I wasn't there for long before I noticed some fellow drunks who were a bit further along in the game than I was. One man was shaking so badly he had to grab a towel, wrap it around his neck, and hold it steady with one hand like a pulley, in order to bring his orange juice up to his mouth without spilling it in his lap. Others just sat in chairs, reviewing their lives with a kind of unearthly stare. Those of us under the age of forty who were still able to sweat out the hangover took solace in the delusion of immortality that buttresses young souls.
After a couple of weeks at the Fidget Farm, if you seemed to be making “progress,” they allowed you to go on a walk by yourself to the center of the town, which happened to be Calistoga. I took advantage of the freedom by visiting the various wine-tasting concessions that dotted the area, and, when I returned, no one seemed to notice my infraction of the rules. At that time Duffy's did no drug testing, so at the end of the required three-week residency, I was permitted to leave with the customary reminder to continue going to AA meetings.
My story is and has always been that I enjoy being sober and I enjoy being drunk. I just wish it didn't unhinge my family and friends as much as it does.
Some reasons (not excuses) for my incurable immoderation concerning food and drugs:
At five feet, seven inches, 140 pounds, I consider myself about three inches too short and about ten pounds overweight. I maintain that slightly hefty appearance because about once a week I like to stuff myself on foods that I
love.
If I don't like the added weight, I take it off. If
someone else
doesn't like the extra ten pounds, they can go right ahead and not like the remaining 130 pounds right along with it—that's their problem. The main reason for dieting is that I'm lazy and I don't like lugging the blubber around. But, ah, the taste of a fine meal.
Concerning my intermittent drug use, people have asked me, “Aren't you happy in your natural state?”
Yes. I like the “natural state” (Montana?). I also like spaghetti, but not three meals a day, every day, all year. I like variations, both for my taste buds and for my forty-odd neural/chemical receptors. During my life, I've used drugs for a number of different reasons: to experience other levels of consciousness, to remain wakeful, to try to induce hallucinations (which I've never really had), to quiet my nerves, to lower my cholesterol levels, to shut up the committee in my head, to get silly, to reduce inflammation, and on and on.
The list of pharmaceuticals and street drugs I've availed myself of is endless, but the worst drug reaction I've had was caused by a prescription pill called Zomax. It was touted as a minor anti-inflammatory chemical mix that worked fine on rats—but unfortunately didn't agree very well with humans. I took Zomax to relieve a pulled back muscle. But when I swallowed one of these harmless-looking little cylinders that a doctor had prescribed for Skip, within a half hour, I was on my way to the hospital—cramping, throwing up, emitting diarrhea, and breaking out in a head-to-toe rash. The paramedics were forced to shove wet towels down my throat so I could breathe (my throat was so dry, it stuck together, blocking the air passages). When I told my doctor what I'd taken, he said, “Oh, they took that off the market—it was killing people.”
What a waste—it didn't even get me high.
Working Solo
W
hile I was being cautioned about my drug and alcohol problems by authorities, associates, and friends, I was working on one of my solo albums,
Dreams,
which incorporated the sensibilities of the AA twelve-step programs. Although for many years I loved being a part of a rock-and-roll group, traveling and singing with the various versions of Airplane and Starship, I've always preferred
writing
solo, focusing on whatever inspired me. By contrast, Paul Kantner has always liked collaborating, so he was overly generous in sharing credit for songs that were mainly his creations. Sometimes we'd be hanging out talking, he'd hear a line from me that he liked, he'd use it in a song, and then my name would appear on the album as cowriter.
But I like writing my own thoughts in my own time. I have a theory that my preference for writing solo is a result of playing by myself so much when I was a child. As I grew up and continued to work at my own pace with my own ideas and my own tools,
sole authorship
became a habit that was hard to break. I respect collaboration; when two or more people
do
manage to produce a successful joint venture, it's like a brief marriage of souls, an accomplishment that's very satisfying. But in my case, collaboration has always been an awkward effort; I really find no pleasure in marching to someone else's drum, and it can be uncomfortable trying to force my input into another's vision.
With Airplane's Jorma Kaukonen, I enjoyed writing lyrics to music he'd already written (we did that a couple of times), but that wasn't so much a collaboration as it was a result of independent efforts. One person wrote the music, the other the lyrics. That's a common division of labor for songwriting teams—Rogers and Hammerstein, George and Ira Gershwin, Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Lerner and Loewe, Rodgers and Hart. I was about to add Lennon and McCartney, but they may be the exception to the rule, since they often interacted on both the words and the music.
Paul McCartney came over to a rehearsal at the Fillmore once, just to hang out and compare bass guitar notes with Jack. I remember feeling like we'd been blessed with an appearance by the Dalai Lama. Even though our album
Surrealistic Pillow
had stayed in one position or another on the
Billboard
Top Ten for fifty-six weeks, in comparison to The Beatles, we were still just part of the congregation. Paul was in the pulpit.
But even with the esteemed Lennon/McCartney collaboration as a role model, I always preferred writing alone, which I got to do when I was recording
Dreams.
I'd just blown off the group in a rage against what I perceived to be our collective animosity and mediocrity, and I didn't even know whether I could continue to make records. How? Solo? With studio musicians? What did I really have to say in the lyrics? Did I care enough to do all the organization, the contracts, the interviews, hire new musicians, write the songs, go on the road “alone”? For what? Applause? Money? Habit?
Since I was a kid, I've always written songs, stories, poems, and free verse. I had no thought of
doing
anything with them. I just wrote for fun—to see if what I created fell into the realm of acceptable communication. Sometimes I'd show my stuff to my parents or friends, but “professional output” never even occurred to me. After I quit Star-ship in disgust with both myself and the music business in general, I continued to write as I always had, generating bits and pieces of thoughts in rhyming patterns. I never stopped writing, and since I had a collection of about six or seven song lyrics when I left Starship, Skip suggested I
do
something with them. “You've got almost enough songs for an album, why not make one?” he suggested.
Why not?
Of course, there was a downside to going the solo route. For me, doing solo albums felt like being in a plastic bubble. Sure, I was protected by the label and the status I had as the top-billed musician on the record, but my isolation was constant. If things weren't right, it was
my
fault. If ideas were discussed, people would usually accept
my
call, even if it was mediocre. If
I
wasn't up to par on a given day, no one could step in and do
their
song instead. It was at the recording stage that the feeling of separateness weighed most heavily. I preferred writing the songs alone, but when it came to bringing them to life, the input of people who had equal status made the effort so much more intriguing and unified.
That said, meeting whole new groups of musicians and producers for each successive record brought a fresh sound to the music that was both exciting and gratifying. It taught me a lot, too. So with Skip managing me and pulling together the various and demanding elements, we hired Ron Frangipane as producer, combined some lyrics I already had with some new ones, and made
Dreams
for RCA. Since I was working solo, this album contained my most personal grouping of lyrics up to that time. Instead of pointing my finger at “you” like I'd done in the past, very often “I” was the subject of these new songs. Although I was still distancing myself by using the pronoun “she,” it was obvious that the concerns expressed in the lyrics were mine. Take, for example, one of the album's songs, “Do It the Hard Way”:
She said I've got to make 'em all think I'm winning so I'll just tell 'em lies
That way I can make sure no one ever knows just exactly what I mean
Then I can beat the drums and yell it to the skies
I'm the queen of the nuthouse, I'm the queen
And I can justify myself—say I've been cheated
I'm the only one in this game who knows how to play
And if it weren't for time—I'd never be defeated
But people, places and things—they get in my way
And I don't like what they say.
She's gonna keep on doing it till she proves that they're all wrong
She's got to let 'em know she's the exception to the rule
She's got no friends 'cause she thinks she's so damn strong
But she's the only one who doesn't know that she's the fool
Talking about hurt, pain, and fear has always been difficult for me. I've viewed that type of “victim's” lament as pathetic inertia, so when it came to expressing my feelings in lyric writing, I usually tried to shuffle the linguistics so that no one would see the pathos card whining at the bottom of the deck. I was more comfortable being perceived as irritating rather than brooding. Empathy, yes. Sympathy, no. But with
Dreams,
the boundaries were getting thin.
Did my solo albums sell? No. If I'd been willing to go on the road to promote them, they might have fared better. What wasn't fully clear to me then is abundantly clear now: no one in his or her right mind puts out an album without tour support. Steely Dan is the only outfit I can think of that managed to stay alive without doing concerts, and I think even
they
finally caved in and hit some clubs later in their career. To add to my self-created promotional difficulties, I had this grandiose idea that onstage every song on my album should have a completely different set to fully complement the lyrics. That was not only physically impossible, it was financially unrealistic. But I was unwilling to go out and do a half-assed Airplane set in order to sell records.
To be honest, doing solo albums scared the shit out of me; making music was no longer fun, it was nerve-racking pressure. For someone who couldn't handle a quarter cup of coffee without wondering where the quaaludes were, working solo was just a couple of steps short of flinging myself off a 150-foot diving board. I much preferred to write the songs and give them to a group of friends to help me make the music in a band format.
Only a handful of people have been able to sustain solo careers after leaving a popular band. Sting, Peter Gabriel, Diana Ross, Phil Collins, and Michael Jackson come to mind. Most egos can't wait to get their hands full of their own importance, and when they do, they realize it's not as easy as they thought.
Of my four attempts,
Dreams
was probably the best and
Manhole
the most unique. But if you don't or can't give all of yourself to a project, it's easy for listeners to recognize a lack of inspiration. In the case of my solo albums, every detail was not attended to, every aspect was not evaluated by the person responsible—me. For instance, when I needed to have my English lyrics translated into Spanish for
Manhole,
instead of taking them to a professional Berlitz kind of guy, I used an easier method. I honked up a bunch of cocaine and stayed up till about five in the morning, waiting for the Mexican janitor to come into the recording studio to clean up. He and I swilled some wine together and I had him translate my lyrics. We traded languages the best we could, which resulted in “Celtic Taco” grammar, so if you don't understand Spanish, the lyrics in
Manhole
sound okay. But if any Latinos heard it, they probably wondered who put the WASP in the tequila. It was fun hanging out with a fellow wino, but rough on album continuity.
My solo albums were each like a half-finished puzzle; they represented only the beginning of a full picture. Simply put, they were inadequate and incomplete. Skip did everything he could to manage the productions and make things run as smoothly as possible, but even the finest Ferrari goes nowhere without the juice. All the people who worked with me were tireless, talented, and accommodating, but it took me four albums to realize that, in my case, true passion required the presence of an ongoing band of musicians rather than a linear autonomous framework. Give me the wolf pack and I come alive. Segregate me and I suck my thumb. Masturbation is fabulous, but nothing beats the old tango.
Even though I was working and putting out music during the time I made
Dreams,
my erratic emotional behavior was affecting Skip and China. I knew it, but I didn't have a grip on who or what was going to inspire me to change it. Tripping over my own unanswerable questions, I felt like I was walking a tightrope without the pole; I was losing it and I couldn't see the net. I was too cynical to keep on with the “we can be together” flowers in the park stuff, and too old to pull off the angry young drunk punk, although at least it would have been more honest. I saw myself as Queen of the Nuthouse then, imagining people thinking, “Hey, let's go over and watch Grace rattle the bars and yell for room service.”
Coinciding with my own maudlin “dark night of the soul” was Skip's painful physical illness, which increased his need for prescription narcotics. His body
couldn't
work and my spirit didn't
want
to work. But sometimes, fate, karma, or just plain dumb luck coaxes the phoenix out of the ashes, or at least out of the wine vats.