Waiting on the Moon, page 14
We met again the following evening in his Park Avenue apartment to discuss the details. In a sitting room decorated with hand-painted Venetian-style frescoes, he lit a Cuban cigar for himself and one for me and began what he called “the business of the day.” Puffing away, he said, “Peter, many managers take 20 to 25 percent. The Colonel takes 50 percent from Elvis, so it’s all a matter of needs and negotiation of the situation.” Dee let this last statement drift in the air alongside the smoke from our cigars as he awaited my reply.
“Dee, how about 10 percent?”
His body jolted, as if he had stuck his finger in a socket. “Ten fucking percent! Are you kidding me? I can see why you need a manager—you’re outta your mind. Twenty fucking percent, or let’s just shake hands and call it a day.” He put out his cigar, squashing it back and forth in the ashtray while staring at me without blinking.
I held his stare and, after a long pause, replied, “Dee, we need a manager, but I’m coming to you as one Bronx street kid to another. When we started, I got the band out of bad management. Then I got us on Atlantic Records and with the best booking agency. I’ve hustled radio stations, rack jobbers, the press, and promoters. I’m not like those English bands that come over and don’t know shit from Shinola. I can handle a lot of the stuff, and we won’t be a burden on you like some of your other acts. You meet with Frank, book us some good dates that’ll give us the opportunity to move up the ladder, and I guarantee you we’ll seize the moment. I’ve been working my ass off, so let’s make it ten percent and shake hands on it. Fuck all this expensive lawyer bullshit. If we become a problem, just call and let me know. Why would we want to work together if it becomes a headache? Let’s have a handshake and call it the beginning of a Bronx friendship.”
Dee was staring hard at me, but I could sense a smile forming at the corners of his mouth. He took out his wallet, from which he pulled a two-dollar bill. “Sign it, Wolf, and I’m gonna hold on to this. If we have a disagreement, I’ll send this back to you special delivery, and that’ll be the end of our working relationship.” I signed the bill, Dee spit in his hand, I spit in mine, and we shook on it, followed by a bear hug that almost broke my ribs. The deal was done. Dee came out on the road with us, and both he and everyone in the band seemed glad he was on board.
We were scheduled to play a music festival in Long Pond, Pennsylvania, in July of ’72. It was a two-day affair held at the Pocono International Raceway and featuring a number of bands. We were billed as part of the evening festivities on the second day, along with the Faces; Humble Pie; Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Edgar Winter; and Three Dog Night.
The other members of the Geils band were installed at a hotel near the festival site on the day of our performance. I was planning to travel up that day with Angel. Dee, who also managed two other acts on the festival’s bill, Humble Pie and Emerson, Lake & Palmer, rented a stretch limo for the hour-and-a-half drive from the city and picked us up at Angel’s apartment. He was dressed in gold-framed sunglasses, a brown fringed suede jacket, jeans, and sneakers. We stopped at Manganaro’s, an old Italian grocery store located on Ninth Avenue, where Dee stocked up on Italian subs, olives, peppers, desserts, and wine. Fully loaded, we sped onto the Jersey Turnpike, Dee on one side, Angel on the other, and me in the middle, with large shopping bags of food and wine at our feet. Dee enjoyed having Angel with us. She was a good listener, and Dee liked to talk. An hour in, Dee fell fast asleep and didn’t wake up until we pulled into the driveway of the hotel.
The Geils band gathered in Dee’s room, where he passed out the subs and gave us his battle speech, holding a sterling-silver whistle attached to a chain he wore around his neck. “When I blow this whistle, don’t walk onto the stage—charge out there! Don’t even think about who’s ahead of you and who’s after. Just hold your own; play like it’s your last day on earth!”
With subs in hand, we yelled, “We’re gonna do it for Dee!”
We were scheduled to go on at around 7:30 p.m., right after the Faces. I headed over to their room to visit them, since I knew Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood from their very first days in the States, when they were members of the newly formed Jeff Beck Group and had appeared as guests on my late-night radio show.
Ronnie was friendly as always, and as soon as we saw each other there were big hugs. He was hanging with the Master Blaster, a photographer who was traveling with the band. The Blaster, who hailed from Boston, had helped me on my radio show and given me the nickname Woofa Goofa. Rod, however, was another story. Wearing fur mittens and decked out in scarves, a fitted long velvet coat, and skintight crushed-velvet bell-bottoms, with barely a glance, he walked right past.
His behavior surprised me, because we were often together searching for Sam Cooke rarities whenever he came to Boston. I enjoyed the Faces; they were loose, rocking, had a good time onstage, and Rod knew how to move the audience.
There were ninety thousand presold tickets, and the promoters expected 125,000 people, but by early afternoon, some reports suggested that there were at least two hundred thousand people on their way, creating miles of traffic jams. The weather was turning from good to bad; rain showers started in the afternoon, and heavy storm clouds moved in along with strong winds and fog. In subsequent years, this unpredictable combination of weather and crowds led some to deem the festival another Woodstock. The roads were so blocked with traffic that the promoters used helicopters to transport bands and crews back and forth between the hotel and the stage site.
With manager Dee Anthony
As dusk fell, even the helicopters were grounded because of the heavy fog. For a brief spell, while the weather held clear, Dee had the foresight to ensure that all his bands got to the site, ready to perform in their allocated time slots. He slipped the copter pilots several C-notes and flew out Emerson, Lake & Palmer; Humble Pie; and the Geils band. Heavy rain started up again, and when it stopped, more than an hour later, the mountain air was cold and damp.
Watching from the makeshift tent area, we saw a sea of people lighting bonfires on the hills to keep warm and dry, looking like Greek armies camped in front of the gates of Troy.
The Faces’ equipment was already onstage, anticipating their arrival. Dee spoke with the band’s crew chief, advising him to fly the band over immediately before the fog caused further delays. The crew chief resisted, saying, “Just cool your jets. They’ll get here when they get here.”
The stage was set high, and all Dee’s bands and crew were watching from down below. It was getting darker and colder, but I was feeling fairly at ease because Angel and I were snugly wrapped in a blanket to keep each other warm. She, though, was worried that Dee’s temper might flare up as he paced back and forth on the stage, yelling to anyone within earshot, “The Faces better be on their way!”
The Faces had pulled this stunt several months earlier at the Mar y Sol festival in Puerto Rico, with a lineup that included David Peel, Elephant’s Memory (John and Yoko were to be surprise guests, but John’s visa problems kept them both in New York), Billy Joel, Dr. John, the Allman Brothers, Herbie Mann, Roberta Flack, and many other artists. We had played just before the Faces, and we connected with the crowd, even getting two encores. However, the Faces kept the helicopters waiting for almost two hours in an effort to build up anticipation and suspense in the audience.
Back in the Poconos, Dee gathered all his band’s crew members together, forming a tight circle on the side of the stage. At least twenty of them surrounded him. Like a coach in a football huddle, he told them, “When I blow my whistle, I want you all to move fast and dismantle the Faces’ equipment in the middle of the stage. If you want, you have my permission to even push or throw their damn shit right the hell off the fuckin’ stage. Start setting up ELP’s equipment. The Faces don’t know who they’re messing with, but if they don’t show up soon, they’re definitely gonna fuckin’ find out.”
The Bronx lurking inside Dee was like a tidal wave, growing larger by the minute as he continually checked his gold Rolex watch. A worried Angel pleaded, “Pete, please go up there and calm him down. He looks like he’s going to explode.”
“Angel, if I could, I would. There’s no way he’s gonna calm down unless the Faces show up damn quick or ELP starts playing.”
When the rain began pouring down in sheets once again, Dee finally broke. He charged over to the Faces crew chief and screamed at him, “All right! Where the hell are they? I warn you, if they’re not on this stage ready to play in ten minutes, it’s gonna be showtime!” The crew chief inflamed an already dangerously combustible situation by answering, “Don’t fucking give me orders, Grandpa. I don’t work for you!”
At this, Dee landed him a punch, right smack on the jaw. As he fell, Dee stood over him and said, “Get up now, kid, and you’ll get it twice as hard.” Dee took the whistle hanging from his neck and blew it, all the while standing watch over the fallen crew chief.
At the sound of the whistle, Dee’s crew jumped into action, pushing the Faces’ equipment to the side of the stage and setting up for ELP. Dee walked over to our tent and yelled, “ELP, get up here. Geils, be ready—you’re after them, then Humble Pie. We’re taking over this fuckin’ stage, and I’d like to dare any fucking body that’s stupid enough to just try and stop us!”
The Faces’ crew chief got up, rubbing his jaw, and stood on the opposite side of the stage. There was nothing he or the crew could do but watch. ELP started playing, and the crowds on the hill cheered in jubilation at the sound of the longed-for music. In the middle of the set, we heard helicopters arriving; the Faces were finally here.
The Faces approached the tented area with their assistants and manager. Their crew chief told them what had occurred, and we watched as he pointed out Dee up on the stage. It was like a scene in a dusty Wild West saloon as the assembled Faces band and crew entered the tent. Rod was truly pissed, and everyone looked accusingly at me, Angel, and the other bands.
What ensued next is a bit of a Rashomon moment.
As ELP was finishing its final song, Dee sent a crew member down to the tent, telling us to be ready to play because we were next. Just then, the Faces’ manager and his crew hurried up the stairs to put back their equipment. Dee, in readiness, had our crew rush to set up our equipment. Band crews are like sailors on an old frigate—out at sea on long voyages, eating, drinking, and bunking together. They sometimes might hate each other, but if one member is attacked, there’s nothing that will unify them more.
Our truck drivers, two brothers who were ex-Marines, were summoned to the stage by Dee. “Geils is next!” Dee bellowed as our crew went to work. Up the steps charged the Faces’ manager, followed by their crew and two of the promoters. Our truck drivers flanked Dee. A promoter approached him and cautiously asked, “Could you please let the Faces play next?”
Dee responded, “Where the hell were you when they were dillydallying at the hotel, keeping not one but three of my acts waiting around in this fuckin’ rain, in a shit-ass tent to boot? Not one band, not two bands, but three fuckin’ bands—and if you fuck with me, I’ll pull the other two!” That was a possibility the promoter didn’t want to argue over, so he backed away.
When the Faces’ manager saw this, he rushed over to Dee and shouted, “Who do you think you are, moving my band’s equipment? I’m ordering you to let my band play next. You already robbed them of their given place on the bill!”
Dee replied, “What kind of manager worth his weight lets his band hold up an entire festival?”
“Listen here, Mr. Anthony, you and your people aren’t scaring me. The Faces are going on next!” But as he finished this statement, he made the grave mistake of poking his finger into Dee’s chest. Bam! Down he went, folding over like an accordion.
Between the fog and the rain, the schedule was running hours behind. I remember we went on after ELP at 2:30 a.m., followed by Humble Pie and, finally, the Faces. We could see the crowds on the hills, almost too wet and frozen to move. The band and I flew back on the copter while Dee and Angel, who wanted to see the rest of the show, remained on-site. When Angel returned to the hotel in the early morning, she woke me. “You should get up, Pete. Dee’s in the hotel dining room with most of the crew, and you won’t believe what happened.”
I threw on my clothes and headed to the dining room, where Dee (whom I never saw drink beer) was sitting at a round table full of empty beer bottles. He was in the middle of reviewing the evening’s events with the crew, like a general assessing the outcome of a recent battle. “Wolf, where the hell you been? You missed all the fireworks!” he said as he went back to detailing the events of the evening.
A full-on brawl broke out between our crew, the Faces’ crew, and even the promoter’s stage crew. Equipment was thrown offstage and instruments were wrecked, yet Dee, opening another beer, was as excited as a kid sitting on Santa’s knee. He asked Angel to sit right next to him. “Wolf, while you were sleeping, this gal over here, she’s a real trooper. She tried to keep people from getting up the stairway to the stage. When a guy pushed her away, Mullin here knocks him back down the steps like he was a bowling pin—hit straight on! You see, there’s a lot more to management than just sitting around collecting a percentage.”
It was a memorable moment in a year spent endlessly on the road. Angel and I stayed in touch, mostly by phone. She eventually moved back to Florida and ended up where she always dreamed of living, Key West. Ever the adventurous spirit, she met someone who also loved the ocean, and they were happily married. Her husband, Dirk Fisher, was a treasure hunter whose father searched the waters around Key West for shipwrecks in the hope of finding sunken treasure. In 1975 he discovered the wreck of the Atocha, which sank in the 1600s with around $450 million worth of gold, coins, and jewels aboard. Angel and her husband were part of the crew involved in the discovery. One night, as they were asleep on the haulage barge, a pump failed, causing it to sink. Both Angel and her husband were trapped and drowned.
Dee continued to manage artists, and when Peter Frampton left the group Humble Pie to go solo under Dee’s guidance, he became a superstar, and by 1978 he was one of the bestselling artists in the entire recording industry. Dee was intoxicated by Frampton’s success. He soon took on too many artists. In the following years, he was sued by Frampton and several of his other artists who claimed he was withholding money and taking more than his designated share of profits. The Geils band decided to split from Dee because of his overloaded roster and lack of interest in our career.
I met with him in his swank new offices and told him that things just weren’t working out, and it would be best for all involved to part ways. However, we did owe Dee $35,000, which at that time was a lot of money for us. We promised to pay it back to him. Dee said he understood and appreciated the fact that I was meeting with him to discuss the matter face-to-face. “Wolf, we always got along. Just tell your band to forget about paying me the $35,000 they owe.” He spit in his hand, I spit in mine, and we shook on it.
Although it appeared in later years that greed may have gotten the better of him, the week after we went our separate ways I received a small package in the mail. Inside was the two-dollar bill we had both signed some six years earlier, at a time when it seemed, to quote the title of the Faces album, “A nod’s as good as a wink… to a blind horse.”
I Rode This Dream
“WHERE I’M HEADED I CAN’T BE SURE”
15
THE RED SHOES
Dorothy Faye
I REALLY LOVE SAN Francisco—don’t get me wrong, Bryn—but whenever I hear that damn ‘I Left My Heart in San Francisco,’ it makes being here feel even lonelier.” Bryn wasn’t listening; she was concentrating on rolling a large braided stick of Thai weed with an odor so pungent it permeated the entire room.
Half interested, she replied, “Just have some of this—it’ll chill you out.”
“Bryn, I can’t smoke that stuff. It’s too damn strong, and besides, me and pot never seem to agree with each other.”
Bryn Bridenthal was a respected public relations rep for Rolling Stone magazine at a time when it was still based in San Francisco, where the Geils band had arrived to play the following two nights to a sold-out crowd at the Winterland Ballroom, ending a multicity West Coast tour.
Bryn was in her twenties, thin and lanky, with short hair and straight-cut bangs that fell just above her oversize glasses, much too big for such a small face, but somehow they worked as her signature look.
Sensing my loneliness, she suggested, “Listen, Pete. I’ll call a friend to come to the show tomorrow night. You might enjoy meeting her.”
Feeling doubtful, I asked, “How do you know her?”
“Oh, we have mutual friends. She’s pretty interesting, and speaking of pretty, she’s damn good-looking, too.”
At Winterland the following night, we made our way toward the stage, and there was Bryn in the swampy green light of the concrete hallway, huddled in conspiratorial girl talk with her friend, who was dressed in jeans, suede boots, a Naugahyde jacket, mirrored aviator sunglasses, and a large-brimmed floppy brown hat pulled so far down that it almost covered not only her curly brown hair but also her entire face. She looked like a Haight-Ashbury hippie, and however much Bryn may have liked her, this brief glimpse did not spark my interest.
They stood stageside, and I noticed the intensity with which Bryn’s friend watched our performance. It was a dream audience; they called us back for three exhausting encores. Sweat-drenched, we couldn’t wait to change and leave the venue after the show, but Bryn insisted that I meet her friend, Dorothy. We had a fairly innocuous introduction during which Dorothy thanked me for a wonderful show as the band and I made our way back to the hotel. Bryn and Dorothy asked for a lift, and they hopped in the back seat with our drummer. I rode shotgun next to our road manager and driver, Jim D. I glanced in the rearview mirror to see Bryn fast asleep, while Dorothy and the drummer kissed like teenagers in the back seat. We arrived at their destination, a bar where the mysterious Dorothy went off to meet someone else. I couldn’t shake the sense that something about Dorothy was strangely familiar, like I had met her before but couldn’t quite place where.
