Confessions of a Glorified Sideman

And The ‘Shroom Tour Rolls Into Mal­ibu…

Dis­claimer: In the fol­low­ing, 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.

Back­stage with Rob­bie (check out my boots!)

(Read Part 1 of this story)

A few days later we were play­ing in Mal­ibu at a leg­endary club called Tran­cas… it’s not there any­more (it’s now a Star­bucks or some­thing). Too bad… lotta great shows went on there…

Any­waaaaaay!!! We were on a roll. Play­ing small clubs but every­one sold out and rockin’! At Tran­cas you could count on it being like court­side at a Lak­ers game in the finals… stars and hot cars and very fine booty. I had invited some friends and one hap­pened to be my mush­room man who we’ll call Frank. Frank was stuck out with a crowd of peo­ple… stars too… who were not being let in as the club was at capacity.

Well, I couldn’t have that, nor Eric… so a large body­guard friend of mine, Ani­mal (who I’d known since my NWA/Ruthless Records days), hap­pened to be there so I enlisted his assis­tance and we went out­side into the crowd, snatched Frank and his peo­ple and hus­tled them in the back door.

Eric and I had our din­ner of psy­che­delic truf­fles and got ready to go on. It was so crowded in front and a very low stage… so I told Frank to stay by the stage door and once we started, open it and watch from there. They did  - so he can cor­rob­o­rate what ensued (and he has… many times).

It’s mid-way through the show, the house is a rockin’ and Eric and I are trip­pin’ hard on cloud 9. We were car­ry­ing on as we did on stage back then and some­how Eric’s hair got caught in the screw that tight­ens the neck of my sax to the body. He started to panic as we were twisted back to back and it was pulling his hair out, which was long at the time. I yelled in his ear and calmed him for a moment as we slid back to back in slow motion down to the stage… head to head like Siamese Twins.

Trou­ble ahead!

Try­ing not to laugh I begged him to hold on so I could take a look. I already had a sax in the shop for repairs so I was wor­ried he’d make a move and bend it or worse and I’d be out of saxes…

As we lay on the stage, with the band blaz­ing on, I looked at where his hair was hope­lessly tan­gled up with my sax. I then made the mis­take of say­ing some­thing really stu­pid, “I think we’re gonna hafta oper­ate.” When Eric heard that he freaked and jerked his head away and left a big clump of hair and scalp hang­ing from my sax.

I’m lay­ing there laugh­ing uncon­trol­lably, look­ing at the crowd and then up at Rob­bie Krieger who’s almost los­ing it with laugh­ter. Eric then did the cra­zi­est thing.

He’s on all fours crawl­ing like a child mind you. At some point a very pretty girl in a white bil­low­ing type skirt was up on stage flirt­ing with the key­board player Jeff. Her back was to us and Eric crab walked toward her at light speed and crawled up into her skirt like a rat up a drain­pipe… and dis­ap­peared. She screamed and start­ing beat­ing on him.

I looked back at Frank and his buddy Mondo who were catch­ing all this from the lit­tle stage door and we all just lost it… I don’t think we’ve ever laughed so hard.

I think that was the last time I ever played Trancas…

©2010, Zavala Songs, Inc.