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

and myself so badly, and became so uncomfortable with the ugliness of that truth, that I created a place for it deep within myself where I vowed to bury it and to never go back to it again.
    Back at
Creem,
I had gone in early to set up for the day’s rehearsal and was walking around the offices for no particular reason when I bumped into a strikingly beautiful university student who was home for the summer and was doing some intern work. We spoke briefly and played with a litter of new kittens she had discovered. Of course I took her name and number. Kimberly Priest. What an odd last name I thought. That’s just what I needed right now . . . a priest. She left, and I carefully looked around for Dave Marsh in the same manner that Peter Sellers always looked for Cato in the Pink Panther movies. Only then did I cautiously ascend the stairs to the rehearsal room to await the band’s arrival.

     
a window to my soul
     
    
Privilege, as granted by birth, is a condition of peril in a democracy. Here, the gatekeeper must never become tired or, for the slightest of moments, suffer distraction. Materialism is the balm that cools the heat of ensuing rage when the mirror casts no reflection at all. The soul-denied dancers, beautiful in their self-confirmation, move to the music of a very small band
.
Freedom, blessed freedom, could you be so common that I might fill my lungs with you and still gasp for the breath of life? Were it not for my good fortune in deliverance and sweat filled blood by your hand might I perish as well? Where lies the reason of desire while massed against your walls lie beggars and thieves waiting to hear the first break in your will? Your weakness so immediately reinforced in reversal by endless contributions of the perfect few. I shall pass a plate of collection that will be filled with your tokens and commerce of fear. Then, and not sooner, shall sleep be of peace
.
The hands of labor both are the backbone of Detroit and the covenant with my past. I have sat next to the wealthy as their insipid needs found a desperate voice, only to be retracted and apologized for at the approach of daylight. I have tasted the potions and powders used by the bored, frustrated children of means and could find no doctor to heal, no crime or cure as the elements seeped out through opened wounds. I have listened in disgust to their jealous affirmations of my fame. They always return to the safety of their transparent dwellings wounded, and regretting having tried to pet the monkey
.

Chapter 18
     
    B ARRY K RAMER COULD READ PEOPLE LIKE a gambler could read an odds sheet. He knew that if he were to have success with me it would have to be without my knowledge.
The Detroit-Memphis Experiment
had been sold or assigned to Dot Records, and they were releasing the first single, “Sugar Bee.” Since Barry’s plans regarding my direction were not yet complete, all he could do was sit back and wait for the results of the record company’s promotion. All the while he was formulating a strategy that would have some relevance to the contemporary record buying public and, at the same time, keep my desire alive. The path of least resistance was to re-form Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels.
    All around us, the gate the Wheels and I had opened those few years earlier, the gate that said, “All right all you little white boy rock ‘n’ rollers from Detroit, now it’s been proven. You can come from Detroit and become national stars,” was wide open. Now, every major record company was flying in to sign up every band that could stand up. During this time Bob Seger began his long-fought battle to achieve his due. Ted Nugent rose up to claim his share. The Frost, SRC, Third Power, The Rationals, The MC5, Tee Garden and Van Winkle, Iggy and the Stooges, Cub Coda and many, many more from Detroit also tried to get their share of the pie.
    The gate had been opened, so it wasn’t going to take long for Barry to realize that Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels, as commercially viable as the name might have been for a short fix, was not going to do it. It was going to take a complete transformation and re-introduction to get Mitch Ryder into a competitive space. Besides, Johnny Bee (Badanjek) would come back but Jimmy McCarty wouldn’t. Jimmy had become a member of the group Cactus and had success beyond the Mitch Ryder connection. He had also recorded for a major label, something that none of the rest of us had done.
    Earl