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

everybody got drunk and melancholy and there was little violence. From the outside, I’m sure they all looked like a typical American family who enjoyed the holidays. And I think they actually might have. Colorful lights, a beautiful tree, story tellings, memories, singing, and an abundance of alcohol.
    My family’s Christmas, Thanksgiving and assorted other gatherings were subdued by comparison, mostly because the majority of my family did not drink that much. We had more fun with Kim’s folks, and we never even thought about counseling. The fights came and went; they were that much a part of our lives.
    It was this particular winter that Tom told me I was about to receive visitors from Germany. I had traveled to a few foreign locations, but Germany was a mystery to me. I knew from the un-ending American media representations that it was a conquered nation full of Nazis. That was a mainstay on American TV. Sadly, it still is.

     
a window to my soul
     
    
Privileged American world travelers and business people, who easily fool themselves by putting themselves into the position of being able to say, “Some of my best friends are Germans,” don’t understand how easily this stereotype can spread into hate. Nor do military personal who have family and wives and children in Germany
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I’m getting a little old to be talking about a hateful representation of a people still being spoon fed to American audiences. And yes, I’m resentful of German school children who are made to take “field trips” to Holocaust museums. Lest we forget. That war killed millions of military combatants, and millions of innocent non-combatant women and children––and most of those people weren’t Jewish. If I wanted to understand why “my” people were so easily hated and destroyed I wouldn’t separate myself from mankind and demand they keep looking at the evil that was done only to them
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In the example of the Jews I consider myself as, and insist upon being, an equal to all mankind so not one person could say I was different. And instead of creating museums in Germany that showed six million Jews being destroyed and tortured, and put in camps, I’d create a museum that showed all ten million human beings who were destroyed and tortured, and put in camps by the Nazis
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But that wouldn’t make me special would it? It was a need to be special that drove the Nazis into their philosophy of superiority. In their minds they were the chosen ones, except they didn’t need “their” Bible to confirm it. Their Messiah was Adolf Hitler
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    In any case, three German gentlemen arrived at our flat. One, a very tall music journalist; another, Richard Wagner, one of the producers of the TV show they had come to negotiate and; the owner of the new German label that had leased Vacation for the album’s maiden release in Germany.
    Uwe Tessnow was the owner of Line Records out of Hamburg, and held the title of “the golden boy wonder” at his previous corporate job. Uwe loved music. All kinds of music. I never did ask him why he chose my album at MIDEM. He was sort of like an un-knowing angel.
    The concert they wanted me to do was called “Rock Palast,” which was a multi-act concert broadcast once a year on a special night not only in Germany, but throughout Europe. The estimated viewing audience would be well over one hundred million people. I was being invited to be part of the show, which consisted of me, South Side Johnny and the Asbury Dukes, and Nils Lofgren. It was to be the perfect kickoff for Uwe’s new label and a tremendous opportunity for me to enter a marketplace I had never been in before.
    In the early days with the Wheels we had cracked the British top ten a couple of times, but we had never been entrenched in Europe because my management focused on English speaking countries. I do have to laugh because I own a copy of “Sock it to Me, Baby” on a Japanese label on which they totally screwed up the translations for the lyrics. If anyone owns a copy of “Devil With a Blue Dress On” sung in Spanish by Los Lobos, you’ll understand what I mean.
    At this time, the persuasive, addictive powers of rock ‘n’ roll were spreading like the Wall Street panic and Europe was coming of age. The site of the concert was a large indoor auditorium in the city of Essen, and even though the site would be filled with people, mostly young Germans, the entertainment would also come to the millionsof people watching on