Devils & Blue Dresses: My Wild Ride as a Rock and Roll Legend

boom. It was over and I got my old band back. Wilson Owens on drums, Billy Csernits on keys, Mark Gougeon on bass, Robert Gillespie and Joe Gutc on guitar. We did the usual tour then recorded, coming out with the album
In the China Shop
. “China Shop” contained some exceptional songs, but it also carried with it some of the more important production techniques and shortcuts I had witnessed while recording with Mellencamp. I was not only trying to improve as a singer and a writer, but as a producer as well. That was 1985.
    Back home, things with Kim kept swirling about from good to bad. There was a lot of mistrust on both sides, but we occasionally reached a quiet truce that sometimes lasted up to a week. We were living separate lives now and not sharing too much of anything in the way of conversation or information.
    I came to realize that my drinking on the road had become un-appealing, but I hadn’t brought myself to that place where I would stop. Our contract rider contained only three requests: five bottles of vodka, five quarts of orange juice, and a carton of Kool cigarettes. These were all consumed prior to the show, and the rest of the time we stayed straight. It was a buyer’s dream, at least in terms of expenditures.
    But when I was home, I spent every free moment at my favorite bar. I eventually started taking my work there and wrote songs and lyrics and whatever came into my mind under the cloud of alcohol.
    When I came home from the road, the house was sometimes full of strangers, soiled clothes, unclean dishes with food all over them scattered about the entire house, people passed out in one room or another, and our pets running to me to get fed. I had seen a paper that suggested Kimberly might be suffering from manic depression, what they now call bi-polarism. That information helped me understand what had driven her behavior for many years, but it wouldn’t make the next six years any easier. She continued to mask her pain, but mostly she sank deeper and deeper.
    I was also in deep pain, and I had two ways to momentarily deny it. I either found a woman to spend a night with or, more likely, drank myself into oblivion. One night after an unforgiving verbal assault between Kim and me, I wanted to kill myself. I could not find the courage to leave and I couldn’t stand another minute of this existence. I took my loaded assault rifle and sat behind the garage in my beloved backyard and fired off a few rounds. I knew it would bring the cops. Maybe they would be kind enough to do the job for me if I refused to surrender my weapon.
    What I didn’t count on was the fact that I knew most of the police from drinking together at Dunleavy’s, and their only response was to tell me to sober up and put away the rifle. Then they left.
    After the China Shop recording Johnny Badanjek re-entered the line-up on drums, replacing Wilson Owens. Wilson had tried to seduce my fourteen-year-old niece at a gig, so he had to go. George Konig, the bass player from Shadowfax, was back in my life, too. We often went golfing together and sat for hours recalling what we considered the good old days.
    One time, when Neil Thompson was our road manager, George and I were walking down the street in Amsterdam. We were following Neil and someone else from the band as we cruised the streets looking for the next exciting place for empty lives to get a refill. Along the way I found a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk. We were excited, but decided not to say anything to the other two, since they had obviously missed it before we found it. Maybe twenty seconds later we found another one. This time we decided we should share our good fortune with them, and as we approached Neil and as he turned to greet us, we saw that he had taken the night’s receipts and stuffed them into his partially opened shirt. He was losing our own money as he walked.
    We all wandered on, breaking empty beer bottles against walls, and eventually the police arrived. They were going to arrest Neil. Neil didn’t want to be separated or alone, and the police refused to take any of us along. George decided he would stay with Neil, so he walked over to one of the officers and punched him in the face. Off they went.
    George was a genuine rarity. He was an excellent bass player, and even though he was not a wealthy man, he knew how to appreciate all that existed that was worth keeping. He loved the excitement of being a social creature, yet he made time to