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

Susan to New York where we began looking for a place to live together. That would at least keep me out of trouble in the place where I was spending more and more time. We looked at a few places, but everything that seemed safe to our Midwestern sensibilities and safe for our daughter was too expensive. So, for the moment, I brought Susan and Dawn to New York when I was able.
    Alan, in addition to taking the band and me to California for the first time to do a show in San Francisco and carrying on about “White Rabbit,” a psychedelic acid rock song by Jefferson Airplane, also began the task of making the connections we needed for the future. We did a lot of TV appearances, which required going to L.A., and I remember running into some of Susan’s friends from Michigan State University on that visit. That was because Michigan State was playing in the Rose Bowl that year. Her friends were nearing graduation and Susan would have been with them if she hadn’t given up her university studies to marry me.

     
    Alan took us to a clothing store on Sunset Boulevard and dressed us up in the outfits we wore on the cover of the albums that featured “Jenny Take a Ride” and” “Breakout.” Later, most of the band and I rented some motorbikes and did a tour of the hills, where I had an accident and damaged my hand. That’s why I appeared on Dick Clark’s TV show with a bandaged hand. I remember looking at the other two set positions while we were waiting in our stage performance area and watched the fabulous Paul Butterfield Blues Band. Then we did our thing.
    I also remember a Dick Clark show from Philadelphia earlier that year when I made eye contact with a curious Paul Simon as he stood next to Art Garfunkel. Both were staring in wonderment at the mighty Mitch Ryder. We were now meeting and performing with artists whose records I had purchased, not stolen. Wow!
    In addition to the booking agency, Alan signed me to the Connie De Nave Agency for publicity. I thought it was funny because one of their other clients was Dave Clark from the Dave Clark Five, whom we had destroyed in Detroit to earn our contract with Bob Crewe. I began a friendship with one of her secretaries, which eventually turned sexual, and then into a fascination for the two of us.
    The next thing to occur was a key part of the question as to who broke up the group. Apart from Bob Crewe’s early signals about which direction he was leaning, the United States government made their move and sent draft notices to my dear friend and Dawn’s godfather, Joey Kubert. Then they repeated their plunder of the Wheels by drafting Earl Elliot. Earl decided to make his own choice, as opposed to the government, and enlisted into the Marine Corps. Joey was pissed off, frightened, and sad. Here we were, finding success and having our teenage dreams realized when he was asked to put his life on the line. I talked to Joey, told him I would see what I could do to involve Alan and Bob in pulling strings, not knowing that in less than a year Jimmy McCarty and I would both receive our draft notices.
    Joey had heard that the Army would not take you if you were a drug addict, so he began shooting up so as to leave tracks in his arms. It worked, but in the meantime we had to keep a working group out in public and we replaced Earl on bass with Jimmy McCallister. Instead of hiring another guitarist we brought in a keyboard player, Jerry Sherida, who was with the band for a few months before he got his draft notice. Jerry chose to buy several pounds of marijuana, lock himself in a motel room, and call the police on himself so he would have a criminal record and be refused by the Army.
    And that brings me to another argument over our lovely British Invasion specialists. Not only were they loved by our girls simply because they talked weird, but they also weren’t decimated by the draft in America. How can you compete with that?
    As the year I was twenty neared an end, Jimmy, Johnny and I went into a session that produced the single “Devil With a Blue Dress On.” Carmin, the bass player from the group Chicago Loop, another of Bob Crewe’s projects, and Gary Knight, a writer and cool keyboard player from Bob’s stable, were also there. We had a friend from Detroit named Denny, who was begging us to help him get a contract with Bob Crewe. He supplied the very high falsetto screams on the track. The record became our second gold recording and stayed in the top twenty with