| The Savvy Stories by Steve Jones (continued) |
|
|
Chapter Four – We Write the Songs... Back at our new apartment at Meadowbrook Place, we had a couple of eviction notices from Ms. Love. It seems we were too noisy and were getting complaints. I knew the complaints weren’t coming from the tenants above us. That apartment was currently the residence of two other members of Savvy; Rich Mauch and Don Reeder. It didn’t matter though. I seemed to be able to sweet talk our way out of both situations. My brother Chris started hanging out with RJ all the time. In fact, Chris essentially was sleeping in RJ’s closet for about 2 weeks. Chris is a really likeable guy, but he didn’t have much experience with meeting girls. Because of his shyness, he relied on RJ to fix him up. I now had to clean up after three people! It was driving me nuts! Rick Miller and Paul Bennett went on their trip to California for vacation while I stayed home with Lilly. We went to a restaurant that was a favorite with her family – Mac’s House. We saw several movies that week: Dawn of the Dead, Phantasm, Halloween and Manhattan. Rich and Don got into a tizzy so Rich moved out, and Lilly’s friend Don Howard moved in. Don Howard was a really decent sketch artist, and he did a lot of artwork for the band. He painted a Stratocaster guitar for me. Then I was very excited to received a call saying the McDonald's "clown" job was mine! There would be some local training that I'd have to do to learn how to put on the face and the long list of corporate Do's and Don'ts that go along with portraying their world famous brand. Once I was up to speed I would start getting bookings. They provided a script for me to learn of a stage production called "Miles Of Smiles" which was performed on their restaurant parking lots, at festivals, fairs, and hospitals around the North Texas area. The show featured music, singing, magic, and audience participation -- all of which I was already doing with the Savvy floor shows. The only real differences were that the McDonald's gig would require a lot more makeup and a crystal clear G rating than what I was used to. Landing that second job meant I would be making some pretty serious money between the two gigs; at least serious compared to my previous standards. The first thing I needed to buy was a decent vehicle. The VW bug was on its last legs. Dad was about to trade in his company car for a newer one and asked if I wanted to buy it from his employer, Sunshine Biscuit Company. It was a blue 1977 Plymouth Volare. It was only two years old and I could buy it for only $1,800. Dad took me to Riverside State Bank and introduced me to his loan officer friend, Bob Kinney. Mr. Kinney was a jovial man who liked to talk about old country music artists. I didn’t care as long as he financed my car. It didn’t take long, and by that afternoon I had myself a real car! The front seat area of the Volare' was almost the size of my entire VW bug! Rick Miller came back from California with a new attitude towards the band. He was finally ready to drop the floorshows, do away with the disco, and start rocking out. There were lots of other things to be excited about as well - but then came the bad stuff. First, on June 11, John Wayne – the DUKE – died. It was hard to imagine a world without the legendary actor. Soon after that, my mother’s brother had a heart attack. Uncle J.T. wasn’t expected to live through the night and Mom took it pretty hard. However, life went on. From the inner sanctum of Savvy’s Nightclub the world felt safe. Each of us in the band tended to feel protected. It had been a long, dark weekend but when Tuesday rolled around, we were back hard at work rehearsing some new songs: “Feel Like Letting Go,” “Turkey Trot,” “Freeway Jam,” “Bottoms Up” and “Riding the Storm Out.” RJ seemed to take enjoyment from giving me a hard time. The practical jokes between us never seemed to end. Finally he'd come up with a plan to completely drive me out of my mind. RJ invited Kenny Stocks to come and stay with us for a few days. Kenny was a real character. He was overweight, cocky, and until you got to know him he seemed to have the personality of a slick car salesman. In fact, he sold insurance for a living.
Not one to miss out on a sweet perk, Kenny would use his friendship with the band as leverage to try to get girls whenever possible. He would sometimes position himself by the door to the back dressing room so that he could intercept any girls trying to get back to see us. He would tell them they had to go through him first if they wanted to meet one of the guys in the band. Sometimes that meant DATING him first. He had no shame about it. He even tried pulling occasional stunts with our established girlfriends, who knew to watch out for his escapades. The girls would report back to us and then we’d have to get Kenny to throttle back a little . RJ dubbed Kenny "Stock Show." Kenny was a complicated character and also had a very normal side to him that would come out from time to time. He could be a lot of fun as he stirred up chaos for the band's amusement, but he made no attempt to hide the fact that he could be a weasel when he had to be. One particularly vivid memory of Kenny was the day I got my brand new furniture for our apartment. I don’t think I’d even sat on my new couch yet before Kenny came in from the pool wearing a wet bathing suit, coated in oily sunscreen, and did a belly flop onto the new couch. I almost went into cardiac arrest! RJ got a huge kick out of seeing me squirm in those situations. It wouldn't have surprised me if RJ had actually put him up to it.
They say that bad things come in threes, so after John Wayne dying, my uncle’s heart attack, and Kenny belly flopping onto my new couch coated in sun tan lotion, I figured those would be the three dark events for the time being. But there would be more - much, much more. Things with Lilly kept getting progressively worse and worse until she decided to move back home with her parents in Benbrook. That turned out to be more of a good thing really. We saw less of each other, but when we were together it was much more pleasant. We finally decided to try to have a real honest to goodness date, so Lilly and I went to the movies and saw ALIEN. We had a great time for the first time that I could remember. It was then I realized I'd completely taken her for granted. The entire relationship had been a blur up to that point. I'd been so caught up in the band that I'd failed to stop and consider what she'd meant to me. I hadn't been taking things seriously at all. And something was beginning to gurgle up within me that hinted that perhaps I wanted to. Bobby Albin came over with a gorgeous blonde named Bernadette. Bernie (as we called her) had recently appeared in Playboy magazine and all the guys were salivating over her (including me, in my secret salivating sort of way.) We sat around and had a great time listening to old tapes of the Desperados’ satire of the Don Hudson days which we'd recorded live at the Hungry I a year earlier. The next day I decided to wax my car. I spent the better part of Saturday putting the best shine on that Volare' it had ever had. But just as I was putting finishing touches on it, I heard a "splat" and saw a small burst of liquid explode off the hood of my car. Then I heard RJ laughing his wicked laugh. He had put Chris up to throwing a fat, juicy grape at the car as I waxed it. My arms were worn out from buffing the wax job, and now I'd have to start over and redo the entire hood! I got very mad and upset with Chris. That was the last straw with RJ. It turned out that RJ was better suited to living with Kenny and Chris, so they began making plans to move out together. I decide to stay at Meadowbrook Place Apartments, but I’d move around the corner to a one-bedroom. This was a big move for me because I’d never lived alone before. There’s something about the first time you walk into a house or apartment before you move your stuff in. The new one-bedroom apartment seemed a lot smaller than the one RJ and I had shared. And there were bugs. Not many. But all it takes is one roach for me to go to war. And that’s exactly what I did. I spent an entire afternoon spraying every inch of that apartment, and it paid off because I never saw another bug the whole time I lived at #147 Meadowbrook Place. I did my first corporate clown appearance on June 16, 1979. It took about an hour and a half to get into the makeup that first time. All I had to do was ride in a convertible during the Ft. Worth Juneteenth Parade. There was nothing to it, and I couldn’t believe I was actually getting paid to ride in a cool car and wave at people. My most vivid memory from that day was focusing in on the white powdery ring around the nostril of the McDonald's owner as he lectured young black children about working hard so they could one day own their own business as he did. I wanted to tell him, but then again it was my first show and I didn't want to rock the boat. Sweet! Chris, RJ, and Kenny finally rented a house together. Around this period I was consumed with the task of moving all my furniture to my new smaller apartment. While all this was going on, RJ had been spending a lot of time with Ricky Lynn Gregg, the lead guitarist from Push. RJ was courting Ricky to come to work with us. I never really knew all that was going on until it was announced at the end of June that we would be letting Larry Patton go, and hiring Ricky Lynn Gregg. Savvy was preparing to shift gears and become a full-fledged rock and roll band! On July 1, Rick Miller gave Larry his 2 weeks notice. It all worked out for the best because Larry transitioned to become the manager of Savvy’s Nightclub, and our first honorary band manager as well. [I’m not sure why I didn’t write more about this as it happened, but there was just the single two-line entry in my journals that said, "Ricky from Push joins us. This should be great!" I must have just been so involved with the "Ronald" thing that I allowed myself to fall out of the Savvy politics loop for a brief time. I knew Ricky was an awesome guitar player and had great stage presence, but I hadn’t imagined him even being interested in joining Savvy, so the announcement caught me off guard. It could only be a good thing so I just went along with it. It wouldn’t take long before I’d not only have an opinion, but also be a huge fan and close friend of Ricky’s.] Uncle J.T. was experiencing a miraculous recovery from his heart attack. I got a little birthday party clown gig for some friends - not as Ronald. The band spent our first rehearsal with Ricky rearranging the stage. We tried something radical that we hadn’t seen done before. We put Rick and his drums on a riser on stage right, and Don and his keyboards on stage left. That left three guitarists and a bass player along the middle. The setup caught on and we kept things that way for the rest of our days with Savvy. Once things were set up and tested we worked up “Train Kept A Rollin’,” “You Really Got Me,” “Good Times Roll,” “Just What I Needed,” “I Want You to Want Me,” and our first Savvy original song, “I’ve Got A Pistol.” (Push had been doing Pistol as an original too, but since Ricky wrote it, it was fair game, and ended up being on our first album). I finally got settled into my new apartment and decided to invite mom over to check it out. I went wild buying groceries and baked my first apple pie from scratch. I bought a washing machine and dryer and started doing my own clothes. The club sponsored a special promotion with KZEW. The popular radio station’s DJs came out and ended up having such a good time they became regular customers. The band had some publicity photos done for an upcoming newspaper article. Local guitarist / photographer George Jara did our photos for us over at RJ’s new place. We set up a photo set in the garage. Business at the club was booming! I got a call from some old family friends wanting me to perform a clown show for an event at the church I went to as a kid. It was extra money so I went for it. At one point I bent over to pick up a prop and my wig fell off. My real hair was tucked under a stocking cap, so I just pulled the stocking cap off and allowed my long, red hair to fall out. Fortunately, my hairdo worked for both rock and roll – and clown shows – equally well. (While that may not be a very flattering mental image, it was true fact.) In August 1979, friend and schoolmate Benny McCloud died in a terrible accident. His car was stranded in a flood and he couldn’t get away from the vehicle and drowned. More ex schoolmates showed up at Savvy’s: Joe Jernigan, Jimmy Uselton, his sister, and Ricky Mullings. Meanwhile, Ricky brought in another original song. It was called "This Makes Three" and we couldn’t wait to work it up. Our goal at the time wasn’t to be an original band, but Ricky’s songs seemed custom made for our sound. Luckily, they caught on quickly with the audiences at the club and before the end of August we had worked up four more. Ricky brought in "Passions" which had been written by his former Push bass player, Randy Phelps. RJ brought in a song called "Rock & Roll Kid" and I ended up re-writing the lyrics at RJ’s request. [A footnote about “Rock & Roll Kid”: I’ve found tapes of an early Savvy song called "Roll Me Up Baby" that I believe was written by Rich. That song morphed into “Rock & Roll Kid.” I have a couple of versions on tape that clearly show the morphing stages.] Rick and Rich wrote a song called "Laughing & Keep On Going" and then we worked up a balled I'd written back in 1974 called "Broken Man." I have vivid memories of the night I wrote that song. I was fresh out of high school and living / crashing with some friends at a little ramshackle house on Christine Rd. in River Oaks. One of my room mates invited a bunch of people over one night to watch "In Concert" featuring the Steve Miller Band. "In Concert" was groundbreaking for its time. Stereo TV is common now, but back in 1974 the only way to watch TV in stereo was when an FM radio station agreed to broadcast the audio in stereo while the video was shown on TV. We didn't know it, but the police were watching the house and stopping everyone as they left the party, doing thorough searches of their persons and vehicles. One of the guests managed to sneak in the house the back way to warn us about it. Everyone streamed out the back door in a panic. I grabbed my old Prarie acoustic guitar and took off running towards the direction of Rockwood Golf Course. After jumping a few fences and outmaneuvering a few angry dogs, I somehow managed to get through the woods and found myself on the levee overlooking the Trinity River. It was a beautiful night and the full moon was dancing on the ripples of the river, looking like thousands of electrified, lit up eels wiggling in the water. I sat down and caught my breath. Knowing I would need to stay gone for a while, I let my mind wander. Soon I was thinking about the girls I had big crushes on; girls who either didn't know I existed -- or didn't particularly care. There was Direthia (who always seemed to have a boyfriend), Nancy (who preferred just being 'buddies' with me, and Suzanne (the love of my high school life who'd moved away to go to college.) After a few minutes I picked up my guitar and found that someone had tuned it differently. (I would later learn it had been tuned to an open E chord.) That's when I wrote Broken Man. We would later find out that the police had been staking out our house because the former residents had been selling Heroin and the police didn't know they'd moved out and we'd moved in. There had been nothing going on at our house that night that wasn't going on in most houses back then. People scattered as a knee-jerk reaction. Of course nobody really knew what the next guy might have had in his pockets or trunk of his car. Fortunately for us, things had loosened up considerably by 1979. Everyone was in a partying mood and society seemed to be giving us all a pass to party to our heart's content. This was evident nowhere more than at the new house that RJ, Kenny, and Chris were sharing at the time. Those guys had a houseful of girls around the clock. The girls cooked, cleaned, and provided just about every other kind of service one could imagine as well. On one particular day, I was hanging out over there when a very pretty girl started flirting heavily with me. Lilly had broken up with me a few days earlier, so the pretty flirting girl and I ended up in RJ’s room. I couldn’t believe how wild she was acting. I’d been sort of interested in her for a while but she’d never shown any interest in me before. Her passion was so sudden! It turns out that she was setting me up. All the guys were outside watching through what should’ve been a conspicuous break in the window blinds. So it goes in rock & roll. I decided to pretend that it had really bothered me, in hopes they might set me up like that again sometime! I finally got to spend a day with Nick, the guy I was replacing in the clowning job. He was a riot! As it turned out, a day wasn't nearly enough time together. I did manage to videotape his final big show so that I could study it and start doing it soon myself. [That video was shot at the McDonald's at Loop 820 at Meadowbrook in East Ft. Worth. Chris had loaned me his video camera, which required also carrying around the portable VTR over the shoulder to record with. The equipment was primitive, but the video tape of the show is still around today.] With the extra income rolling in, I was feeling generous. I bought Mom some roses and bought Dad a radio controlled airplane model kit. I sold my Guild amp to Richard Milligan, an old friend from school, but soon heard that he’d pawned it. I went to dinner with brother Ray. Savvy decided to go into the studio and record some of our originals! We hosted our first Savvy’s Labor Day Rock & Roll Telethon as official members of Savvy. The club stayed open with live music from local bands around the clock for two days. Some bands donating their talents were RIO, Lodella, Barb, Jamm, Motion, Rumor, Penguins, King Peach, and the Ft. Worth Cats. We raised $9,000 for MDA! Rick Miller, Ricky Lynn Gregg, and I went to Six Flags Over Texas to present the money on TV to local TV legends Harold Taft and Bobby Wygant. While there we ran into Iris and Akemi, some new friends from the Dallas Playboy club. We met them through Rick’s ex-wife Suzanne. They ended up coming back to the club with us and hanging out for the rest of the day / night. I wasn't trying to be greedy. Life was already a dream-come-true for me even BEFORE the Playboy Bunnies came along! That was just the icing on the cake for me. I was so consumed with the hoopla that I didn't even realize that across town, someone was actually truly in love with me. I was out of Lilly's sight, but not out of her mind. |
|
|
SAVVY STORY INDEX
|
|
|
|
