things were going downhill for Wicked Lester, Elvis played four shows there, in June 1972. I picked up a group of people one of those nights. “Where to?” I asked.
“Madison Square Garden,” they said. I smiled.
And I’ll never forget pulling up to the curb in front of the Garden that night. Because in the midst of all the turmoil, one clear thought rang out in my head as those folks got out to go see the King in all his sequined splendor: I will be here someday, and people will be taking taxis to come see me.
Face the Music: A Life Exposed Page 7
