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

the tracks someone made a mistake. In America it would be a quick shout from the control room: “Okay, someone fucked up. Let’s run it again.” Not so with my new German friends. Immediately, every one put down their instruments, pulled briefcases and chairs into a circle, broke out the score sheets, got some coffee, and began a serious conversation about exactly what had occurred. I was blown away. The attention to every detail was of supreme importance to them.
    After ten minutes everyone indicated they were ready to resume and we did the take without error. In fact, they were so immersed in each song that there were very few mistakes. It must be a German thing and made me think back to the 180-degree kind of recordings I did with the Thrashing Brothers where drinking, exhaustion, fighting, and mistakes consumed a lot of studio time.
    Engerling had an inherent discipline that I had not seen since the days of professional studio players back in New York City. It was their pride and professionalism that made me know from that point on I would be surrounded by men of music who, althoughthey were one step removed from the American heartbeat of rock and R&B, were men I could teach. To top it off, they were eager to listen and learn.
    The second impression is much wider in scope and a bit political in nature. Experience tells me that people who come from countries unfamiliar with freedom, liberty, and consumer driven economies, as expressed in American terms, are lost when first introduced to this new reality. It is without question the under-privileged, poverty stricken, and lower classes from any society that work harder and create more effectively to reach their dreams than established upper classes with their built-in connections and protections. Ruling classes, especially in the business world, have bought and paid for a law of the land that is specifically tailored to help keep their domination in tact.
    The most visible demonstration of the lower classes access to a better life comes through sports, music, other forms of entertainment, and serving. Entertainment and serving the public is what the higher classes control, but don’t or can’t actively involve themselves in, given the fact that for most it requires too much physical energy. I always laugh when I hear politicians comment on how long or how hard they have worked to serve the public. I’m not saying the upper classes don’t work hard or like to get dirty. It’s just that their mandate tells them the reason they must work hard, think, and play dirty is to maintain control. In my mind, that’s way different than working hard and getting dirty to raise yourself up from poverty and make enough to help your family survive. That is an honest and righteous pursuit.
    I like sports and boxing, as I have stated previously. Since the fall and re-shaping of the old communist controlled countries, we are beginning to see not just boxing, but all sports showing a tendency to become dominated by people from the old communist Eastern bloc countries. It is no different in music, which brings me to my point.
    Musicians from East Germany are hungrier and more focused on their goals as musicians than most other musicians I’ve been exposed to. Engerling is a good example. In Germany, this fact along with many other political decisions about what to do with German tax dollars has brought deep resentment between the two different Germanys that have now become one. Likely it will take another generation or two for the two sides to embrace their fellow countrymen.
    In one of the first performances I did with Engerling, I introduced them to my Western fans and the band was booed, but now, after years of touring with them in East and West Germany, they are welcomed, expected, and accepted by all of my fans.
    Attending the recording of the CD
Rite of Passage,
as she had done for
La Gash,
was Megan. As our worlds became more and more visible to each other, her price for a relationship was being tested by me way more than it should have. I was only just beginning to understand how fucked up I was as a partner, and also as a human being. Alas, I was no longer alone.
From Megan

     

     

     

     

Chapter 33
     
    N O LONGER ALONE. W ELL, THIS WAS going to be difficult because in my first two marriages I was alone in the sense that I was not a good partner. And even though Susan was kept from becoming close to me, we did have the children. That was reason enough to make it