“Groovy, man!”
“That’s outta sight!”
“Far out!”
It couldn’t have been farther from the street element I had grown accustomed to hanging out in Riis Park. Fortunately, Walt and I clicked early on and he took a liking to me. He was a good-natured guy from a blue-collar family who, like the rest of the band, kept out of trouble. Walt sometimes came across as academic and proper, but there was also a zany side to his personality. He had a wild spirit and loved to make the guys laugh with his rubber-faced antics. On top of that, he was an incredibly skilled musician. He was playing the clarinet by the time he was nine and also picked up the saxophone along the way. Walt’s father had also played in bands at one time as a trumpet player, so music was in the family genes.
I also grew tight with Terry Kath, initially out of necessity. He was the closest thing to a leader in the band in terms of the direction of the music. Together, Terry and I were the rhythm section of Jimmy Ford and the Executives and had to make sure we were in step with each other at all times. If we were misfiring, then the band was misfiring, so we had to stay in the pocket together. Terry was a world-class bassist and guitarist from the western suburbs, who was almost entirely self-taught like myself. He was a happy-go-lucky guy who always seemed to be smiling. That being said, he also came across as a real man’s man and I remember thinking he looked just like Robert Mitchum. Terry had a charisma that intrigued me from the beginning. But at times there was also a feeling that something darker lurked beneath the surface. Terry’s family, in particular his father, was having some issues with his deciding to become a full-time musician, but I could only speculate at the time. Terry kept that side of his life to himself.
My parents were overjoyed to hear that I had been hired to play in a legitimate group. The future my mother had envisioned for me was back on the radar screen and there was hope. For the first time in my life, I had a direction and a purpose. I couldn’t think of anything else except playing drums and returned to the basement in our house to practice for hours on end. Jimmy Ford and the Executives were giving me an amazing opportunity and I didn’t want to blow it.
On the morning the band was to leave for our big gig in Pittsburgh, I came down with a 103-degree temperature and could barely pull myself out of bed. I finally managed to make it down the street to Dwight’s house to meet up with the rest of the band. Walt and Terry looked hungover as hell. Terry walked up to me and let out a huge burp right in my face. He must have been eating garlic bread for breakfast, because it smelled absolutely awful. It was his weird way of testing the new guy in the group.
After loading our gear into the Cadillac hearse, we piled in and set out on the road. Walt sat up front in the passenger’s seat next to Mike as he drove. Jimmy and I squeezed in with our equipment in the way back, while Terry reclined in the backseat with Dwight, whom the guys had decided to bring along just in case for backup. I had no problem with it. In my condition, I wasn’t so sure I would even be able to play.
Terry pulled his bass out of its bag and sat back and lazily strummed it as we got on the highway and made our way out of the city. Up in the front seat, Walt took off his shoes and propped both of his feet up on the dashboard.
“Hey, check this out, man,” Walt said, lighting a cigarette and sliding it in between his toes. He brought his foot up to his mouth and took a drag. “What do ya think of that, Danny?” he asked, looking back at me from up front. All the guys busted up laughing. I managed a smile at Walt’s goofiness, but his behavior was a little unsettling. I didn’t know what to expect next.
What planet are these guys from? I asked myself.
An hour into the trip, we ran headfirst into a brutal snowstorm. Mike gripped the Caddy’s massive steering wheel with both hands and strained to keep us straight down the highway. About halfway to Pittsburgh, the hearse blew a tire. Mike kept the car on the road long enough for us to get to a service station. The attendant put the car up on the lift and pulled the wheel off.
“It don’t look good,” he told us, running a grease-caked hand over the wheel. “Ain’t got this size in stock, so I’m gonna have to send someone to the next town to pick one up. Could be a while.”
The guys scrambled and hatched a new plan. They made a call to Dick Clark’s people in Pittsburgh and filled them in on our situation. “All right, Danny,” Walt said, walking back from the pay phone. “You hang out here and wait for the guy to get his hands on a new tire for the hearse. The rest of us have to make it in time for the rehearsal, so we’re going to call Dick Clark’s people and have them charter the next plane to Pittsburgh for us. Once the car’s fixed, you drive the gear and we’ll see you when you get there.”
My fever was getting worse by the second. “But guys,” I pleaded, “I have never even been to Pittsburgh before.”
“No problem,” Terry said. He pulled a road map from the glove box of the hearse and lobbed it to me. “Just follow this. Once you blow into the city ask someone where the Civic Arena is. You’ll be fine.”
Walt slapped me on the back. “Good luck. We’ll see you in Pittsburgh.”
Despite my condition, I was the low guy on the totem pole and nothing was going to change their minds. Before I knew it, they were gone.
I walked over and gazed up at the massive hearse on the lift. What a beast! It might as well have been a school bus. How the hell was I going to pull this stunt off with a throbbing head and a fever? All the way to Pittsburgh? The farthest I had ever driven out of Chicago was to Calumet City.
After waiting around the cold station lobby for three hours, I was back out on the interstate with a new tire. The blizzard had intensified and I could barely see the road through the hearse’s frozen windshield. What a nightmare! I don’t know how I was able to pull it off. By the time I finally exited off the 579 freeway and merged onto Centre Avenue in Pittsburgh, I was spent. I thought my eyes might have been playing tricks on me because the Civic Arena looked surreal. It was a huge dome with a retractable roof. I had never seen a building like it. The guys met me around back and we unloaded our equipment before returning to the hotel they had checked into earlier in the day.
Immediately after getting to the room, I climbed onto one of the beds and passed out. My body completely shut down at once. I woke up to find singer Lou Christie walking around, talking to a couple of the guys. I recognized Lou from seeing him on television. He had just come out with his No. 1 single “Lightnin’ Strikes,” which was all over the radio. The scene was unbelievable.
I dozed off again, but before long someone was shaking me by the leg. I gave a kick and rolled over onto my side.
“Hey, Danny,” a voice said.
“What?” I moaned. Looking up, I saw Terry standing at the foot of the bed. He was already dressed and ready to go.
“We’re on in an hour backing up Chuck Berry,” he told me.
“What do you mean? Aren’t we going though a rehearsal?” I asked. Although I knew most of Chuck’s songs by heart, I still wanted a chance to warm up. The rest of the band had already gone through a complete rundown earlier using some other musicians’ equipment. I wasn’t going to be so lucky.
“There’s no time for that. We’re leaving in five,” Terry told me and walked out of the room.
I staggered out of bed and scrambled to pull myself together. My body felt worse than before I went to sleep. I dragged myself downstairs to join the rest of the guys and we took off in the hearse. Thankfully, they didn’t make me drive.
When we arrived at the Civic Arena, the promoter led us to the backstage area through a maze of hallways. When I caught sight of Frankie Valli walking by, my heart jumped a few beats. Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs were also hanging out in the corner, so I couldn’t have felt more on edge. This was the big time.
Once we reached the side of the stage, the band huddled up. Off to my left, Chuck Berry almost magically appeared. I couldn’t take my eyes off him. The MC of the show announced Chuck’s
name and the crowd erupted.
“All right, you’re on!” someone yelled from behind us.
I trotted out and was immediately blinded by the intensity of the lights overhead. When my eyes adjusted, I was confronted by the insanity of ten thousand screaming fans. The noise was deafening. I stumbled toward the back of the stage and settled in behind my drum kit.
I’m not sure why, but Chuck Berry appeared to be out of it. After he greeted the crowd, he walked back from the microphone and turned toward the band.
“Hey man, what are some of my hits?” he asked nobody in particular.
There was an uneasy silence. “‘Johnny B. Goode’?” Jimmy Ford asked.
“Cool.” Chuck nodded. He turned and walked back up to the front of the stage.
The band exchanged a nervous glance. Was Chuck being serious? We hoped it was his idea of a tension breaker.
After the initial jitters, Chuck kicked into gear. Even though we didn’t have the chance to rehearse, the band quickly built up steam. Terry confidently thumbed his bass lines as Walt wailed on his saxophone. Jimmy cocked his head back and made his trumpet scream—man, he was an unbelievable player. My head still pounding, I fought to keep us together and in time. We tore through “Johnny B. Goode” and then transitioned into “Roll Over Beethoven.” It was spontaneous and thrilling. Chuck hopped around the stage like he owned the place. When he dipped into his signature “duckwalk,” the audience in the arena went crazy.
During the guitar solo, Chuck turned around and flashed us that famous grin of his. He nodded along to the beat I laid down as his hands danced over the fretboard of his guitar. It was nice to know we had earned his respect.
After Chuck played his two songs, Lou Christie took the stage and our band backed him up on “Lightnin’ Strikes.” To this day, I have no idea how I made it through the show without a rehearsal. Overall, I was running on pure instinct. It was the only thing guiding me through each number.
As soon as we finished, I jogged offstage and doubled over to catch my breath. Walt came up behind me and gave me a playful push. “How are you feeling, man?” he asked.
I was too overwhelmed to answer. When I looked up, he was still staring at me and smiling. “You got off on the music, didn’t you?” Walt asked.
“Yeah,” I finally said.
“So, what do you think?”
“Wow,” I answered, nodding my head.
“It’s great, isn’t it?”
“It sure is.”
It was the first time I had been high in my young life, and I couldn’t get enough of the sensation. I had never come close to trying any drug. They were considered taboo in my neighborhood. But being onstage was something different. It was a release of all the frustration stored up over the past few years of running around the streets with no purpose. I wanted the feeling to last forever.
I sat to the side of the stage for the rest of the show, watching acts like the Yardbirds, Mitch Ryder, Little Anthony and the Imperials, and the Four Seasons perform. The show was a rite of passage. The band had thrown me into the fire and I had made it through to the other side. I had been pulled out of the darkness, and become something I never thought possible—a working musician.
After the Pittsburgh gig, Jimmy Ford and the Executives played three or four times a week all around the Chicago area. Needless to say, the lifestyle was very foreign. In the beginning, I found myself walking around with a wide-eyed stare. Fortunately, Walt made sure I was comfortable every step of the way. Wherever we went, he introduced me to the local club owners, promoters, and booking agents. Walt told me how to act and what to expect. Without his guidance, I don’t know what I would have done.
We developed such a close bond, in fact, that he came to me one day and confessed that he was having a love affair with Terry’s girlfriend, a beautiful young girl named Jackie. She and Terry were on the outs, but not exactly broken up yet, so it was a tough situation. It meant a lot that Walt would look to me for advice. He was deeply distressed because he thought the world of Terry. The two of them had been friends and bandmates for a long time, and Walt knew the news would crush him. In my mind, there was no use in hiding his relationship with Jackie any longer. The situation was only going to worsen over time. I told Walt he had to sit down with Terry as soon as possible and get the secret off his chest. As expected, Terry took the news hard, but eventually he and Walt were able to work through it. They were too close to let a chick come between them. Besides, Jackie wasn’t just any girl. She and Walt eventually ended up getting married.
Jimmy Ford and the Executives continued to headline shows and opened for some national acts whenever they came to the area. In many ways, Walt, Terry, and I became like a version of the Three Musketeers within the band. We hung out constantly and they became like older brothers to me. After our gigs, we’d go down to a place called Bella’s for a slice of the best thin-crust pizza in the city. Despite the fact that I came from a drastically different background, the three of us found we agreed on almost everything and had similar views about the world. Although I was younger, Walt and Terry recognized I had knowledge and instinct beyond my years. As they guided me along the path of a full-time musician, I made sure nobody messed with our band. After all, Chicago clubs were tough places and I knew how to handle myself.
I loved the new life I was leading and my feelings of despair were gone. My parents didn’t have to give me money anymore. I could support myself. While my father was thankful to see me keeping my nose clean, he was still skeptical. He wasn’t convinced that I would keep making a living by simply playing in a band. But my mother’s prayers to get me off the streets had been answered.
“What did I tell you?” she said. “I knew you were going to be a famous drummer.”
I still occasionally hung out with the JPs, but it wasn’t the same. They understood that I was doing well with the group and most of them were happy to see me going in a different direction with my life. Not that they would come out and say it, but deep down they were proud of me. Most of the corner guys didn’t have many options. It was the streets or nothing. Somehow, I had managed to find another way.
Then, one afternoon at a band meeting, everything changed. Walt, Terry, and I were told we were being fired from Jimmy Ford and the Executives. We couldn’t believe it. Mike Sistack said it was a “last in, first out” type of policy. He explained that the band had decided to merge with a popular R&B horn band from Chicago called Little Artie and the Pharaohs, and were renaming their new group the Mob (how fitting for the city of Chicago at that time).
“Don’t take it personal, it’s just business,” Mike told us.
And that might have been the case, but we were still stunned by the band’s decision to dump the three of us. Walt, Terry, and I were hurt and slighted, but there was nothing we could do about it. What was done was done. As quick as my music career began, it seemed it might be in jeopardy of ending.
4
The Missing Links
After being let go from Jimmy Ford and the Executives, I had no idea what my next move was going to be. Was that it? A short run as a working musician and then back to running the streets?
Fortunately, I didn’t have long to struggle with the thought of being without a job. I was relieved when Walt told me he had come up with a new plan. A guy he had grown up with out in the suburb of Maywood named Chuck Madden was looking for new musicians to join his group. Chuck was the guitarist in a cover band called the Missing Links and saw our being dumped from Jimmy Ford and the Executives as an ideal chance to improve his band. He was all for Walt, Terry, and me joining right away. The three of us were thrilled because we wanted to keep playing together.
Chuck’s father, Bob, had a reputation around the city for being a savvy booker. We figured he could get us plenty of gigs, but were still shocked to find out each of us would be making five hundred dollars a week playing in the Missing Links. It was nearly impossible to wrap my head around that kind of money. Nee
dless to say, it took the three of us about two seconds to take Chuck up on his offer. Although we would be performing the same old cover tunes and it wasn’t going to musically challenge us, it was still a job playing music—a well-paying job. That was the only thing that mattered to me. Besides, being in a band sure as hell beat lugging refrigerators around all day at Polk Brothers Appliance.
The money was more than I had ever made before, and I spent every penny of it. I didn’t think to set anything aside. The only thing that interested me was that I could buy my own clothes, go out drinking, and didn’t have to rely on my parents to support me. I was even able to buy my uncle Sam’s Pontiac coupe for $1,500 and put in a top-of-the-line eight-track stereo. I felt like a real big shot in that car.
The band continued playing the club circuit around Chicago and supported a few major acts when they came through town, such as Tommy Roe, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and the Turtles when they played the Arie Crown Theater downtown. The clubs typically booked us Wednesday through Saturday, so we continued to make good money. Typically, we loaded our equipment into a U-Haul trailer and towed it behind Walt’s Plymouth. When the band traveled outside the state to play venues like the Holyoke Club in Indianapolis, the Attic in Milwaukee, and Shula’s in Niles, Michigan, Bob had an old van he let us use.
We started referring to Bob Madden as Buffalo Bob because he wore a leather Indian jacket with tassels hanging from the back. He was a colorful character and always had plenty of ideas for the band. At one point, Buffalo Bob thought we might be a bigger draw if we used stage names. He didn’t have a problem with Terry Kath, but he wanted Walt and me to change our last names because he thought they sounded too ethnic for mainstream audiences. For a few shows, I went by Danny Sera and Walt became Walt Perry, but it seemed too silly to keep it going. It wasn’t long before we switched back.
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