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

mink bedspread. The triplex was where my education about the road to superstardom began. And, there was a lot of educating going on because at least a third of my time was now being spent in New York City, while I divided up the remainder with Susan and Dawn in our new home. Plus, there were personal appearances, which were becoming increasingly numerous.
    I was staying at the triplex so much that the maid asked me what I wanted to eat as she made out the week’s menu. Mr. Crewe had also brought in a young man named Billy that he was guardian to. Billy wanted to be a saxophone player and many mornings that’s all you could hear. He was a big, muscular young man and kept a weight set in the triplex. He also provided sex to Mr. Crewe as part of his agreement with Mr. Crewe to keep him from going back to prison. Alan chose a young man named Lenny who provided the same services for him.
    There was a kangaroo-skin couch on the main floor where all kinds of people passed through. Once I arrived to find Stephen Stills (of Crosby, Stills, and Nash) deep in conversation with Mr. Crewe on the dead kangaroo. Another time a very perplexed and fearful Seymour Stein was there. Stein was at that time employed at
Billboard
magazine and was trying to figure out some damage control for the Federal investigationinto “bullet fixing,” a term for falsely attributing chart positions to recordings so as to increase their sales and radio exposure. He later went on to a big career with Warner Bros. Records and was a co-founder of Sire Records. Artists, producers such as Shadow Morton, whom Mr. Crewe said would be great if he could quit drinking, and socialites of every stripe . . . the place was never dull except on holidays. On holidays the city was dead.
    The triplex was also the place where Bob, Alan and I first listened to “Strawberry Fields” by The Beatles, and correctly guessed it was the prelude to what was to become “Sgt. Pepper.” It was the place where we sat transfixed listening to a recording by a young Stevie Winwood performing “I’m a Man” with the Spencer Davis Group. It was the place where I came in to find Bob Gaudio working on more Four Seasons recordings. And there were many, many parties.
    The address, the access, and the company kept made me feel important, and in a way I was, because Bob Crewe was driving me up the ladder to superstardom. Publicity dates were arranged with other famous artists so I would look to America as an already established star of unequaled proportions. Millions and millions of recordings were being sold under the name Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels but all the time I was in New York stoking the machine, the boys were back in Detroit waiting for the next dictate to come down from Mr. Crewe.
    On one of the vacation weekends Mr. Crewe decided to take me to Connecticut to visit a man named Morris Levy. Morris eventually wound up in prison for the way he did business, and was rumored to have something to do with the murder of a policeman. But at this point in time he and Bob Crewe were fast friends, and while the two of them went to discuss their private business I was given a tour of their beautiful mansion by Morris’s wife, who was probably the most physically attractive women I had ever laid eyes upon.
    Another holiday weekend took Mr. Crewe and me to see a home in Connecticut that Dan, his brother, had purchased. There was a huge fight between the two of them because when Dan arrived, Mr. Crewe had almost completely taken down a wall with a sledge hammer in an attempt to help his brother reshape the interior. Unfortunately, Dan had not been consulted. It wasn’t much of a fight, at least not the way I was used to them, but they were doing some serious homosexually inspired notions of physical damage to each other.
    The triplex was also the very first place I did acid (LSD), but it was controlled and we had a licensed doctor in attendance to monitor our reactions. I recall walking into Central Park that weekend and feeling wonderful. As I walked, I came upon an acquaintance and friend, Michael Bloomfield, a talented guitar player I had first seen at the Dylan sessions, and then again with Paul Butterfield. When the band and I wereon the road Michael had approached me about being the singer for a new group he was putting together for Columbia Records called The Electric Flag. I turned him down. On this day, though, he appeared distressed and stood in a tortured stance on an