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How The Who And A Bald-Headed Albino Changed My Life
I attended the Atlanta Who concert in 1971 and ended up on the tour. I dated Keith Moon for the remainder of that tour and traveled in their limos and planes all over...from Atlanta to Seattle and all points in between.
In 1982 I went on the US tour with Queen and Billy Squier. I met rock photographer Neal Preston and we had a mutual friend that I used to know from Atlanta -- John Bilecky. (I went to fashion college in Atlanta in '71.) Bilecky used to do a lot of photos for Creem Magazine. When Neal and I discovered we both knew Bilecky it was like old home week and we ended up calling him in LA from a backstage party. Later, when I accompanied the Queen Tour to LA I went to visit Neal at his home. I told him about my experiences on the Who's 1971 tour.
Finally, after 30 years I can look back on my adventure and not
feel guilty or ashamed. I DID tour with one of the world's greatest rock bands and I am damn proud of it!! I'm really excited to be finally relating this experience. For many years I wasn't really proud of having been a groupie, but nowadays it seems it was all OK. The photo on the left was taken in Atlanta in 1971; the guy with the hair played for Lynard Skynard, if my memory serves me correctly.
I may very easily have gotten some things mixed up. It was almost 30 years ago… I was a 17 year-old college student who ran off from school to tour with Mooney and the boys and was pretty addled with party favors by the time we got to LA.
Emerson Lake and Palmer were also in Atlanta doing a concert...not the same night as the Who but within a day or two of their show. My friend Sue and I had gone to the Hyatt following ELP's Atlanta show to meet them because we never thought we'd have a chance with the Who. But, when we got to the Hyatt, we sat down for a snack and a coffee in the main dining room on the first floor and low and behold just a few tables away was Keith Moon. He invited us to come join him at his table where the rest of the band were also stationed.
Things get a bit foggy, but somehow Keith went back to his room for one reason or another and told us to meet them in the Hyatt's bar in an hour or so. We used this time to our advantage and hooked up with ELP. Soon it became clear that there was an interesting rivalry between the two bands. When we got to the Hyatt bar and rejoined the Who they said, "They're the Indians and we're the Chiefs! Who would you rather be with?!,” and of course we admitted to liking the Chiefs a lot better. Soon thereafter Keith invited us to the following day's show in Miami. We partied till the bar closed (3AM or so) then caught a taxi back to the dorm to get packed, but first stopped and got several bottles of cheap champagne at an all-night grocery. We packed and screamed and woke up all the girls in the dorm as we tore around and got ready and screamed and shared the bubbly. Amazingly enough we made it back to the Hyatt by daybreak and onto the plane by about 8 AM or so. My friend who came with me to the Miami concerts was Sue ***, and the Who gave us the nicknames of "Pickles and Spam." I was Pickles. Sue had a really bad complexion and earned the Spam moniker for this reason. Everyone on that 1971 US Tour had nicknames: Pete Townshend was 'Towser,” Keith was “Fred,” and Roger Daltrey was “Barney” from the Flintstones. Their Miami concerts were Thanksgiving weekend in 1971.
It was at the Miami concerts that I met Linda ***** and Pat ***** (who also served as the welcome wagon for Robert Plant and the Zeppelin). Those two girls were both with Roger as I recall. Linda or Pat had an interesting story about sleeping with Plant as one night they levitated off the bed and it was all windy and spooky. I think Roger caught a social disease from Pat, but man was she ever gorgeous.
I had to fly back to Atlanta to college to take a typing test...I think on the Monday after the concert in Miami, as it was nearing Christmas break and these were the finals for the semester. Peter Rudge was the Who's tour manager, and their road manager was a bald-headed albino guy...I think his name was John [Wolff]. He was really a nice, sweet and funny guy; always a gentleman to me, unlike Dougal Butler (Moon's "personal assistant" and the author of Full Moon), who put the moves on me when Keith was out carousing in LA. John made the reservations and gave me the cash to return once I finished my schoolwork, so I missed the Memphis and New Orleans shows to go back for my finals. It was around a weekend later when I rejoined Keith in Texas [in Houston and Dallas] once school was out. After Dallas came Denver, then Phoenix (where we stayed at a Playboy Hotel), then San Diego.
I can remember in one airport - Denver I think – [Editor’s note: This would most likely have been in Long Beach before the first San Francisco concert.] Keith was so whacked out that we had to put him in a wheelchair to get him through the airport. So then he puts on this outrageous water buffalo fur hat with horns for the occasion! It was hysterical -- the man was a raving loony. There was NEVER a dull moment.
In Denver a roadie named “Chalky” got busted with coke (I think), and there was a doctor partying in the hotel with us and giving us free unlimited prescription items.
Also in Denver, Joe Walsh came to the hotel, and Steven Still's manager, Michael John, drove us in a pickup truck to Still's cabin above Boulder. I don't think Keith came along, but I will always remember Roger Daltrey riding in the back of the truck in the freezing cold so us girls could sit inside where it was warm!
Pete Townshend cut his finger on a champagne bottle back stage at one of the concerts...I want to say it was Phoenix. He needed stitches but he just put a Band-aid on it and went onstage and played the smokin’est set ever!
During the Atlanta up to LA part of the tour, Roger and Pete told me what a calming influence I had on Keith, that he was really behaving well and that no one had been able to accomplish that to date. He still was pretty darn wild -- food fights, a doctor's bag full of tasty pharmaceuticals. But he had an outrageously funny personality and was a real cut up.
I was sent onto the stage in front of a zillion fans in San Diego to present Towser with a crown that Keith and Roger had purchased from a costume/prop store in Hollywood. We were staying at the Playboy Hotel in San Diego and Keith had coerced one of the bunnies out of her tail and ears -- then he gave these items to me to wear onstage to present Towser's present. I was always under the impression that it was Towser's birthday --or at least that's what Keith and Roger told me, and why I was pushed out onto the stage with the crown and the rabbit accessories. Perhaps the joke was on me...? [Editor’s note: Pete Townshend’s birthday is May 19…the date of the San Diego show was December 8, 1971.] Pete was really pissed that they sent me onstage. I could see the rage in his eyes, and I was terrified of being struck dead by an electric guitar, but when he saw Dougle and Keith giggling after pushing me out on the stage, he suddenly understood the joke and decided not to kill me. Neal Preston was in the audience photographing the concert that night for Creem. I freaked when I found out he had photos and he freaked when he found out the girl onstage was me!! Unfortunately, he couldn't find anymore of the pictures from that concert. I think Towser kept the crown and wore it out onstage again the following night in LA and then threw it into the crowd. There were tons of celebs at the [Los Angeles] Forum show. I remember meeting Mama Cass backstage in LA. I was wearing a pair of powder blue wedgies and she told me that my shoes were "Chase me, catch me, fuck me shoes!" Keith took off for a couple days with Canned Heat and he almost OD'd. We stayed at the Sunset Marquis on Hollywood Blvd. His favorite thing to drink was Brandy and dry Ginger (very expensive Brandy and ginger ale --preferably Canada Dry).
I lost a long black coat when I left it in the back of a limo in LA. When the show was over there were different limos and the coat was gone. I had borrowed it from a friend who started out the tour in Miami but who went home. I knew I was going to have hell to pay when her mother found out!! We drove in the limos from LA to Long Beach that night, I think.
Someone put acid in the punch backstage in San Francisco and I lost Keith for a couple of days. I met Bill Graham at one of the SF concerts, and there was this really pretty oriental girl that I think spiked the punch and took off with Keith. One night in SF he had done so many pills (downers) that there had to be a doctor backstage -- behind the drum kit -- who injected him with speed every time he started to slow down. First he could hardly walk backstage before the show, and then he took a shot and was like a wind-up toy -- the Energizer Mooney -- and played and jumped around and then just wound down and the doctor would inject him again. No wonder he died at such an early age!
By the time we were staying at the St. Francis Hotel in San Francisco, Keith was starting to lose interest in me and suggested I ride in the equipment truck to the next gig in Seattle. I pitched a fit and got to fly, but then I went back to Atlanta directly from Seattle. I celebrated my 18th birthday (my DOB is 12/15/53) at the Edgewater Hotel in Seattle, fishing out of the window. It seems that the Who went on to New York City after the Seattle show but I was not invited. The wives were joining them from London.
Flying back to Atlanta from Seattle, I slept with my head on Mylon LeFevre's shoulder the whole way. [Editor's note: This was the leader of the band Mylon, one of the opening acts for the Who on this tour.] He was an Atlanta resident as well. I discovered that I had been kicked out of the dorm and that I had to get my stuff out before going home for Christmas. Luckily I moved in with some friends and went back to Atlanta following Christmas 1971.
By the time the Who came back to Atlanta (in '73) I had a live-in boyfriend. Keith had hooked up with a groupie named Patricia and had no time for me. I was devastated. A few years later, when I heard he died, I just went into denial about the whole episode, and even that I had ever known him. I cried about his death.
You know what's really weird for me is that I never imagined myself as any sort of celebrity -- I just thanked my lucky stars for being invited to join the tour. In those days I never thought I was very cute or sexy, but now that I'm older I see that I was really deluded!
The pictures below are of myself and my husband, and were taken at the Halloween party this year (2000). The theme was "The Sixties," so that is why my husband, Michael, and I are dressed like the Sixties. Michael just turned 50; he's a carpenter, former teacher, and plays African drums. (And is the stabilizing influence in my life, as well as being a darn nice guy!)
