The time had come for us to get out on the road. In New York, She and Joey were frantically looking a booking agent to handle us before we bankrupted them. They played the telephone game, trying to get through to people who had just stepped away from their office or were in meeting. A million phone calls trying to get past a million closed doors. Using the invisible album as an edge, Shep finally got up the International Famous Agency, where we cajoled, begged and befriended a man named Alan Strahl. At twenty-four, Strahl was one of the most successful guys in the business. He was a short, sunshiny-faced man with a remarkable sense of humor — probably the reason he took up on us as clients.
Alan Strahl didn’t exactly know what he was getting into. He heard through the grapevine that we were a little weird, but that was all. Shep, after all, was a nice boy from Long Island, like Alan, so what could be wrong? With Strahl behind us we got a few dates.
We played Salt Lake City for $700, The University of Boulder for $1,000, The Black Dome in Cincinnati for $1,250, and Vancouver, British Columbia, in March for $1,500, where we saw the first copy of Pretties For You with an Ed Beardsley painting on the cover sealed in plastic.
Pretties For You may have been declared a classic years later in Germany, but in 1968 it was a dud. People hated it in droves. It was called a “tragic waste of vinyl” by one critic although it had some of our best compositions on it, like “10 Minutes Before the Worm” and “Swing Low Sweet Cheerio.” Dennis had written a masterpiece for that album called “B.B. On Mars.” When Alan Strahl got a copy of the record in New York, curious to hear what it sounded like, he was only able to listen to twenty seconds of it before he had to shut off the record player.
We had our fans, however. The Hells Angels adored the album. The president of the San Francisco chapter of the Angels was a longtime Zappa fan, and when Pretties For You came out he was one of the few thousand people who bought a copy. He told Zappa to tell us that we represented more of what the Hells Angels stood for than the Grateful Dead, a supreme compliment. As word spread on us, the Angels would show up backstage everywhere we played. It was a frightening fan club, and we treated them gingerly and with respect.
In April, only seven months after signing a recording contract, we were $40,000 in the hole. There was literally no work left for us in LA. We had played the town out. The only choice was to find another city or another location where the Alice Cooper band would be better received.
Whatever you do, if you’re new and haven’t played around, you don’t go to New York. New York isn’t considered a “breaking town” in the record business. You have to be big already by the time you hit New York, and then you’ve got to be good to stay big. If they don’t like you in New York they put the word out on you and you’re crippled in the music business. They send you back to the hinterlands without a second chance.
I don’t know if Shep knew how dangerous it was to take us to New York, but I think he wanted to get it over, put us out of our misery, so to speak. Alan Strahl and Shep wrangled a whole East Coast suicide spree for us. Strahl’s influence got us a booking fourth on the bill at the Felt Forum on June 6, 1968, followed by two nights at Steve Paul’s Scene. On June 13 we went to the Electric Factory in Philadelphia for two days before returning to New York for three more nights at the Scene.
Memorial weekend we piled into a station wagon like lambs to a slaughter and with a van full of lights and sound equipment following us we drove to New York. We arrived on a hot, humid day, a city-broiler that makes the tar soft and glistening and the air fetid and thick. We spent a good hour driving in circles around Madison Square Garden, gawking at the building and counting winos asleep on the sidewalk.
Shep had a surprise waiting in New York, although I can tell you we weren’t happy about it. His name was Billy. Billy was another in a series of road managers that Shep seemed to find for us under rocks, or in brothels, or in Billy’s case, fresh out of military prison. He was waiting for Shep in the busy lobby of the Allison Hotel in Greenwich Village, grinning and sweating as he pumped our arms up and down.
Billy’s job, by its very nature, was only for losers. Road managers were unpaid, overworked dolts who got nothing out of the job except room and board. There was always the promise of Easy Street when things got good, but who would have put their future in our hands? S o we were mothered and corralled by an astounding collection of ex-junkies, junkies, ex-prizefighters and loafers.
Billy had been arrested in the marines for stealing a radio, I believe. I don’t remember the details except that Shep picked him up on his way out of military prison on the occasion of his dishonourable discharge. Billy took the job, in part, because he didn’t think handling a rock group would be much different than handling a bunch of guys in the marines. Boy, was he wrong.
I made it up to the hotel room first and took choice of the beds, a matter of great importance and dispute between us. When I saw the room, an oilcloth and wallpapered cubicle, I knew I would get the crabs. I was waiting for my roommates, Neal and Glen, when I met the first of the drag queens.
I had been courted by drag queens before in LA, but in New York they latch on to us like we were the Welcome Wagon from Max Factor. It was almost as if some sort of alarm system was set off in transvestite bars all over the city, sending them swishing up to the Allison where they lined the hallways and lobbies for three days.
When I heard the knock I thought it was Glen and Neal. I never expected to see a transvestite outside the door. I think I screamed a little, like aargh! I even tried to slam the door in his face, but he stuck his foot in the doorjamb and said, “Oh, baby, have I been waiting for you!”
The elevator hall opened across the hall and Neal and Glen got out. Neal had a girl with big tits on his arm.
“Alice found a girlfriend already,” he said.
“Alice!” the drag queen repeated blissfully. “Alice. I love it, love it, love it to death. Where’d you get a name like Alice?”
We all walked into the room together and the drag queen started a monologue about New York when Glen howled, “Where’s my guitar? Where’s my guitar?” He tossed suitcases aside, looked under the bed and in the bathroom. He ran out into the hallway banging on doors, screaming for Billy to come help him. Billy ran out into the hall in his underwear with a girl in bra and panties trailing him.
“Where’s my guitar?” Glen screamed. “My thousand-dollar Les Paul is missing. My pink Les Paul! I gave it to you fifteen minutes ago!”
“Well,” Billy asked him, blinking, “was it on the elevator with the other stuff?” There was no consoling Glen. He ran up and down all the floors of the hotel knocking on doors and cursing. He ranted and screamed and fired Billy, which Billy paid no attention to.
The next day, in order to play the Felt Forum, Glen had to rent a guitar, and he said it knocked his performance off. Not that anyone would have noticed. The crowd at the Forum acted as if nobody was on the stage. They didn’t seem to mind us very much, and that was encouraging. I’d call it “silent fascination.” When it was over there was light applause, but at least no booing.
The gig we really cared about in New York was at Steve Paul’s Scene. Like the Hullabaloo Club in Los Angeles, the Scene attracted a music business crowd, and that was important to us, but more important than that, the Scene attracted the media. Like Max’s Kansas City after it, it was the headquarters for pop culture and the avant-garde in New York. Steve Paul’s own reputation as a trend-setter had made the club into the enormous power it was, and Paul was hardly twenty-three at the time.