The crowd were on the same wavelength, and they cheered for five minutes while Iommi remained on the ground. He opened his eyes but didn’t get up. Some of the band’s techs held him upright while he finished his solo, which was a dissonant mess. Then his handlers walked with him offstage, where he collapsed. Thank you, goodnight. The next night in Sacramento was canceled, and that was the end of that tour.
A few days later, we continued the Three Friends tour on dates with Yes and the Eagles. The former had already hit the mainstream with ‘Roundabout’ from 1971’s Fragile and were polite and friendly—if spiritually eccentric—Englishmen. The Eagles had just released their debut album, and ‘Take It Easy’ and ‘Witchy Woman’ were all over the radio. By contrast with Yes, they were arrogant and obnoxious, and they treated us like hired help. We hadn’t been treated that badly on tour since we opened for The Beach Boys.
I didn’t get it. How could they look down on us? They claimed to love good music, and we were a challenging, melodic rock band who were fun to watch. They were a simple soft-rock group with a few catchy songs. We’d passed that level years ago in Simon Dupree. And, despite their popularity, they were hardly arena-ready. Their harmonies were off-key, their tempos inconsistent. Maybe they felt threatened by us since, musically, we were far superior to them. Still, they were so full of themselves, I can’t imagine how we could have made them feel small. They were selling shitloads of records while we were struggling to stay on the road.
Even though there were six of us, they gave us only a small portion of the stage and minimal lighting. When we started doing well, they loaded more of their gear onto the stage before we played. Every night, the backdrop was moved forward, and we had one foot less room to work in. By the last show, I could barely stand on the edge of the stage, let alone move around while we performed.
At first, we tried to be friendly.
‘Nice show,’ I said, after one of their sets early on the tour.
‘Yeah, Don Henley replied. ‘That’s how it’s done. You guys fuckin’ blow.’
Yeah, we fuckin’ blow you off the stage every night! That would have been the ideal response, but I said nothing.
We played some shows with Frampton’s Camel and Steve Miller in Texas, and, to our surprise, discovered we had a strong following there. Three Friends was beating sales expectations in America. We also did well in Quebec and Montreal, which wasn’t so surprising, since the Canadians seemed to like challenging, experimental music. We had planned to continue the Three Friends tour in Italy, but then Jethro Tull invited us to join them for another month of their US Thick As A Brick tour. As much as we loved Italy, it was a better career move to delay the tour and return to America with Tull. They were huge, they were good friends, and the people who liked their music also enjoyed Gentle Giant. The only drawback was the tour schedule. Tull were playing for two nights at numerous venues, and since we didn’t have hotels booked or planes to shuttle us between faraway cities, we could only play one show in each city. Captain Beefheart & The Magic Band or Wild Turkey played the second dates.
Being in the States with nothing scheduled between shows was too stressful for Phil, who missed his wife and son. When we were out with Black Sabbath, most of us were annoyed by all the cancellations. Phil was crushed. Being onstage was the only thing distracting him from not being home. He spent most of his time in our room at the Holiday Inn, his ear connected to the receiver of the phone by his bed. He spent hours talking to Roberta, who was having a hard time being a single parent and consistently urged him to come back home.
Back then, international calls were timed to the second at exorbitant rates. It was a total racket of unconscionable price-gouging fueled by loneliness. At a time when there were no competitors to lower prices, phone companies and hotels charged a fortune for overseas calls. During the Black Sabbath tour, Phil spent over eight hundred dollars on phone calls, which was a lot back then. When we returned to the States with Tull, he spent even more time on the phone with his wife, and it rarely made him happy. So, he booked flights back and forth between whatever American city we were in for a day and Portsmouth, sometimes returning just minutes before we were scheduled to go onstage two days later. It was disruptive to the rest of the band, who drove between gigs, and switching from homebody to touring rocker was tearing Phil apart like a newspaper.
In stressful times, the unpredictability of rock’n’roll sometimes delivers a welcome relief, or at least interesting stories. One night in May 1973, we were sulking in our dressing room somewhere in Texas when our publicist, Jessica, entered with a short black fellow holding a Chinese take-out bag.
‘Gentlemen, this is Sherman Hemsley,’ she said. ‘He’s a big fan, and he would love to say hi.’
We had no idea that Sherman was a famous TV actor, having played George Jefferson on All In The Family and The Jeffersons. Those shows weren’t broadcast in England. But though the timing wasn’t ideal, we were always fine with meeting fans.
‘Hey, you guys are unbelievable,’ he gushed. ‘You know, you have one of the best bands I’ve ever heard in my life.’
‘Well, thanks, man,’ I said. ‘That’s very nice of you.’
‘I brought you a special gift that I think you’ll like,’ he replied, reaching into the plastic bag and pulling out two foil takeout trays.
Oh, he’s bringing us Chinese food, we thought. It seemed like an odd gift.
Sherman opened one of the containers, and it was filled with dried mushrooms. I didn’t see any sauce or noodles, and since he was a stranger, I wasn’t about to try the food. Still, I wanted to be polite.
‘Is it chop suey or something?’ I asked. ‘I’m sure it’s great. Let’s save it for later.’
‘No,’ Sherman laughed. ‘They’re magic mushrooms. You’ll really enjoy them.’ I flashed back to my nightmare LSD trip.
‘Oh, thank you very much,’ I said, stumbling on my words. ‘I’m sure they’re wonderful, but I’m going to pass.’ Kerry, Ray, and Phil also turned down the ’shrooms, but I think Gary and John tried a little, and some of the people who were backstage with us happily accepted the rest.
CHAPTER
TWELVE
COMPLETE
CONTROL
When we were in Simon Dupree & The Big Sound, we felt lucky that the local gangsters had befriended us and seemed to be looking out for our best interests. And we were happy that our connection to the Kray brothers in Portsmouth led to a relationship with Worldwide Artists Management after Gerry Bron quit. But maybe we should have realized there are substantial drawbacks to doing business with gangsters.
Back then, managers were notorious for striking crooked deals with artists and holding these horribly one-sided contracts over their heads like a razor-sharp guillotine blade. Patrick Meehan and Don Arden were business partners and two of the most intimidating managers in the business, and both had ties to the British mafia. Arden had signed numerous bands from the Birmingham area, including The Move and The Small Faces, who we played with several times before they became The Faces. At a time when they were releasing hit records and playing big shows, they were on a salary of ten pounds per week. Arden and Meehan’s team bought them fancy cars and the musicians drove them around like they owned them. In fact, they owned nothing. When they realized they were being bilked and tried to renegotiate their deal, Arden called them into his office—but not to offer them more money.