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

only about the way we communicate. They are no longer about the damaging actions that people foreign to love bring upon each other. And that is one of the major blessings I have been afforded by something more powerful than my faltering yet supreme ego. To be with a woman who has so many real problems to face every day, and to be around her as she awakens each day full of life and ready to face her destiny with confidence, gratefulness, and happiness is indeed a blessing.
    Megan recently went with me again to Europe where I created (some say) my best CD yet,
You Deserve My Art
. And now that CD is finished, a book written by James Mitchell titled
It Was All Right: The Story of Mitch Ryder’s Life in Music
has been released through Wayne State University Press, work on my first American CD in over twenty-five years will be finished this year, and this autobiography will be released soon as well.
    But more important is finding out what love is truly about and sharing it with those close to me––especially my wife, who loves me but has stated there is a limit to her patience. I learn in spite of my protests, and my friends . . . that’s the payoff.
    But there is also an ugly downside. Once you have cheated on your wife you cannot expect forgetting or forgiving. Ever. It no longer is a part of your partner’s vocabulary. It makes me wonder how former President Clinton and his wife have come to an understanding.
    I, for some reason unknown to me at this time, believe in my deepest intuitions. These tell me that I not only suffer from low self-esteem, but I also believe women want to dominate me. That is why I show a great deal of disrespect to them. I also believe Megan could have chosen someone better than me, not because it is so hard to make the changes she requires me to make in my life choices, but because I am now in a place where I cannot financially give her the life she wishes to have. The same was true for my other two wives. I believe to the core of my soul I have indeed become the artist I so badly needed to become, but the truth with regard to my financial situation and abilities to provide is pathetic. Please, I beg you. Can you get a letter to the outside?
From Megan

     

     

     

     

     

     

Chapter 34
     
    T HE BIRTH OF THE PROBLEMS I have faced throughout my life, my reaction to the same in the form of my behavior, the continued presence of my low-self-esteem, the daily fears I battle or run from, and the difficulty I struggle with to find trust and love are all explained in the very first chapter of this book. I know this is a hard read for most people, because I am not a writer. I didn’t even find out until a couple of months ago that, today, most celebrities who write books do so with the help of other writers. So I understand and appreciate your patience if you have managed to get this far.
    Like every other person born into lower working class conditions, sometimes drifting between that category and poverty, we are fearful of so many things. We try to isolate ourselves from that fear by purchasing material things and end up hiding our fear in exchange for financial debt. The decisions we’ve made have never been made from a position of strength, a wonderful place reserved for the wealthy where, if you don’t like your decisions you can simply throw them away and move on to the next. No. The decisions we make are trade-offs where if we have gained something temporarily we have also had to give up something else––hopefully not permanently. Many times we give up something we may have liked to have kept. Many times the exchange is a momentary pleasure that cannot be held onto and damage us. These trades we’ve come to accept are not only material. They are also trade-offs of our moral beliefs, our ethical standards, and assaults upon our character and standing in the community. The cost is an investment from which we may never realize a return. Our dignity. Our self-respect. Some of us then flee to the unknown for help. We go to church. We ask for direction and salvation. We become beggars of spiritual rescue.
    Upon reflecting the scope of book, I understand completely that, in spite of what fame I have achieved, no matter how important that seems to be in our culture, it makesme no different from other people who are born from the same soil as myself. I was in some ways unfortunate to get a glimpse of the upper class.
    Oh, I think it’s marvelous that I belong to an elite club in