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

really gutsy rock ‘n’ roll. I had no expectations from the gigs, other than the badly needed money. Wayne Kramer had a great take on my condition at that time. Too high.
    After a while, I drifted away again and couldn’t bring myself to get a straight job. Every time I accepted the reality of my situation, an errant gig would came along and fooled me into thinking I was still a star.
    I had stopped doing drugs . . . almost. We had now begun social drinking around my uncle’s house with Erika and George. Apparently they saw nothing wrong with drinking. But, I was hiding some real problems because one winter night I went to a bar and got so drunk that my uncle woke me up late the next morning from a deep sleep inside the car. It wasn’t the first time I had passed out in such as way. Nor would it be the last.

Chapter 20
     
    K IM TOOK ON A DISTRAUGHT EXPRESSION to her face. She began to withdraw from her usual outgoing and upbeat personality, which we had both come to rely upon during our endless times of crisis. Her lovable adopted confidence of the worldly-wise woman was now replaced by the helpless look of a lost little girl. She became quiet and depressed, and asked me to hold her as she lay her head on my chest and quietly cried, not saying a word. I gently rubbed my fingers slowly back and forth across her brow trying to make the wrinkles of despair fade from her beautiful face.
    In four short years the hard and fast life I had been living, the exhausting attempts at touring, the tiring endless miles of highways, the smoke filled clubs and halls, the parties that lasted ’til sun-up, the disappointing attempts at a comeback, the desperation for money and now, without even the privacy of our own home, the truth of our situation overwhelmed us. Kim and I lay huddled together in the makeshift bedroom of my uncle’s basement against the insanity of reality.
    I needed to admit defeat, turn my back on what was left of my career, clean myself up, and cut my loss. I needed to stop dragging this woman through what had proven to be a demeaning and unforgiving struggle to satisfy the addiction of stardom. I needed to give her something other than my life to live for. If I truly loved her, which I said I did, I should offer her the choice between getting married and starting a new life, or setting her free.
    I didn’t do either. I didn’t do anything. I let her choices be her own. She was more than welcome to stay with me, because I was frightened to be alone and could hardly think for myself. I had nothing to offer other than what she had already seen and the faint distant star I was following. I neither owned, nor claimed, anything else. It was only about me and my selfishness and my fears. I was delusional, and felt that if I didn’tsomehow keep walking to the footsteps and beat of the music that lay unclaimed in my head, that I would cease to exist.
    Our bond was growing––but mostly at the expense of happiness––as Kim blindly threw away her independence to more deeply invest in the future of the star known as Mitch Ryder. I began to see Kim as a different person. A kindred spirit. A soul whose hurt could be easily felt. In my mind she had been my lover and comrade, but now she was becoming my equal, and what she couldn’t match in talent and ego, she was forced to match in monumental sacrifice. I would see to that. Even though we weren’t married, it was beginning to feel as if we were and her commitment to me had significantly raised the stakes for the two of us.
    We took another trip to New York. While there, we discovered that one of our more pleasurable acquaintances, the J. Geils Band, would be performing in Central Park. The band had come to visit us when we still had an apartment in Royal Oak,Michigan. I remember feeling so special at the time, and when I think about it, I wonder if I would have taken precious hours out of a tight schedule to do the same.

     
    Kim and I desperately needed something to lift our spirits, and we were having fun sitting backstage in Central Park watching the band perform. Our emotions were running high as I looked out at the adoring audience and pretended it was my show and they had all come to see me. God, I missed it so much. The stardom. Now, when I could get work, it was for eighty or ninety people in some small dump in Detroit. After the J. Geils show was over we said our goodbyes and prepared ourselves for the trip back to Detroit where nothing at all