Blood, Sweat and Tears Read online

  If you worked in Ronnie’s band, he worked you hard. We would play five shows a night, forty minutes on and twenty off. The band would break at one in the morning when the bar closed, grab a bite to eat and be back at the club by three for rehearsals which lasted till dawn. Then we’d round up the always present bar girls and cocktail waitresses, head upstairs to the Hawk’s Nest and party till noon. The band would sleep until around five in the afternoon, eat breakfast and start all over again. Some nights I crashed upstairs at the club. Sometimes the band would pool their money and rent a party room at some cheap hotel and I’d sack out there. On Saturday afternoons we’d play a two-show matinee beginning at one. On Sundays either we’d play a one-nighter somewhere or we’d all collapse and sleep around the clock. My formal education in show business had begun.

  We were surrounded by drugs, booze and loose women, and we indulged in them all. If someone wanted to buy you a drink, the club owner expected you to accept it. It was an insult to refuse to drink with the customers and an insult wasn’t taken lightly on the Strip. The local hookers and bar groupies were always ready and willing to party with the band and we took full advantage of their generosity. We popped uppers to balance the booze and get through the night and downers to come down after the shows. Liquor and drugs had entered my life, and it would be years before I could finally rid myself of these nasty habits.

  By 1964 my marriage to Nancy was hanging by a thread. She was living with Christine at Bill’s place up in Willowdale. I paid the bills but I seldom slept there. This was not what she had bargained for. She married a blue-collar stiff who worked nine to five and came home every night. She didn’t know this wannabe rock star who hung out in the bars downtown and was doing God knows what all night. She tried to make our marriage work but it was a losing battle. I was living in a different world. I’d been locked up for most of my teenage years and the lifestyle of a rock musician was incredibly seductive. Nancy couldn’t possibly compete with all that sex, drugs and rock & roll.

  I was singing with Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, the hottest band in town, and loving every minute of it. I made many lifelong friends among the young musicians who gathered at the Saturday matinees. One afternoon I met a young left-handed guitar player by the name of Fred Keeler. He came in with a bass player named Scott Richards, who played with Fred in a little R&B garage band called the Shays. They had a keyboard player with his own B-3 and a drummer with a wicked foot pedal. They lived out in the suburbs. They all had day gigs or were still in school and they played high school dances and such on weekends. They needed a singer and invited me to a rehearsal.

  Like every other band in town they worshipped the Hawks. They knew all the tunes I sang with Ronnie’s band and we clicked right away. Before long we were playing dance gigs at local high schools and shopping plazas. We called ourselves “David Clayton Thomas and the Fabulous Shays.” We played R&B by Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding and blues by Willie Dixon and Bo Diddley. I had dropped the “Thomsett” name to put some distance between the prison years and my new life in music. Many of my blues idols had three names—John Lee Hooker, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin’ Sam Hopkins. My name just sounded like a blues singer’s name. Then a club owner on Yonge Street inadvertently hyphenated my last name on the marquee. I liked it and it stuck. I became David Clayton-Thomas.

  Donnybrook

  What’s all the fuss, what’s all the racket

  I just came here to have me some fun

  Take my beer and hold my jacket

  A donnybrook has just begun

  Man, this life is crazy, and it makes no sense

  We all go round for a while, then we all fall down

  You think you’re tough, you think you’re funny

  And you think you’ve got the world by the tail

  You’re outta luck, you’re outta money

  And tonight you’re gonna land in jail

  Man, this life is crazy, and it makes no sense

  We all go round for a while, then we all fall down

  Lyrics by David Clayton-Thomas. Copyright © Clayton-Thomas Music Publishing Inc., 2007.

  5

  YORKVILLE AND THE BLUENOTE

  Nineteen sixty-four and I was finally a working musician. I sang with Ronnie’s band when they were in Toronto, did pickup gigs around town when they weren’t and played high school dances and shopping malls with the Shays on weekends. On weeknights I became a regular fixture at every bar and strip joint in town, eager for any chance to sit in with the band and sing a tune or two. I didn’t care if I made any money. I just wanted to get up onstage for a few minutes. After years of being told that I was just a number, a nobody, the spotlight and the applause gave me an identity. Onstage I was somebody.

  There was a little after-hours club on Yonge Street called the Bluenote. The club didn’t open till after midnight, served no liquor and ran till dawn. Once the bars on the Strip closed, the musicians would head for the Bluenote to hang out and jam. It was the only place in town still open. Anyone who was in town, from Motown acts to Chicago blues bands, would end up at this little upstairs club. The Bluenote had a house band called the Silhouettes. At around two in the morning the dance floor would be cleared and the “floor show” would begin. Whoever wanted to get up and sing was welcome, but beware: like at the Apollo in New York, the audience could be merciless if you weren’t really good. In that crowd on any given night would be not only the top local entertainers from the bars on the Strip, but you might also find the Righteous Brothers, the Temptations, Albert King, James Brown or Tina Turner.

  The Bluenote offered nothing but a great band and hot women but that was enough to draw the biggest names in the business to the floor show. If you were a musician or an entertainer, the cover charge was waived, but you were expected to “sit in.” If you didn’t, you wouldn’t be welcome there again. Leave your ego at the door, get out on the floor and let it all hang out. The crowd was ruthless when faced with mediocrity and the house band was wicked hot, a pure R&B soul machine. Many wannabe singers left that club with their illusions shattered forever. If you had the audacity to step out on that floor, you’d better bring it or they would eat you alive.

  I met a remarkable young man at the Bluenote, one who would play a major role in my life and be my friend forever. He played Hammond B-3 organ. His name was Doug Riley but everyone called him “Doc.” He was no more than eighteen when I first met him but he was already the undisputed leader of the Silhouettes. A young white kid from suburban Toronto working his way through a music scholarship at the Royal Conservatory, he was the baddest B-3 player I have ever heard. World-renowned organ players like Jimmy Smith and Groove Holmes would drop in at the Bluenote and they would break into a broad smile when they heard young Doc Riley play. Fire and funk, beautifully melodic with a fierce groove—there was only one Doc Riley and there will never be another one like him.

  I had seen him play several times but he was always behind the B-3 and he worked the foot pedals like a great bass player. I was surprised the first time he stepped down from the Hammond and joined me at a table. He walked with painful difficulty. He’d had polio as a kid and couldn’t walk at all until he was about twelve, and even then wore braces on his legs for years afterwards. When the other kids were out playing hockey and baseball, young Doug Riley was sitting on a piano bench. It wasn’t just his astounding chops and considerable musical education that set him apart. It was that intangible thing called soul. If you played with Doc, fasten your seat belt, baby—you were in for the musical ride of your life. There was a fierce intensity and an aching tenderness to his playing. When I sang with him for the first time at the Bluenote, he made me sing better than I ever had in my life and from that moment on we were brothers. Doc Riley would be my best friend and closest musical collaborator for the next forty years.

  CHUM Radio was the big pop station in Toronto. One of their disc jockeys, a guy named Duff Roman, heard the Shays and invited us to play at a little aft
er-hours club he was starting downtown. I liked Duff immediately and he was blown away by this white blues band who played John Lee Hooker, Howlin’ Wolf and Lightnin’ Sam Hopkins tunes. Duff Roman became my first manager and took us into the studio to record a single, a John Lee Hooker tune called “Boom Boom.” The song exploded onto the local charts and in a matter of weeks David Clayton-Thomas and the Fabulous Shays was the hottest act in town. The bars on the Strip were now demanding the Shays, and we started headlining on the same circuit that Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks played.

  I was barely two years out of Millbrook and I was becoming somewhat of a local celebrity. I still wasn’t making much money but I was becoming well known in Toronto. My songs were all over the radio, we had our first local TV appearances and my name was up in lights on Yonge Street. For the first time I began to believe I could be more than just a working musician. I would have been satisfied with that. It was everything I’d ever dreamed of but now I began to believe I could actually be a star.

  Home base for the Shays was the Friar’s Tavern, another rowdy joint with go-go dancers and Saturday matinees, right down the street from Le Coq D’Or. We adopted the dress code of the Hawks, mohair suits and razor-cut hairstyles. Freddy Keeler played a white left-handed Telecaster and we worked the same five-shows-a-night routine as Ronnie’s band. Both bands were so popular on the Strip that rather than compete with each other, the club owners would stagger our sets so the crowd could catch a set with the Hawks at Le Coq d’Or and then move down the block to catch the Shays at the Friar’s. Ronnie and I became lifelong friends. Our bands worked the same schedule and hung out together. Both bars closed at one in the morning so we’d all gather at Fran’s Restaurant at Yonge and Dundas for dinner, exchange war stories about the hookers, pimps and rounders who were our clientele, then head back to our respective clubs for rehearsals or to the Bluenote to jam until dawn. We lived the same lifestyle and partied together, no-holds-barred, all-night donnybrooks with the hookers, hustlers and cocktail waitresses who worked both clubs. We bought our mohair suits from the same tailor, played the same kind of music to the same crowds, knew all the same local characters and hung out with the same women.

  I was living in a different world by now. I had nothing but bitter memories of Willowdale and I had left it far behind me. I had almost no contact with my family. My life was my band and my gigs. Occasionally I’d see my mother, when I knew Fred wouldn’t be there. She was truly happy that I had found some direction in life. My father still didn’t get it. To him there was no difference between spending the rest of my life in jail and hanging out in bars with a bunch of no-good rock musicians. I was still just a useless bum. I began to realize that nothing would ever be good enough for him. Unlike most parents, who want their children to succeed, Fred Thomsett resented any success I might have. “So you think you’re a star, eh … What makes you think you’re any better than me?” How do you argue with twisted logic like that? I didn’t even try. I didn’t give a damn what he thought. I didn’t speak to him for nearly seven years.

  The Shays were developing a huge following in Toronto. Young people were packing our dance gigs on the weekends. We had our own fan club and that spring we opened for the Rolling Stones at Maple Leaf Gardens. The little garage band that had only played bars and high school dances was performing for 17,000 screaming fans. We recorded a second single, also produced by Duff, and it was an immediate hit. The song was called “Walk That Walk” and it was my first original composition. This time we got national airplay in Canada and the record came to the attention of Paul Anka and his manager-father Andy Anka. Paul was set to host the NBC rock show Hullabaloo in New York City and he was looking for a Canadian band to feature on the show. We got the call.

  So off we went to New York in April of 1965, a little five-piece blues band from Toronto with our disc-jockey manager all crammed into a 1960 Cadillac Sedan de Ville, pulling our gear in a homemade trailer. The overloaded Caddy blew a tire on the trip and Duff and I had to change it by the side of the New York State Thruway. We couldn’t have the musicians risk their delicate hands, so the singer and the manager did the heavy work. We made it to New York City, checked into a cheap hotel and prepared for our television debut. A Canadian rock band was unheard of in those days and the Hullabaloo producers, knowing absolutely nothing about Canada except that we played hockey “up there,” surrounded us with dancers dressed up as hockey players. God, it was awful, but what the hell, we were in New York City and doing something no Canadian band had ever done: appearing on American network television. Welcome to the big time, David!

  We were in New York for three days with lots of free time. So I searched out a place I’d only heard about on Bob Dylan records, a mythical place called Greenwich Village. For three days I haunted the clubs in the Village. I saw Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Carole King, James Taylor, Richie Havens and a band called Jimmy James and the Blue Flames, whose lead singer would later become Jimi Hendrix. It was a creative scene like I’d never known. It was so vital, bursting with energy and possibilities. In Toronto, even with two hit records, we were still playing the bars on the Strip, but this was the gateway to international recognition. I was hooked. I wanted to be a part of this. I wanted to make it in New York.

  We returned to Toronto but I was burning with a new fire. What I’d heard in New York was new and exciting, and everyone was writing their own songs. The closest thing we had to Greenwich Village was Yorkville, a two-block-long street of coffee houses that featured blues, jazz, folk and progressive rock. It was a bohemian, artsy Toronto version of the Village in New York. Yorkville Avenue was only a few blocks long, but it was the two blocks between Bay Street and Avenue Road that would become indelibly etched in the history of Toronto. This stretch of Yorkville was lined with rundown three-storey houses that had seen better days. It was these old houses that originally drew the artists to the neighbourhood. The top two floors were rooms for rent cheap, usually by the week. The main floors and the basements were gutted out into larger spaces and in the late fifties were used as art galleries or espresso houses for the beat generation.

  By the mid-sixties, the poetry readings and art galleries had given way to music. The coffee houses had become little clubs that hosted every kind of music from folksingers to rock bands. Sidewalk cafés lined the street with their outdoor tables and colourful Cinzano umbrellas bringing people in from the suburbs. The area became so popular that the street had to be cordoned off in the summer and no vehicles were allowed. Tourists jammed the street from sidewalk to sidewalk. The street was lined with tie-dye-draped head shops and T-shirt joints that sold everything from incense and Peter Max posters to hash pipes. That short two-block stretch of Yorkville would be packed with thousands of young people.

  At night the club scene took over. There were little basement clubs like the Riverboat, with its pine-panelled riverboat motif complete with faux portholes, a nice, small place that brought in folk and blues talent from Canada and the US. It was here that I first saw Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Joni Mitchell, Gordon Lightfoot, Son House and John Lee Hooker. There were other places that weren’t so “nice,” like the Purple Onion, the Penny Farthing and the Devil’s Den. While the Riverboat audience was seated and polite, many of the other joints had dance floors and were loud and raucous. These places featured local rock & roll bands with that “Toronto sound,” a funky blend of British rock and American R&B.

  In Yorkville, artists were actually writing their own music, and this was where I wanted to be. There was one catch, however: there was no money in the coffee houses. They sold no liquor, seated only about fifty people and paid peanuts. I certainly couldn’t afford a five-piece band or support a wife and a baby with coffee-house gigs. So in early 1966 the Shays disbanded and went back to their day gigs. Nancy took our young daughter, Christine, to live with her parents, and I moved into a one-room flat on Yorkville across the hall from Joni Mitchell.

  There was a real sens
e of community in Yorkville. The rents were cheap and most of the musicians lived in the neighbourhood. Young artists like myself, Joni, Neil Young, Rick James and John Kay lived in the second- and third-floor flats, working the clubs at night and hanging out in the little cafés along the street by day. I played everything—from folk clubs with an acoustic guitar to rock joints with my Telecaster. I loved Yorkville. This was as close as I could get to that magical scene that was Greenwich Village. I was burning to get back to New York but it wasn’t that easy. You had to have a visa to cross the border, a sponsor, a gig to go to. I had none of these so I stayed on in Yorkville, living from gig to gig, rooming with other starving artists. Many times I wondered if I’d made a big mistake. There was still a lucrative scene available to me in the bars downtown but the bars on Yonge Street had a dress code and demanded a certain kind of music. It was a world of mohair suits, top-forty music and drunks. Yorkville was long hair, blue jeans and pot smokers, and Yorkville audiences weren’t there for the booze—they were there for the music. Yorkville changed me as a person. The hair-trigger temper that was my survival mechanism in prison and in the brawling bars on Yonge Street was completely unacceptable here. This was an intellectual community. They weren’t impressed by my tough-guy bullshit.