When you're 23 years old, it's all about smoking dope out of an empty beer can, having sex in the backseat of your car, and watching Soul Train the next morning with a hammer-to-the-forehead hangover. At least, it would've been for me, if I had actually owned my own automobile.
That period of my life was spent hitch hiking through an obstacle course of dysfunction. I'm still not sure how I ever made it to the age of 24 after a critical mass of epileptic seizures, pot busts, a rehab stint/intervention and the requisite teary-eyed confessional on Oprah.
Twenty-three years old and headed for Hell--something had to give. I wisely chose alcohol and haven't emptied a bottle since. This unfamiliar transition to clarity helped me finally figure out that everybody on Soul Train had been lip-syncing. It was heartbreaking to realize that so many of my heroes were fakin' the funk. Someone had to course-correct this shit. Who would have thought that a gang of four punk rock kids from Southern California would finally bring the grime back to prime time?
December of 1985: We booked the Red Hot Chili Peppers to play at the
Theatre Gallery in Deep Ellum. These four kids weren't faking anything.
Sure, they were grabbing at little chunks of hip-hop, psychedelic, metal,
Dr. Suess books and elements of punk rock. Somehow they threw it all
together and created a sound that was all their own.
The dirty tour van pulled up at around one in the afternoon. A few
minutes later, Anthony Kiedis and Flea (also both 23 years old at the
time) asked me if I would take them somewhere cheap to get something to
eat. We were all pretty broke, so we ended up just taking the van out
to my Mom's house in North Dallas to go make Kraft macaroni and cheese.
(I'm a real badass when it comes to boiling water, yo.)
Flea was
cracking up while going through my family's photo albums and Anthony
was out doing back flips on the trampoline in our back yard. Both took
a quick shower, I twisted a fat doob and we were good to go again.
On the way back downtown, we stopped by the old Bill's Records
location in North Dallas. Anthony and Flea totally fell in love with
the place.
Bill Wisener (Bill's Records): "When they came in the store, Anthony
was wearing this furry jock strap and Flea had on a leather jacket that
had tin cups sewn onto the shoulders. They started digging around
underneath the tables and found this old red, white and blue skirt. I
told Anthony that he could have it; that he probably needed it because
it was supposed to get really cold that night. I also gave him a
cassette tape of Songs in the Key of Life. I heard that Anthony wore
that skirt onstage every night for years afterward."
Steve Shein (Theatre Gallery manager/security): "December 10, 1985,
seems like yesterday. I got down to TG early that day around noon.
Several skater kids were cruising around the front of the club, and
when I started to go in, they flocked to the door. They all wanted to
know when they could buy tickets. I asked Russ if we were selling
tickets and he said, 'What the fuck? Why not?' I set up the box office
and called in the kids. After 10 minutes, 15 tickets were gone. One
kid went to find a phone (nobody had cell phones yet) so he could tell
his friends to come up and get tickets. This went on all day. By five
o'clock I had sold over 200 tickets. I took a short break and walked to
Theo's Diner, had a grilled cheese and lemonade (all I could afford),
then headed back. I had only been gone an hour, and as I came around
the corner, was excited to see a crowd stretching from TG halfway down
Commerce to Adair's. To see all these people lined up for a show like
this in Deep Ellum at that time was truly amazing."
Kids were piling in from all over the DFW area; word-of-mouth on the
street was that this band was onto something truly different. I can't
remember the last time an unknown group had generated so much
anticipation before a debut performance in Dallas. Tuesday night in
Deep Ellum was usually a ghost town. By sundown, this was already
shaping up to be the biggest show we had ever done at Theatre Gallery.
Amy Curnutt (Dallas model/fan): "That night, my friends and I piled
into my Mom's car; each of us pitching in dollar bills until we had five
bucks and were able to buy enough gas to get to Dallas from North
Richland Hills. I was 16 years old at the time. That was back when the
Chili Peppers were super cool. It was edgy and fun. That night, we hung
out at the Clown Ramp before the show, then came down to Deep Ellum;
that's what we always did. We sat in front and hung out with all of the
skateboarders."
David Williams (Decadent Dub Team): "There was no music scene to
speak of in Denton in '85; just my bands, and Brave Combo, and all the
UNT jazzers--that was it. We had to drive in to Dallas for every show.
Spent a lot of that time period dropping acid and skating the hills of
the TWU campus with Matt Miller and Jeff Robinson (who turned me on to
RHCP); they were two of the finest artists to come out of Dallas. [Miller and Robinson both painted murals on the inside walls of the
original Prophet Bar.] It seems quaint now, how urgent the RHCP
sound was there for a minute. Andy Gill produced the first record;
George Clinton did the album they were touring behind in '85. The show
at Theatre Gallery was really good. Hillel Slovak was still their
guitar player, which was nice. But look what their success caused: so much lame copycat punk-funk."
Russ Hobbs: "They came on the scene as this great marriage of rock
and soul and funk, way before the whole rap-core thing ever happened.
The Chili Peppers were totally ahead of their time. On Freaky Styley, Anthony started singing with more of a melodic style. George Clinton
really brought that in him as a vocalist."
Bill Wisener: "I went down to the show with Kevin
Keepers, a local DJ who was one of my employees. At the time, I remember
hanging out with you and Edie Brickell in the gallery up front before
the doors opened. Once it started, I had never seen a show with that
much energy; it was freezing cold and the band was all naked and
jumping around all over the place."
Steve Shein: "When the doors opened that night it was nuts. All the
kids bee-lined it to the front of the stage while all the college kids
and adults went straight to El Barco for drinks. Trey the bartender was
wearing a tuxedo that night. Beat Orgy opened with a good set that got
the crowd fired up. Just before the RHCP went on, I went to the
backstage area where I found Anthony Kiedis in his red, white and blue
skirt staring out at the crowd. He looked at me and said, 'Man this is
great! I didn't think any one knew us here'. Then he laughed and said
'This is gonna kick ass', and trust me, it did."
Since there weren't any bands in town that sounded weird enough to
work as an opening act, the skeleton crew of Theatre Gallery employees
and a handful of musicians formed a one-off band called Beat Orgy. Jim
Heath and I were playing guitar, Pat MaKanna (The Trees) played bass,
and David Mabry (Homespun Remedies/End Over End) played drums. Russ
Hobbs and Heath were the singers. There were at least ten people
onstage, including Brandon Aly from New Bohemians and Bob Watson from
Shallow Reign. Shit was pretty wild.
Jim Heath (Rev. Horton Heat): "When we did the Beat Orgy gig opening
up for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, it was kind of cool that in the
middle of it all. I got to sing 'Folsom Prison Blues'. That was really
the beginning of Reverend Horton Heat, because that song convinced
Russell Hobbs to give me my first solo gig at the new Prophet Bar."
Russ Hobbs: "Anthony and Flea were standing in front of us while we
were doing the Beat Orgy thing. It was kind of intimidating to see them
right there. I'm glad we had all made friends earlier that afternoon.
(Laughs.) We were just goofin' off, you know. But it was all fun. The
Prophet Bar had just opened across the street, and they came over and
hung out with us upstairs before the show. [Hobbs and I lived in a loft
space above Prophet at the time.] Anthony had this tattoo of an Indian,
and we were using this same Indian image on the very first poster we
ever made for the club; so we kind of bonded over that. They really fit
our scene, we were kindred spirits."
The Chili Pepper's set list that night was all over the place.
"Police Helicopter" had the braver audience members diving on top of
each other. "American Ghost Dance" and "Yertle the Turtle" (with
impromptu lyrics lifted from the theme from Shaft) were both hilarious
and uplifting. A cover of "(Let Me Stand Next to Your) Fire" was
totally off the chain; Slovak was just killin' the Hendrix guitar tone.
Flea was thumping his shit like Bootsy Collins on a jumbo speedball.
Original drummer Cliff Martinez was rock solid behind the kit the whole
set.
Damon Heltzen (Dallas-based photographer): "The Red Hot Chili
Peppers show at Theatre Gallery was a beautiful musical turning point
in my life. We got to take our records and make them come alive. That
LA sound was right in front of us, we were feeling the energy they were
conveying. Imagine being sweated on and kicked in the face by Flea. I
was rockin', he was definitely rockin'. Neither one of us cared. This
memory will live in my mind, heart and soul for as long as I live. The
skinheads were there, along with punkers, skaters, post-preps and even
a homeless guy or two bumming cigarettes and beer. The show was a
magical evening that will live for me forever!"
The band's guarantee was $1,200. Half of that I had already sent in
as a security deposit, so the balance due was 600 bucks. It was the
most money we had ever paid a band up until that point; it was also the
most they had ever made for a single show outside Los Angeles. I was
waiting for the band backstage after they finished their last encore.
By this time, they were wearing nothing but two pairs of athletic socks
between the four of them.
You can guess where each of the single socks
went.
Bill Wisener: "After the show, you guys were all standing around
backstage, and they were still naked except for the tube socks. You
were paying them and they divided it all up among each other and
stashed it in their socks. They just whipped 'em off, stuffed their
money inside, and then put them right back on. I couldn't believe how
cold it was that night, and they were naked almost the whole time."
Steve Shein: "My favorite memory took place after the show. I stood
and watched as hundreds of smiling kids left, many clutching new RHCP
t-shirts--I still have mine. Great music, with no fights or arrests,
just a truly memorable performance. I'm glad I had a part to play in
it."
Russell Hobbs: "That was one of the first road shows that put us on
the map. Theatre Gallery really started to turn a corner that night. We
had been kind of this underground art gallery/performance space during
most of '85, then both the Chili Peppers show and that Bad Brains gig
on their 'I Against I' tour sort of took the venue to the next level."
The Red Hot Chili Peppers were also at the start of a positive
trajectory. What had begun as four kids jamming in their garage would
eventually turn into an amazing live act that headlined Woodstock and
Lollaplaooza. Over the next twenty years, they would go on to sell 50
million records worldwide. Their days of playing in nightclubs and art
galleries are long over. Or you would think, anyway.
Sometimes you're just in the right place at the right time.
In November of 2006, I was working at the Roxy Theatre in Los
Angeles. Microsoft had rented the venue for a private, invitation-only
event to roll out their new Zune mp3 player. The Red Hot Chili Peppers
played for a capacity crowd of 425 people. It was great to see them
playing in an intimate setting once again.
Before the show, I ran into Flea warming up backstage. He startled
the shit out of me by saying, "Hey, I know you! Dallas, right? You took
us to your Mom's house so we could go take a shower before our show at
that art gallery." He then brought me back upstairs to the dressing
room to find Anthony.
"Hey, look who it is!" said the shirtless
bassist. "Remember this guy?"
There was an awkward pause as Kiedis temporarily drew a blank.
"I took you guys to a record store in Dallas back in 1985," I reminded him.
Then the light bulb went off: "Yeah! Bill's Records. He gave me that Stevie Wonder tape!"
And just like my old vinyl copy of Freaky Styley, another odd melodic revolution would turn and come full circle.
