Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

Robby & Eric — 1990

A Night I’ll Never Forget

Dis­claimer: In the fol­low­ing post, I dis­cuss my use of ille­gal drugs. Let me be clear, I no longer do ille­gal drugs or have plans to ever do them again, nor do I wish to con­done or encour­age their use by any­one. Ille­gal drugs were a part of my life in the past and I can’t change that.

In late 1989 I hooked up with Eric Bur­don, the pow­er­ful vocal­ist of the Ani­mals and their many hits. He was the infa­mous “long-haired leap­ing gnome”… in his own words, from War ‘s song “Spill the Wine.” He and gui­tarist Rob­bie Krieger from the Doors were going on tour (Rob­bie wrote their big hit “Light My Fire”).

Eric was known at the time of being a leg­endary party ani­mal (sorry for the pun… LOL) and was remem­bered from hang­ing out with Jim Mor­ri­son and Jimi Hen­drix on noto­ri­ous romps from Hol­ly­wood to London.

I was told Eric was clean now and to not offer him any drugs or alco­hol… OK…

For myself, I had come up with a bril­liant idea on how to beat my own cocaine prob­lem at the time — by tak­ing “magic mush­rooms” — Yeah I know… brilliant!

Some­where along the way Eric found out and started secretly ask­ing for a cou­ple of mush­rooms. So I gave him some… and we tripped up and down the coast.

We were on a tour of clubs from San Diego’s Belly Up Tav­ern to San Fran­cisco. At one point we played a club in San Luis Obispo. A girl­friend of mine who hap­pened to deal cocaine had gone on ahead and booked a room at a local hotel so I stopped for a visit before the show.  I had taken a hand full of very pow­er­ful mush­rooms and she enticed me into a hot bath after doing a few lines of blow. One thing lead to another and after a few hours slipped by I real­ized I was late and it was just about show time.

I was dri­ving a black 5.0 Mus­tang. A very fast and dan­ger­ous car for the likes of me.

How I ever sur­vived that car I’ll never know. I paid a for­tune in speed­ing tickets.

So I’m pulling up to the club trip­ping hard out of my mind on ‘shrooms and blow and there’s a line around the block to get in and NO PARKING any­where… so what do I do? I screech right up in front, jump out with the keys in the car and motor­ing run­ning, grab my horn and bolt inside the club… Just left my car in the mid­dle of the street run­ning with no idea what would hap­pen to it… yeah, brilliant!!!!

The club is packed and rockin’!!! The band is just start­ing the first song and I make my way to the back­stage area and no one is there. I’m trip­pin’ big time now, but my inter­nal clock says “stay cool, you’re gonna make it on time”, as I didn’t play on the first cou­ple of songs… so I wasn’t offi­cially late  — yet. I’m get­ting my horn together when I hear the band kick into “Don’t Bring Me Down,” which I had a sax solo on and was my first song.

I’m just about to open the door to the stage that was up a cou­ple steps when it flies open and there’s Eric star­ing me down with his hand out say­ing “You’re late!!!”

I had a feel­ing he would be want­ing his fix of ‘shrooms so I was pre­pared with three mas­sive mush­rooms in my hand. I slammed them on to his open palm and he inhaled them and said, “Let’s go!!!” We arrive onstage and the place is pumpin’!!

I swear to God, I couldn’t make this up. As I arrive at my mic it’s just in time for my solo and I rip in to it. It feels like my horn is a blaz­ing rocket and I’m just hold­ing on for the ride. I blew my ass off on that solo and every other sax and harp solo that show. We had two shows that night.

Now we’re back­stage on the inter­mis­sion before the sec­ond show and bass player Dave Meros is com­ment­ing on my play­ing, basi­cally say­ing “Was­sup, man? You’re on fire!!” I own up to Dave and the boys in the band that I’m trip­pin’ hard on mush­rooms and that they should try some for the next show. Funny enough, most of the guys had never tried them. Some­how I con­vinced every­one of those fucks to take them… hahaha… one for all, all for one type shit… EXCEPT Rob­bie Krieger — He was on Chemother­apy at the time and begged off.

The band fuckin’ rocked that sec­ond show. Seri­ously!!! At one point I remem­ber watch­ing Eric jump­ing all around the stage singing his ass off, and look­ing across stage to see the key­board player so into the music look­ing down at the keys as he played like he was try­ing to melt into the piano, the bass player and drum­mer with eyes closed groov­ing hard…  drum­mer ban­gin’… and then Rob­bie and me locked eyes and he was shak­ing his head with the biggest shit eat­ing grin on his face… He knew what I had done.

I just shrugged with my arms out and palms up, laugh­ing with a look like

“Hey, what can I say…Ya got me!”

It’s a moment I’ll never forget.

(Read part 2 of this tale)

©2010, Zavala Songs, Inc.