Uncle Ernie's Hollywood Daze

I had just finished getting rid of my second wife. No, I didn't kill her. I had introduced her to an acquaintance of mine who was hot to trot with her. I had just sold our house and moved us into a basement apartment. I then started hanging out with my hoodlum friends. I also let our new car go back to the dealership and bought a 1963 Cadillac convertible to restore. She was out the door in sixty days. What a feeling of relief!

With Beelzebub gone for good I was able to pursue the love of my life, music. When I met Beelzebub, I was running one weekly rock concert and working at another. A total of two nights a week for which I made about $800.00. As she saw that I was having way too much fun, she insisted that I get a job in a factory. Making $200.00 for four times as many hours. Those days were over now.

My best friend had an up and coming rock band that needed a lot of help. They also needed a place to practice. A friend put me in touch with a real estate agent. He had a five-bedroom house on seven acres with six months free rent for simply cleaning it up. Sound too good to be true? It was certainly a nice place, once we dug seventy-five large garbage bags of beer cans out of it. Seven abandoned, stolen cars, from the back yard. Two forty foot truckloads of steel, from the four-car garage. A motor cycle gang, who had a penchant for parties, had leased the house. After a lot of elbow grease, we had the perfect place for our band. On one side of the house was a small factory with a twenty-five foot high wall that ran about 800 feet, nearly half the length of our property. On the other side was a ten-acre field. In front of the house were so many pine trees you couldn't see the street. Behind the house a forest of trees imported from Germany's Black Forest, all in the middle of the city. We could, and did, rock all night without bothering anyone.

We had two major problems; we didn't have a drummer, and nobody had a job. What we did have was an excellent keyboard player, Brad. A fair bassist with a never-ending supply of pot, Craig. A brilliant, ever so slightly schizoid lead guitarist, Tom, and me the manager, soundman, light man, chief cook, bottle washer, jester and baby sitter.

We also had a roadie, Bill, who had a full time job making donuts on the midnight shift at "Dunkin Donuts." Every morning he would leave us two dozen donuts, a half a gallon of milk, a half gallon of orange juice and a dozen eggs on our door step. It took me over ten years to look another donut in the face but that was about all we had to eat for almost six months. This stable food supply allowed us the leisure of working toward our goal of forming the next, "Super Group." So we began by auditioning drummers. We eventually went through 160 auditions, looking for that perfect drummer, and somehow we finally found him.

We had been at this for almost six months, and had yet to work a single gig. We had begun to record our demo tapes on an eight track Akai when we discovered what we really needed was a lead singer. Oh well, back to the auditions. We came up with a name for the band, "Infinity," and a name for the album, "Marianas Trench: 7 Miles Deep."

Christmas was fast approaching and we decided to take a short break for the holiday with some members going home and others staying. I myself headed home Christmas Eve, but returned late the next night.

Craig had a visitor one cold snowy evening; an old girl friend named "Alice." Alice had just returned from LA, to visit relatives for the holidays.

Prolog page 2

She was a petite redhead, who in her spare time, was Buddy Miles current mistress. She partied with us for a couple of days and invited us out to Beverly Hills to meet Buddy and see if he could help us with marketing the album. Just the break we had been looking for.

We knew it would be next to impossible to get a record deal in Detroit. The Detroit music scene had faded away by the mid seventy's. Motown had moved to LA and, with our heavy metal style, we knew that a trip to one coast or the other was in order. Well with this development there was no stopping us now.

Christmas came and went, and the band got back together again. With New Years Eve fast approaching, we planned the "Mother" of all parties. The band was starting to get really tight, so we decided to do a concert during the party. The party itself was a B.Y.O.D. affair, as we barely had the money to spare for snacks.

All our ladies and friends arrived, bearing great quantities of various drugs and liquors. After the concert we proceeded to get wasted. We drank, smoked great quantities of weed and most of us dropped four hits of windowpane acid!

Now let me add that for years we had gotten together every other night to trip. The four of us would buy twenty hits of windowpane acid, and each eat four hits. We then, put the remaining four hits in a bottle of "Boones Farm," and passed it around. Then off we'd go for a long drive, often from Detroit to Chicago and back.

So it was a great surprise, when my best friend Tom, started to freak out. Tom had had a streak of rather bad luck. In the last year or so his father had died, he had found his aunt dead, his cat that he had since his boyhood had died, and his girl friend was driving him nuts. The end result was that we had to take him to the hospital for a little, "Thorazine Cocktail." I won't bore you with the gory details, but in the aftermath the band broke up. However it didn't stop an otherwise killer party, but the handwriting was on the wall. 1976 was going to be a rather strange year.

As the band started to go their separate ways, Brad, Steve and Tom moved back in with their parents, which left Craig, Bill and me living in the house. Craig wanted to take the tape to Hollywood and meet up with Buddy Miles. His only problem was, he didn't have any money or transportation. So he swallowed his pride and talked Tom into going out to LA. Meanwhile the real estate agent decided that nine months of free rent was enough, and suddenly wanted a small fortune in rent for the house. Needless to say the rest of us moved out. Apparently just in time, as a severe ice storm hit a week later and destroyed most of the trees. It took three men with chain saws, eight hours to clear a path to the front door.

Craig and Tom headed for the coast, and I moved in with my "buddy," Danny. Alice called on occasion, and kept me informed about Craig and Toms adventures. She kept asking when I was coming out. At that time I was finishing up the rebuild on the Cadillac, and had a deal to swap it for a 1966 Mercedes Benz 230 SL convertible in mint shape. All I had left to do was get the Cadillac repainted. Can you see a tragedy about to happen?

Our next door neighbor was moving out. As we shared the same double driveway, she asked me to park out in front, so she could get the moving truck up to her house. So I parked on the grass out front. Early next morning, I was awakened by a little old lady driving 65 M.P.H. in a 30 M.P.H. zone.

Prolog page 3

She had slammed her car into my Cadillac, pushing the tail fins into the back seat. Fortunately a police officer had witnessed the accident. Fortunately for the little old lady, as it kept me from killing her on the spot. The policemen shared a story about a similar experience he had, when he lost his 1957 Chevy. He told me what to expect from her insurance company, and how to get around it, without hiring an attorney. This saved me several thousand dollars and hurried up the check.

Craig and Tom had just returned from LA. Craig had some rather bizarre news. Buddy had helped them find interested record companies. In fact Tom had been offered a recording contract, and fifty thousand dollars for an album. However Tom had declined the offer and returned to Detroit. At the time, this made absolutely no sense to me. After all he had just been handed on a silver platter, everything he'd always wanted, everything he worked so hard to achieve, and he'd run away from it. Craig on the other hand couldn't get enough of LA. He planned to return after the 4th of July. I was wondering what I was going to do without a car, when Tom announced that I could buy his four year old Vega GT for a song. I should have known better with Tom, the way he had been acting but I didn't. Craig said he would be flying out on the thirteenth. So, we decided to meet in LA when he arrived. In celebration we thought we'd eat some excellent Amazonian mushrooms, that Danny had. We'd get wasted, go to the fireworks and come back home to plan my trip to LA "The best laid schemes of mice and men, gang aft a-gley."*

We returned from the fireworks tripping our brains out, to find all of my possessions out on the street. Everything except my new color t.v. No one was home except the Wayne County Sheriff, who said we should pack up and leave before we got into any trouble. Can you see the pay back that's coming? Apparently Danny didn't see it either. I won't go into it because I'm not sure the statute of limitations has run out, but I can say that pay back is a "Muther Fucker." He wasn't the only one I got back at that day; in fact, I paid back two others who had ripped me off. All in one neat little package. From now on, "No more mister nice guy!"**

I decided to go "up north" and visit with my parents before leaving for the coast. I also had to store some things. Tom's car seemed to be running all right, but it did need some tires, and I needed some new suitcases. I took the old mans boat out on the lake and stayed out fishing until after dawn. I then went to town and bought the tires and luggage. By the time I returned it was the late afternoon. I had dinner with my family and went to bed, it was about six p.m. When I awoke it was two a.m. I then packed up the car. LA, here I come.

* ** See Quotations

The picture at the top of the page was taken during the Prolog. The picture below was taken during the Post Script.
(c) 1997/2008