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

chose to look the other way because when we were back home,his style of drumming was perfectly suited to the American market, and where we would do any of the German material?
    When John Badanjek wasn’t complaining, he was joking. He had his hands full with Joe Gutc, because Joe was the master of fun. But complaining and joking are the only two sides of that man I have ever known, even to this day. I deluded myself into thinking that John was grateful to have a gig and would eventually accept my direction.
    John didn’t make too much trouble in Germany, but when we returned to America he began separating himself from the band and often gave speeches to the band about how he, being a former Detroit Wheel, considered himself different from the other band members. The insinuation was that he considered himself better than the rest of the band.
    That was a problem. First, most of the guys had been with me almost three times the amount of years John had. Then he would tell me how lousy he thought Joe Gutc and Billy Csernits were. He liked Robert Gillespie, because Robert shared his view of what rock ‘n’ roll was supposed to be, look, and sound like. He also welcomed Mark Gougeon because of his professionalism, and because he had survived the Mellencamp cut. My problem with John’s belief was the very real truth that my German material was not about rock ‘n’ roll or sounding like what was on the radio, but was instead based on my sensibilities as an artist.
    The year prior, 1987, had taken us to Japan for a five-city tour. It should have been a welcoming indicator for my career, but I managed to derail the opportunity by sabotaging the shows with my alcoholic intake. We didn’t have a deal there and I treated it as if it was a vacation, instead of an opportunity. I was also irritated because of the constant friction in the band, and also because Kimberly decided she had to come because her father had been stationed there during the war.
    I was miserable. I was so miserable that I made plans to leave the band and Kim and head to Bangkok. The problem was that I told someone in the band, and the next thing I knew was when it time came for the band and Kim to head back to America, that’s exactly what they did. In the process, someone had taken my passport and my wallet. So there I was with just a few dollars in my pocket, sobering up to the fact that I was stranded in Tokyo.
    I couldn’t find my booking agent. Not that it mattered. This gig had fallen into his lap. Since I’d left New York I hadn’t been with a decent or powerful agent. I had been with some of the better ones in Detroit, like D.M.A., which was run by Dave Leone, but I had also allowed Ron Baltrus to get me gigs for over a year, when his specialty was putting titty dancers into bars.
    I was always scratching and sniffing around for money, wherever I could find it. That’s how Richard Schein came to own several of my original oil paintings. That’swhy I took gigs in clubs where you only had a fifty-fifty chance of getting paid. Some star I was. But you know what? I still had my art. Yeah, the kids had been cut loose. The first wife had been abandoned and the second one was on her way out. I fucked other women. I drank too much and I didn’t respect much of anything that couldn’t immediately hurt me. I sure as hell didn’t know what love felt like. I knew what it looked like by watching other people. But I had my art. On my terms. I wasn’t selling shit, but I was continually growing as a writer and a singer and as sick as I was spiritually and mentally I continued to document my life through my music.
    Eventually I found my way back to Detroit.

Chapter 31
     
    O NE OF THE TWISTS FOR MY new German promoter, Karsten Scholermann, was the introduction of our band to the dreaded communist East Germans. Karsten had opened a relationship with my German manager, Gert Leiser, and several promoters and party officials who were trying to quell the uneasiness with the youth of East Germany in their struggle to adopt Western culture, especially rock ‘n’ roll. I don’t know how or why my band and I were picked, but along with a lot of cooperation between the communist controlled East German government, Gert Leiser and his friends, together with the efforts of Uwe Tessnow, Karsten Scholermann, and the West Germans, we were invited by the state to perform in a soccer stadium with a huge East German general’s tent for a dressing room.
    Even