A Few of Dave’s UK Big Daddy Memories
The Pink Elephant
Our first full, live gig in England was an unmitigated disaster, a case of the wrong band booked into the wrong room. We’d had a great response to our performance on the Old Grey Whistle Test TV show; we were headed to Luton to play our first “club” gig at the Pink Elephant, and we’d just found out that the venue was what was known as a “Youth Club,” meaning that patrons had to be between the ages of 18 and 22 to be allowed in. At 24, I was the youngest member of Big Daddy by at least five years, so I was a little worried about the demographic fit.
“It won’t matter; British audiences love American rock and roll, and they also love the droll and absurd! You’re really going to go over here,” Andy—our liaison—told us. Hmmm. . .
The club was big, a high-tech disco, but with a round, curtained stage. As we waited to go on, we could see the lasers and mirrored balls lighting up the room beyond the curtain, pushing a crowd of dancing teens to the pounding pulse of “Caribbean Queen.” Suddenly—like, in the middle of the song, suddenly—the music stopped cold, and as the dancers began to gripe, the DJ announced, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, direct from the United States of America, please welcome, BIG DADDY!”
The curtain rose as we jumped into the rat-a-tat-tat of our corny-silly At-the-Hop version of Barry Manilow’s “I Write the Songs.” I don’t think any of these kids had seen us on Whistle Test. None of them were the least bit prepared (or interested) to see a tongue-in-cheek celebration/parody of American rock and roll, and they certainly weren’t at this club to enjoy an evening of droll absurdity.
The packed dance floor stood stock-still watching us, with their arms folded and mouths open. The closest we got to applause after the first tune were a few indignant shouts of, “what the fuck is this shite?” and “get off the stage, you wankers!” But it was too late. We were there, so we did our thing. One of the staff told Gary Hoffman and me afterwards that we were lucky there was a strict “no food or drink on the dance floor” policy, or we’d likely have been pelted. Auspicious beginnings, indeed.
The Zap Club
Coming from a first show like that one, we were nervous when we arrived at the Zap Club in Brighton for our second live gig. The place was actually under the road fronting the beach, a curved-ceiling, barracks-style room (“just like the Cavern!” we thought, romantically).
Gary, John and Andy in front of the Zap Club
The opening act was a performance art group of some kind, and—watching them load in their odd assortment of stage props—I was curious about what sort of crowd might show up. The dressing room at the Zap Club was far below the stage, in a tiny basement so small we had to dress in shifts.
John, Marty and Tom in the world’s smallest dressing room
As one of the first ones to get ready, I decided to head backstage to see how the opening act was doing. The room was crammed to what seemed over-capacity with people in metal folding chairs, and they watched the spectacle on the stage with rapt attention. A contortionist near my side of the stage was pretzled into an unlikely shape, moaning as though in pain, and a man in a WWI pilot’s get up sat on a tall stool, smoking a cartoonishly-enourmous cigar while reciting bleak, existentialist poetry. For some reason, the stage was covered in broken, raw eggs. In the center of the stage was a small crucifix bearing the body of a dead rabbit.
Yes. They’d crucified a bunny. I was told later that the rabbit had already died prior to the performance, but we didn’t know that at the time. The audience was dead silent and grim.
As the pilot finished his poem, he announced that the rest of their “ceremony” was to take place at a “sacrificial bonfire” down on the beach, and he invited the crowd to accompany them as they walked down the aisle and out the front door. Five or six patrons (among the two or three hundred there) actually got up and followed them, as the rest of the crowd sat in thoughtful—and perhaps confused—silence. While we waited for the staff to clean the egg yolks and bunny blood from the stage, I wondered whether our particular brand of shtick had skipped right over its natural cultural niche into a demographic too far, from one extreme to the other. Would we be too square—in an entirely different way—for this room as well?
I needn’t have worried. The crowd, wound up with post-bunny-execution tension was ready to release it all, in a frenzy of frolic. It was a joyous throw down. They loved us immediately, and by the end of the first song, all of the chairs had been folded and tossed aside. The club was hot, humid and sticky, exactly as it should’ve been. Those people put at least as much energy into the show as we did, and that gig remains one of the four or five most enjoyable performance memories of my entire career.
John Hatton, playing the Zap Club
Nothing Like the First Time
British television in the mid-80s was odd. Viewers had four channels between which to choose, and the BBC’s programming choices seemed to have been made by pulling ideas randomly from a discarded bag of old socks. On a given Tuesday night during what, in America, would’ve been called “prime time,” one could choose between a documentary about flywheels and pulleys, a show called “Wavelength,” which consisted entirely of ambient drone sounds played behind a single, hour-long shot of a moderately-placid lake, an agri-business discussion talk show about farm prospects, or The Old Grey Whistle Test, a show featuring live performances by pop bands. Luckily for us, pretty much everyone watching TV on a Tuesday night was watching that show. There couldn’t have been more ideal immediate exposure.
The next afternoon, John, Gary and I were at a shoe store down the street from our flat in Hampstead, and while the cashier rang us up, “Dancing in the Dark” came on the store radio. It took a second to sink in, the familiar song in the unusual context, and the three of us realized what was happening all at once. Likely mystified by our proud grins, the cashier said, “Oh my god, don’t you hate this band? Why would they do that to such a great song?” Before we could respond, she said, “and did you see them on Whistle Test last night? They’re SLOBS!”
“It’s us!” John said, excitedly. “Really! That’s us! We’re the slobs!” I wasn’t sure she particularly cared to know this, but she finally asked for some proof, and I sang a couple lines of the song. She looked at me for a minute, and then said, “Stay right here! Let me go in the back and get Carolyn. She REALLY hates you!”
We ended up autographing a shoe box for them to keep in the counter (or not).
The Supper Club (note: was that the name of it?)
I can’t remember exactly where this place was, but it was remote. We drove for what seemed hours, through empty moors and farmland, seeing little but sheep and hedgerows. Eventually, we pulled up in front of a lone building, the only structure for miles. As we stumbled from the van, we noticed a couple of guard dogs eyeing us from the roof.
. . .the dogs on the roof
Bob and Marty getting out of the van at the Supper Club - Bob noticing. . .
“Well, this should be interesting,” somebody said. Fortunately, it was interesting. I have no idea where all of those people came from, but the place packed out, and they were as enthusiastic as any audience could’ve been. Another truly memorable gig.
With Marty, at the Supper Club
Tom and Nick, testifying to “Ebony & Ivory”
Our British Colleagues
Unfortunately, Vince Ciavarella and Jimmy Street weren’t able to come along to England on either of the first trips, so the record company hooked us up with a couple of ringers to fill in on piano and sax, Dave Taylor and Nick Pentelow. These guys were fantastic musicians, and they picked up our material with amazing speed and finesse, learning it all in essentially one long rehearsal.
Dave Taylor and Nick Pentelow
Nick was exactly the sort of self-effacing, befuddled-Hugh-Grant style of British gentleman Americans find irresistibly charming, but Dave was another can of beans entirely. He was presented to as the “British Jerry Lee Lewis of Finland,” and he more than lived up to the nickname. For one thing, I don’t think I’ve ever met another human who could drink more beer. In fact, he had an endorsement from a beer company, and he travelled with his own shiny white upright piano, pulled behind the van in a trailer bearing the company logo. He occasionally brought his girlfriend Tina along, and watching their odd submission-dominance interaction made the rest of us feel a bit sheltered, if not downright uncomfortable. As we’d arrive at a venue, Dave would toss her his trailer keys and say, “Tina, go get my piano.” We could see her out in the parking lot, struggling to roll this enormous piano down the trailer ramp by herself, while he went inside to look for free beer to stuff into his overcoat.
Dave also tended to casually urinate into dressing room sinks (“it’s closer—less spillage!”), a practice that didn’t sit well with Marty, who generally wanted to brush his teeth before we played. Headed north one night in the van, Marty asked Dave to start using the urinal instead.
“You yanks are so pissy about pissing,” he laughed. “Hell, if it’s a cold night and I’m warm under me covers but I gotta go, I wakes Tina up and I says, ‘Tina, time to carry me piss.’ And I stick it in, and she takes it to the bathroom for me.”
“. . .Wait,” one of us said, uncertain. “You. . .pee into Tina, and she gets up, carries it into the bathroom and sits on the toilet for you?” Gulp. Tina was sitting next to him as he told us this. “Tina, really?” I asked, and she nodded, shamefully. “And she never spills a drop!” Dave exclaimed, proudly.
Craig, the Tour Manager
Our tour manager Craig was easily the hardest-working, most competent Communist I’d ever met (“peasants of the world, unite!” was his motto). He was a laid-back, unflappable guy who’d drive every mile in the van, and by the time we’d come back from having put our costumes in the dressing room, he’d have all of our gear out of the trailer and on the stage.
Craig, the Tour Manager
Nothing Like the First Time
He was also good at procuring diversionary substances for the three of us (among seven) who were interested in filling some of the road-tedium with chemical distraction. He brought us a gooey chunk of hashish the size of a newborn’s fist, and it lasted for several weeks, since a piece the size of a small pea was generally more than sufficient for an evening or a long drive. At the end of our first leg in England, though, there was still quite an impressive blob of it left, and the three of us spent the morning trying to smoke down the baby’s-thumb-sized remaining portion before we got to Gatwick airport. I know I certainly had no plans to carry any illegal substances onto a transatlantic flight. As we pulled up in the parking lot, I said, “there’s still a really big chunk here. What should I do with it?”
“What else? Eat it,” said Craig. So I did.
Our flight had been cancelled, so we had to sit in the terminal for several hours, waiting on the next one. I decided to walk down to the duty-free store to look for a bottle of single-malt Scotch to bring back to California. As I stood in the store aisle reading the bottles, they began to wobble and bend. Soon, the bottle necks were undulating like hula dancers, stretching and twisting. As I watched in fascination, the bottles, the store, everything began to fade into a sea of white. I found myself alone in a blank space, with no floor or ceiling. I couldn’t move; in fact, I wasn’t sure I still had a body. Dimly, I could hear a voice asking, as if from a distance, “are you alright sir? Sir? May I help you? Sir?” I became certain that I was to die there. I knew I’d never find my friends again. It was utterly horrifying. Fortunately, they came and found me, because my next memory is of waking up as we landed in New York. I’d zoned out for an entire 13-hour flight. It’s good to have friends.
Experiencing the Culture
Many of our days were spent between events, just hanging out in London. I tried to use the opportunity to sightsee as much as possible, and—once we’d been there awhile—to see how well I could blend in. I grew up in south Louisiana near New Orleans, and though I’ve never had what most here would notice as a southern accent, I’d felt a little embarrassed early on, at a restaurant waiter’s having asked, “what part of the American south are you from?” So I was determined to up my game. A few weeks in, I was buying a tweed overcoat on Kings’ Road, and doing my best to “pass” as a native. It all seemed to be going well, until the very end, when the clerk asked, “are you from Denmark? Your accent is very strange.” Denmark is, at least, closer, I guess.
At one point, I wandered into a “Coat of Arms” store, a place where they’d sell you all sorts of souvenir items embossed with your traditional family crest. I knew most of my ancestors were from that part of the world, so I decided to see what the Starns crest might look like, not knowing at the time that my immigrant ancestor was actually named “Starring,” a name he’d changed when he’d moved to America in the early 1700s. The clerk pulled out a big book and searched through it. “Hmmm, no luck,” he said. “Ireland, possibly?” pulling out another book. “Not there either. Let’s try the Continent.” Finally, he looked up at me and said, somewhat solemnly, “you aren’t in any of the books. Perhaps you’re too low.” Yes, perhaps I am.
John Hatton and I wanted to attend a performance—any performance—at the Royal Albert Hall, so we bought tickets to see the Mozart Requiem (with Prince Charles singing in the choir!). The tickets were simply labelled, “Thursday the 28th.” Queuing up to go in on Thursday, February 28th, we were struck by how young and hip everyone in line seemed. “This is inspiring,” I said, “you’d never see a bunch of American twenty-five-year olds lining up to see classical music like this.” But when we got inside, there were amps and drums on the stage and people sitting in our seats. That’s when we realized that the tickets we’d bought were actually for Thursday, March 28th. It wasn’t Mozart; it was Phil Collins. Fortunately, we found a couple of empty seats and enjoyed the show anyway. And since the gate staff hadn’t torn or taken our tickets, a month later, we went back and enjoyed the Mozart Requiem. Now that’s solid value for your entertainment pound.
Making the Rounds
The record company decided that a couple of us should traverse the middle part of the UK, doing a string of BBC radio interviews, and John Hatton and I drew the short straws. So while the other guys made a pleasure trip across the channel to Paris, we stayed in a tiny North East
Derbyshire village called Lower Pilsley (yes, there’s also an Upper Pilsley), at the 300-year-old suburban home (never quite got used to that) of the parents of Sandy, one of the record company secretaries. For three days, Sandy’s dad quite patiently shuttled us around from Oxford to Manchester and beyond.
John and Sandy at the BBC
Our gracious hosts
Razzmatazz
At one point, we drove north to Newcastle to play a kids’ TV show called Razzmatazz. It was a music show, but one which required lip-syncing, and because our record had been recorded outside the UK, British Union rules demanded that we re-record something to lip-sync to on the show. So we spent the morning in Newcastle in the studio, recording versions of the songs we’d play that evening. All day, I felt worse and worse, as a powerful intestinal flu crept over me. By that afternoon, it had become an exploding-at-both-ends sort of illness, so the guys lay me down on a sofa in a darkened dressing room with a cool rag on my forehead and bucket to dry-heave into while they went to eat dinner. By show time, I was wrung out like an old rag, dehydrated and pale. I’ve watched the performance on YouTube, and you can almost see the panic behind my eyes, as I fight back the urge to puke onto the microphone while shitting my pants on national television.
The producers told me that during the song-ending vamp, I was to hand my guitar to one of the kids standing at our feet and walk down into the audience to dance with a model waiting there. I was a little nervous about handing off my vintage Telecaster to a random 10-year-old, especially when he asked me, quite seriously, “Can I keep the guitar?”
“No, you can’t keep my guitar,” I said, surprised.
“Oh come on, ya fuckin’ geezer. You’re a rich American rock star. You can buy another! Lemme keep it! My dad doesn’t even have a job,” he snarled. “You’re an asswipe, that’s what you are!” And several of the kids around him began calling taunting me, jeering, “Asswipe!” for the rest of the show. Children in depressed North England mining towns don’t mess around.
Later, as I danced with the model, I was supposed to kiss her, but I’ll never forget the look of relief on her face when I told her I wasn’t going to subject her to my puke breath.
Razzmatazz
The Weirdest Autograph Request I Have Ever Gotten
We needed some live footage for the video the record company had commissioned, so they booked us a gig at a terrific London club called the Mean Fiddler. The gig went great, and by that time—several weeks in—lots of the people there knew who we were and what to expect; there’s something really gratifying about having your audience show up. Afterwards, we hung out and talked to folks from the crowd. At the very end of the evening, I found myself with an enormous—and enormously drunk—professional Soccer player from Sheffield. He was a good foot taller than me, ridiculously muscled, and was sputtering cheerfully in a nearly unintelligible Yorkshire accent while he sloshed a full pint mug everywhere. Between the loud background music and his garbled shouting, I could only make out every twelfth or thirteenth word, so I smiled and nodded politely as if I understood what we were talking about. As the club turned off the sound system, though, I caught the phrase, “cute American Porky,” and found him saying, “...yeah, I could take ya from behind on all fours right now in the gent’s room! Have you got a tight asshole, then?” Fortunately, a bouncer walked up to interrupt my UK Deliverance audition: “Alright mate, we’re closing up, swig your pint and let’s go.”
“Wait!” he said, between chugs, “I’ve gotta get his autograph—he’s gonna sign me dick! SIGN ME DICK!” He dropped his glass and whipped out a whopping, pale schlong that would’ve humiliated Ron Jeremy. “Um, no thank you,” I stammered. “If somebody’s got a typewriter, maybe...”
It took three bouncers to drag him out, with his gargantuan member flopping in their wake. As they got to the door, I heard him shout, “there’s another one! Hey, you, SIGN ME DICK!” Bob walked over, laughing, “you won’t believe what just happened!” “Yeah,” I said, “I think I would.”
One Post-Big Daddy Memory
I was the first of the original members to leave the band. It was totally amicable, more a life- decision than anything else. My then-wife was pregnant with our first child, we’d been doing the casino house-gig circuit, and she wasn’t enjoying the stress generated by my leaving for weeks at a time. I realized I was in danger of ending my family before it had really begun, so I decided to call it quits. I would’ve been more hesitant to go if Don Raymond hadn’t been available to step in. Donny D was the perfect replacement; he sang and played at least as well as I did, and he was better looking to boot.
But a few times after my departure, I came back to sub for one or the other of the guys. One moment I’ll always remember (we don’t really get to choose the moments we’ll always remember, do we?) happened at Disneyland, where they were doing a "Summer Sock Hop," a generic, back-to-the-50s kind of thing, and the band had been hired for the summer, playing mostly old rock n' roll tunes in the Gazebo at the end of Main Street. It was a hot summer, and when rounding the facade to go "back stage” towards the employee cafeteria, I'd gotten used to avoiding the Goofy and Pluto guys, sprawled out, panting in the grass, their hair matted to their heads, sometimes pouring vomit out of a big character head (they couldn't take them off in the park, even if they felt heat stroke coming on).
I mention the costumes because when we'd play, a crowd would gather in the grass around the gazebo, and sometimes characters would dance around in front of the stage. One afternoon, we were playing "Johnny B. Goode" while the Three Little Pigs pranced between the stage and the crowd. The Three Pig costumes are almost scary, with giant, expressive heads. Still, I thought it was cute, until I began to play the guitar solo. I'd usually "ham it up" myself (sorry), with the Chuck Berry duck-walk and all, and if people were into it, the band would stretch it out for a while. So I was doing my thing when I looked up to see one of the three pigs right in front of me, facing the crowd of about 200, playing air guitar. “Well alright,” I thought, “you go, pig.” But then he turned to face me, his back to the crowd. Our eyes locked as he altered his right-hand gesture from air guitar strumming to what was obviously masturbation. From the back, I'm sure he still seemed to be jamming an air guitar solo, but from my perspective, he was clearly jerking off. My immediate thought was, "OK, this solo has already gone on for 36 bars--is he making an editorial comment about my playing?" He jumped back around to face the crowd again: air guitar! He spun to face me again: wanking!
To grasp how odd this felt, you have to know that it was the "Practical Pig" character, the one with a permanent scowl of disapproval. So I'm playing a solo, watching a giant-pig-head guy pretend to pleasure himself while he scowls at me, the bitter shame of his judgmental porcine- face behind the flailing hoof implicating me in some kind of furtive contract of secret, guilty ego-gratification, as though we had bonded in a moment of desperate, shared self-loathing and joyless hedonism. I haven't looked at guitar soloing quite the same since!