THROUGH THE SHATTERED GLASS
JEANIE CLARKE WITH BRADLEY CRAIG
AND NEIL CAMERON
Copyright © 2016 Jeanie Clarke.
Text written by Bradley Craig and Neil Cameron.
Cover and interior designed by Bradley Craig.
All photographs from the personal collection of Jeanie Clarke, with special thanks to Mike Carpenter and Dennis Brent.
First Edition.
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
ISBN-10: 1530387019
ISBN-13: 978-1530387014
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to anyone who feels that they are suffering in silence, you are not alone and there is always a way out of misery.
And to my daughters, whose smiles provided a ray of sunshine during my darkest days.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements
Foreword
Introduction
Prologue
1 Sandy Beginnings
2 Go Away Little Girl
3 Seconds Away, Round One!
4 When Saturday Comes
5 California Dreaming
6 The Grass Isn’t Always Greener In Portland
7 The Dallas Trip
8 A Stunning Discovery
9 Romance Blossoms
10 The Toll Of The Road
11 Family Comes First
12 In Holy Matrimony
13 Injured Pride
14 An Extreme Decision
15 A World Of Opportunity
16 Georgia On My Mind
17 The Lone Star State
18 Losing Identity
19 In Dark Despair
20 A Fractured Home
21 Escape From Reality
22 Gentlemanly Conduct
23 Breaking Point
24 In God We Trust
About the Authors
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to thank the efforts of Bradley Craig and Neil Cameron.
During the writing of my autobiography, Bradley challenged me to be brave and tell my story in its entirety. He made sense of my stories and forged it into a coherent narrative. His tireless research and effort connected the dots between my life and career, and his knowledge has helped me understand the context of issues that directly changed my own circumstances. As a result, he encouraged me to heal many old wounds which enabled me to grow as an individual. For that, I am truly grateful.
Neil was highly supportive and I am appreciative of his encouragement. He convinced me that my story could be a source of inspiration to others. I would like to express gratitude for his unwavering kindness.
I would also like to thank the following people for their generosity in providing thoughtful contributions to my story: Bill Apter, James Beard, Gary Michael Cappetta, Karen Burge Cole, Shane Douglas, Bobby Eaton, Bobby Fulton, Marti & Dory Funk, Jr., Linda Hanley, Jon Horton, Sam Houston, Missy Hyatt, Jerry Jarrett, Les Hudspith, Marty Jones, Marc Mero, Jacqueline Moore, Paul Neu, Rod Price, Mark Rocco, Laurie Rogers, Terri Runnels, Mal Sanders, Terry Simms, Tracy Smothers, Adrian Street, Kevin Von Erich, and my two wonderful daughters Stephanie and Cassidy Williams.
I wish to recognise my good friend Jean Huseyin for her ongoing support during the writing of this book.
Finally, I am grateful to Pastor Tom Kaplan, for helping me build a good foundation for my Christianity, and Pastor Billy Crone of Sunrise Baptist Church who was a source of strength during some trying times in my personal life.
Jeanie Clarke.
I would like to thank my parents, Jan and Graham, for their enduring encouragement and support. I wish to acknowledge my sister Lauren, who has been a great source of joy and enthusiasm over the years. I am grateful to the Pirie family, Andrew Sr., Jane, Andrew and Jill, and her fiancé Graeme Smith, for their kindness. I also want to thank my friends back home in the Bridge of Don, my fellow alumni from The Scott Sutherland School and my many friends within the professional wrestling industry.
Bradley Craig.
There are a few people I'd just like to thank. My parents, Margaret and Tom, who have always supported me in whatever choices I've made in life, my good friend Mark James in Memphis whose books have been an inspiration, all the Elvis 'Family', David Wade who has been a great boss and a good friend, to all of my family and friends. And finally I'd like to make a dedication to John - a true lover of books.
Neil Cameron.
FOREWORD
People often ask how I came to be involved in the wrestling industry. The answer is quite simple; wrestling was in my blood. It’s the craft my father taught my brothers and I, and, in turn, it’s the craft which I have taught my own sons.
But to begin with it was very different, because at first I never really had any interest in wrestling as such. What was more important to me was wanting, as many young boys do, to be just like my father. I grew up with my father as my first hero, my role model, the person I looked up to, and that admiration crossed over into wanting to be just like him.
It just so happened that my father was one of the biggest wrestlers of his era. So I was kind of pre-destined in life. It initially started as a summer job really. Wrestling back then was a little different though, it was very much the slow paced, rest-hold in the middle of the ring kind of matches, and the wrestlers were of a much older generation. My brothers and I were all athletes and had all excelled in different sports; basketball, football and the like; and the kind of wrestling we were seeing really wasn’t fun for us to watch, let alone participate in. So we put our own spin on it, we were all young and athletic and so we just did what came naturally to us, something which was completely new and different and that turned everything on its head.
What we were doing just seemed to click and having this new, young breed with a new style in matches led to some major changes at the shows we were on. Our audience figures steadily doubled, and then tripled, with people wanting to see these completely fresh kinds of matches, and, as the crowds grew, our demographic changed too.
Before, the audience had been mostly made up of males in the 18-49 age brackets, but now there were more females coming along too and you could notice a change just in the sound of the shows as there was a huge presence of squealing from the young female contingent. It was even evident just through the concession stands at the venues too; beer sales were down and cotton candy sales were up! Dealing with this different side of the spectrum and the crossover appeal we now had really helped improve our shows and pushed us further into giving audiences something that was new and original.
And from there things just exploded. We had to get bigger venues, we were picking up more and more TV markets across the country and as a result of this expansion we seemed to attract the most loyal and diehard fans and not just in Texas, they were all over the USA. Our show even managed to beat Saturday Night Live, it shocked a lot of people at the time but we went head to head and we managed to beat them in the ratings. It was an exciting time and before long we were starting to make an impact overseas as well.
My father had already made a name for the family in Japan many years before. He was held in high regard out there and when it was time for us to make that journey too, the doors were open for us and we were lucky to be a big hit there as well. Talking about Japan reminds me of a funny story.
I remember watching a Godzilla movie once; these films were a huge part of popular culture in Japan and were made at the time when my father was wrestling. I just recall watching this one movie, K
ing Kong vs. Godzilla, and these two monsters are fighting each other and in the middle of it all one of them puts a claw-hold, my father’s signature move, on the other! That just felt like a milestone to me, that my father was being referenced in something that was so big in Japan.
One of the other international markets we became big in, and perhaps the one which means the most to me, and is certainly closest to my heart, was Israel. I have the utmost affection for both the country and its people and I’m so proud that our shows were able to resonate so deeply within society there. I once had the honour of talking to Shimon Peres, Israel’s former President, who told me that wrestling was more than just entertainment in his country, it bought people together and the only real time there was a cease-fire during the war there was when wrestling was being shown. Our conversation is quite heavily documented and it is still one of the pivotal moments in my life.
Something else I get asked frequently is why do I think that what we did became so popular. It’s a question which I have two answers for. Firstly, I think it’s because what we did was relatable to those watching. We were a close family; we had to be, constantly travelling from town to town with a father who was the biggest villain in the industry.
At a time when people really believed what they were seeing, we only had each other and we soon realised from an early age just how important family was. This gave us closeness, a bond that was stronger than many other families, and this really became apparent to the fans. Seeing this close knit family of brothers, who they followed growing up really held their attention as it was natural; it was something they could invest and believe in because they could see the similarities to their own families. And that similarity translates to everyone, no matter where in the world they are. If people can see that you enjoy doing something, no matter what that is, then they buy into and they enjoy it as well.
The other reason is that I believe that we were blessed by God. I don’t say that to have an ego or to come over as being brash, but I honestly think we were given this talent by the Lord and that’s something I give thanks for every day. But when you have that blessing you have to use it to enrich others’ lives as well. That’s why we would put everything we had into our matches; so we could entertain.
We never forgot who was putting us in that fortunate position we were in; our fans. That’s why none of us developed egos or acted like big shot celebrities and I like to think that’s also why we were so over, because we thought of ourselves just like everyone who was out there watching our shows.
During our time in the ring we wrestled all the big names of that era; Bruiser Brody, King Kong Bundy, Big John Studd, One Man Gang and so many others. All the big names came through and worked with us, and this was way before The Fabulous Freebirds came in. Two others who came into the promotion and who did great business for us were Chris Adams and Gino Hernandez; they were just two of the greatest guys. I had known Gino for many years but Chris was new to us. He and I just clicked straight away.
At the time, we were looking for another big name to wrestle. That’s how the business works; you either bring in a big name or you make a big name. For example, someone like The Great Kabuki, he was someone who we created. But with Chris Adams though, we just brought him in as he was a really good, versatile athlete. He didn’t actually come here with a name, but because he was so good at what he did, we could use him straight away without having to change much about him.
Almost immediately, we just started selling out, building after building. Again, I think it was because it was something new to the fans when they watched our matches. We would just go at it in the ring. He would use judo on me and I would wrestle him back and we would just fight, and we would fight hard! It was so stiff that the other guys would wince.
Chris and I got on so good and I admired him so much. Other wrestlers would complain that I hit them too hard but Chris never complained. Chris would just give as good back. He understood that people want to see that, that it was our job to give people a good show. They wanted to see some intensity: they want to see guys going at it and see believability. It’s just the same as them buying into the closeness of my family; the brutality that Chris and I put into our matches meant that people believed.
In a short amount of time, our matches caught on and we had such intensity in them that they’re maybe better than the Freebird matches.
I do recall though that Chris had a hard time with interviews at first, because of his accent. That British accent just made you want to like him and so he had to work really hard to get the fans to hate him, but he did figure it out and found a way. He started saying that he was fed up with kissing fat girls, insulting the American people and things like that and soon he became a natural on the mic at pissing people off.
Despite playing the heel away from the ring, Chris was, in every aspect of the word, a gentleman. He kept his word, he was on time and was just a pleasure to do business with but sadly alcohol changed that. It hits some people harder. Chris actually knew this and would try to avoid it and would only order water when we would go out. I know this because I was there and it’s sad that there are so many stories about Chris which aren’t true, told by people who weren’t there.
I can remember we went to Mexico, Chris and I introduced our hard-hitting style down there, and we went for a beer afterwards but he only had two beers and he wouldn’t drink anymore. People often overlook that these things really only affected him in the last couple of years of his life. It was so unfortunate that these took control of Chris and that it happened so quickly. At the time, I was busy with my own life and didn’t really see too much change in Chris before it was too late.
I do remember one night that the Police called after they had arrested Chris. They found his address book and he needed someone to watch his daughter Julia or she would be taken in by the child support services so we ended up looking after her a couple of weeks. I hadn’t seen him for a long time before that and it was actually one of the last times I saw Chris. The path his life took was a tragedy that never should have happened.
I was one of Chris’ pallbearers and, after he died, I went to see his family in England and went to a little service for Chris. I just wanted his family to know that Chris was a good guy; his word was his bond and he was a proud man.
He had honour and integrity and that it’s sad that people only remember the negative things.
When Chris passed away it was said that he was just another victim of drug taking within the wrestling industry, but the reality is far bigger than that. People talk about the substance culture in this industry in the ‘80s, but to be frank it wasn’t just the wrestlers, you have to look at the ‘80s at a whole. Everyone was doing it. All the celebrities, all the athletes, it wasn’t just our business, it was the time we lived in and we looked at the world so differently back then. It was just the way of the world. But it’s true to say that for wrestlers it was more of a hazard because of everything else that went with it.
For those who didn’t experience first-hand that lifestyle it’s sometimes hard to explain, but a good analogy I found was something I remember doing when I was in college. I had to do a paper on occupational hazards and which jobs had the shortest life-spans.
As I did the research I found it was rickshaw drivers who, on average, lived to just 29 years of age. It wasn’t the job itself that caused them to live such short lives, but the peripheral aspects of that job; eating cheap food, living in squalid conditions and then actually doing the job without the proper nutrition or health.
It’s exactly like wrestlers who away from the job are putting their well-being through huge amounts of abuse away from the ring – hours upon hours of travelling without rest, eating fast food on the road and then time after the matches spent in bars. And all of this night after night without an ‘off season’ like other sports and that’s all compounded to a career that can run to 30 to 40 years, compared to say a football player who, if lucky, will only play for 15 yea
rs.
It’s easy to say that ‘pain pills killed him’ when talking about so many who were taken before their time in this industry, but the real answer isn’t that simple. Drugs may have contributed, but they weren’t the sole contributor. If you don’t eat right, sleep right or look after yourself then you’ll age like crazy. It’s an exhausting lifestyle and one that takes its toll.
I’m just glad I didn’t follow the lifestyle of being in bars every night. Luckily, I was a married man and I wanted to come home to a clean and wholesome home life. That’s why I treat my wife like a queen; I never messed around on her. I’m not trying to make out that I’m a great man, but with her being at home it gave me direction and kept me on a straight path. So that’s what I did and that’s why I’m still here and haven’t aged as much as my other friends who are lucky enough to still be here.
But you can see why the life expectancy was so low. Like the rickshaw driver, it’s the surroundings and the lifestyle as a whole, not just the drugs. There was a huge amount of wear and tear along with the substances in the wrestling industry and my generation had a mindset of ‘it feels good so just do it’.
My generation just wanted to do it our way, and we never realised it was harmful and, for many, it was too late in the day before the realisation set in.
It's sad that so many of our peers are no longer here with us, but I give thanks for those who are.
Jeanie is someone who survived the horrors of excess, and her book aims to shine a spotlight on a lifestyle that claimed too many casualties.
I hope that her story can help set an example that it is never too late for anyone to turn their life around, even when the world seems truly bleak.
Things will always get better.
Kevin Von Erich
INTRODUCTION
I first met Jeanie Clarke at the famous WCCW Cotton Bowl show in October 1985. Jeanie and her oldest daughter Jade were there for Chris Adams, who headlined his biggest match in his career with Gino Hernandez against Kerry and Kevin Von Erich in a Double Hair match. I was only in my first two months in the wrestling biz. When I saw Jeanie with her movie star looks, British accent, and the way she carried herself, I instantly thought, ‘this girl is money’. I was so lucky that Jeanie had no aspirations in wanting to be in the biz at the time, since I would probably be out of a job. Yes, I considered Jeanie as a potential threat. I’m not blind and oblivious in recognizing talent.
Through The Shattered Glass Page 1
