Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

April 1981 – Aboard a North­west Air­lines Flight from LA to Tokyo

As the flames danced off Danny’s head all the way up to the over­head bins, it dawned on me, “sub­tle as a leg iron” — one of the nicer ways my new boss Rod Stew­art liked to describe my com­port­ment in those days — that I wasn’t in a Sacra­mento Top 40 club band anymore.

In record time the boys in Rod’s band had already exhausted the flight’s sup­ply of sake and were in the midst of anni­hi­lat­ing the remain­ing stash of booze as we would. Rod had sacked his band in Eng­land and in the three weeks prior had put together a new band in Los Ange­les. Hence, yours truly, bassist Jay Davis and gui­tarist Danny John­son were the new Amer­i­can recruits fondly referred to as “Sep­tics” — as in Sep­tic Tank Yank — by our new British friends or “tea bag fags” as they came to be affec­tion­ately known to us as our love and respect for each other blos­somed. Oh yes, love, love, love…. As in they loved to fuck with us.

Rod — of course — was the ring­leader of most of the “stick” as they called it, which roughly trans­lates into mak­ing your life a liv­ing hell for days on end just to see how long it takes for you to break. But Pete Buck­land, tour manager-Grupen-Fuhrer of the Sex Police and the road­ies were the real evil geniuses. Basher, Boiler…oh how I do miss the lads. Pirates!!!!! Bloody fuck­ing, Pirates!!!

Poor Danny, our man of the hour — or in the cross hairs, if you will — and never a stranger to a full can of Aqua Net, had made a few deci­sions I’m sure he came to regret. One was the pump­ing of an extra can of the afore­men­tioned hair­spray onto his lovely rock ‘n roll mane that day. The other was tak­ing the seat in front of key­boardist Kevin Sav­i­gar. Now in Kevin’s defense, I don’t really believe he was try­ing to turn him into the human torch, as it seemed he only waved the lighter near Danny’s head — but who knew? The con­cus­sion was staggering…

As the flames raged, we all self­lessly emp­tied our drinks on his head and pro­ceeded to beat the shit out of him with what­ever we could get our hands on to save his life. He lived… some­thing else he later prob­a­bly regret­ted. They tor­tured him for five weeks through out Japan, Hong Kong and Bangkok. He left the group not long after.

And we all knew it was just a mat­ter of time…

We’d been in Japan for a cou­ple of weeks when Rod and the entourage — about twenty of us — went out for a night of Sake Mad­ness,- as Rod liked to call it — and some Korean BBQ. The restau­rant had put up some dividers to cre­ate a pri­vate din­ing room for us. We were all seated around a long table which had all these small lit­tle grills dug into the table where you’d cook the food your­self. Dur­ing the course of the meal, after about my fifti­eth sake, a wicked cramp knifed through my guts and I was off in search of the toi­let before an extreme case of — what my old man use to call — “nico­tine shorts” ensued. Get the picture?

When I reached the bath­room, to my shock and hor­ror, I found the “toi­let” con­sisted of a lit­tle pedestal with a 12” inch hole with two bricks sit­u­ated next to the hole with which to bal­ance your feet on and hang your ass over the hole while pray­ing for good aim. How the Japan­ese man­age to never shit all over them­selves and their clothes I’ll never know. And there was no door on the “stall”!!! With the bal­last I was car­ry­ing at that moment…. I mean there was no way …oh never mind. I quickly peeled off all my clothes and got down to business.

In my weak­ened con­di­tion, para­noia soon reared its ugly head and pro­ceeded to con­sume me. I was con­vinced the boys would soon be pay­ing me a cour­tesy call, push­ing me over and tak­ing my clothes — not all that far­fetched really. Just the pre­vi­ous night back­stage just before we were about to go on, the road­ies that took care of my sax­o­phones explained to me that the sax player that I had replaced used to give them a lot of grief and if I ever made that mis­take with them they would do to me what they did to him. They then pro­ceeded to take their knobs (British slang for cocks) out of their pants and rubbed them around the mouth­piece of my sax. In my best George Sanders imper­son­ation I replied dryly, “Never heard of her­pes, have we? “ There was no response and as I walked to the sink to wash my mouth­pieces I casu­ally said, “You will.”

Need­less to say, from then on they could take my horns onstage for me but I always took the mouth­pieces. But I digress…in my weak­ened, para­noid state in the toi­let a plan of action soon began to take form — my men­tal state was such that I fig­ured do unto oth­ers before they do to you…

After I dropped a gut, I pro­ceeded to tie all my clothes in a bun­dle in my leather coat, stash it under the sink and put just my shoes and socks back on — Capezios, I believe — and take a casual nude stroll through the restau­rant back to our table. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I almost made it back with­out inci­dent — but no such luck. Keep in mind that apart from the bath­room, it actu­ally was quite a beau­ti­ful place, with fine art work and plants placed through out the restau­rant. As I approached the desk a lady stand­ing with her child caught a glimpse of me, put her hands over the child’s eyes and let out a scream I won’t soon for­get. Oh hell, I’ve long since for­got­ten — but it was fairly mem­o­rable at the time and LOUD with feel­ing. I remained calm though, and pro­ceeded past her with a tip of my imag­i­nary hat (always the gen­tle­man) and entered our din­ing room.

Imme­di­ately, I was greeted with a stand­ing ova­tion — roars and cheers. I took no notice and calmly walked to my chair, sat down and asked some­one if they could please be so kind as to pass the soy sauce. By this time Rod and boys were chant­ing “table dance, table dance, table dance…” Soooo… when the boss says dance, you dance… Up on the table I go and, thank God, I had had the sense to wear my shoes as the lit­tle grills were all fired up now.

I’m doing my lit­tle jig up on the table. Rod and the boys are laugh­ing and shout­ing at me. All of a sud­den I feel all these hands pat­ting my legs. And I’m think­ing to myself as I keep on danc­ing “Whoa, these British lads are get­ting a bit friendly.” What I didn’t real­ize was that some sparks from the lit­tle Korean BBQs had caught the hair on my legs on fire. Soon I real­ized my dilemma and took a run­ning leap off the table. There’s an amus­ing photo of that moment float­ing around some­where in the great beyond. Taken from behind, the photo cap­tures me from my ass down in mid-stride, with my block & tackle hang­ing down between my legs and about a foot long blue flame and smoke com­ing off my legs. Incred­i­ble. I never felt the flame.

Well… From that moment on I was imme­di­ately accepted by the boys in the band and the crew and was ini­ti­ated into the Sex Police — a ven­er­a­ble insti­tu­tion with his­tory going all the way back to when Rod was in the Faces — a great honor and rarely achieved by mere Sep­tics Later, they ratio­nal­ized it all by say­ing ‘You’re not Amer­i­can…. you’re a crazy Mex­i­can.” Who was I to argue???

The whole inci­dent was immor­tal­ized in song on the Tonight I’m Yours album on Tora, Tora, Tora (Out With the Boys).

As Rod would often say, “It has been a silly life.”

© 2010, Zavala Music, Inc.