A Stray Cat Struts

by Slim Jim Phantom

  “Yoo da boy marry-ed to da movie stah?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “R yoo da boy marry-ed to dat moovie stah?”

  There is always a little panic that happens to everyone with a conscience when you know that you’re holding up an interior airplane line. Think, man, think. I was blanking out and didn’t want to make an old cat repeat himself again, especially since on the last one, he was almost yelling. It hit me—he was asking if I was the boy who was married to the movie star. He must’ve seen the morning show while he was getting ready to leave his hotel and saw Britt’s interview, and now he was recognizing me on the plane.

  “Yes, sir, that’s me,” I said, trying to be cool but sounding as if Wally Cleaver were from Long Island.

  “You play, son?”

  “Drummer.”

  He smiled, flashing a gold tooth, and he jabbed his minder with his other hand. His man reached into a bag and handed me a yellow John Lee Hooker T-shirt. John Lee produced a Sharpie pen and wrote his name in a childlike scrawl across the front under his picture and handed it to me. He finally lifted his cane like it was a tollbooth, and I passed. I flew home, and that was that. Pretty cool story to tell the others: I met John Lee Hooker on the airplane, and he gave me a T-shirt.

  That night, everyone was home, and it was a regular night. I was watching the ten o’clock news, and the local anchorman presented a piece about the first night of the Playboy Jazz Festival, opening that night at the Hollywood Bowl. There was my new pal John Lee Hooker onstage sitting in a chair playing the blues in his unique, real McCoy style. “This is so cool; I just saw this guy on the plane today!”

  As the newsman talked over and John Lee was belting it out, the camera panned in on him for a close-up, and there it was—that big old gravy stain on his tie, coming in loud and clear. Now, that is a real bluesman.

  15

  Live from the Sunset Strip

  We opened the Cat Club at 8911 Sunset Boulevard in June of 1999 and were open every night with few exceptions for the next fourteen years. There were five bands a night, seven nights a week, rain or shine. It can never be said that I have not done my part to keep live music alive in LA. As is true with most clubs, the path to how certain players all come together as partners on a team is unorthodox. The Cat Club was no exception; certain factors lined up, and it just shook out with these guys. Everyone involved came from the nightclub business, had experience, and came together on this deal. I had three partners: Steve Scarduzio, who knew the nightclub business—I had worked with him in the past when we had a club together on Hollywood Boulevard in the 1990s; Sean Tuttle, who had the original lease and is the grandson of Mario Maglieri; and David Klass, the South African jeweler who was a popular club promoter in the 1980s and 1990s. The address, liquor license, and start-up money are all factors in how these places happen. We all got along well enough and had varying percentages of ownership and different responsibilities. I was the face of the place. Steve did most of the clerical, day-to-day juggling of bills and running of the place. I’ll always be thankful to him for keeping the boat afloat, especially while I was away on tours.

  There were a lot of legendary nights and good times at the Cat Club, but like everything else in my life, it was slightly more difficult than it appeared, and it was definitely more famous than rich. In the bar business, the owner is the last one to be paid, and you’re way down at the bottom of the list. The real winner is the landlord; he’s guaranteed to be paid every month. The bar owner managed to attach a liquor license to his property, which is no easy deed, especially in West Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, and it’s usually a low-maintenance property. The vendors who sell the beer and booze need to be paid, or they stop delivery. A bar with no booze is about as useful as an unloaded gun. The bartenders and waitresses need to be paid, or the booze goes unserved. The list goes on. The electric company is an important one—air-conditioning bills and the juice to power the amps and PA are big in a rock club.

  The maintaining of the gear is also an important cost, because if the general word around is that the club has crappy gear, it makes it more of an uphill battle with the bands. In this case, we were lucky in that I got most everything on endorsements. The drums, amps, microphones, and sound system were put in by the equipment companies who thought it was good advertising for their gear, and the sales reps liked that they could also come and be taken care of at the bar when they were in town. It’s a fact: everybody likes being involved in a bar. I’ve never met a regular guy who didn’t like being recognized and treated well at a bar. There’s something that every guy likes about being able to walk into a bar and have his order be on the house. The truth is that a drink costs a bar fifty cents, but it can buy a lot more in goodwill.

  These mundane parts of operating a rock club still need to be taken care of and maintained; it’s another constant expense and headache, but someone has to stay on top of it. The hardest part of the whole thing was the California State Board of Equalization, which is a fancy name for the state sales tax storm troopers. A lot of the bar business is cash, but for those who are unknowledgeable and think that the bar owner can just pocket money all night long, the reality is that the tax is due quarterly and estimated, and when it’s time to renew any license, if the sales tax is not paid up, you’re in trouble, and the state is relentless. They will keep at you. It’s probably similar in other businesses, but this is the one I know a little about.

  Like rock and roll, operating a nightclub looks cool and easy to the untrained eye, but it’s damned hard to make a buck out of it. There has to be a certain amount of love of the unconventional hours and an ultimate resistance to a normal life involved. It’s not for everybody, but I always liked the life. I had already stopped drinking for almost ten years by the time I got involved at the club, so it wasn’t about that. There’s a certain comfort and outlaw cool to operate your life out of a bar instead of an office. We had the keys and a liquor license to a joint on Sunset, and it felt like a natural place to have as a base of operations.

  When we first opened, I lived right on the corner of Sunset and Doheny Drive. TJ and I shared one of the coolest apartments in town, in a vintage 1940s Regency-style building tucked away right off the main street. True pal Jimmy Ashhurst, bass player from the excellent local band of the day Broken Homes, lived in the high-rise across the street. We had his spare key and used the pool and mod cons of his building, so we had the best of both worlds. Girls came and went, some stayed longer than others, but mainly we were two bachelor boys and led a pretty normal life for quite a few years. I coached Beverly Hills Little League, and we would sit on the floor for hours at a time, cracking the codes on the latest video games and eating Mama Celeste frozen pizzas and deliveries from Greenblatt’s. We sat at the little table in the kitchen of the Rainbow or at the sushi bar at Tenmasa most nights. I walked to the club every day and walked home at night, dropping the money off in the night deposit at City National Bank. I never felt threatened walking along the Strip, although at 3:00 A.M., I’d walk right down the middle of the street for two blocks. When you walk down the middle of the street, it takes away the chance of anyone stepping out from behind one the buildings. There’s not much traffic at that hour, so I found it less nerve-racking.

  TJ did his homework in the office of the bar, adding to his alternative upbringing. He pretty much grew up on the Strip. At ten years old, he was already an experienced jaywalker and had gotten his candy at Gil Turner’s liquor store for years. TJ learned to ride a bicycle and throw a baseball in the parking lot behind the old Scandia restaurant. His brother, Nicholai, owned and ran the Roxy; we’d known everyone at the Whisky and Rainbow for twenty years already, so we were around family. We had two rescued pit bulls that lived in the apartment with us; they were very protective and would guard TJ, in his bed, if I had to run down to the club for a few minutes on a night off.

  Living in the middle of town presented certain challenges, too. Walking two pit bulls who di
dn’t like other dogs was like mounting a major military operation three or four times a day. TJ would help put muzzles and thick chains on the beasts and do a quick reconnaissance on the street behind us to make sure no one else was walking a dog at the same time. We’d take them for a few walks every day. We played basketball at the West Hollywood elementary school. We would jump the fence, and the pit bulls would squeeze underneath, and on the weekends, we had the whole field and courts to ourselves. Our back gate opened up onto Harratt Street behind the 9000 Sunset Boulevard building, Lemmy was a neighbor, and we’d holler up to his window. If he was home, the skull and crossbones pirate flag that served as his curtains would move back, and he’d pop his head out and we’d catch up. This was our routine life, and it never felt particularly strange.

  I had met Julie McCullough at the end of 1992. True pal Jamie James was playing a gig at the Troubadour, and I walked down Doheny Drive to see him play. Jamie’s girlfriend at the time was Kelly Coleman, daughter of the fantastic character actor Dabney Coleman. She was a gifted singer, and Jamie was backing her in a rock band playing her songs. I had known Jamie since the 1980s. He’s the singer and front man of legendary band the Kingbees. He and I had a band in the late 1980s with Lee called the Rufnex. We played around LA during a hiatus taken by the Cats. He was there when TJ was born, and we’ve stayed best pals ever since. I believe we would have gotten a record deal. But Brian called me and wanted to get together, and the Stray Cats started to get busy again.

  Kelly Coleman’s band was good, and Jamie is a talented guitarist, writer, and singer. At the time, Julie was a regular on a TV show called Drexell’s Class that Dabney was the star of. He had invited Julie to watch his daughter’s gig, and Jamie had invited me. Harry Dean is a longtime friend of Dabney’s; he was at the gig, too. I think he got up and sang with the band. We all went next door to Dan Tana’s after the gig. Dan Tana’s is a very famous restaurant that has been next door to the Troubadour on Santa Monica Boulevard since the 1960s. Dabney, Harry, and a few others held court at a back table, and we were welcome. It was the first of a hundred nights that this gang of people would sit around Dan Tana’s.

  Julie is a very talented comedic actress and a full-on American 10. She was a Playboy Playmate and had been unceremoniously fired from a successful sitcom called Growing Pains after the star of the show was born again and thought he was making a statement. This was all before I met her.

  If you believe in love at first sight, then that’s what happened between Julie and me. She gave me a ride home and her phone number. We made a nonverbal, perfunctory agreement to go out once or twice to make sure. I had really only split from Britt about six months before. These types of things come along maybe a few times in your life, but there’s no telling when it will happen. There was no rebound or quick fix attached to this one. We connected on every level. There was some interest in us as a couple from paparazzi types but on a much smaller level than with Britt. If we had played it up, it would have been more. Within a week or so, she would wind up living with us at Doheny Drive.

  The Stray Cats were making what would be our last album at Virgin Studios in Beverly Hills with Jeff Baxter producing. Julie came to visit and helped me by watching TJ, who immediately loved her. I can admit to being very proud to have her show up at the studio and showing her off to the others with no real explanation. I know it’s immature; it probably stems from some insecurity, but I have always been and still am that guy. Part of my charmed life has been that the few times I was really loved and in love, it was with women that could stop traffic and make the others jealous. I do enjoy it, too. It’s part of the original rock-and-roll dream. It may seem shallow on the surface, but it is deep in my heart.

  I wasn’t ready for the commitment it was going to take with Julie. We were very close for a quite a few years. She traveled with me to Massapequa, and the whole family loved her. Everyone thought we would eventually get married. I can’t exactly remember why we never did. She was totally cool, not driven by money in any way, and we were definitely in love. We broke up and got back together three times. She moved in and moved out. I had never gotten a divorce from Britt; it had something to do with insurance. I could’ve done it if I had wanted; it was some type of safety net to protect me from a commitment. I accept it as my mistake. I don’t really believe in predetermined fate, but everything in life happens for a reason. Maybe I need to chalk the whole thing up to bad timing. For a drummer, it’s not a good excuse, but it’s honest.

  At this point, I’ve developed a coping mechanism where I tend to better remember the positives and have trouble remembering the negatives when it comes to important life milestones. I tend to embrace it as a gift, but I understand that there is a little selective memory and cluelessness involved. I can’t guarantee that the other people involved are as willing to understand this way of looking at it all. If I said that I have no regrets in life, it wouldn’t be truthful. I’ve learned that it’s how I accept and then deal with the regrets that have been the real test. Moving on is always the hard part. But somehow everybody does it. Better things do come along. I can easily go crazy from the what-ifs. So I’ve learned to remember the good stuff and be fuzzy on the bad. I stay in the exact now. It’s the only way I stand a chance.

  Julie and I had fun; she had a lot of friends, and she was very friendly with the people who lived in my apartment house. There were only a few flats in the building, and each of the tenants was a character. It was a real-life version of the TV show Melrose Place. Courtney and Natasha Wagner both lived there, and their dad, Hollywood legend and leading man Robert Wagner, came over sometimes. He was Hollywood royalty and a big presence. There was also a crazy tenant with a terminal disease who purposely clogged the old furnace and almost blew up the building. He had embezzled money from the homeowners’ association. He was slowly going crazy from impending death and medication.

  Julie and I went out and had a lot of friends and people stopping at my flat for coffee and just to hang out a lot. Julie booked the Roxbury Club on Friday nights with her friend Tia Carrere. We played there with the Cheap Dates every week for a year. It was the mid-1990s, and we went to the Gate, Hollywood Athletic Club, Tattoo in Beverly Hills, and Viper Room and always went to gigs at the Whisky and Roxy or drove out to the Palomino. I did my own gigs and did much smaller jobs than I had done in a while.

  It was a good time, and by then I was used to life without either the Cats or Britt. TJ spent a couple of years back in London before his mom moved back to LA. I went back and forth a lot. It was all hard; the Cats didn’t play at all and had quietly without fanfare broken up again. If I had been earning even a little with them, it would have made the whole thing easier. I did prove that I could lead a full life without them. I played with a lot of good musicians during this time.

  Julie moved on and got married. We tried another time to get it together. We had a genuine, special time, but we couldn’t close the deal. Sometimes a ship sails and it never comes back to port. I hold on to the positive memories of a certain era of my life that she was an important part of.

  TJ was always a gifted drummer and played in the school orchestra; I helped them get extra equipment through the companies I worked with. I went to every school event and sports practice. I also took TJ everywhere I went. We made it work. He was comfortable in clubs, dressing rooms, and recording studios. At a session I was doing one time, the bass player on the date was trying to make small talk with him.

  “Hey, little guy, do you know what this is? This is a bass,” the guy said.

  “I know,” TJ answered matter-of-factly. “My friend is Bill Wyman. He plays bass in the Stones.”

  The guy really didn’t have an answer.

  We called it “two guys together.” For as wacky as our lives seemed to the casual observer, I spent more time with my kid than anyone else I knew. During the five years that I coached Little League, there were a number of kids I had on my teams whose parents I rarely or never met. Th
ey were probably nice people but were so busy hustling in Beverly Hills or Century City that they had no time for their own kids. One misperception about rock and roll is that you’re away on tour for months at a time and don’t see your kids. The flip side is when you’re home, you’re really home. I know a lot of musicians who have tight relationships with their kids. Britt had moved back to LA and lived right there on Alta Loma Road, so TJ spent some nights and good quality time with her, too. This was extra helpful when I realized I wasn’t going to make a million as a club owner and needed to go back on the road a little to keep us in our relative luxury.

  I liked having the Sunset Boulevard address attached to the club and the whole concept of a clubhouse, but at the end of the day, you have to remember that regardless of where it’s located, it is a business and needs to be looked after.

  The Cat Club was a classic hole in the wall, a dive bar in the true sense of the term. It was located in a little row in the 8900 block of Sunset. Our neighbors were the famed Whisky a Go Go and Duke’s Coffee Shop. Anyone who was around in LA at that time has probably been to all three. In the past, the same address had also been home to Sneaky Pete’s, a bar and grill that was a hangout for the original Rat Pack. In the 1960s, it was the Galaxy, a folk-music-based coffeehouse and bar. All the history appealed to me but didn’t help pay the rent. The club itself was long and thin with the bar on the side toward the back. It had a small upstairs that we used for guests, and there was a small office attached, where I spent thousands of hours sitting at the desk. I liked the base of operations that the club provided; I took any appointments there and let all my friends do the same. Over the years, I let countless people do interviews and photo shoots in the club and in the alleyway in the back.