Autumn Leaves and Dry Heaves: Chapter 7

I first heard the term 'discotheque' around 1964, in Paris: the music sounded like watered-down James Brown - what we used to call 'tunes to breed by'. The people who liked that crap weren't cultured enough to appreciate Sinatra or me, yet were too old to dig the Beatles and Stones. So they'd park their Lamborghinis outside nightclubs and jump around till dawn in their Capri pants and crewcuts and believe that somehow they were hip. But they weren't; they were just rejects, unknowing geeks, trust fund rich kids insulated for too long who spent a lot of time in front of mirrors. In fact, mirrors became a big deal in discos, but I'll get to that later.

Around 1974 rock and roll music collapsed under the dark influence of women's rights activists. No longer did you have songs about hell raising on Saturday night or Suzie in her tight pink sweater - just your basic Elvis. No, a lot of songs started to come out with the words 'peaceful' or 'gentle' in the title. You see, good rock is about male aggression, and great rock is about sex. It's not a complicated formula. But women don't want that; they want songs about how you 'feel'. Suddenly everyone, including me (I'm sorry to say) released 'feeling' songs. I mean, take a look at a few of the 1974 Billboard hits - Jim Croce's 'Time In A Bottle', Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road', Barbra Streisand's 'The Way We Were'… it just goes on and on. In fact, the biggest hit from 1975 was some piece of shit entitled (you guessed it) 'Feelings'. Small wonder I couldn't hold down my food back then.

So what happened is that everybody with half a brain just gave up on rock and roll. Some of them got into country music and picked up where my old pal Gram Parsons left off. Others did the punk thing. Some smoked bales of dope and listened to Pink Floyd. Then around 1976 you started to hear a lot of what we now call 'disco'. You'd go into a club and hear the same song - or what seemed to be the same song - that you heard in another club just one hour before. It was all identical crap. But it was a big improvement on the 'feelings' crap.

I remember leaning back on a bar stool at New York's Santuary Club late 1975, watching a lot of well-dressed people leaping to disco music. I was just trying to figure it out. The women loved it because women love to dance; the gay guys loved it because gay guys are like women. And the men, mostly first-generation Italians and Puerto Ricans, loved it as foreplay. I thought the clothes were okay - but polyester shirts usually look cheap: you've got to be very thin to make them work.

One night, in a Time Square bar, I bumped into a journalist named Nik Cohn. He said he knew me from the old days and we had a drink. Cohn told me he was working on an article for New York Magazine about a bunch of young Italian guys from Brooklyn who ran off to discos on Saturday night. They had dead-end jobs so the dance floor was kind of like a salvation. He said that it was impossible to interview any of these zipperheads because they were just too fucking stupid. So I advised him to make up what he had to - it didn't matter. Who cares. So Nik made it up and later sold it as truth. Anyway, his story became the basis of the movie 'Saturday Night Fever'. And when that movie came out, everyone began to take disco very seriously. I know that I did.

So after that terrible nightmare of the Monkees tour, I was ready for anything. I had a two-part plan: first, I had to get to the west coast, California (you can only stay in New York so long without rotting your gut); second, I had to do something with disco music (I needed a ton of cash for the IRS and a few lawsuits involving greedhead ex-wives).

During my flight to L.A. from NYC, I penned the hit song 'Gimme A Chunk-a Funk'. A week later, I recorded it with a bunch of crack studio musicians, and man, I was back in business! You see, disco music was all about singles - the studio never wanted albums from anybody, so there were a lot of one-hit wonders. Anyway, do you know how you've made it in L.A.? You get invited to Hugh Hefner's mansion - and that's what happened to me.

Before I get into this little story, I want you know that I never make excuses for any violent behaviour on my part. I hate people apologizing all the time. Everybody does nowadays. If you fuck up, then you're guilty: saying you're sorry (past the age of eight) just doesn't cut it.

Okay, on we go. I like Playboy magazine because it reminds me of a time when we didn't have predatory packs of hysterical and unattractive women with marine haircuts running around, shrieking about their rights and making everyone, including themselves and their poor daughters, gravely unhappy. In other words, Playboy exists in a time warp - with the top ceiling holding at about 1965. And the fabled Playboy mansion is like that too. So when I showed up at Hefner's pad at Holmby Hills, I left 1979 behind and entered a world untouched by male-hating malcontents.

I suppose you should know a few things about the broads who litter the lawn at the Playboy mansion. Most of them are pretty, most of them have huge breasts, and all of them are stupid - and I mean dumber than a wet stick. It's incredible to me that their brains are even capable of supporting basic life functions - like breathing and digestion.

Anyway, I realize that you don't go there to play chess - but after a while you start feeling kind of violent because everything you say causes one of these beautiful pinheads to giggle - for if she's giggling that means she doesn't have to reveal her stupidity. Men should have to work at seduction - or it doesn't make any sense.

After walking around the mansion yards I met Hugh Hefner, wearing his dopey pyjamas and bathrobe, and he acted like we were old pals. (In fact, I had met him once in Chicago about thirty years before, but I know he acts this way with every so-called 'celebrity'). So Hugh and I strolled down to the grotto and he introduced me to guys like James Caan, Shel Silverstein, Don Adams and Ryan O'Neil - real losers. There wasn't enough talent there to choke an ant. And that's what's depressing about the mansion - you run into a lot of people whose careers have hit the shit pile and will never dig their way out -Robert Blake, Jimmy Connors, Robert Culp - you get the drift. There are a lot of dead men walking.

In fact, the only person in this stinking world who can truly act like a 'playboy' is Hugh Hefner. That's the whole irony of the place. When you go to the mansion, when you buy a Playboy magazine - all you're doing is feeding this cretin's lifestyle; you're just a bit player in his orgasmic existence - and who the hell wants to do that? Not me pal.

So I wandered around the grounds, drinking some kind of terrible warm scotch. It got dark and I made my way to the mansion. Some shaved ape was blocking the door, and said I needed some kind of special pass to get in. All I did was pull off to one side and had a smoke, then slipped in when he was distracted (like I said, the mansion is not a brainiacs convention).

The place looked like Helen Keller decorated it. Just a junk pile. Small wonder why Sinatra never came there, even after Hefner wept please-please tears at his feet. I love decadence but I hate decay.

So I walked up a flight a stairs and down a hall. I felt kind of loaded but very controlled. Suddenly a door flew open and out ran Red Buttons, half-dressed and sweating like a pig in hot oil. He looked me over and said, "Excuse me sir" then careened down the hall.

I looked into the room he'd just left. Laying back on this cheap leather sofa was a nude broad, maybe twenty years old, and she was crying. So I went over to her. She gazed up at me and said, "He wanted me to do things that I didn't want to do!" And she started crying again. "Kid," I replied, "get dressed, get out, get an education, and get a job. You're pretty but you've got no cheekbones so your face will fall faster than King Kong's dump off the Empire State." That was cruel I know - but Red Buttons? Jesus H. Christ, how low can you go! Anyway, her wailing drove me out of the room.

On my way back downstairs I met Hefner coming up. He had a blonde on each arm. "Dusty," he said, "you find something you like?" I felt like smacking his old elf face. All this guy thought about was sex, that's it. And that's not necessarily a bad thing, but it doesn't make you very interesting. He doesn't respect broads. He doesn't hold the door for them. He doesn't tell them they look beautiful when they really don't.

"Did I find something?" I said. "Not as much as I could find in a Las Vegas casino at three a.m. when the big tables shut down and everybody is feeling empty and even an ordinary woman looks gorgeous because you can see past her face and into her soul."

"Yeah, whatever," he replied and started up the stairs. "Lots of girls for my friends." And then the blondes started giggling.

It was too much to handle. I don't know - maybe it was the crying girl; maybe it was all the all Don Adams-type losers; maybe the scotch, maybe it was just Hefner's smug face, but whatever it was, it unleashed itself with fury.

Hefner's face suddenly resembled an old man trying to blow up an invisible balloon. I suppose that's what can happen when you drive a fist into a guy's flabby gut. He kind of jackknifed and gripped a railing for support. The two blondes were even too stupid to scream: they just froze and moved their lips like hungry goldfish bumping against aquarium glass.

"You're a punk!" I yelled. "Just an old raincoat flasher with a camera who takes pictures of retarded teenagers. Shit man, you're supposed to grow out of that crap when you're fifteen!"

Hefner was fumbling in his pyjama pockets. "What do you got in there?" I said. My hands went the same place as his and retrieved some kind of radio alert device. I put the thing under my heel and ground it into the carpet - the ugly, red shag carpet. "Too bad you apes won't show up," I said, "the night is still so young and I want action!"

I began to walk down the stairs. Hefner kind of moaned to me, "I… I want you to stay Dusty… I want your energy. I like your danger, that's why I wanted you here… Join me with the girls, now. We can watch… each other."

I lit a smoke as I hit the front door. The gorilla guard was there and he said, "How'd you get in?" I turned to him. "Getting in isn't important pal. It's getting out that counts." He just stood there scratching his head, probably searching for lice to eat.

As I made my way to the front gate I heard someone whisper my name. Out of tall bush stepped Tony Curtis. It looked like he had been sleeping naked in a mud bath. "Hey Dusty," he said, "leaving so soon? Look bud, you got any nose candy on you? I'm out and right now I need a little kick." I heard some giggling from the bush.

I looked him over. "Tony, I'd be pleased to give you a little kick, but it would probably kill you." I'd always liked Tony Curtis, we used to hang together a little, but I didn't like what he'd turned into - just another Hefner flunky in a bad toupee. I tossed him a tiny envelope that I carried around sometimes for emergencies - I still do. He practically poured the stuff up his nostrils, and then began to shiver. "I won't forget you," he said sniffing. "A real friend. Look me up sometime." He shuffled back into the bush.

That night I hit the bottle at a place called Tony G's on the Sunset strip. I had a great single and song on my hands with lots of club and radio play - but then nothing. No manager wanted to manage me because I was unmanageable. Screw them all. I've always walked alone. I got the feeling that something big was going to happen, something great. Once again, my career was going to push in the clutch and drop into first gear.

I finally rolled into a cab and told the guy to cruise Santa Monica Boulevard and cut down La Cienega. I began thinking about the 1960s and the Whiskey A Go-Go and all the people I met there - Steve McQueen, Ann Margret, George Peppard, Rita Hayworth, George Hamilton, Tuesday Weld, Johnny Carson, Laurence Harvey, Troy Donahue, Lana Turner, Janis Joplin… funny how the talented people tend to die young. It began to rain and the red neon of Sunset crossed the windows like tracer bullets - something I'd seen in Vietnam, but over there they were bright pink. I resolved to call an old friend, Elmer Valentine, who used to run the Whiskey: maybe he could make things happen.

Well, I saw Elmer and he helped me put together a hot band and got me booked at the Whiskey. I told him that I could make it happen on the strength of 'Gimme a Chunk-a Funk' and to hell with the nostalgia shit.

So there I was on opening night, trying to decide on this stage costume that everybody said was necessary. It was a white jump suit - and it just didn't fit. I mean, this suit lifted, separated and defined my balls. It was friggin painful. It cut into my armpits and buckled at the navel. But everyone was wearing these goddam white disco jumpsuits, so off I went.

I get out on stage and led into 'Gimme a Chunka Funk' and the place went nuts. They really dug my groove. But then I started to feel funny, light headed, and I realized this goddam suit was cutting off my circulation. I was actually dying! So I unzipped the whole thing and that really got the place going. So I said to myself, might as well go all the way. And before you know it, I was dancing around in my boxers and white boots.

And you know what? I felt liberated! No more dumb-ass Hefner celebrity shit, no more jumpsuits, no more pain over my career. It was just me, Dusty Carr, a man alone with his unique vocal stylings. What I didn't know was that there were some punk rockers in the crowd that night. They were from England. So they saw what I did and they thought, 'Wow! He's one of us! This guy's the real thing'. So to show their appreciation, they came up to the stage and started to spit on me. That was their way of showing appreciation. But I hate that crap - it's so low down, so bargain basement. I used to see it in New York and it make me feel incredibly violent. So I started to spit back, but my spit hit the wrong guys, some cowboys from Dallas. And they went berserk. One of them climbed up on the stage, grabbed the mike stand, and whacked me on the side of the head. The last thing I remember was feeling like I could really fly. I woke up the next day in LA General Hospital completely disoriented and very afraid.

Anyway, 'Rolling Stone' magazine credits that incident with launching the punk scene in California. In some article they treat Iggy Pop and me as the godfathers of west coast punk. All they had to do was phone Joey Ramone and he would have set them straight.

I stayed in L.A. for a few months. I mostly hung out at Barney's Beanery, talking to guys I knew from my time in the Jefferson Airplane. I never took the disco shit that seriously. It made me enough bread to get the IRS off my back and keep my ex-wives away from lawyers.

L.A. is a town you get tired of very quickly because there's nothing there, not even gambling. I started thinking about maybe going to Europe because I still had a following in England and France - you see, people over there have long memories because the countries are so old. In America, most people think of Watergate in terms of ancient history. But I wouldn't get to Europe for another two years - three things got in my way - Memphis, booze, and my late great friend Elvis Presley.

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