A Stray Cat Struts by Slim Jim Phantom

Author:Slim Jim Phantom
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466888876
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

12

Don’t Worry About It, Son

The Cats were on the bill for a tribute concert to Les Paul being filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. It was 1988. The guests included the one and only bluesman B.B. King; country music legend Waylon Jennings and his wife, Miss Jessi Colter; superstar, British gentleman, guitarist Pink Floyd’s Dave Gilmour; songbird, old pal, and neighbor Rita Coolidge; guitar whiz Stanley Jordan; FM radio king, hit maker, and Cats fan Steve Miller; pop royalty Carly Simon; Les’s legendary trio, drummer buddy Rick Marotta, leader of the house band, keyboardist, and composer Jan Hammer, and Les Paul Trio guitarist Lou Pallo; and party pal extraordinaire, guitar hero Edward Van Halen.

The good thing for story-gathering purposes about this show, like the Carl Perkins special, was that we rehearsed it for two days beforehand and all hung out a lot at the gig in shared dressing rooms. We stayed at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South and drove to Brooklyn for the day and back to the city at night. Someone had the room next to Eddie’s; we left the doors open between the suites and had a three-day party. The guys all had acoustic guitars, and it was a rare treat to watch Eddie and Brian play together. Lee, who is also an excellent guitar player, impressed Eddie with his ability to fingerpick Chet Atkins–style. It was another one of those times when I was proud of my guys and happy to be the party organizer.

The daytimes were spent in typical hurry-up-and-wait TV show fashion. There were a few dressing rooms below the stage where everyone hung out, swapped stories, and drank a little. Van Halen and I probably hit it a little bit harder than the others. The other Cats were party guys, but not like I was; I would drink in the daytime. I would especially go for it on a gig like this, where we only had to do a song or two. It wasn’t a whole gig, and it was a very social setting, and though I tried not to get wasted before the show, I would try to keep a little glow going. I still looked at cats like Waylon Jennings as my elders and didn’t imagine them partying too much. Again, my naïveté of the time is revealed in the light of modern day where we find out that those outlaw country guys partied more than anyone. They never said they didn’t, but the substance use and struggles of Nashville-based country music artists didn’t get as much media attention as someone like Keith Richards getting busted did. When it did, it was portrayed in a more sympathetic, everyman, blue-collar way. The general American public wanted to think that the country artists were different from the rock and rollers and didn’t want to believe that all musicians, regardless of genre, behave more or less in the same way. It’s all showbiz. I’ve since learned that the cast of the Grand Ole

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