“Every New Year’s I have the same question…’How did I get home?’” –
Melanie White
This story actually belongs in my last column “The Rougher Side of Rock & Roll,” but I only had so much space to work with.
The last day of 1973 was a wild ride. Our band Starchild was the house band at a nightclub called the Bacchus House in Riviera Beach, Florida, and it was New Year’s Eve. Under its previous name and owner, it had hosted many well-known bands, including the Young Rascals during the mid-Sixties.
Myself and Joe Boudrie, singer and bass player respectively, showed up two hours early to the job, as usual. In those days the common practice in all bars was that the band drank for free, and this being New Years we wanted to make sure we got our share.
When we got to the Bacchus House, our favorite bartender Debbie was on duty at the main bar so we knew we would be feeling the holiday spirit, even more so as the night wore on. We would soon find out.
I had dated Debbie briefly when we first started our “residency” there and we were among friends. The good times were rolling. We made our way to her bar, shaking hands and greeting people at the tables we had grown to know and like.
It promised to be a memorable night. And boy was it.
Our manager, Angie Benvenuti, had been married at one time to Chuck Negron, one of the singers in Three Dog Night and she had contacts with bands and musicians at the top level of the record business.
She would often bring them to our gigs to meet and hear us in hopes of moving up the rock and roll ladder, which of course meant she would finally make some money for a change. Ten percent commission at places like the Bacchus would barely buy her dinner – at least at the kind of restaurant Angie was used to eating at.
That night, she had put her hooks into Jay Ferguson, singer from the California band Spirit (“Got A Line on You”) who was on tour with his new group Jo Jo Gunn playing the West Palm Beach Auditorium that week.
I know this might be shocking to you if you weren’t around in 1973, but like pretty much everyone we would… uh… occasionally take drugs. If you remember the 70s, as they say, you were not there.
Sipping our bourbon at the bar, Debbie handed us each a couple of small tablets that she claimed was some mild tranquilizer to “help us take the edge off.”
What can I say? It was HER fault!
Ferguson got to the club (drunk as a skunk) about midway through our first set. We realized she had lied to us. What we had ingested was very very potent LSD, and we were ill prepared for the ride.
Standing on the wooden stage, it felt like it was made of marshmallows and seemed to sway with every step. There were about 400 in the crowd, and I swear I could see each person’s individual face – separately – and read their lips.
As I sang into the microphone, I could hear my voice, but it seemed like the sound was coming from outside two buildings away, and it echoed like the Grand Canyon. I could FEEL my hair. It hurt. Each strand.
He didn’t want to, but we browbeat the totally blasted Jay Ferguson into getting up and singing a couple of Spirit songs we had on our list. Acclimated to it all by then, I booted our keyboard player off the stage and took over, playing a not so great organ part while a stumbling Jay did my job.
Another Auld Lang Syne, my dear.
Thom Caraccio ([email protected]) is a retired musician and retired motion picture scenic artist living in West Palm Beach, Florida who hails from Columbus. He graduated from S.D. Lee High in 1968 and still considers Columbus his real hometown.
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