A Stray Cat Struts (16 page)

“Aha!” he said. So he stepped around and joined an already crowded stall; there was no one else in the bathroom. As we were all chatting and sniffing away, the door opened, and I heard a pair of boots clicking on the tile floor. I looked down under the stall and saw a pair of battered black suede pirate boots and knew right away who it was: it was Keith. We opened the door, and it became clear that we should all go out into the bathroom rather than trying to squeeze one more into the stall.

So we were all standing around the sink now. Slick had an eight-ball vial and was pouring out bumps onto that little spot between your thumb and forefinger that's formed when you make a fist. We were all talking, reminiscing a bit about when the Stones first saw the Cats, the gigs we were on, and how cool Gene Vincent was, when I impulsively suggested to Keith that he come into the studio while we were mixing and add a guitar on a song. We had a song called “My Mistake” that was perfect for that Keef, country rock, signature sound. I figured you cannot win if you do not play. It's the same reason the hottest chick in class has no date for the prom; everyone is afraid to ask. There was a split second of silence before he agreed. As I'm writing this, I'm wondering why I didn't ask Ronnie to play, too.

We went back into the club and had a few drinks. Keith's wife, Patti Hansen, was there; she was gorgeous and very cool. At some point during the night, I noticed that Keith and I were wearing identical black-and-white polka-dot scarves. I said something about trading, and before I knew it, I had his scarf on, and he had mine. We traded scarves; it seemed like a good idea in the moment and makes for a good story now, but at the time, Britt chided me because it was her designer silk scarf, and the one I got from Keith was cotton. I wore it on the album cover and still have it in one of my drawers.

We agreed to do the session over the next few days. We would be there for a week longer. Eric Gardner is important in this part, as he stayed in touch with Jane Rose, Keith's ultrahip, tough, New York gal manager. This was pre-cell-phone days, and I doubt Keith would have one even now. A few days later, we got a call in the daytime saying Keith would come in that night to do the track. Sure enough, he turned up that night with his longtime tech and famous roadie Alan Rogan. We had Jack Daniel's in the studio, and everyone loosened up before we got down to playing. Keith was the one holding that night. He carried a black bag. Rogan attended to tuning a white Fender guitar and Telecaster.

The session itself went along very nicely. The producers, Steve Thompson and Mike Barbiero, got along with everybody. As I thought, the song was right up Keith's alley. He picked it up very quickly, and we had multiple good takes in an hour or so. We spent the rest of the night talking, drinking, dipping into the doctor's bag, and listening to the rest of the album, which he seemed to like.

I had a leopard-skin jacket of my own, inspired by the one I had seen Keith wearing a few years before. It had velvet cuffs and collar, black silk lining, and my name embroidered in the inside pocket. A real custom piece of proper tailoring by bespoke rock-and-roll tailor Glenn Palmer. Glenn is a real artist, a Yorkshire man, straight out of Dickens. He trained in traditional tailoring in Savile Row in the 1960s and brought the legendary Kings Road clothing line Granny Takes a Trip to LA in the 1970s. He could make a suit for the Prince of Wales and then make a costume for a metal band. He makes stuff for me still today. He's the best there is at his game. Keith mentioned that he liked the jacket, and I insisted he take it as a token of my appreciation for doing the session. He, of course, hesitated, but I persisted. When he tried it on, the sleeves were too long, and there was no way he was going to take it. We had a fun rest of the night, and when he split, I knew I had just had a special night—and to prove it, I had a killer guitar track on a song that I wrote. I think Keith had a good time, too.

Lee and I started thinking about a cool way I could offer some type of payment. I didn't expect to get an invoice or a statement from the Musicians' Union, but wanted to do something to show we were thankful. I thought about my jacket and how he had liked it so much. The plan unfolded. We would get Glenn Palmer to make an identical leopard-skin jacket as a gift for Keith. A cool rock-and-roll gesture as payback and thank-you for a job well done. Glenn is a real artist, and things needed to be right. Jane Rose waited until Keith was asleep on the couch of her office and then measured his sleeve and neck size. She relayed the info to Eric Gardner, who relayed it to me; I gave it to Glen, and he started working on the jacket. He had it done in a couple of weeks. We shipped the jacket to the office and were told he received and dug it. A fitting end to a good story!

It was 1988 in Hollywood, and the Cats were making the
Blast Off
album at Ocean Way Recording on Sunset with Dave Edmunds. It was a good time, as the Cats were recording and touring; I think it may have been the time when everyone was getting along the best. We had proved ourselves, and now we were just working. Keith had just done his first solo album with his band the X-pensive Winos and was doing a tour around the USA. His excellent band included friends Steve Jordan and Ivan Neville and true pal Charley Drayton. The LA gig was at the Hollywood Palladium, a classic ballroom from the 1940s on Sunset Boulevard that had hosted all types of gigs and TV shows from the likes of
The Lawrence Welk Show
to riotous punk rock shows in the 1970s. The Stones had played there in the 1960s, and the Cats did an unheard-of three-night, sold-out stand at the Palladium as part of our first USA tour.

On the night of Keith's gig, Brian, Dave, and I took a break from the recording, walked across the street, and went to the show. We went into the raised balcony on the side and watched the show from there. I remember meeting Michael J. Fox and Woody Harrelson. Michael J. yelled at a female fan who interrupted him and asked for his autograph. They were both nice to me. Keith and his band were great; he always brings that loose tightness or tight looseness with him wherever he goes. They played a combination of songs from Keith's fine first solo album
Talk Is Cheap,
featuring super first track “Take It So Hard,” some covers, including family favorite Eddie Cochran's “Somethin' Else” and a few Stones numbers. They did one of my all-time favorites, “Connection,” and powerful versions of “Time Is on My Side” and “Gimme Shelter” with Sarah Dash trading lead vocals with Keith and really killing it. Charley and Steve switched back and forth between the drums and bass.

I really enjoyed the show and wanted to go backstage to say hello. Brian and Dave went back across the street to the studio. The Palladium is an old-timey venue, and there are a series of small dressing rooms behind the stage, real vaudeville style with round lightbulbs around the mirrors and small dressing tables. The headliner has a slightly bigger dressing room that has a small bathroom attached. The size of the room and the fact that it was Keith's first solo gig in LA meant that this tiny dressing room filled up real fast, and being Hollywood, everybody was somebody. It was really crowded and hard to get to the back of the room to say hello. I squirmed toward the back and squeezed myself into the mini bathroom for a badly needed pit stop after drinking a few pints out of plastic cups on the balcony during the gig. I'd zipped up and was starting to open the door back into the madness when I heard, “Everybody get the fuck out!”

There was a little murmuring and crowd whispering, and then again, “I mean it! Everybody get the fuck out! Jane, get 'em all out of here! I don't care who it is!
Out!
”

This was unmistakably Keith's voice. He'd just finished his show, had had it with the backstage moochers and scenesters who always made it back there, and had just thrown everyone out of his dressing room en masse. I heard the sounds of grumbling, shuffling of feet, fifty people complaining under their breaths all at once, and then the slamming of a door. Then nothing but silence. Everyone was gone. I understood his move, but I was in a tough spot; I was stuck in this little adjoining bathroom and had to get past him to get to the door that led out of there. I didn't want to be the last guy in this room who caught the “I told everyone to split” hell that was sure to follow.

So I was panicking a little, and I thought of Bill, who would have chuckled at my predicament. I eased the door open a crack and saw Keith sitting in a folding chair by himself in this now empty dressing room. To add to the scene, he was looking down, expertly playing with a big butterfly knife. I made my move, slowly opened the door, and eased myself out and headed toward the hallway door. Keith sensed the movement in the room and growled, “Who's that? I thought I told everybody to leave!”

“It's me—Slim Jim. Erm, hi, Keith. Great gig, man. I was just leaving, too,” I answered meekly, remembering that although I had hung out with the guy in the past, it had been a couple of years since I've seen him last.

“Wait a minute. Where you going? Sit down,” he said.

“I'm splitting. You just kicked everybody out; I thought you wanted to be alone,” I responded.

“That's okay—you can stay. All those fuckers were making me crazy. Pull up a chair,” he told me.

“Okay, cool!”

So I looked around the room that was filled with luggage, guitar cases, and an ironing board, found another folding chair, and saddled up next to Keith. We chatted away about the gig, how cool Eddie Cochran was, and our shared history with the Hollywood Palladium. TJ had just been born a few months before; I told him about that and asked about his wife and kids. All pretty normal stuff. During our talk, Keith had reached into one of bags on the dressing table and pulled out a nice, big pharmaceutical vial. My eyes were lighting up as he dumped out a healthy-sized pile onto the ironing board, flicked his big knife open, and carved out two thick lines, each the length of the ironing board. With no interruption, we chipped away at these long rails and talked for half an hour or so in backstage peace and quiet. The sounds of a rock show being torn down and packed up could be heard in the background. At some point, Jane Rose came and got him, we said our good-byes, he told me to say hello to the guys, and I made my way back across Sunset Boulevard to the studio with a fantastic story to tell the others.

In the past few years, there have been more encounters with Keith. I usually go to see the Stones when they play LA, and I manage to say hello. Rock shows in general are stricter, and the old all-access pass is rarer and not quite what it was in the past. I have a good memory from one of the shows in the 1990s of playing snooker with Keith and Ronnie before the show and seeing Guns N' Roses as the opening act. Another good show featured President Bill Clinton announcing the Stones at the Staples Center in downtown LA. I did turn up at that one with a regular general admission ticket, found the right few people, and wound up backstage talking mainly with Charlie Watts that night about how we drummers deal with blisters on our fingers. On the way back to the seats, I was stopped by and had a good conversation with Larry David. He's a fellow Long Islander and was a writer on the
Fridays
TV show that the Cats had gotten our big break on. We had apparently hung out back then. Sadly, I can't remember that one, but I'm sure it was funny.

Since the Steel Wheels tour, true pal Bernard Fowler has been a touring member of the Stones, and we always see him before the shows. Bernard is one of the best singers I've ever heard and was part of the very first legendary Cat Club Thursday night jam band. Bernard's rocking funk band NickelBag with another true pal, Stevie Salas, on guitar were doing a gig at the Viper Room a few years back, and I went along. The room was buzzing because Keith was there to see Bernard play. The place was really crowded, and he was surrounded in the booth by the stage. I didn't go over and was standing in the crowd. I got a tug on my sleeve, and it was Tony Russell, who has looked after Keith for a long time. He's a New York guy, so we get along fine. We crawled across the room, and I slipped into the already packed booth next to Keith.

“Hey, man. Why didn't you come over and say hello?” he asked over the crowd noise.

“Sorry, Keith, it's really crowded; you looked busy, and I didn't want to bug you,” I answered.

He gave me a “yeah, okay, that's cool” kind of nod, and we watched Bernard's show from the booth. He left during the last number, and we said good night.

Not too long ago, I was in Las Vegas doing a gig at the Hard Rock Hotel. It might be cheesy, but I like to look at all the memorabilia from rock and rollers. I still get off on seeing all the guitars, clothes, gold records, and assorted stuff on display there. One of the glass cases on the floor had a Keith Richards display. In it was a White Falcon Gretsch guitar and a leopard-skin jacket with a brass nameplate at the bottom. It was the same jacket that we had made for him in 1985; I would know it anywhere. I don't know any of the details of how it got there, and I don't really care to; I think it's cool that this jacket is there for all to see. At the end of the day, I'm still a fan of the coolest guy in rock and roll, and I'm happy to have a connection. There aren't too many guys who are top-notch songwriters and have a look that anyone would want to emulate. This display case at the Hard Rock has both sides of that equation. It doesn't say where the jacket came from, who made it for him and why, or any other info about it. It even looks really cool on the mannequin. A fitting end, indeed.

 

12

Don't Worry About It, Son

The Cats were on the bill for a tribute concert to Les Paul being filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was 1988. The guests included the one and only bluesman B.B. King; country music legend Waylon Jennings and his wife, Miss Jessi Colter; superstar, British gentleman, guitarist Pink Floyd's Dave Gilmour; songbird, old pal, and neighbor Rita Coolidge; guitar whiz Stanley Jordan; FM radio king, hit maker, and Cats fan Steve Miller; pop royalty Carly Simon; Les's legendary trio, drummer buddy Rick Marotta, leader of the house band, keyboardist, and composer Jan Hammer, and Les Paul Trio guitarist Lou Pallo; and party pal extraordinaire, guitar hero Edward Van Halen.