LESLIE WEST: On Stickball, Gutterballs, Jackie Kennedy, Amos 'n' Andy And Torch Guitar

Leslie and I were having a pleasant discussion over some burgers and chocolate milk in the restaurant of the Springfield, Illinois airport. "I don't like to do interviews regular because everybody knows whatever they wanna know, they could find out sure enough. What I wanted to do was, I wanted to start a stickball league in New York. We used to play stickball for like three or four hundred dollars a game when I was a kid, everybody'd put money in. We'd go to the Bronx, we'd play some team from Brooklyn. If anybody wants to play stickball for money, or for fun, guitars, royalties, for anything, let 'em call Phantom records and we'll start." Would you play journalists? "Journalists know how to play ball? I never seen a journalist play ball with anybody, if you know what I mean...Sure, I'll play anybody, man. I swear to God I'll play anybody for any amount. I'll play oneon-one with anybody for any amount, which is what stickball's about, but the way you do it is you only need two guys on a team, one guy in the field, one guy to pitch, and you can make different teams up."

What's this? Is the king of the molasses-thunder guitar really a closet jock? "It's just somethin' else to do; you get tired of traveling and playing and traveling and playing, so to break it up when you have time off, or you're recording an album and you have some time...like last year Corky and I went out and bought baseball gloves, we bought half a dozen baseball gloves and we just played softball on the road. In " fact we were playing in Knoxville, Tennessee at the Hyatt House, the one with the elevators in the middle, and it's all open, all empty, all the way up the middle, and we're playin' catch on the balcony on about the fourteenth floor, and the softball went over, came down and hit the floor and rebounced up to the third floor and people looked up like 'What the fuck are they???' We couldn't find any grass, we were hoping the hotel was near a field or something.

"I like sports a lot, that's where I was brought up, in the pool halls, in the schoolyards.. .In fact the first group I was in, the Vagrants—the guy that played the organ was the New York State bowling champion. He had like a two-fifty average, and one time he was bowling, he had about twenty of his friends backin' him, and he threw a gutter ball, and you don't throw a gutter ball when you have a two-fifty average;

and he threw this gutter ball and you shoulda seen 39,000 guys jump over the rail and beat the shit outta him. I mean this guy, he wished he never knew what a bowling ball looked like, in fact I think he tried to crawl into one of the holes. I mean the guy had a twofifty average and he threw a gutter ball. Can you imagine—everybody was standing and waiting, all he had to do was throw like a three, and—ho, God —he'll never dump again."

Everybody here in Springfield town talks like Junior Samples. Later in the day, a cab driver would see a woman with three kids and remark: "Ah bet ah know whut she lahks t' do." The gig has been cancelled. Everybody in town knew the night before. Leslie's no dummy, he's getting his ass on a plane back to New York in another hour, with his bassist Donny Kretmar, while the rest of us: Corky Laing, guitarist Mick Jones and road manager Nicky Ferrantella (that's five, Nick) will head back to a nice Ramada Inn, where there's no room service after six. So what the hell,

I tell Leslie to talk about anything he wants, while I stuff a hamburger and watch the tape suck it all up.

"You don't care what I'm talking about, do you, ya lazy son of a bitch? Look at this, we fly him out here first class, and he makes me do his work for him. I'll talk about my driver's license. 1 got my driver's license the other day, and that's the biggest thrill of my life." You got it for the first time? "No." They took it away? "Wellll— yeah." Later, Corky told me the one he had before was fake, and indeed, he acts like a kid that just got his license for the first time, rushing to the car rental desk upon arrival at any airport and insisting that he drive whenever they leave a hotel for the airport. The day before, Donny had casually looked out the back window of the limo and remarked "Look at that fat chick behind us," and there was Leslie, closing in fast in a big Buick.

"I hit a lady—the first royalty check I ever got I bought a Bentley, about four years ago. When 1 hit the lady, I had just paid for the car, it was mine, beautiful, and I hit this son of a bitch, and she was in a '66 Caddy and she got out and screamed whiplash immediately and I got a ticket, 'Failing To Keep Right,' and I didn't wanna get convicted on a ticket, so I settled out of court, and it cost me twelve thousand for the attorney, six thousand for the lady, twelve thousand for the car and I couldn't get a New York license, so I went to my friend's out in Connecticut and took the test there. But I got my license so I could pick up my new Mercedes I got.

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"It was really exciting, but the band's really exciting too. I think Mick Jones is the only guitarist I ever found that I could play with in a band." Mick, as Spooky Tooth aficionados could tell you, was responsible for many of their more fiery moments, and now adds the smoke to Leslie's flames. "The guy that was in Mountain, I didn't pick him (David Perry), and it's very difficult to play with somebody that you're not into. It took so much time to relay what I would be doing, and for Felix to relay it to him, that by the time he relayed it to him, I wasn't doin' it anymore. Now we're just playin' rock and roll and gettin' up there and havin' a good time on stage. Before, it was teal

serious and you're worryin' about makin' it, and you're concentrating on everything being precise, and everything's mapped out. We even had the fuckin' encore mapped out. So, we went from a planned, arranged band to—not a dis-arranged band, but everything is loose, except for the beginnings and endings. There's no tension, you can do whatever you wanna do as long as you end at the same time, stop at the same time. We're all pretty well established, Donny's been in two groups of major importance. Seatrain and the Blues Project. Donny also prossesses a sense of humor that either has you on the floor or reaching-for his throat. Travel around enough and work hard enough, and sooner or later you ask yourself, 'When am I gonna get to have fun?"'

It appears as though he got his wish. The gig the night before was a gas, Leslie producing those syrupy, whiney, fat fibers of sound from his axe, makihg it vibrate like a fine old wooden instrument; and Corky (who I never had the balls to tell to his face that I think he's the best goddamn drummer in rock and roll) playing with a strength, vitality and yes, thoughtfulness unequalled anywhere. Corky is probably the only mean-ass drummer in the world that uses his cerebrum as much as his wrists. Couple that with the intertwining of Mick's biting, chopping style and Donny's thumping bass, and you've got one mother of a band. Though I didn't care much for The Great Fatsby album, those songs come across live with a lot more punch and balls, and Corky and Leslie in any band are always going to sound like Corky and Leslie. Or like Corky put it earlier: "As far as I'm concerned, Leslie and I are a band in ourselves; we still treat every gig like an event, we still get dressed up when we play out, and have a good time."

But enough of this music talk. What I want to know is, who does Leslie think Jackie Kennedy will marry next?

"Whaat? Who gives a shit? That's the way I feel about it." I suddenly realize he's giving me a serious answer. Instead of saying "Don Knotts" he's answering the question like Rock Star Leslie West giving his opinion on all this terrible exploitation of John and Ari's old jump. "Every Holiday Inn we go into, there's The Enquirer, you know, the Rat Sheet, The Daily Trivia, and it's always Jackie seen with...I'm sure she's probably tired of who she'd marry next. She's got enough money, she don't have to marry nobody, just go and fuck anybody she wants to, but I don't give a shit. Print that, say that I don't give a shit.

"What do I like on TV? Well if I could afford it, I'd love to buy the Amos 'n' Andy re-runs. I used to have that whole show down, it was the greatest thing, and then the NAACP came along and took it off. They thought it made them look dumb, but I'll tell ya, some of the shows nowadays make them look dumber than that. I thought Kingfish was pretty smart, always trickin' Andy, foolin' him and rippin' him off. You know what was so funny about Kingfish? He sold Andy everything, I mean everything. And one day he sold him some real estate and a house, the front. It was just a front. And Andy walked in and said: "Kingfish, where da rest o' da house at?' 'Oh, well uh Andy, ya see uh, da contract is, uh—-dey don't come in and finish it out till dey get your specifications, you have ta live in it awhile and decide where ya want dese rooms.' 'Oh, I see, Kingfish. Kingfish, you been bamboozlin' me all my life, and dis the last bam you gonna boozle.'

"What else do I like? Graham Kerr. He shows you how to make cheap food, like meals that only cost you like three hundred dollars in a supermarket, or how to serve a nice, inexpensive dinner wine like Chateau Margaux '55; eighty-eight dollars a bottle. 1 don't really watch Graham Kerr, I just watched it one day. I tried to cook once, though. The recipe said to start off with a glass of wine, start

off with some sherry, and I just kept drinkin' it. I tried to lose weight once, too. I'm waiting for you to say 'Did it work?' " Did it work? "Obviously not. It made me the most irritable son of a bitch in the world. I hate ups, and I just couldn't put up with it. It came down to if I lost weight, I'd be so irritable and nasty somebody'd kill me. If I kept eating, I'd kill myself. So, I'd rather have nobody kill me.

"When it comes time, I will., .1 weigh a lot less than I used to. When it comes time to take it off for my heajth, I'll take it off..."