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

teacher, spoke little English but was happy to be leaving with a real man. The next morning the German schoolteacher awoke in a panic to discover where she was and what she had done. She flew from the room without bothering to take all of her clothes.
    There was another odd woman I met at the famous club, Onkel Po’s Carnegie Hall in Hamburg. She approached me because she knew I was American and she was having a very hard time connecting with anyone else. Turns out she was an Israeli Jew. She took me to her room near the airport where we had sex until she had to leave the following day. I wrote a song about our encounter called “I Fucked a Jew in Germany” but Uwe refused to put it out.
    But the most important woman met in Germany was Geisela. When I stop to think about the women in my life who have made any difference about how I view life and love you can count them on one hand. Geisela was one. Her parents owned a bakery, but you couldn’t tell it from looking at her. She was beautiful and energetic and challenging. She wanted the world and, because I wanted her, I pretended to have it.
    In jumped my contradiction. I went to Paris to hang out with Jurgen, as our relationship had become special and our fondness for each other had grown. On one evening we went to visit Elton John at his beautiful home off the River Seine. What I remember most about that visit was the fleeting figure of a young oriental servant running from some unseen danger as he dashed for his life from room to room.
    Later that evening, as Jurgen and I sat at a table in a quiet little café, we realized we wanted our relationship to be something that would last, and so we committed ourselves to that end. While we were in the café, we fell to the floor in an embrace and as we were kissing each other, the other patrons became upset and left. I left Paris profoundly changed in whatever notions and doubts I held for my sexuality. but still nonetheless confused.
    Because the Mellencamp-produced album and single were starting to appear on the charts in America, we were also enjoying airplay on the Armed Forces Network (AFN). The music was so blatantly commercial American and so far removed from what my German fans had come to expect, that they were having trouble coming to grips with the new direction. From my point of view, that was not the only problem. Now, for the first time, our performances were starting to draw Americans as we played near some of the bases. So, what I held as a special covenant between my German fans me and was now being altered by the presence of Americans in the crowd.
    I did the
Never Kick a Sleeping Dog
album songs and the American service people cheered, because they had heard them on the Armed Forces Network. But then I wentinto my German material, which the Americans had never heard, and the Germans cheered. I did songs like “Bang Bang,” which was clearly an anti-military song or “Er Ist Nicht Mein Prasident,” which was a criticism about President Ronald Reagan, but also a warning about letting George Bush the First become president, because he had been head of the CIA. The Americans were deeply concerned, but it made me understand that my German material was so far under the radar that no one in America was even aware of my German recordings. For that matter, very few Germans were as well. I left that tour seriously concerned over my future in Germany.
    Nearly two years passed before I returned. It was the only time I ever allowed that to happen. I had become nearly hysterical over my absence from Germany, and the Indiana band from the Mellencamp days had pretty much run its course. They were just too pretty, too professional, and too predictable. I began to yearn for the dysfunctional aspects of the old band.
    Then fate reared is ugly head once again. The hardest lesson for me to learn is that I am not in control here––or anywhere. Someone, probably Gary Lazar, manager of the ill-fated Rockets, came up with the idea of a Mitch Ryder and The Detroit Wheels reunion concert at Pine-Knob to be recorded and filmed by a huge crew. Capital Records would own the tapes.
    This was 1984. We did the concert. I had managed to secure another tour in Europe but I had to take the reunion band. I didn’t enjoy it much because I had agreed to sing covers of “Rocket” hits, whatever that was. The music, however, was exceptional with Johnny Badanjek on drums, Jimmy McCarty on guitar and Jim Noel on keyboards. Then