Luck or Something Like It (11 page)

I remember the first night I went onstage by myself. For almost twenty years, I had played bass and stood behind a microphone and sang. All of a sudden, there was no bass to hide behind and I had to walk and sing. I found out I didn’t even know
how
to walk. Every step was awkward and I just knew I was going to trip and sprawl out across the stage. Worse, I found myself walking to the tempo of the song, which certainly looked strange.

As I looked around, I realized there weren’t any obvious options. I had very few job skills and I couldn’t imagine in my heart doing anything that wasn’t music related. It’s times like this that you find out who you really are, what you’re made of, and how important your dreams are.

I was actually lying in a bed in a funky little rent-by-the-day hotel on Van Nuys Boulevard in L.A., remembering all the good times I had had and how lucky I had been in my life, when something dawned on me. With the exception of “Just Dropped In,” the First Edition had really been a country-rock band. With hits like “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town,” “Reuben James,” and even to some extent, “Something’s Burning,” we had created a bit of a following in country music.

It was at that moment that I made—out of sheer desperation—one of the smartest decisions I have ever made. I would go to Nashville. Looking back, I have no idea now what was so exciting about that, because I really didn’t know anyone in Nashville, but I felt that city would be better for me than Los Angeles.

So now I had to undertake a scenario I hated most—driving alone cross-country at night. I had actually never done this, but I knew I wasn’t going to be happy. I had driven long distances, but Mickey Jones had always been along to tell me stories and keep me company. Before I hit the Arizona border, in the middle of the desert and nothing but straight, boring roads, I started to really miss him. I had nothing to do but drive and no one to talk to.

I was approaching the city of Winona, Arizona, when I suddenly realized that I was driving “Route 66,” the old Bobby Troup jazz number that I had sung a thousand times with the Bobby Doyle Three. That kept me singing to myself until I reached Oklahoma, where I started wondering if this was really a good idea. I was headed for a city where I knew no one and had no reason to think my job skills were wanted or needed. But there was no turning back now; I had a commitment to make my music work and Nashville was the next stop. I thought this might be my last chance—I was thirty-seven at the time—and I knew that success can only follow true commitment.

I had been to Nashville before but mostly just passing through. As I look back on that time, I’d say there was a much older, more tradition-bound, less outgoing group of people running things in Nashville in 1975. They loved their country music, loved their stars, and were suspicious of anyone outside the country music family, especially pop or rock stars trying to edge into their territory. From their perspective, that is exactly who I was.

During that transitional year of 1975, I spent some time in Nashville, living at the Spence Manor Hotel. Like L.A., Nashville was a place where new music contacts could be made, so I thought I could at least look around for some possibilities there. After a short time there, I was introduced to a guy named “Shug” Baggott. I never knew his real name. Everyone just called him Shug, so I did, too. Shug was managing George Jones, and he was interested in managing me.

However my career might unfold, I would certainly need a backup band to replace the First Edition musicians. Shug took me down to Printers Alley, where music was king in Nashville. There were bands everywhere—good bands—but Shug had seen one group that he thought would be perfect for me. They specialized in “big” vocals and full music sounds. We went into a little club called the Starlight. The piano player in the trio was Steve Glassmeyer, who is still with me today; the drummer was Bobby Daniels; and Gene Golden played a Hammond B3 organ and the foot pedals for the bass line. They were extremely versatile in their choice of music. I don’t remember negotiating with them, but they agreed to work with me. The group was called Turning Point, and it was—for all of us.

Not long after we had put a show together, and God only knows where this offer came from, we were invited to do two weeks in Saudi Arabia. Now, who wouldn’t take that offer no matter what it paid? So off we go to Saudi Arabia, courtesy of Aramco Oil Company for two weeks. We assumed we would be performing for English-speaking Americans who wanted to enjoy “a little piece of home.” It was a surprise, to say the least, that our audience was all men, mostly Pakistanis who spoke no English and had never heard “Ruby, Don’t Take Your Love to Town.” We knew this would be a conundrum of the biggest nature.

I have to paint this picture for you. First, it wasn’t just our group. The duo who opened for us were traveling with us. So there were seven or eight of us in a minivan traveling across the desert in the middle of what the Saudis call a shamal. These are heavy winds that blow and create large sandstorms that come several times a year. We were just lucky enough to be there during a major sandstorm. Our interpreter, Muhammad, was also in the van with us.

Now we learned pretty quickly the laws of the road in Saudi traffic. If the car or truck to your left honks once, it means he would like to come over. If he honks twice, it means he is coming over. That’s very literal.

So picture a small Toyota pickup truck with at least twelve Pakistani oil field workers in front of us on this very bumpy highway. The truck had a one-inch steel bar that wrapped around the bed of the truck, a little above head high, for the workers to hold on to, so as not to fall out.

We’re probably doing sixty or seventy miles an hour when this big tanker truck pulls up to us on the left, then pulls alongside the little white pickup truck in front of us. We had just commented on the fact that the workers didn’t appear to be talking to each other, just bobbing heads, with arms extended, on a rough road. That in itself was funny enough, but when we heard one blast of the horn from the tanker and the little truck didn’t move, then two long blasts of this air horn . . . we knew the rules. This gigantic truck, with no further warning, just turned sharp right. With no place else to go, and I promise you without anyone so much as changing expressions, the pickup turned right and disappeared over some sand dunes. It literally vanished into the desert. Twenty seconds later, out of nowhere, like some choreographed dance, the little truck with the bobbing heads reappeared in front. It had never broken stride. No one was angry, no one was offended. They were back in the flow of traffic, and the heads never stopped bobbing. It was a thing of beauty to watch. This was Saudi culture right in front of us.

Then it was “Showtime in the Desert.” After some fifty miles or so of harrowing traffic experiences, we arrived at an oil field and the building we were to perform in. The place we worked seated literally thirty-five people, no more. The stage was maybe at the most eighteen inches high. There were no “set” decorations, no frills, no fancy moving lights. Just us . . . We were all set up and ready to go. We had been assured by the people of Aramco Oil this was a very enthusiastic group and they very much looked forward to these nights of music.

The opening act was a couple, as I mentioned earlier. I never knew if they were married or just dating, but I knew they were very good. They did some Carpenters songs and a couple of Beach Boys songs. I don’t remember their names and I wish I did, but the girl was quite a bit overweight at this point in her life. Still, to these guys who hadn’t seen a girl of any kind for, in some cases, years, this girl was
hot.

There were about twenty-five Pakistanis, maybe five Americans, and five Englishmen or Germans in the audience every night, so the odds of them speaking fluent English were pretty slim. Basically, for the first few nights, they were polite but not impressed. I finally figured out if I threw them tambourines and did mostly fast songs, they would love us. It worked. Getting the tambourines back, however, proved to be a nightly challenge.

Here comes that culture thing again—not wrong, just different. In the United States, if people don’t want to stay for the end of the show, they’ll usually wait for a dark moment, or at least the end of a song, so as not to be too obvious when they leave. Not in Saudi Arabia. When people there are ready to go, they’re ready to go. Instead of just slipping out, they would literally come stand right in front of us, almost nose to nose, then turn and walk out. That one took a while to get used to.

One of the really great customs we observed was in an alley in a little town. Muhammad was walking in front of us when we passed beside an older man, who kept motioning for us to come into his house. We went in, and he served all of us tea and watermelon. As we were leaving, we asked Muhammad why he had invited us in. Muhammad said the old man had quoted a scripture from the Koran: “If you pass my house, even if you are my enemy, I must invite you in.” It was one of the nicest customs I have ever been a part of, and a great memory for all of us.

At the end of our tour, full of the wonder and beauty of Arabic customs, we started to leave, but Muhammad wouldn’t return our passports until we all paid him $100 each.

Back in the States,
my pending management deal with Shug Baggott didn’t work out, and all I can say is, thank goodness for things that don’t work out. I kept my base in Los Angeles and continued to be managed by Ken Kragen. It felt good to have a band again and a fresh start.

We started out by doing three shows a night for three weeks at Harrah’s in Reno. Then I didn’t have any work coming up, so I had to cut the band guys loose. It was strange. I had always been part of the group, not responsible for employing the group.

Then, however, we got a slot opening for Captain and Tennille. As the opening act, we were not treated well. I called Ken and told him that the situation was not what I had in mind for the next stage of my career. I swore that if I ever got back to being the headliner, I would never treat an opening act the way we were treated. They were flying city to city, but we were all packed up in a station wagon driving city to city. We would take turns driving to be able to drive straight through. It was a lot like the early days of the First Edition. Keith Bugos, my sound guy/roadie who started with me with the First Edition and is still with me to this day, can attest to that.

We also opened for Steve Martin. At the end of my show, for as long as I can remember, I’d throw out tambourines during the last song. That’s fine if you are the closing act. It didn’t work well with Steve Martin following you and the crowd banging on my tambourines throughout his whole act. He actually did a whole bit racing up and down the aisle screaming “The tambourines, the tambourines! They are driving me insane!!!” Fortunately, Steve didn’t hold it against me. We remained good friends, and he would always come to play in my charity baseball game for the Special Olympics that I hosted in Las Vegas.

On our own, we were playing lounges and doing guest spots on TV music shows like
The Midnight Special.
On one of those shows, we followed Bob Marley and I remember being introduced as Kenny Rankin.

One person who didn’t write me off during this painful stretch was hotel owner Steve Wynn. Steve booked me and the band into the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas. Even though I was playing a little three-hundred-seat lounge, Steve gave me star treatment. I had a suite, a Rolls, and star billing. It was amazing, and it gave me plenty of confidence to keep on going strong. There’s nothing like having your name in lights and a Rolls in the parking lot to give you a boost.

Gigs like that aside, I was pretty much broke or actually less than broke—I owed $3,500 and had no idea where to get it.

Being $3,500 in debt while getting a divorce might have been a big deal to me if I hadn’t been there before. When I first moved to L.A. from Houston to join the New Christy Minstrels in 1966, I had about the same amount of debt with no visible way of getting it. But at that time, once I got to L.A., I remembered that I had written a song called “Please Don’t Laugh at My Love” in 1960 for an Eddy Arnold album. I didn’t write all that many songs, so I tended to remember the ones I did. And in this case, I had never been paid any royalties.

The publisher was Henry Mancini and his office in 1966 was in downtown Los Angeles. Never having received a royalty statement from these people, I had no idea what to expect. It could have been thousands, it could have been millions, or it could have been nothing. I quickly looked up Henry Mancini Publishing in the Yellow Pages. When someone answered the phone, I meekly volunteered my name and a short explanation of my dilemma.

The lady on the phone shocked me when she said, “Mr. Rogers, we’ve been looking for you for a couple of years! You didn’t leave a forwarding address when you moved last time in Houston, and we had no way of reaching you. We have a check for you for $2,875 in accumulated royalties.”

I literally couldn’t speak.

She could tell I was thrilled but couldn’t respond. “Would you like to give us your current address? I can send it to you,” she said. “I’ll be right there,” I replied, and I was.

I know this was only $2,875, but when you have nothing and you’re in a new city, it might as well have been two million dollars. It was a godsend. There I was, a “hundredaire” in Los Angeles with a new job and a thirty-five-dollar-a-night hotel room in Hollywood. Tomorrow would be the beginning of the rest of my life. I kept thinking all the way over there,
I need to write more songs.

Unfortunately, my dilemma in 1976 was a different story. The First Edition was over, I was in the throes of a death match with my ex-wife, and once again I had $3,500 in credit card debt. I told myself the first time that I would never be broke like that again, but I was. The difference was, I couldn’t go back to Henry Mancini for a quick royalty check. I had to find a new miracle. I was now staying in a sixty-dollar-a-night hotel room at the Holiday Inn—which I obviously couldn’t afford for long—just down the road from that $35 room I had in 1966. I had some pocket money with what was left of my last check from the First Edition, but it wasn’t much. As Yogi Berra would say, “This was déjà vu all over again.”