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

recovery and recovery programs is that there is no accountability––you can slip a million times and still have welcoming arms awaiting you. That is bullshit. You either have the will to stop or you don’t.
    Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous are the only two disease-related groups that trumpet and celebrate the growth of their membership. If I was dealing with terrible disease I wouldn’t be happy about growth. I would be alarmed and start looking for a cure instead of a fellowship.
    To celebrate our Paris success, Jurgen threw a lavish party. Prior to the event we ate at a restaurant called
Ban Douche
, and were hosted by the two brothers who owned the place. There, I was offered heroin. It had been at least ten years since I had any and I wouldn’t be shooting, I would be snorting, so I wasn’t that concerned with the cut. I should have been. As we ate I began to sweat, and I didn’t notice until I looked at my clothes and felt my hair. My entire body was dripping with sweat. Then I felt weak and faint. One of the brothers grabbed me and we began to walk. The next thing I remember is lying on a cold, empty tile shower floor and hearing the voices of two franticmen talking about where to put the body. When they realized I wasn’t going to die, they cleaned me up and we returned to the meal. Then it was on to the party at Jurgen’s. Eight balls, hash, and magnificent vintage French wine was being circulated.
    While we were there, Billy made an interesting friend who was an associate of the William F. Burroughs gang. Wilson was in the basement having sex with one of the female guests next to the furnace on the floor. Richard moved about as if he were the American Ambassador to France, and Mark and Joey hung with the road crew and laughed all night. Kimberly and I met everyone at least twice and then the sun, as it usually does, brought everything to an end.
    The tour was a great success if we remind ourselves we are talking about a cult status, and not an arena success. Then came the studio and our first digital recording. It was 1981. This was also the place where the infamous Owens on Csernits attack took place. Uwe was dumbstruck, because after a few minutes to rest following the fight, the band was back in place and recording. In the end we came out with the product called
Live Talkies
, which would turn out to be our biggest seller yet. Tom estimates that Uwe sold around eighty thousand copies of
Live Talkies
. In Germany that is a lot of sales. Whatever was going on in America I now became oblivious to, because I had finally found a way to achieve my dream––outside my homeland.
    We had to go home sometimes and when we did we toured in an RV Tom acquired for us called a Palm Beach. It was a GMC vehicle that we took all over the country. It was in this vehicle over thousands of miles and months that every human drama possible was played out. We had taken a friend of ours, Jerry Lubin, who was an ex-DJ for WABX during the high-flying hippie days, as our road manager/driver. But Jerry didn’t appreciate our sense of humor.
    One day we took off and he noticed debris trailing the RV as we drove down the road. He stopped and went to the back of the vehicle only to find his suitcase strapped to the back bumper. He was furious, but because he didn’t want to go to jail for killing someone all he could manage was a quick, almost foreign sounding growl that seemed to say, “Wall to wall assholes.”
    Tom was no longer on the road with us. I think what did it for him was planting the child porno magazines in his luggage without his knowledge, and then delighting in his attempt to explain it to customs on a trip back from Amsterdam. He now worked hard at building the European market since our label, Seeds and Stems, was defunct. In America there was no breakthrough, and I realized I had been with this band for six years, in the business for nineteen and with Kimberly for fourteen.
    In 1982 Kimberly and I finally moved into our own house. True, it was a rental, but I don’t think I can tell you how happy that little accomplishment made me feel. I hadn’t had my own house since 1967 when I was with Susan. Just to be able to live ina house with your own yard to care for and a garage brought me immeasurable amounts of joy. I thrilled at the notion of having a simple laundry chute in the bathroom wall in which to drop my clothes into the basement. True, we were still in Detroit, and there was still