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

will come up while you frantically seek employment in your career as an “artist.” It was a terrifying balancing act trying to figure out how to save enough from an unknown amount of income to spread evenly through times when you already knew you would have no income at all.

Chapter 29
     
    I N THE LATE SUMMER OF 1982 an interesting development was in the making, and Jerry Lubin was responsible. Jerry had gotten his fill of being road manager for our band and had returned to the radio. One day John Cougar Mellencamp came through the studio on a promotion blitz. At this point in time he was a young, rising triple-platinum star, and he noticed one of my posters hanging behind Jerry on the wall. He asked how I was doing and Jerry told him. Mellencamp then did the unthinkable. He proclaimed that he would like to talk to me about working together on a project. He said I was one of his early heroes and was eager to speak to me. Jerry, aware that Mellencamp was not privy to his relationship with me, supplied John with the telephone number. All of this took place for the public to hear. I imagine it surprised the hell out of John, who must have forgotten that he had opened for me just a few years earlier in Canton, Michigan.
    John and I had an initial conversation that covered what I was doing with my career and life, and what my future plans were. The second conversation we had he made a proposal to produce my next album. He said it was his way of giving back to someone who had greatly influenced him. He also took the time and trouble to tell me he had picked me from a list of artists that included Donovan and Eric Burdon. I was fortunate to have won that lottery. He wanted to hear something I had recently done––I assume to determine if I still had a voice––so I gave him a copy of
Born to Laugh at Tornados
by Was (Not Was), which I had been a guest artist on the “Bow Wow Wow Wow,” cut. It was less than a year old. I also gave him a copy of
Smart Ass
.
    Convinced that I still had my chops, things began to move quickly and he announced to the media that he was producing my next American album. From that moment on, things all around me began to change. It was first noticeable at theneighborhood bars Kim and I frequented. When I first started hanging out in them I was so low key that many people didn’t even know I was Mitch Ryder, and for a long time I didn’t tell them. I just wanted to be one of the regulars. After a while though, they found out. I guess the thing that puzzled them was the fact that I didn’t live in the expensive suburbs, but was indeed their neighbor. In any case, over the couple of years that we first lived on Winthrop, I became friends with a lot of the regulars.
    When I wasn’t at Alvin’s I preferred to hang out at a place on Warren and Greenfield called Dunleavy’s. I became friends with Tommy Dunleavy and his brother Kevin, who split their time at the bar. I went there for the Euchre tournaments. I knew a lot of the detectives and off-duty cops from the local precinct who shot pool there and, like most of us, anxiously awaited St. Patrick’s Day, the high water mark on the drinking calender, and the busiest night of the year for an Irish bar. I also went down the street to Ozzies a lot. That’s where Kim and I danced.
    Eventually I met a man named Phil Stemelo who played Rugby, was an ex-Marine, a member of a bike gang, and the owner of a place called Rutgers. Phil was involved in two of my musical projects, one being “Good Golly Ask Ollie,” a spoof of Oliver North and the Iran Contra affair. Phil and I actually found a pool hall in Manhattan while we were working on the deal. He also made sure my dress for the cover of the Oliver North send-up was militarily correct. We shot pool together on the Busch League, and enjoyed each other’s company.
    Phil also, almost single-handedly, put together the album cover for my CD
Monkey Island
, which would come a few years down the road. He wrote the liner notes and was a true believer in me. He owns a share of that recording and has yet to see any return for his investment.
    When the news that Mellencamp was going to produce me hit, all of my friends greeted this with well wishes and were happy over my good fortune. Before we ever set foot in the studio, the press response was greater than any I had seen in years and a flurry of activity greeted each day like a flood.
    John Mellencamp wanted to see my band perform, so he arranged