BURNED - Living Through the 80s and 90s as a Rock Guitarist

by Bobby DeVito

  So I spent that weekend working on a few songs, so I could make a good impression on the band. To be honest, I could have jumped onstage with them the night I met them, but I really dislike odd-shaped guitars. Especially if they have an animal print on them. You might as well join Winger or Warrant.

  Come Monday night, I arrive at the club a little early, and Jon is outside waiting. At this time, all he had was one car, a beat-up Opel GT. I joked about the dimunitive vehicle, calling it his “poor man’s Corvette”. The joke would end up being on me. Seven years later at the end of The X-Statics Jon would have a ’68 Camaro, a ’67 Camaro, a ’68 Corvette Stingray, and two Opel GT’s…and I had a Chevette.THAT’S real rock and roll, folks.

  We go inside and I set up my gear. I had a beautiful black mid-70s Fender Strat that I had gotten from Vic Valmus. It had originally belonged to Flame and the Heaters front man Fritz, but he had reneged on payments, and I ended up buying it from Vic. The bass player and drummer arrive, exchange pleasantries, and get ready to play. We launch into a few Cars songs, and it was evident that we had something special. I sang harmonies with Jon, and everything “clicked”. Right about that time the Magic Dick-looking guy arrives. Somehow he had been alerted that the band was practicing without him. He storms in cursing at Jon, packs up his amplifier and assorted cables while glaring at me (I had brazenly just plugged into his amp to do the audition), packs his stuff and leaves in a hail of “fuck yous”. The band is speechless, as they play Wednesday-Sunday, and it is Monday night. Jon looks at me and says “Can you start playing Wednesday?”

  It’s usually like this in the music biz. I have come to accept it as a fact of life, there is never enough time to make things “right”. You get together, you make music, and you make the best of it. You pray that the other players can listen, as well as play. You pray that you yourself will be open to what they are trying to say musically. You all pray for a receptive, interested audience. So here was my chance, and I grabbed it and ran with it a far as I could.

  After I started playing in The X-Statics, my military performance suffered greatly. I overslept one day and was 4 hours late to school. That’s not like being late in normal life, it’s called Unauthorized Absence or “UA in the Navy. The Army calls it AWOL. Either way, it’s more trouble than you really want to be in. Once you are in the military, they OWN you, and do not hesitate to remind you of this fact. For my casual little oversleeping episode, I was sent to Captain’s Mast. I got busted back down to E-1, given two weeks in restrictive custody, and fined $500! This was the last straw for me, and after my time being locked up, I started pursuing a discharge from the Navy with a vengeance. I used every logical excuse I could, trying to convince them that my burn injuries had come back to haunt me, and that I was crazy.The Navy kept threatening to make me a Boatswain’s Mate and have me chip paint for the rest of my enlistment. This went back and forth for a few months, until I was finally issued a General under Honorable Conditions discharge. The day before I was finally going to be released from the Navy, my Senior Chief at the barracks called me into his office. My hair had been getting longer, but I had refused to get it cut since my release from service was imminent. The Senior Chief had other plans. He was a mid forties lifer, with a bad seventies mustache that resided on his upper lip with a staunch sense of purpose. He looked like the kind of guy that would offer” mustache rides” to women. Anyhow, as I entered his office as requested, I saw that his flunky PO First Class was behind the door, and he grabbed me and they both tied me to a chair. After securing me with rope, they proceeded to give me the “boot camp special” haircut.

  A day later, with much less hair, I was led to the gate of Corry Field, and they took away my ID and security passes. As I walked out of there a free man, I took my uniforms, sea bag, and all my Navy paraphernalia and threw it back at them. I wanted nothing to do with them, and knew that I would never have any need for all those clothes. I probably should have kept the pea coat though; I look pretty damn good in a Navy blue pea coat.

  Luckily during my out-processing, I met a sweet little Navy girl named Melissa. She was a Yeoman and did most of my outprocessing paperwork. Somehow, I managed to convince her to go out with me, and she ended up letting me crash at her place for the first couple of months after my Navy stint. We listened to music, hung out at her house a lot, had tons and tons of sex. She was really cool person, and looked after me during this time as I tried to re-enter the world and get my stuff together with The X-Statics. I knew this was temporary, and kept my eye out for someplace to live by myself. Luckily, since I had hung around the local music store Zoellner’s Music, I managed to get a room behind the music store, on some property the store owned located out back. Store manager Mike Medlocke was my buddy back then, and we hung out a lot after hours. Lots of local musicians would come by, and we would have jam sessions in the store after hours. Local guitar sensation Jerry Dawson was 16 when I met him back then, and he was quite a player even at that age. He later went on to play with local Southeastern circuit favorites Bagdad, and then went to Nashville to be Highway 101’s touring guitarist. We had tons of fun, and Mike and I used to hang out at the local bars and try to pick up women. He was better at it than I was, and he had bait – pure cocaine. It wasn’t the first time I had been around it, but during my time there I developed a taste for it. I can vividly remember the first time I realized that my favorite all-time buzz consisted of 2 joints, 4 lines of coke, and 6 beers. Like it was some kind of scientific formula!

  One night during this era, I was finishing up a gig with The X-Statics at about 5 in the morning, when someone dropped a small piece of paper on my toungue. It was blotter acid, LSD. I had never tripped, and did not know what to expect, so it was quite a ride. After the gig was over, all of the “trippers” decided to drive to Ft Pickens, a state park on the tip of Pensacola Bay. We played all day long at the Fort, running around like children jumping on the huge guns and smoking joints. Being in the band really helped me to get around in the Pensacola scene, and also helped me to get lots of free drugs and alcohol. I don’t think I paid for drinks for most of that time we were the house band at the All Nite Affair. It was one of the perks of the job.

  In contrast, Jon Allmightey was just about a teetotaler. He did not like drugs at all, and very rarely drank. We started branching out, got a few booking agents, and The X-Statics were starting to play all over the South. We did every major college in the Southeastern US multiple times over. From the little house band at the All Nite Affair, we were building up into a regionally popular band. However, some other bands around us during that time started to show us what was REALLY going on, bands like REM and The Producers, and seeing their success really fueled my ambitions. We played Athens Georgia a lot back in the early 80s, and it was literally the time of our lives. To be dancing at the 40 Watt Club in the early 80s was just a joyous experience. I am sure that part of this was seen through my rosy 18 year old innocent glasses. I saw lots of things I shouldn’t have back then. But I can still remember the fun, the optimism, the excitement of that early new wave alternative music scene. Jon printed business cards for our band in 1982; I still have one of them. He termed The X-Statics “Rock’s Alternative” – the first time I can remember seeing that term used in that fashion. Jon was perhaps one of the most talented and artistic individuals I’ve ever performed with, and we were pretty damn good back in our day.

  Luckily, my new found glory was getting me more female attention. One of the bartenders at Franco’s was a beautiful little woman named Susie Vickrey. At that time, she was 31 years old, and a gorgeous little brunette pixie of a girl. Susie was wanted by nearly every guy that worked at Franco’s, from the other bartenders and security guys and of course the customers. I was 18, and didn’t have a clue. For some reason, she took an interest in me, and we dated for nearly 6 months. The other guys that worked there would rib me about it, slap me on the back, and tell me I was “the man”. Susie was an ethereal, fragile creature at
heart

  – at home, she would design and craft stained glass art while listening to The Police and smoking pot. She was a vegetarian, and a dancer. On one of our first nights together, we were in bed and were making out heavily. We began to have sex, and it was amazing. I raced towards sheer abandon, but she suddenly stopped me, exclaiming “Hey!!!”

  “What”? I countered. “Am I doing this wrong?” “Are you going to a FIRE????” she quickly asked. “Slow down just a little bit!”

  Susie taught me a lot about the art of sex, and the art of macramé plant hangers. I loved that she had the taste to buy the enhanced Mobile Fidelity Sound Laboratories versions of albums. I loved that she cooked the most amazing vegetarian foods. And I loved that she loved to smoke pot and screw my brains out. After six months, however, she finally broke up with me. She felt that I “needed to date women my own age”. Which I totally did not understand at that time, I was having a great time being with her. But she was adamant, and I was once again on my own.

  As much fun as I had with Susie, my true first love was Tina. Tina was six months younger than me, a naturally dirty blonde about 5’6” with long hair and a great body, and bore a striking resemblance to Sheryl Crow. She was a waitress at Franco’s, and we began to have a hot and heavy relationship that would continue for most of the time I was in Pensacola. I have rarely seen another woman who could look so good in shorts and a cut-up t-shirt. Tina had sun-browned skin and the kind of streaked naturally dirty blonde hair that Madison Avenue matrons only wish they could buy at a salon. She was unabashedly sexual and was completely insatiable. Since we both worked at night, we spent most of our days having sex, watching soap operas, eating lunch in bed, and having more sex. I felt like a rockstar.

  However, as The X-Statics started traveling more, I started to hear rumors about her infidelities. Once on the road we were doing a show at Georgia Tech, and I was hanging around with one of the other “A” circuit bands from that era. They found out that I was from Pensacola, and immediately asked me about Franco’s. I told the guys that we played there a lot when we were home off the road. They immediately high fived each other and asked me “Do you know that hot waitress Tina? Damn, me and the drummer here TAG TEAMED her when we were in Pensacola, she was such a freak!”. After this little episode, I had to go back and play one more set with the band, which I finished off by smashing my guitar into a brick wall and basically breaking the neck. Our agent from Atlanta was there, and he wanted to know if that was a regular part of the show. More and more as time went by, I started hearing various things that Tina was up to. But I always forgave her, and we made up. Yes, it was the sex. Yes, she was hot, in that Jaime Pressley sort of blonde white trash hottie way. Yes Fred Durst, I did it all for the nookie.

  During one of the numerous flare ups between Tina and I, around Christmas 1984, I had hooked up with a local 32 year old woman named Karen. She was an athletic, tightly wound woman with an amazing hotrodded Z-28, a house on the water, and a father who owned one of the local banks in town. She was very wild, completely did not give a fuck, and took me in and put me up at her lake house in Pensacola. She was a gym rat, and was always on the go. I noticed quite a bounty of pills in her medicine cabinet, and began to go through them all. Settling on some Librium, I grabbed a handful of them. Later that night, I went out to do my gig with The X-Statics, took too many of the pills and drank on top of them, and basically became a screaming asshole and quit the band. It’s OK; I normally quit that band about once every six months anyway. But here it was, Christmas time. I had quit the band; and I had broken up with Tina. I always tell people this is the saddest Christmas ever. It’s at the very least the lamest Christmas ever.

  Here’s my Christmas story: I am stuck at Karen’s lake house, as she has fled town for the holidays to avoid her family. I have ten dollars to my name. And I am depressed beyond words. So I walk to the local grocery store and buy a Totino’s frozen pizza, the 99 cent kind, the kind that is encased in a little cardboard box ensconced in plastic wrap. I also stop at the liquor store and buy a fifth of Rich and Rare bourbon. Mmmmm, mmmm, good. I trudge home, with my bounty of frozen pizza and bad whiskey to the empty house. I heat the oven, place the pizza inside, and pour some whiskey and pop some Librium. A little while later, things are getting a little cloudy in the room. I notice that I am seeing clouds inside the little lake house. Suddenly I realize the clouds are smoke, and that I have burnt the poor crappy pizza into a small flaming black ruin. Grabbing the pan with a bar towel, I hurl the flaming black disk into the lake, and pour another glass of Rich & Rare. Merry fucking Christmas.

  Somehow that night, I end up at the All Nite Affair, where The XStatics are playing with Jerry Dawson replacing me. And damnit, Jerry sounds really good with the band, so it hurts even worse. It’s always better mentally for a musician if they get replaced with someone not quite as good as they were. So, I have a pocketful of pills, and carte blanche to drink as much as I want for free, as the bartenders knew I was in bad shape and felt bad for me. Guilt is a great way to get free alcohol and drugs. I end up in a stupor, yet another blackout in my young life, and do not remember the rest of the evening. Luckily, someone had been watching me from the shadows for months, a woman that I had never spoken to. It’s amazing to me how I have met true angels from time to time in my life, angels who have guided me away from trouble and kept me safe. I woke up to her in bed the next morning.

  “Who the hell are you, and how did we both get here”I asked as I awoke with the sun streaming in the lakefront window of the house. “I’m Renee”, she said “And I brought you back here last night. Boy, it was hard getting directions out of you when you were passed out, though”.

  Renee was a very voluptuous and statuesque woman, “built like a brick shithouse” as they say in the South. I don’t know how I could have missed her coming to see the band, as she had an amazing body and natural 40DD boobs that could catch any mans, and many womens, eyes. She had thick long hair that reminded me of a horse’s mane that flowed down her shoulders, cut in that typical late 70s feathered look parted down the middle. Except we were in 1984.

  “You just looked so sad and alone”, she said as we lay there in the bed. “You passed out in the corner, and I helped you to my car”.

  I tried to remember the events of the evening, but all I can remember is seeing the red carpet of the All Nite Affair. Up close. In the program of Alcoholics Anonymous, they tell you that you start to recover memories like these after you have been sober for some time. When I initially went in for my first rehab, I thought I only had a problem with drugs. But alcohol was always there with me, and the more I peel back the layers of the onion and realize how many times I blacked out, came close to death, wrecked cars and lives, and wrecked myself… it’s sobering.

  Naturally, since Karen was off doing her thing, and I was alone at the time without a band, a job, or a dollar – I lived with Renee for a few months. I re-joined The X-Statics after a few weeks, when Jon had calmed down. Renee truly did like me, but I still held a flame for Tina, and when the opportunity arose to take Tina home with me one night, I did. I brought both Tina and her best friend April over to Renee’s apartment and had sex with Tina in Renee’s bed. Of course, Renee’s next door neighbor heard to tell-tale “click clack” of Tina and April’s highheel shoes, and witnessed me ushering them into the apartment. I was busted the next day, and Renee kicked me out. Luckily The X-Statics were leaving for a road trip that day, and I simply grabbed my guitar and my clothes and headed out on the road.

  As we left for Ft Benning Georgia, I was on the loose. Our bass player at that time in the X-Statics was Arthur “Ferrari” Hall, an affable Scotsman who had grown up in Gulf Breeze on Pensacola Beach. Arthur had played in some competing bands to us around town, and ended up playing bass with us like a lot of other bass players did. Spinal Tap went through drummers, and The X-Statics went through bass players. Let me see….Kurt Robinette, Arthur Ferrari, James Bowie, Charley “Goa
thead” McGraw, Tommy Gunn, Brad from the “Cool Babies”…. and that’s just the ones I can remember 20 years later.

  Arthur and I had secured ourselves a case of cheap beer, and we rode in the back of the equipment truck with the door open all the way down the interstate highway. We did this a lot; it was a great way to see the sights traveling that way. Over all the years we did it, we only got stopped by the cops a couple of times for riding in the back of the truck that way. We were traveling this trip with a temporary roadie named Dwight who was working for us as a fill-in. Dwight was a frustrated guitarist who played metal guitar in a vaguely Michael Schenker sort of style. He wore a black leather bomber jacket, had ratty 80 metal hair, and smelled like saddle soap. This particular trip, I was renting his Marshall 50 watt combo guitar amp, as I had made a quick deal the week before for a beautiful vintage 1964 Fender Stratocaster, the year of my birth.

  My love for the Fender Stratocaster goes way back in my youth. Seeing Clapton and Hendrix play them inspired me, not to mention Richie Blackmore and other icons who favored the sleek instrument. God bless Jonathan Richman for writing a song about it, because that guitar is an obsession. Vic Valmus then turned me on in the early 80s about how much cooler the 50s and 60s era Stratocasters were. The modern Gibson and Fender guitars in the late 70s and early 80s truly did suck. Vic used to find beautiful vintage 60s custom color Fender Strats for around $600, and I was always secretly jealous of his ability to seemingly conjure up these rare guitars from within closets and under beds. I was playing at the All Nite Affair one night, when some scruffy looking dude comes up to the stage and says “I heard you like Fender Stratocasters”. “Sure do!” I replied. “Whatcha got”?

  The band took a break, and the scruffy guy comes back in with a beautiful Olympic White 1964 Pre-CBS Stratocaster. “The guitar player in my band don’t have no amp”, he said. “I’ll trade you the Strat for your guitar and your Legend amp”.