Can I have your guitar

Can I ride in your car

Can you give me a role to play

Can we rap, I don’t have much to say

Can I follow you home

Can I use your telephone

Can we crash here for just a few days

We’re from Rolling Stone so it’s o.k.

It all began as a simple two day shot to Oklahoma to do an in-depth interview with former rock-a-rama now country super-star Conway Twitty. Neat trip, I thought on a hot Glendale afternoon. That’s when the phone rang.

A few minutes later my whole itinerary had changed. Tulsa before Twitty because Leon Russell had “granted” to be interviewed before kicking off his latest tour. As well me as another. Why not?

Arrangements made, T shirts and tooth polisher were packed, a sweet homegrown rolled and off down the San Diego Freeway to LA International. I’d never been to Oklahoma. Didn’t know what to expect. Heat and the flatlands. A long, lazy conversation with Leon. Little did I know.

I love airplanes, because there’s no good reason not to get totally wasted for the entire in-flight time lag. Just get on and get off.

It was no different that day to Tulsa. Goofed all the way. I read the ads in the Times until the jets warmed and the plane taxied onto the final runway, paused, began again, picked up speed and the great rush began.

When the airplane dropped down and landed in Oklahoma City before moving on to Tulsa, I left the plane and sepnt the alotted ten minutes standing in front of the airport lobby on solid Oklahoma soil. (I stood in a flower bed when no one was looking.) I wanted to see how it felt; it felt good.

Tulsa. The Oil Capitol of the World. At the fair grounds, the city has erected a sixty foot rusting steel oil man guarding the entrance to the rusty enclave of buildings. In the distance, the race track, where the super stocks run on Saturday nights, and Leon was going to play on Sunday afternoon. It looked hotter than overheated bearings.

The Camelot Hotel (All Electric). A krnum & Bailey Disneyland Midwest, stucco facade that, once peeled away, revealed twelve obsolete Flying A Ser3 Stations laying on top of one ther, held together by sweat and act cement.

At dinner that night, I read in the 'oma Journal of the sixth death of ar at the hands of the Oklahoma Strange ones, too. A black kid, arrested on suspicion of dope, with his iffed behind him and sitting in a the middle of his mother’s t had his face blown all over ihen a gun discharged as the mpted to unload it. He was vimanded for “negligence in of his duty ” On-the-road o news at all. Just things to id get a flavor. Terrible to hgs, but that’s what mobto the road you don’t live you live in suitcases.

Outside the hotel, less than a block away, was a gas station in the throes of what appeared to be a grand opening - except that it wasn’t. Just another gas station. I mention this because laying out by the pool early Saturday afternoon, the sounds of rockin’ country music kept sifting over the garretted stucco walls as the hot winds shifted about the Tulsa landscape. It went on all afternoon as I sat behind my dark glasses and narrowly contemplated the foxy blonde pool girl.

“It’s some crazy band set up on a flat-bed truck at the service station,” Gene said. Gene is the Shelter photographer. He’d been scouting around for a bathing suit. “Five guys just playing the shit out of their instruments. And there’s no one there. Not person one. Not even any gas station attendants.”

I strolled over to the gas station about an hour later, as the mercury approached the one-oh-two mark on the Dr. Pepper thermometer. Sure enough, a flat-bed truck, four Fender amps and these guys running through their country licks. A baker’s dozen every hour and no fooling around. This was no practice. This was it. And nary a soul in sight: no girl friends, no camp followers, no nothing. The gas station wasn’t even open.

Dino, head of promoton of Shelter Records, came down to the pool about four o’clock. He’s a giant, bearded man best described by incident. Quite an imposing fellow when he moves his great girth across the cement. People look. What do you do when a 300 pound bearded, long haired gent who wears turquoise bracelets, for Christ’s sake, and who radiates business, crosses your path?

He’s business top to bottom but mellow, right? You got it. Dino’s all business even when he’s a friend. Business before pleasure, because pleasure’s his business.'

Dino best typifies the hip promo man. Smokes the best dope. Scores the best broads. Has the best raps. Stays at the best places. Knows the best people. Example: You can smoke and snort your brains out, until your synapses lie in a puddle on the floor, rearranging themselves in their favorite Kodacolor shades, and your hands are beyond reach. Stoned again ... until you look over at Dino, and with a deft (almost practiced) gesture or word... “Whew”... he renders your own oblivion incomplete. And you don’t want to be any more wacked than you already are. But he keeps right on tokin’, right on smokin’. And still has details under control. That’s Dino, the Disneyland guide this time out.

After cordialities, I asked him when the interview with Leon would take place. “Leon doesn’t give interviews,” he laughed quite matter of factly, “but you can talk with him. You know get into a rap, see how it goes. He’s a veryshy person. An Oklahoma boy. Very guarded. But we’ll go see him tonight and see how it goes.”

Fair enough, I guess. I had talked with Leon once backstage at Mac Court in Eugene, Oregon, about three years ago. He seemed accessible then. Why not now? And he had done a Rolling Stone interview two years ago, although it sounded more like an elevator conversation than an interview. On the other hand there were stories about interviewers being led into darkened corridors and rooms to find Leon sitting alone under one third degree arc light, waiting to be interviewed.

Anyway, Dino left to go crash. He hadn’t slept in three days.

Showboat was the Saturday night movie. Thank god for Ava Gardner. Movies from the early fifties puzzle me. But they’re still my favorites.

Dino snapped me back to the 70’s when he charged into the room.

“Ready? We’re going to see Leon.”

So we left, seven people in a rented Camaro, Dino at the wheel, a fund of info about Tulsa after dark. Guide to the end.

“You’ve got to dig this street man,” he said, waving a thick arm at the neon lit buildings which paved the parking lots of Tulsa’s strip. “Dig where the kids hang out.”

Sure enough, it was an eye opener. In the darkened parking lots of tire stores, brake shops, daytime bakeries, banks and booteries, the Tulsa teenset made their stand. By the thousands.

“Not at Frosty Bob’s, mind you,” Dino said. The place was sick in the spleen. Well lit up but dead.

“Not at the Pizza Hut,” he continued into his hidden microphone, “but here at Alonzo’s Florist Shop.”

And there they were, in little clusters, all along the strip, their dropped CJievies and hot Mustangs and BSA’s clogging the least likely of shadowed places, while the fluorescent drive-ins all went broke. Millions of kids and not a hamburger to be sold. The convention was no convention.

The promoter’s house was the first real eye opener. Leon stayed upstairs the whole time. Downstairs, however, was full of people. Denny Cordell was there. He’s the business end of Shelter Records, the man in charge. He has wooly grey hair and steel grey business eyes. When someone mentioned the Delaney & Bonnie interview I conducted in which Delaney made some rather derogatory remarks about Cordell, Denny smiled kindly.

In the living room, the living room of a man who sells furniture on credit, an aggregation of intense souls watched a broken TV with all the interest of a man in some southside emergency ward waiting for his wife to die from a head-on collison with an insurance building. Everybody looked when anybody moved. I sat down on the edge of the couch and pretended to watch TV too, terribly awkward, waiting for Leon like the rest of them.

It was difficult to determine who all the people were because each time anyone spoke, it was as if they were using a bullhorn in a telephone booth. So no one spoke except in stage whispers and muted tones. After two hours, I still didn’t know any more than when I arrived, least of all what I was doing there. Picking up vibes? No thank you.

Dino went up and down the stairs many times, but with no word about how it (whatever it was) was going. The silence upstairs was outstanding. Then Dino came down for the last time.

“Ready?” he asked with a scurrilous wink.

“For what?”

“For some barbecue, man, I’m starving.”

Back in the official guide car, the bear of a man took us on a cruise through the back streets of Tulsa to Wilson’s Barbeque, an “E” ticket ride in tremulous Tulsaland. This, of course, was Boogieland. Cute broken paved roads OR the otherside side of the tracks. Wilson’s was a joint. Authentic bar-bee-que. Dino paid his way with a stack of Freddie King albums to Mr. Wilson, who sat toothless on a stool and rolled his eyes at us. We all had78c sandwiches. Two slices Of white bread, four thin slices of beef and that red rich barbeque sauce we’ve all been dreaming about. Great sauce. Had my dad been there, he’d have asked for the recipe.

Across town to Tobey’s. Another “E” ticket. Tobey’s sits at the back of a shopping center, and provides a certain midwest San Fernando Valley feel to Mod-Honkieland. C&W-rock for the bouffant and patent leather pump crowd. White loafers and flashy doubleknit bells bopping the Rick Nelson blues. The threads are today, now, gear but the moves — the quickly fashioned coyness of a quick frug here, a little monkey there, and over in the corner, Snow White and her old man, Phil, grooving with the swing — were a time warp spanning 15-plus years in the soft red light. Yesterday’s dreams wrapped in today’s Jr. Ms. madness. Pre-hair. All honcho. Hoods become bank accountants. Computer operators.

Two drinks further into oblivion and one half hour later, Tulsaland shut down for the night.

“Ready?” Dino asked for the last time that night, and we were gone -back to the Camelot for a well-deserved rest.

The next morning, my eyes felt like the proverbial two pissholes in snow. It was already hotter than the last of God’s living fuck out. We had to be at the fairgrounds in less than an hour.

We arrived thinking we were gonna be early, but already the mass exodus from Tulsa’s teenage boredom had begun. The rack track was already exhausting the teenage populace, hours before the scheduled starting time. Lots of wine and beer, T shirts and hidden stashes. Rock, the great leveler. Muskogee, L.A., Atlanta — they all look the same. Degrees of difference in flash and filligree, but in essence, no difference.

Moments before Willis Alan Ramsey, Shelter’s acoustic contribution, a roadie and a local ragamuffin helper hoisted the Shelter flag up the flagpole and brought the 10,000 plus kids to their feet, beer in one hand, joint in the other, and a midwest smile of unprecedented joy in their eyes. A singular lack of jadedness that all too frequently envelops the big halls where there is too much too often. In L.A., the audiences lay back, waiting. All right, I’ve had enough, what else can you show me?

Not Tulsa. These people were out to have a good time from the start.

Just outside the backstage fence, there was a heavy set fellow who arrived early and stayed late, as ready as any freak in Tulsa or all of the good ol’ USA to get it on. Except this honcho was dead serious about his mission, and he was going to do it alone. He came dressed to play, to be seen, to do it. Sitting on a roll of chicken wire, he wore fire engine red pants, a brilliant pencil-yellow silk shirt, a psychedelic Picasso paint rag neckerchief knotted at the throat (102 degrees, folks), red white and blue rock and roll shoes, and closecropped wavey red hair, topped off by huge mirror sunglasses. He stopped people dead in their tracks as he sat pokerfaced, playing the flashiest maroon Gibson guitar imaginable, silently picking away at his unamplified instrument, leaning in and out, bending unheard notes as his fingers flew noiselessly at the neck of the ax. He went at it for hours without word as people stood and gawked, smiled and snickered, then walked on by. The cowboy just kept on pickin’.

“Hey, ain’t that J.J. Cale down there?” a thick-waisted Indian laughed inside J.J.’s trailer as the crew looked out the window into the heat. J.J. finished a beer and casually looked out and down at the dude and his big guitar.

“That’s him, all right,” J.J. said, and he opened another beer.

I only saw one kid so obviously ruined he was a threat. He was a stringy-haired, once-handsome blonde, who crawled back from underneath the stage. Nutsed out on reds and staggering about, laying his head down here and there and blinking moronically at each shadow in his way. He was avoided like a leper; the hope seemed to be that when he finally went down for the last time, he’d go down somewhere else, because then he’d only be trouble and such trouble on the road is to be avoided. No monkey wrenches in the works, please. Such fools aren’t part of the deal. Just keep them out of Hollywood Midwest.

“We only put on the show. What they do, well, that’s their business. Just don’t involve us.”

Sometimes, that’s easier said than done.

At the northwest corner of the dirt track skirting the sparse perimeter of the giant crowd, one of the innumerable rent-a-cops keeping an eye on things was suddenly rousted from behind and had his blue metal gun fondled by some laughing towhead kid, who-broke away and sprinted for the safety of enveloping.numbers.

The cop flew into a rage and actually slapped leather and fired a loud round straight up, as the kid disappeared into his friends’ collective embrace. The shot, however, brought the whole crowd to its feet, all neck and eyes; the cop, not to be outdone and in pursuit of deserving and blind justice went in after the fondler, only to find himself quickly surrounded on all sides by jostling legs and tanned biceps and smiling jeering teeth. For all his time spent there, he received little more than some good feels and a few long lopping roundhouse chops upside his head. He was finally pulled to safety by Denny and Dino amidst scattered applause and random mocking threats by the music lovers. Word had it that the cop was later slipped a sawbuck or two and sent into the distant and vacant bleachers for the rest of the afternoon.

The entire band had arrived and backstage, for all its bustle and strange grimaces, was a congenial place. Hectic but together as people ran happily into one another. A very smooth, organized operation. Those who had something to do, did it. Those who didn’t watched and drank beer from some endless supply in the trailer. Everyone had arrived, that is, except Leon.

It was hot and getting hotter by fpur thirty. Denny and a roadie met in the shadow of Leon’s trailer.

“Denny. This guy has called the box office twice now and says there’s a bomb under the stage, set to go off in five minutes.”

Denny touched a pensive finger to his lips and sighed at the thought. Great.

“What’d he sound like?”

“Mad, man, mad.”

“Angry?”

“Angry, man.”

“Well...” He cocked one eye and looked absently around at the hundredplus active souls hanging around and pouring down the foamy suds and moving shit and shinola from here to there, carrying on the business of show business as usual in the waning moments of Freddie King’s programmed blues set. Denny shook his head and muttered some mental abuse with his eyes at the clogged stage.

“Well, fuck that cat. He’s crazy. Couldn’t get in or something. You think I’m gonna clear the stage now, man?” He wagged his greying head and walked away. “I mean, what can we do? It happens every time, right?”

I walked back to the front of the trailer not more than eight feet from the stage.

“What’s happening?” Scout of Space City asked, wiggling to the music inside her white Big Mac suit.

“Nothing. Just a bomb threat. Set to blow in five minutes.”

Scout nodded, shrugged and kept right on dancing.

“That’s far out.”

I’ve purposely failed to mention performances. 1 mean, what the fuck can you say about a concert: Willis Alan Ramsey had delighted the audience? He got an encore? Freddie King came out and played “de blooze” and everybody likes “de blooze?”

And J.J. Cale? Mellow as always? Jesse Ed Davis was on lead, and very laid back? It’s a good show? Builds nicely, strong beat and you can dance to it? Anything else you’d want to hear about it? It’s strange, but the performance is the one thing that’s truly taken for granted by everybody in the crew. It’s getting things ready that is uppermost in their mind. The time of performance is a time of relief. It’s most hectic when nothing is happening, if that makes any sense.

When the black, smoke-windowed limousine came to a stop on the track behind the stage, the roaming outside backstagers and coldwater seekers, beerdrinkers, dopesmokers, boys in barefoot and boots, crewcut and shags, girls with round nubile bodies, heavy weight southside greezers and their mamas with painted eyes all jumped the car, their fingers and red noses pressed tight up against the grey glass, a kinescope of stardom. Looking for a look in those crystal eyes hidden behind dark glasses. Everything stopped. Leon had arrived. Word went out on busy little tongues.

The Shelter people turned to meet and greet the master with a certain apprehensive sigh of relief. The place fell strangely quiet. Then Denny jumped from the stage, waving his arms and shouting at the back gate crew.

“Take down the damn fence. Drive him in here. Don’t make him walk through that. Drive him in!”

It was hard to see the car from the top of the trailer where I stood, but somewhere through the tangle of arms and gawking mouths, the dark outline of a solitary figure sat quite still in the back seat of the automobile, unmoved, unperturbed, a spectre meant to rest in the outer regions of rock & rollers favorite dream, now falling prey to the adulating and hungry eyes of the worshippers waiting for their dreams to be broken.

Leon was equal to the task, keeping his distance even at close range. Admitting nothing; seeing nothing. The dream remained intact. The police and Shelter goon squad unwrapped the chicken wire and the car nudged forward, over toes and through arms, as the cops brandished their power at the outsiders still wanting everything they couldn’t have. The fence closed in front of them and they remained behind it like the squalid Italian beach boys waiting for nickels from Sebastian, before they finally jumped and devoured him with the help of razor sharp tin cans. Here it was a desperate smile, a long skinny arm reaching through the dust toward the airconditioned luxury mere inches but still eons away. Leon nev.er flinched.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 84

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 41.

Inside the fence, the friends of Shelter dropped away in their own protective silence at the approach. Good friends (I assumed all along) stood back in the deepest possible recesses, still close enough with enough angle to steal their own private glimpses. Everyone up against something: the trailer, the fence, the stage. Something to hold onto. Anything. The car stopped next to the trailer, the door opened .. Leon, resplendent in a cool white suit, white shoes, white hat, stepped out of the air conditioning into the momentary heat, took one more step up, disappeared inside the cool confines of the trailer. No one followed. No one greeted him. Only a second sigh of relief when he was gone, the frenetic pre-startime activity picked up again.

I looked at the trailer and saw the red light in my head go on. Rap with him. Just start talking and see how it goes. Try and rap with him before the concert. People lingered outside the trailer, peered obliquely into the dark windows for a glance, then moved hurriedly about their business. I looked once at Denny Cordell, leaning against the trailer door, and got the vaguest hint of apprehension even on his part about going in. But that must have been nonsense. ... Right?

When Leon left the trailer, the band was already into the intro. Leon swept through the palm frond hands of extended arms of his people and took the stage. Literally. The crowd went crazy.

The Leon Russell Show is a Giant, one of the best. Essentially the same with a different cast, but still the same. After all, Leon’s there, and that’s where the show is. If you get the chance don’t miss it. Nuff said about that.

When it was over, it was over. Leon pushed and shook his way through the same palm frond hands, disappeared for a few minutes into the trailer, and was gone.

Dino was left to line up the broads. There was a dearth of eligibles. Free for the taking. As darkness slowly swallowed the fairgrounds, people wandered out one by one.

After the concert, Gene and I drove over to the promoter’s house again. It was the same crew and the same broken TV syndrome.

. This time, however, when I peered into the living room, the hit of weirdness was stronger. No one seemed to have moved much. A slight rearrangement, perhaps, but still the same except for the tenor, except for the presence; because there, sitting on the couch was Leon himself. A “very heavy vibes trip” as the saying went. He has a thick, dark charismatic presence that not only fills a room, but virtually drowns it. Normal things do not seem to happen when Leon’s around. The room was holding its breath as they ... rested? I can remember thinking this is how the cat relaxes. Not a word was spoken as the people played with their own devices. To walk into that room — merely to move through it — required a major entrance. I passed, and slipped into the kitchen.

A second crew had gathered there. Dino sat on a stool, eating pretzels. Denny leaned against the sink, eyeing the proverbial plastic blonde lady, with the sound man from Texas. Don Preston and John Galley of the band were also there, and a few others. The talk was just kitchen talk.

Then Leon walked down the narrow hall and into the light of the room. Again, weird. The kitchen went stone silent in his presence. I looked across at Dino and Dino looked at me and then looked away. So what the fuck?

“Great show, Leon. Great show,” the Texas sound man said in a too loud voice. Leon nodded as he took a beer from the ice box. The room lapsed back into silence and stolen glances as everyone looked at something else, at nothing. One of those.

Leon departed and went upstairs; conversation picked up again, momentarily, dissolved and people drifted slowly from the room. Ten minutes later, I left with a severe case of the willies.

The next day, Gene, Scout of Space City and I drove to Leon’s place, just outside of Disney, about 80 miles from Tulsa. I was apprehensive, quite willing to pass on the trip, but Scout said it couldn’t get much weirder than it was already, and so I thought what the hell, let's go.

Leon’s habitat is a miniature village unto itself, a complex of four stunning buildings that sit at the end of an almost impassable road behind a high wooden fence. The buildings sit on the bank of the Lake of the Cherokees and verge architectually on Hansel and Gretel Halloween, all brick and stone and cedar, enough rooms to house a batallion of disabled veterans of psychedelic wars. It’s still in the building stages, but far enough along that it’s clear that it’s going to be some place. He has a fully equipped sound studio (“ ... but only a small 16 track board, about 60 grand worth.”), the swimming pool a mere belly flop away. It’s a mind boggier to suddenly come across this place in the midst of back country houses with sagging plumb lines. It’s a veritable palace in the midst of huts.

Late that night, I was getting a sweater from the car when I happened to look over at the main house, and there, sitting on the porch, was Leon and a lone lady. Talking softly as the fireflies flickered through the trees. So I casually wandered over and sat down, as two other people joined us. This was the Big Chance, as we all sat in relative silence, but when I looked up at Leon, virtually everything I’d planned on asking him was somehow rendered too crazy. It really didn’t matter now. I didn’t really want to know anything in particular, and Leon looked like there really wasn’t anything he wanted to say, anyway. What was there to know, at this point?

So we all sat there on the porch and looked across the black water to the far shore. Just relaxing after two days of nutsdom. After a while, Leon got up and went in to bed. And then we all went to bed.