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

millions of dollars that Bob Crewe and his brother Dan had weaseled away from me. But in the end, communism was a philosophy I couldn’t embrace. You are not a star unless you believe you are, and that was hard to believe living in poverty with a famous name. I hadn’t given up on my country, but I was almost ready to give up on the music business.
    John wasn’t able to make it work. The band was broken in spirit but was desperately holding to the belief that some little miracle would appear to save the day. The country wanted to get away from anything that reminded them of counter-culture and revolution, and that included John, and through him, me.
    Kim and I had now acquired the initial glue that would hold our relationship together and carry us beyond the realm of sexual attraction. We compared our scars from the battles we had braved together and slowly began to function as a single unit. Neither of us was willing to get married, but we were very much partners and we both needed to now step back and look at our lives. We needed a rest. I said goodbye to John Sinclair and to the band Detroit, and Kim and I returned to our apartment to lick our wounds.
    Paramount Records was still owed an album, but I wasn’t up for it. I heard that John was able to negotiate a second Detroit album with Paramount, separate from my contract, and my replacement singer would be Rusty Day. Rusty Day was later murdered in front of his twelve-year-old son, and then they killed the son since he was a witness. Drugs.
    My life didn’t make any sense. I had been too negligent in my responsibilities to my health, my image, my relationship to Kim, and most painfully, to my children. It was no longer about being a star. I had lost my pride and self-respect as a human being.I had allowed myself to be taken to a place where I couldn’t pay my bills. I couldn’t pay Susan’s alimony, my car had been repossessed, and we were being evicted from our apartment.
    The IRS sent me a notice, so I made my way downtown to their offices for my appointment. The agent listened to my story and ended up giving me a silver dollar to keep in my pocket so that I might never be broke. Kim, thank goodness, had kept her old Volkswagen Beetle from college; otherwise we couldn’t have gotten around at all. There was nothing to live on and I couldn’t think clearly. It, in hindsight, was disgraceful.
    The continual sacrifices and increasingly lower standard of living coupled with a reckless lifestyle had torn Kimberly away from her upbringing. How could a beautiful young woman like her still be with me? Had I destroyed so much of her that she couldn’t leave the sinking ship, or did she really love me so much that she would tolerate the indignity of the unwarranted poverty I had brought her? Was she as weak as I was? We would find out very soon, because we no longer had money for, or good will enough, to hang with the party crowd.
    Kim and I moved in with my relatives, Uncle George and Aunt Erika. George McDaniel was my mother’s step-brother, and Erika was born in Germany. She met George while he was stationed there as an MP. George had a gunsmith license and a small machine shop in his garage. I watched with fascination as he started with a block of wood and slowly cut, shaped, and sanded it into a beautiful rifle stock. When my mother and father had taken me as a child to visit Erika’s parents on Second Avenue in Detroit, George was living there. He turned me onto the Green Hornet, an action hero on the radio and taught me how to fence with a rapier. He knew me as a boy, and now he was facing me as a man. He didn’t care what was going on in my life, he only knew I was in trouble and was willing to shelter us. That was enough.
    Uncle George was a self-styled intellectual who could speak for hours about any subject and held an opinion on everything. He spoke fluent German, and he and Erika spoke it around their house when they didn’t want anyone to know what they were talking about. Against his advice, I began doing a few gigs with some of the players from that side of town. It was pretty much a bar band and, as I could no longer afford drugs, we began to drink heavily. Although still manageable, it showed the potential for problems. The band was called The Knock Down, Drag Out Party Band, which was later shortened to The Knock Down Party Band.
    The group had some excellent players: ex-Detroit members, ex-MC5 players, and a lot of great music that was