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

and paid for a rehearsal hall in Troy. It was actually a church. I assembled the band as it was at that time and there was no Wilson Owens. Instead, we had a temporary drummer, a friend of Richard Schein’s.
    Through the years I have had people ask if I remember so and so, because he used to work with me. I’ve come to understand the meaning of that to apply to someone who was on the same bill, someone who sat in at a rehearsal, someone who worked with me a week or two on a temporary basis, or some other transitory position. That’s why, in the beginning, I don’t give credit to a few of the musicians who, although very good, such as Mike McClellan, never served any real time with me in the trenches. RayGoodman is another story like that but not the same example. Ray is a very good guitar player and served as one of the revamped Detroit Wheels under Barry Kramer.
    In another situation, Ray put a band together and we toured out West. We even did duets from time to time. In fact, I recently played with Ray in Ypsilanti. Musicians sometimes find better gigs and move on; things change and they come back. Basically though, since I stopped doing solo gigs forty some odd years ago, I’ve really only had the Wheels, the Thrashing Brothers, what I call the George Brothers, and Engerling, my German band.
    So John, in spite of my belief that I only cared about the quality of the music, began to watch as the group performed, and he was watching with an eye on appearance. He wanted young, skinny, good-looking, and talented. I protested and he lay down the ultimatum; his way or no way. I imagine because of his success he had his own notions about what was marketable from an image point of view, and even though he respected me, he felt I was out of touch on this issue. So, more than half my band was gone immediately. He did not want to fail. I think that would have bothered him.
    From my point of view beauty only mattered as to how it applied to the music coming off the stage. Everyone I turned to for advice told me to do what John said, because he was offering me an opportunity that I had been unable to create for myself, and it might never come again.
    After the recording was finished, John hand picked the musicians who were the nucleus of my touring band. He did allow Mark Gougeon to stay, and at the time of the rehearsal we were experimenting with two keyboard players: the fading Billy Csernits, and Harry Phillips, whom I had last worked with in the band Detroit. That was in 1970. This was 1983. But Harry somehow appealed to John and he seemed to have mellowed. Harry was a good friend of a man named “Chooch,” who has since passed away. Chooch was a friend and satellite figure to the Rolling Stones entourage and Harry supplied him with some of the best pot known to man. Harry also possessed the rock ‘n’ roll look John was seeking. The rest of the group came from John’s backyard in Indiana.
    Having cleared that hurdle, John wanted to start picking out songs for the album. He chose two of the songs from the
Smart Ass
album, wrote or co-wrote some, and took songs from outside writers. He also had a great idea in pairing me with Marianne Faithful, who had also been trying to establish herself overseas. There were other guest artists as well. Gina Schock (drummer for the Go-Go’s) played drums on one of the songs. John used every trick in the book and in the end, the album sounded great.
    John insisted that I appear on the American Music Awards with him and got his way. The press coverage was excellent, crossing from the
New York Times
to
Time
magazine. Looking in from the outside one would have to say that John Mellencamp didMitch a favor that Mitch should be eternally grateful for. Polygram pushed the product well, but a local Detroit television station, WDIV, pushed the project better than anyone in New York. They did a week-long daily segment on the making of a recording and followed the process every step of the way. The single from the album, a Prince composition called “When You Were Mine” from his
Dirty Minds
LP did very well in some segments of the country, but poorly in others. Polygram dropped the option, and under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of the story. But there is another side that is much more compelling, especially in light of the fact that the album sold nearly eighty thousand units.
    In the beginning, when I was told I would be making the album, I started to put together