Suck and Blow (10 page)

A few years after, I returned, met someone else, and we started to fool around in the same room (the couches were exactly the same and
had the crunchiest fabric I've ever encountered, which may be why I haven't been back). Well, lo and behold, Ron Jeremy walked in and clearly wasn't going to make the same mistake this time, so he said, “Room for one more?” and started to get undressed. I was trying to be cool, because I was in the presence of porn people, but when I saw the thing he pulled out, I was traumatized. I lost my erection for the next month.

But back in those early days at Masada, we all were relatively innocent. The funny part was watching Bill Graham come back after his son threw a party. Occasionally we'd get some of that rap. We were his son's friends and his house was trashed and Bill was walking around cleaning shit up.

Around this time Bill got us a gig opening for the Jerry Garcia Band at the Warfield. And after our set Dave said, “The B-52s are playing—do you want to go see them?” I said, “Sure,” and Bill stared at us like,
What the fuck?
We don't know why he was staring at us—he wouldn't tell us—and when we came back we learned that Carlos Santana had come to meet our band. I missed the whole thing and was so mad. I would have been able to sit in with him if I had just stayed where I was at the Warfield and not gone to see the frigging B-52s.

I did luck out, though. When I came back to the Warfield and heard this, I ran out after him, and there he was. I said, “Oh my God, you're amazing.” And he said, “Hey, we're all part of the same thing.”

People treated us differently because of Bill. When we recorded our first album, A& M Records wanted the song “Slow Change” to be our single. When we'd do it live, it was eight minutes long and in a 7/4 time signature, but A&M wanted us to cut it down to three and half or four minutes. It was Bill who said, “The single should be ‘But Anyway,'” and then they immediately said, “Of course, ‘But Anyway.'” He had that impact right away.

The last time I saw Bill alive we finally got Carlos Santana to sit in with our band, and Bill had no small part in it. It was at Golden Gate Park during Ben & Jerry's One World, One Heart Festival, shortly after the media reported that Miles Davis had died. We did a “Mountain Cry” that was twenty minutes long and felt like our high school graduation. I was dueling with him and Chan was dueling with him
and he traded with each of us. We were all keeping up with him, and it was a really long, cool thing. We felt like men after that.

Carlos described the way I play—and I think it's the way that Blues Traveler plays—as like a salmon fighting its way up a waterfall. I was very happy when he said that because it meant he was paying attention to us. I remember telling Bill how blown away I was. He told me that was how he felt after he met Muddy Waters.

Bill died less than a month later. It was just so unexpected. He loved that helicopter, and the crash also took the life of Bill's beloved pilot, Steve “Killer” Kahn.

We were at a gig, and I was one who heard about it first, so I called the band members to get on the bus and tell them that he'd been in a helicopter crash. We were all freaking out because we had such plans with Bill. It was a big deal.

My reaction to his death was to punch Bobby in the face.

Whenever we were under stress, a pattern would unfold in which Bobby would be in bad mood and act like a bully. He had this great, infuriating snort, like he couldn't believe what you just said, and he'd give you the middle finger—put it right in your face and violate your personal boundaries.

So the next day we were at the Pancake House. This was the first meeting where we were talking about what we're going to do now that Bill's died—who would be our manger and where we were going.

I think Bobby was getting up to leave to go to the bathroom dismissively when I said, “You can't leave.” So he snorted and stuck his finger in my face. I stood up and threw a chair across the room. This was in Winooksi, Vermont, and there were all these old people—it was the senior brunch special. I always forget how large I am, and when I threw the chair, I scared the shit out of the entire place.

I went to leave, but before I did, I just turned around and cranked him one, right on the nose. Then we went out and had a big talk about what was really bothering us.

We were freaking out, but by the time we got to the memorial, it was clear that Dave Graham was really going through a lot: not only his grief over the loss of his father, but, as all things are when a powerful man dies, it was a clusterfuck. He and his aunts were dealing with various issues from the inheritance, and there were all sorts of
questions about who would get what and who would run the company.

I remember River Phoenix was there comforting Dave. I'm not sure where they met, but I remember River looking at me and saying, “I'm so glad I get to be useful today.” And that really struck me because that was exactly what he was being.

We were comforting him as best we could, and then we'd see someone from Bill Graham Presents and it would take on the aura of a soap opera. There was all this tension because there were a lot of unresolved issues about what was going to happen next. It was a little bit like being in a Mario Puzo book. I think that was how Bill Graham ran his outfit—he was the head and he had a family.

The last time I saw Bill alive was the day I got to play with Carlos Santana at Golden Gate Park. The next time I was at Golden Gate Park, Bill had died and I was playing with the Grateful Dead.

Before the show I was in Jerry Garcia's tent and he was eating a cheeseburger. All he wanted to do was eat his cheeseburger, and there were all these people fussing and not talking to him. I was just staring at the floor. I had my ridiculous harmonica belt with the telescope, and I was playing with telescope. I could see him watching me, and he sort of laughed a little. I could tell he was trying to put me at ease.

Then the room cleared out, and it was just Jerry Garcia and me in this little tent fortification. I heard him sigh, so now I had to say something. This was my moment to talk with Moses, and Moses really just wanted to sit there and eat his cheeseburger. It was a sad day, but I was also very excited to be playing “Wang Dang Doodle” with the Dead. So I meekly offered up, “I'm a flurry of emotions.” There was a long pause, then he sighed again and said, “Me too.” That was the extent of our conversation.

I remembered Carlos Santana doing a song with the Dead, and it seemed like he was trying to overpower them. They would sort of implode over him, so I was very careful to be humble. I didn't want to impose myself because when you try to establish an ego in a jam with the Grateful Dead, they'll dissolve the ground beneath you and grow over you like vines. So I got my rocks off and put my chops in, but I didn't get greedy and try to outdo them or anything. Afterward I said,
“That was pretty good,” and David Graham responded, “Man, you should have gone for it.” But there was no way I was going to go up there and try to push Garcia around. It just seemed to me to be the biggest mistake I could make, so I did my humble thing.

Every now and then you see the picture of Garcia and me playing. He's fat but I'm even fatter, so it looks like the lunar eclipse of the sun where you can see me behind him. A Russian doll of fat musicians.

Although that was the only time I played with Jerry Garcia, in the years since I've played with the other members of the Dead, and what I've come to appreciate is how they use music like it's magic. It's not a big thing to them—it's just how they hear it.

When it came time to figure out what would happen next for Blues Traveler, we weren't asking for much; we just wanted to be managed by someone who believed in us. Bill believed in us and Dave believed in us, but the people at Bill Graham Presents never took Dave seriously because he was fresh out of college and hadn't done anything yet.

Greg Perloff was as good to us as he could be, but he was running BGP, so it needed to be somebody from their ranks. That's how Dave Frey became our manager. At first he was working for Dave Graham officially, but it wasn't long before Dave Graham was having problems and couldn't really manage us. We tried to have an intervention of sorts, but the interventions we had weren't by-the-book interventions; it was basically me threatening him with an axe handle, screaming that he had to get his shit together or else I would beat his brains out.

Meanwhile, Dave Frey was able to keep things running by dotting the I's and crossing the T's. Eventually it became clear that he was the one who knew us best. We'd always had someone who cared, but they had to rely on someone else who was delineating the logistics. This was the first time we had a logistics guy who was managing us. From 1992 to 1993 Dave Frey was becoming the guy, although Dave Graham was still in there. By early 1994 Dave Frey had become our manager and would stick with us through 2000.

It was a tough year or two for Dave after Bill passed, but then he started to become the adult he is now. He's still one of my best friends. Bill wanted to make him into another business, guy but Dave's more of a poet. He just didn't have that lethal bastard gene.

10

A&M BLUES

Back when we were just getting looked at by A&M Records, we were scheduled to play a showcase at Wetlands. We had exactly forty-five minutes to play a carefully composed set of all our various strengths and utilities as a band. This was a real challenge for us, but we were told the reason we only had forty-five minutes was because these record people would come to see a whole bunch of bands, and each had the same amount of time.

But before we got on to play our carefully crafted set, meticulously timed down to forty-five minutes, someone came running up to us and said, “Buddy Miles is here! Buddy is here! And he wants to sit in with you guys!”

This is the guy who did Band of Gypsys. How was I going to say no to Buddy Miles? So he proceeded to kick Chan off of guitar and do a fifteen-minute guitar solo, then kicked Bobby off bass to do a fifteen-minute bass solo, then did a twenty-minute drum opera, and finally he grabbed my acoustic guitar, sang a song, and cried out, “Buddy's back!” We were supposed to have forty-five minutes for our entire set, and he took more than that in solos alone.

It was horrifying at first, but it just got so funny at that point. Our entire carefully crafted plan to get signed was ruined. But A&M signed us anyhow because they said they liked the way we handled it.

When it came time to record our first album, however, they made it clear that they wanted it to be a documentation of our song catalog. So for us, the big question was: Who would be the producer?

In January 1990 Bill Graham got us into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony at the Waldorf Astoria in Manhattan. There I ran into George Drakoulias, who had produced the first Black Crowes record. I knew he would be perfect for Blues Traveler, so we cornered him: “We've got to get you for our record.” He said, “Don't you understand? I'm over already.” He was about twenty-four years old at the time, so I took that as a blow-off. Maybe he was talking about trends in the music industry, but I still thought it would have been a good album. If Drakoulias had done for us what he'd done for the Black Crowes, that would have been killer. Instead we got Justin Niebank. Poor Justin Niebank. Or maybe that should be poor Blues Traveler.

Justin Niebank had just worked with Jason and the Scorchers as the engineer on their album. That's mostly what he had done at that point for artists like Albert Collins and Johnny Winter.

A&M's approach to this album was, “You have thirty songs, so let's just take the ten best and put them out there.” Justin Niebank's attitude was, “You might think you have ideas, but you've never done this before. I've done this before, so listen to me—I'm making sense.” We weren't angry at him because this was the most attention we'd ever gotten, and he did make sense about a lot of it. But what came out of that was a milquetoast record.

Justin Niebank was so antipot that he didn't want us smoking before we'd play, which, by the way, is all we'd ever done. Then we went to do “Sweet Talking Hippie” and
had
to be stoned to play that song. It's a big stoned jam in one key. So we snuck a joint and, big idiot that I am, just before the take I taunted him: “Justin, we're all high.”

He stopped the take and proceeded to yell at us for a good forty minutes—“You've let your parents down, you've let the label down, you've let yourselves down . . .” Then he gave us this born-again lecture about being stoned before saying, “Roll 'em.”

So what you can hear is the most timid “Sweet Talking Hippie” we've ever done because it was four boys having just been lectured by
some sort of schoolmarm. No, if you're a producer, you get the take first and
then
you yell at them. The more I look back at that, the more I'm confounded by his behavior.

Basically what we did with our first record was just do as we were told and shut the fuck up. And it shows. We felt lucky to be anywhere and assumed that the way A&M was treating us was normal. Then we saw our friends the Spin Doctors, who fought hard and whose attitude was, “This could be our one and only album.” And that's really the way you should look at it. In retrospect I think we should have behaved more like that; we should have made desperate stands.

It was a really bumpy ride getting our album thing going. Our live-show instincts were great, but our recording instincts took a while. We knew how to sell a show, but we didn't know how to make a record. And, truthfully, the Spin Doctors didn't either, but they were convinced they did, and that made all the difference.

They fired their first producer in the middle of their first album. That, to me, takes serious balls. I came in and Eric Schenkman was sitting there with half a bottle of whiskey and asked me, “Is this what it all is, John? Is this what we work for?” They wanted me to sing the harmony on “Two Princes.” They were asking for ideas, and this producer was looking at me like, “Help me.” You could tell it was not a coast of a session; they were battling forces I wouldn't battle. They fired that producer and got another guy, and then they fought
that
guy.

Pocket Full of Kryptonite
is an incredibly concise, brilliantly executed first album. And that's because they fought for it. Our first album is very confused and a little devoid of purpose. Up until
four,
we'd say we were all about the live gig, that you can't capture us on a record. And we had the comfort that people also said that about the Grateful Dead, so we figured it was a thing.

With our second album,
Travelers and Thieves,
we wanted to reach a bit further. Jim Gaines was our choice to produce it, and we were starting to get choices. He'd just finished records with Stevie Ray Vaughan and Santana. He also squeezed us between a half-dozen other projects and was literally falling asleep during our takes. It wasn't entirely his fault—apparently there was a jackhammer at work right outside of his hotel room. So he would come in and say, “I got no
sleep last night,” and we would laugh about it, but by week two he was showing up and falling asleep. We would record a take and then have to wake him up.

I suppose Jim did the best he could given the circumstances, but there was still this feeling of being neglected and left on our own. This feeling was then reinforced by a situation involving Gregg Allman.

We heard that Gregg wanted to do a song on our album, one Brendan had written called “Mountain Cry.” The guys were a bit nervous about telling me, and I can see why, because that's my area but now Gregg was probably going to sing a verse. But instead I thought,
Cool, that's going to be a valuable thing.

So we were all ready to do this. I was our big hurdle and I was all for it, so there we were, at the session, waiting for Gregg. An hour went by past when he was supposed to be there, and then two hours, and then we get a call from Dave Graham, who had picked him up at the airport and they were at a bar.

Gregg was very carefully babysat when he was on the road with the Allman Brothers and used the fact that he was going to New York to record with us as a way to get away from his handlers and have a drink. Dave said, “Hi, we're almost ready to go down there,” and I could hear the concern in his voice. Then Gregg said, “Now give me the phone.” He told me, “Hey John, we're almost ready.” I could tell he was practiced at assuaging the fears of his handlers, and all I could think was “Oh my god, it's Gregg Allman, and he's talking to me!” So we figured, “Cool, this is what they do. Everybody's late.” We didn't care.

He eventually showed up three sheets to the wind. And he was trying to play for me the song on the piano but—this is the sad part—his hands were shaking. I was sitting there, trying to kiss his butt, but I could see in his eyes that he knew he wasn't doing it.

Then after we finished the song, Gregg took me aside into this little vocal booth and said, “I want 10 percent of the record.” I couldn't believe it. Gregg Allman, who seemed all powerful, had just laid this surprise on me. We had figured he was getting paid to do this like any other sit-in we've ever had, so I thought we had made some arrangement with him. I didn't know about this. All I could say was, Okay, let me talk to the guys, because we are a democracy and that seemed to be a diplomatic move.

Then he said, “Oh, I'm playing with Rick Danko at the Lone Star Roadhouse on 52nd Street. I want you to come sit in with us.” That sounded cool.

So the next night I went to the Lone Star, and the opening band had me sit in with them. Then I went backstage and Rick Danko had taken some kind of drug that made him go, “ack ack ack” like the Aflac duck, and he wouldn't stop doing it.

Rick remained there, while Gregg, the opening band, and I started to play. We were a song or two in before Gregg said, “I'll go see what's keeping Rick,” which is code for “I want to do what Rick's doing.” So Rick Danko and Friends became me and the opening band for the entire night.

After the show I wandered backstage and Gregg and Rick were sitting up there, arm in arm howling at the moon, when Gregg said, “You know, I changed my mind. I want 20 percent of the album.” I couldn't believe this—it was getting worse and worse. I didn't know what to say to him because I was twenty-four and this was Gregg Allman. So I said, “I'll talk to the guys,” and he told me, “Don't talk to the guys. Make it happen.” I explained, “It doesn't work that way,” and he responded, “You know I wrote that song.” And now we were at the point when I had to disagree with him.

But then I lucked into the phrase that changed everything. I said, “You're breaking my heart,” and Gregg Allman's entire mood changed as if on a dime. He told me, “Oh man, don't worry about it—you don't gotta pay me anything.” Then he threw his arms around me and gave me this huge hug. He'd vowed to work for free.

When Gregg was sober, he was the nicest guy you ever met, but when he was drunk, you got the Jekyll and Hyde show that you eventually learned wasn't personal. It was just where his brain was, and he didn't remember a thing the next day. I don't think he remembered asking me for a percentage of the album either time. We paid him the fee that was negotiated in the light of day by managers, and it was as if he had never spoken to me about it.

I think whatever Gregg says he means at the time. He just seems liberated from the responsibility of meaning something for all time, which is what most people expect of the truth. It's a great thing to be
that liberated, but I'm not that liberated. Whenever I see Gregg these days I just give him a hug and hold on tight.

We were trying to grow with
Travelers and Thieves,
but we didn't know what we were doing. We wanted to try something in the studio that was impressive like Jimi Hendrix or Led Zeppelin would do, and that became the elephant noises in the beginning of “Ivory Tusk” and all the weird sounds we looped in on “The Tiding” before “Onslaught.”

It wasn't like Jim Gaines was falling asleep
all
the time. We were proud of
Travelers and Thieves
because it was further than we'd come. It was a more ambitious record, and I truly believe that the songwriting was improving, but we were still figuring it all out. And A&M was stumbling around just like us, trying to learn how to make records with us. Their dedication was clear when they floated us a bunch of money to keep things going after I had a motorcycle accident because our business was about to fall apart. So these guys were trying to figure out what to do with us.

But then when nothing was wrong, there was almost no budget, and there would be no promotion. We'd sell fifty thousand records, and it felt like they'd say, “That's great. Let's see what happens when we give them even less money.”

On the first record they said there would be several singles, but there was only one. This would become a theme, and it's a theme for anyone who's ever put out a record out. The label wants to put all your songs out, but if they don't think it's going to make them money, it's really hard for them to push it beyond a first single. You basically have a month to make it interesting to them.

They let us make a video for “But Anyway” on the first album (there was a second “But Anyway” video four years later when it was rereleased as a single after it appeared in
Kingpin
). MTV rejected it, but it got played at hockey games. It was us using a friend's car and my old high school buddy Tom Brown, who popped out as a newsman, and our girlfriends were in it. So at least we got to have fun. It was wacky and stupid and a very family thing.

With the second record, the label tried to push things a little further. But “All in the Groove” never got very far as a single. The
David
Letterman
band played it better than we did, but at least it got us on the show. It needed horns, and the organ was awesome on it.

This all took place around the time when Herb Alpert and Jerry Moss were leaving A&M. They sold it in 1989 but continued to manage it until 1993. I remember the one time we met Herb Alpert. He said, “There's a buzz about you . . . it's a small buzz, but it's a buzz.” And he couldn't have been more right. That was us all along. We seemed like a huge deal—certainly in our own minds—but we were barely hanging on to being a huge deal.

We were always convinced of our absolute invincibility. We just felt that the label didn't sell us right. I would get so upset by those CBS “buy six albums for a penny” ads. I would look where our section was, and we were always next to Elton John. That pissed me off. I feel sorry for my managers because I would call and complain, “How come on the CBS records promotional deal we aren't near Pearl Jam? They're our age—why are we being skewed with Elton John, who's thirty years older than us?” It was more a symptom of what we were going through, in which A&M was treating us like a mainstream band and not getting anywhere with us because we were too alternative for mainstream and too mainstream for alternative.