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

evolution of mankind through their cunning self-serving agenda. They would control the world monetary system, cause countries to go to war for their own material gain, (say, that does sound reasonable if you’re in the arms industry) and never have a “real” allegiance to any country because they were, and would forever be, desert-hopping nomadic misfits who suffered under the delusion that their God was a realestate broker. Why else would Jews be driven from and persecuted by so many, and yet set up shop in each new home with an ease of transition that could only come from a stubborn, single-minded purpose and insidious practice. In America
, Mein Kampf
implied, the “chosen ones” controlled the media, and thus, public opinion. Wealthy Jews bought members of Congress and owned them. And Hitler’s last complaint? By following the dictates of a punitive God in the Old Testament, whose words were written by Jews, they had killed Jesus Christ. My question is: why did it take the world so long to realize that Hitler was fucking insane?
    There was the key, the lie, and the promise in one neat little package. There were no other words available that would allow those men to start their own country and, at the same time, have the blood and sacrifice of the commoners around them. After all, who would physically protect those beautiful words? Yes, the commoners would be their “equal.” Smooth, to say the least. And promises would be made and broken. But, off in the distance somewhere was that long shot chance that you, a commoner with bold initiative and hard work, could rise up through the class distinctions and become one of the American elite. All you needed then and now was money. Well, I bought it. I decided right there, on that marvelous Florida beach, that I was going to be rich.
    First, I would have to destroy my hatred of the wealthy. Given the fact that I was going to one day be living next door to them, it simply would not do to have ill feelings toward them, since I was certain they would welcome me with open arms.
    While Joey and I were in Miami, many fortuitous events were in the making. Cassius Clay, whom I respectfully refer to as Muhammad Ali, was going to box Sonny Liston. This was important to me because I loved the sport of boxing. Before I was old enough to make myself intimately aware of the sport, I knew three things about it. My father had told me that Sugar Ray Robinson had beaten him up outside a Detroit library while showing off for two of his pals; most of the fighters, the really good ones, were Italian; and everyone was always looking for “The Great White Hope.”
    I recall sitting outside one summer night, listening to the first Floyd Patterson/Ingemar Johansson fight on a little transistor radio. I savored every second of it and surrendered my imagination to the ringside, dodging the lurid sweat and the spattering sacrificial blood while sitting next to the announcer as he tried in vain to be heard above the screams and cheers and jeers of the drunken, impassioned fans. He coughed from sucking in the smoked filled air but, in spite of the winner, he called the fight just right. “Peek-a-Boo” Floyd was already past his prime and, even to a young teenager like me, you had to know he must have badly needed the money.
    I wondered if there would ever come a young champion that I would be able to more closely identify with. Then came Ali. “I am the greatest,” he would say, so proud and sure of his place in the world. I wanted that cocky confidence and strength. Then he would say, “I’m pretty, and I’m smart,” and he was not just empowering young American blacks with his theatrics and bombast, he was giving young men of every color all over the world a simple but absolutely necessary piece of life called hope.
    One of the most cherished moments in my life came decades later as I sat right next to the Champ, the man who had helped repair and shape some of my life-view atsuch a critical moment, and we shared a banquet “birthday” meal together while covertly watching a boxing match on my hand-held TV, hidden discretely between ourselves just under the table, as the speakers, one after another, droned on and on with their praise of, and birthday wishes for, Muhammad Ali.

     
    Muhammad Ali and Mitch Ryder watching TV
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    But just as interesting to me was the impending arrival of a group of British musicians who called themselves The Beatles. Joey and I maintained the