When Spencer Davis came into town, Todd decided to take him to a small Italian restaurant he frequented. “This old boy from Italy ran the thing. So he was OK and I would go in there when I would do work on the club. So we decided to stop in this little restaurant and have a bite to eat. Well typical of the ’60s, my hair might have been a couple inches long, Spencer’s hair was down to his shoulders. And this old boy kicked him out.
“He said, ‘Todd, you’re an OK kid, I like you, (but) we don’t serve longhairs here.’
‘But this man is a star, he is from England.’ replied Todd.
‘I don’t care who he is.’ said the restaurant owner.
So Spencer Davis and I proceeded to get kicked out of a little Italian restaurant.”
Dancin' Daze, Todd Kromer, Page 46
“I got the impression this guy was deeply disturbed and deranged,” was Harry Leip’s description of Iggy Pop. “Like he was in trouble and needed to be in an institution. Beating himself with drumsticks. He fell on the microphone stand and popped up without touching anything. He would stick the stand on the floor between his ankles and hold the stand at an angle, and arch his back and fall full force without putting his hands out to brace himself, and just pop back up miraculously while he was singing. He was a whirlwind of stuff like that. It was constant.”
The Stooges, Page 48
I used to attend a lot of concerts at Rainy Daze and one time they booked this new band introduced as being from "Hollywood" named Alice Cooper. I knew of them because they were one of Zappa's early recording artists on his Bizarre label. Their first album, Pretties For You, contained good material but was poorly produced. Some of my Parkway Central buddies and I gave the band a lift back to their motel and was invited in to hang out. Expecting drugs, groupies, and Zappa-affiliated California weirdness we instead chatted with a group of mostly polite, regular-guy working musicians (even if the singer's name was Alice). I think Alice was drinking a bit even then though.
John McLeod
