Detroit Rock City (21 page)

Michael Lutz (
Brownsville Station, guitarist, vocalist, bassist
):
We were playing everywhere. Warner Brothers had us do this show at Oberlin College with Parliament Funkadelic. Big mistake. There was a girl sitting down in front of me while I'm singing my ass off, and she's goin', “You're for the white folks. We want P-Funk.” That was one of the worst gigs I've ever played in my life, man. You know, we come out there, and it's all basically a black crowd, and we open up with “I'm a Roadrunner, Baby.” We did another show like that with Junior Wells. “We want Junior.” In '74 we did 327 one-nighters and ten days in the studio for a follow-up record to “Smokin' in the Boys' Room.” Think we had about fifteen days off. That song, “Smokin'”—that really did it. Cub and I talked about writing a song called, “Smokin' in the Boys' Room” at some point before I woke up one morning somewhere near Houston, and Henry and I were gonna walk to NASA. We were walking down the street, and I was reciting the chorus to Henry, our drummer. I mean, here's my Beatles influence: “Smokin' in the Boys' room, teacher don't you fill me up with your rules.” That's totally English. Henry's objection was “fill me up.” But I thought it was totally cool because it combined Americana with English. At that point I had the chorus. When we got back home Cub and I sat down and I showed him the chorus and he loved it. We wrote the verses together. It came out, and now you're talkin' about a band that is hardcore blues, and now we've got the
biggest rock 'n' roll single in the country at a time when FM radio was the thing and nobody wanted to even talk about AM radio. If you got played heavily on AM radio, you'd sold out. It was really separated.

Ted Nugent:
I had to fight to record “Stranglehold” because the guys that were in charge, the producers, Lew Futterman and Tom Werman and the band, didn't think it was anything but just an indulgent jam session. There was no chorus: “It's called ‘Stranglehold,'—where do you sing ‘Stranglehold?' Where does the song title appear?” They were kinda choked by the status quo of music. I said, “No, no, no, man, this song makes the girls grind, this song makes the audience grind every night. This is a cool song, and just shut the fuck up and record it.” I had to fight for that, man, and I stood my ground. God knows I was right.

Gloria Bondy, aka Gloria Love (
Sillies, backing vocalist, scenester
):
I was traveling with the Amboy Dukes at the end, just before Ted went solo. I was John Angelos's girlfriend, and he was singing with Ted at the time. He was frustrated because he was singing Ted's songs but didn't like the material. It seemed like Ted was going to make it big.

Tim Caldwell (
artist
):
I met Angelos at Magina Books on Fort Street in Lincoln Park, a place Rob Tyner would frequent too. John was looking for some Philip K. Dick novels. He said Dick was one of his favorite authors, and I would venture Burroughs figured in there too. He had on big bug-eyed vintage shades, like Marcello Mastroianni in
10th Victim
. I came over to his house and gave or sold cheap to him a few P. K. Dick books, ones he hadn't been able to find. John was a nice enough dude, no rock-star pretentious bullshit. Seemed to me his promo pics tried too hard to copy the look of Thunders' Heartbreakers, down to blood-spattered white formal shirts.

Jerry Bazil (
Dark Carnival, drummer
):
We played a show with Johnny Angelos and the Torpedoes, and when we were showing up they took Johnny away in an ambulance. Then he came back and did the show. I don't know what happened to him, but he came back pretty together.

Tex Newman (
RUR, Shock Therapy, Country Bob and the Bloodfarmers, guitarist
):
We played with Angelos three weeks before he killed himself at the Roostertail. He was a real bad junkie and was having problems with his old lady. He was
always a very shy dude. Next thing I know Tim Caldwell had loaned him something by Philip K. Dick, and I guess he had a few drinks and went in the garage and turned on the car.

Bill White (
bassist, Ted Nugent and the Amboy Dukes
):
John was ahead of his time as a character. But I saw him the night before he died at a party and he said he wanted to go out with a drink and a sci-fi novel in his hand. And that's exactly how he did it.

Chris Panackia:
It was ridiculous. He was a great singer with Nugent. And the Torpedoes were great. Asphyxiated himself in the garage. He was chasing that needle after a while. And Tussionex. Drank it like a wild man, like fucking water. I used to work for him: The Torpedoes. Warner Brothers was looking at them.

Gloria Bondy:
I was with John Angelos for ten years. We weren't together when he committed suicide. His mom, she said John's car wasn't in the driveway and she thought Mitchell, John's son, was going to come home soon and no one would be there. She went into the garage and saw John dead. She called and asked if I would come over and help her call the police. She didn't want to be alone, so I went over there and saw John dead in the car. I couldn't believe it. I never thought he would kill himself. He was waiting for a contract to come from LA, and I think it came the day after. I don't know if that was the only reason. He wanted to make it.

Gary Reichel (
Cinecyde, vocalist
):
We all saw Bob Seger and Ted Nugent before they were big, There were good then, and when they got famous in the seventies, they weren't. That was the consensus. And they weren't even really local anymore, either.

Rick Kraniak:
The seventies is when you didn't have too many Michigan bands headlining here. It evolved to where the ballrooms were bringing in these national artists moreso than the Michigan ones. Nugent didn't really play some of those really popular places like the Eastown very much. Then we started headlining him at Cobo, and then he became a staple again. The big shows got really big. We did the famous ELO playing-to-tape show at the Pontiac Silverdome. Our stage manager for the show went to see ELO in Ohio before they came here. This was a big show for us, our first at the Silverdome, and we didn't want to mess it up. He came back and said, “You know, I think these guys are on tape.” We said, “No, no way.” That was just a huge deal at the time; it was pre–Milli Vanilli getting busted
for not singing on their records. So we watched the soundcheck very carefully the day of the show, and we were able to affirm that they were playing from tape. The show was exactly the same length—the song order, the space in between songs. Odd things happen in between songs usually—you know, the guitarist turns up his guitar or there'll be some feedback. But these things were clinical. Detroit busted ELO.

Tom Morwatts:
I owe Bob Seger an apology. We played with him on a big bill; he was the headliner. It was a nice facility, a hockey arena, and it had good-sized locker rooms separated by a chain-link fence so the teams couldn't get at each other. Bob Seger's band was in the one next to ours, I guess. We had finished and we played well, so I was happy about that. I was drinking Metaxa Ouzo—it's this Greek version of tequila—and it can make you insane. This girl comes into the dressing room and I was talking to her for a while, and I ended up chasing her around with a guitar chord, snapping it at her like a Three Stooges thing. We're running around in circles; I'm trying to get this guitar cord close to her ass. She would run out the door, and then five minutes later she'd come back in, and we'd repeat the whole process. As I got drunker, though, I started walking over to the fence separating us and messing with them. Finally I was hanging on the fence drunker than hell, going, “Bob, You're a homo, aren't you Bob? You guys are all homos. Tell me. You can tell me.” I was just being a total jerk. They all just looked at me like, “You asshole.”

David Teegarden (
Teegarden & Van Winkle, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, drummer, vocalist
):
Bob Seger was doing this solo thing, that
Brand New Morning
stuff, when Skip and I started playing in his band. He was discouraged before we joined. He dumped the System and was doing that folk thing. Later Bob mentioned to me he had considered going back to college. Later on, when things got good, he told me, “I'm glad I didn't do that.” Yes, that would have been a bad idea. When I first met him we had Teegarden & Van Winkle. We had recorded “God, Love and Rock and Roll” with Westbound, and we had a hit. Instead of us opening for everyone, we were headlining. Bob came backstage after one show ranting and raving about how he loved our deal, and we traded numbers and all
became friends. He came over to our house and jammed. I have hours of tape of us jamming, with him playing guitar. He was pretty good on guitar, but he wasn't as serious about his playing because he was into writing and singing. But we hung out, and one day he went to Skip on the side and said, “My band the System is breaking up. Would you guys mind forming up?” We said, “No.” But later on we played with him as a backing band sometimes.

Charlie Martin (
Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, drummer
):
Before I came along they were doing the albums in Oklahoma through Leon Russell's studio. They did
Back in '72
there. But Eric Clapton was coming out of this heroin thing and had Derek and the Dominos rolling, and so through Leon, he started falling into this Tulsa thing, since some of the Dominos were Okies. When Eric wanted to do
461 Ocean Boulevard
, Leon recommended the same group that he had recommended to Bob. So they all went with Eric, and Bob had no band to record with. He went through this six-month period where he had to slap a band together.

Tom Weschler (
photographer, Bob Seger road manager
):
No, it wasn't like Eric came in and stole the band. That's not what happened. They were all ready to part.

Wayne Kramer (
MC5, Gang War, solo, guitarist, vocalist
):
I called Bob when the MC5 was over and said, “Bob, let's start a new band. I play lead, you're the front man; this is a good idea.” He said, “Yeah, Wayne, that is a good idea, but here's what'll happen: you'll be in a band with me, and at a certain point you're going to want to go out on your own, and that'll be too hard to me.” It was pretty much a nice way of saying I'm not going to hire your ass. So all he hires is people who don't really matter if they're on the gig or off.

David Teegarden:
Skip Knape and I had been playing with Bob, and we played on
Smokin' O.P.'s
. Skip sang one song on there, I sang one, and when we cut the tracks, Bob called me and said, “Your track sounds good. You mind if I sing it?” I said, “Hell, you're the singer. We're just filling in.” So Bob sang all the tunes. The original idea was the album was going to be credited Bob Seger with Teegarden & Van Winkle. When the LP came out, I got a call from Skip and he said, “Hey, our names are not on there.” So I called Punch Andrews and I said, “Hey Punch, is this a Bob Seger album?” He said, “Yes.” I thought about it for a second and I said, “Well, you paid the bill.” He said, “Yup,” and I said, “Okay, I guess it's a Bob Seger album.” Skip didn't like it, but Bob and I stayed friends. But that was the end of Teegarden & Van Winkle playing with Bob. For the next album he wanted me to
play and I had commitments. I'll take credit for the Muscle Shoals deal, because in my talks with Bob, he was due to go in and record some of these songs we were doing in '72. I said, “Here's the number for Muscle Shoals. It's good.” He talked Punch into funding it.

Drew Abbott (
Third Power, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band, guitarist
):
When I was in Third Power, we played one of Punch Andrews's clubs. He was really upset that we were playing so loud, and we just said, “Well, if it's that bad, don't pay us.” He said, “No, no, keep the money.” No one turned down money. Punch was so taken aback by that, we became friends. I knew Seger as well, and I was looking for some work—this was after he did
Back in '72
. I stopped by Bob's house and he said, “I'm playing tonight in Ypsilanti. Come on down and check it out.” He had this great group he was calling the Borneo Band. After the show we went out to his Winnebago and he said, “How'd you like to play guitar with us?” I said yes right off, and that eventually became the Silver Bullet Band. We left three days later and did 260 one-nighters a year starting with that tour. We did a tour opening for Bachman Turner Overdrive, then did a Kiss tour. At first it was billed as Bob Seger. Pretty soon we added Charlie Martin on drums and changed some things around. We got Chris Campbell on bass. Alto, who is really Tom Cartmell, never toured with us until we got big. He had this regular job, and he didn't put in the hard road time with us.