First Gigs In The US

In May of 1978, I got a call from Marc Jordan. I’d known him since the first year I worked with Shirley Eikhard when he opened for us at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. 

“How busy are you?”

 He was riding high on a critically acclaimed album for Warner Bros., and was continuing an extensive tour to promote it. He had already done a set of shows in the US earlier in the year, a tour I was asked to do, but I was booked. Now, two of his band members were unavailable to do the remaining shows. 

He said he had thirty-six concerts over seven weeks, all but two of them in the US.

I hadn’t as yet played anywhere outside of Canada, so this would be an adventure for me. I said yes.

The two weeks of rehearsal were uneventful.

The first three shows were a different story. 

Use The Stairs

Show number one was in Hartford, CT. The concert was fine, and afterward, we went to a record store and signed autographs. Seriously! People were asking me to sign Marc’s album. 

“I’m not on it,” I said, but they didn’t care. 

My signature looks like a Rorschach test. Like an inkblot. And that’s being nice. You’d think that someone who plays the piano would have more control over their hands.

Later, when I was with Gord, guys would show up at the reception with guitars. 

They wanted all of us to sign them. 

I’d say, “you don’t want me to sign it, trust me.”

“Oh yes, we do,” they’d insist.

Eventually, I got good at distracting them and weaseling away, “Hey, there’s Gord!”

But not before depreciating by half, a year’s worth of Gibsons and Martins.  

Later at the hotel, the drummer, Rick Gratton, who came with me to this gig from Shirley’s band, had three guys follow him into the elevator, kick the shit out of him and then get off at their floor. My first performance ever in the US, and I’m getting a sinking feeling. 

“They carry guns here too.”

The best story is my second US gig a week later in Los Angeles. 

So I’m going to save it and skip to number three.

Nowadays We’d Be Barred

The main part of the tour began in Houston, Texas. It started on a Saturday evening, so we were to fly there from Toronto on Friday.

Our visas hadn’t gone through yet, so we had to pretend we were visiting friends. 

Marc and a few others got through the customs pre-clearance and were on the plane before the officers opened my suitcase and found six pairs of drumsticks that Rick had asked me to carry for him. They figured out immediately why seven long-haired guys in their mid-twenties were visiting friends in Texas. 

They sent two uniforms onto the plane to get any of us that had squeezed through. When they got there, they apparently used the words “Come Peacefully.”

An international incident already! And we hadn’t left Toronto.

Marc somehow hid, perhaps in the restroom, and headed off to Houston without a band.

US Customs and Immigration pre-clearance was set up in the sixties to better deal with travel-oafs like us. They catch you in your own country, so there’s no expense in flying you back. After admonishing us for thinking we could trick them, they sent us away, saying, “don’t try that again.”

In case you’re wondering, we did make it to Houston in time for the show. Warner Bros. Records pulled some strings, and we had our papers by noon the next day.

What kills me was the tacit implication that the two new guys, Rick and myself, we’re responsible for the fuck-up. And we’re like, “Is everybody forgetting that the plan was illegal to begin with and that the pinhead lawyers at Warners were the ones popping the pooch?”

* * *

During the seventies, Los Angeles was the center of the show-biz universe. New York and London shared it in the sixties.

The idea that “you’ve made it” when you’ve played those places springs from the same bullshit mythology that brought us Tiny Tim and the crazy notion that Laugh-In was funny. 

But still, it was thrilling, particularly to a nondescript flunky piano player like myself, to perform in such iconic cities.

How To Inspire Awe

Los Angeles, more specifically, West Hollywood and the famed Roxy Theatre, was just my second time playing in the US. We were opening for Robert Palmer. 

We flew into LA the day before. Our hotel on Sunset Boulevard, which will remain litigiously nameless, was where anyone who thought they were someone stayed. 

It also had a reputation at the time of being an employment opportunity for thug wannabes, the same pool of reprobates that certain department store chains draw on for security. None of us were robbed at gun-point in our rooms, but later I met some that had.

The Rainbow Tavern was just a ten-minute walk from the hotel, so a few of us headed down for a drink. Along the way and in the bar, there were people in the strangest clothing. It looked to me like a convention of aliens and transvestites. I figured it to be Hollywood chic and decided that this was one California fashion trend that wouldn’t play in Peoria. I was wrong. Months later, I realized It was the audience for the Rocky Horror Picture Show. 

The next afternoon the crew at the Roxy set up our equipment behind the stage curtain, and we did a quick line check. We then waited until 9 pm for our set. 

The curtain was the kind that went up rather than the more common ones that split to the sides. We didn’t know that the crew had set up the back legs of the keyboards on the overlap of the curtain. 

“Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Marc Jordan,” said the announcer. Marc counted in the first song, the curtain rose, and so did the back of the three-tiered stack of pianos and synthesizers. 

I moved quickly but still ended up with a Mini-Moog on my lap. Marc kept playing and singing, seemingly oblivious to the swarm of roadies frantically trying to fix things. 

Everything, except my dignity, was back to normal by the second tune. 

Hello LA.