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

differently, and I couldn’t talk to Leslie because he was always high on cocaine. Near the end of the tour I was putting down a fifth of Jack Daniel’s just to get myself on stage. After the tour, I stopped drinking and returned to writing songs with no clear goal in view, amidst ambiguous and infrequent communication with Prager. One day he called and said he wanted me to fly to Philadelphia for a “meeting” with him and Philadelphia International Records.
    I arrived only to find it was an audition, which I had not been informed of and was totally unprepared for. I was greatly embarrassed and noticed an attitude of enjoyment on Prager’s part at witnessing my failure to perform anything improvised or original. He essentially was saying, “Here you are you great star, exactly what I know you to be. Nothing.”
    The money soon came to an end. I no longer had a recording contract, which Prager had seen to. My band no longer existed and I was starting to panic. Then I received the following letter from Prager. His fun was about to begin.
    Dear Mitch:
Without going into great detail, after working together for one year it looks like this. We’ve advanced you $11,649.69. In addition, we spent time and money, including legal fees, in obtaining your record release from Paramount, something that none of your previous managers and attorneys could accomplish. We put you on the Wild West Show, from which you earned $3,517.50 without paying commission or offering to reimburse us in any way
.
After that you decided to form your own band. Thus far you’ve failed to keep any band together long enough for me to bring people to hear it. This, even though I had one company that would have put up $100,000 if they could hear and like you and your band
.
During the past year I have tried to make a record deal for you. But it is not easy. Almost every company that knows you or knows of you does not want to be involved with you. The people who previously dealt with you for some reason or other want no further involvement with you. We’ve had turndowns from Columbia, Atlantic, MCA, Capital, Mercury, andIsland. GRT was interested if they can see you live. The one company that was really interested, Philadelphia International, you blew by being totally unprepared for the audition
.
Now when I put it together with Denny Cordell and Shelter, your lack of cooperation and inability to oblige is absolutely shocking. It almost appears that you have no interest in a recording career
.
We’ve certainly tried and we’ve certainly paid. Whenever you’re ready to do your part let me know. I’m sure you can find some record companies that want you, so be sure to keep us posted. Meantime we’ll keep looking
.
Sincerely,
E.S. Prager
.
    I couldn’t understand or find any logic as to why Prager was trying to frustrate me at every turn, lie to me, and then try to turn everything around in an effort to blame me for following what were clearly his directions. As far as my previous “managers and attorneys” were concerned, I never asked Barry Kramer or John Sinclair to get me released from Paramount. And, the idea that I owed Prager commissions from the Wild West Show puzzled me. They had control of the money and, I assumed by reading the contract, that they were to take out their commissions before they paid me. That was, and is, the common practice.
    The assertion that I couldn’t keep a band together long enough for Prager to have an interested party view it was a bold faced lie. Prager himself told me to disband the group I had assembled. As far as a company being willing to put up a hundred thousand dollars, I had never been informed of such a situation.
    Why Prager felt it necessary to inform me of the many great record companies that had rejected me because they didn’t want to be involved with me finally opened my eyes. This man and this letter were meant to hurt and demean me. Now it was clear why he hadn’t told me the truth about the meeting in Philadelphia. But his philosophy was taking root at some level, because I now realized I was standing next to an enemy.
    I was now operating at such a heightened state of insecurity that when the offer to be involved with British producer Denny Cordell appeared, if there was in fact such an offer, I did not feel trusting enough to pursue it. I remembered when Barry Kramer was my manager we had a meeting in the state of Washington with Denny and Leon Russell. They were looking for a singer