“I started sniffing and wiping myself until it had to be obvious to Dick and a million viewers what was really going on.”
He performed his singles “You and I” and “Mary Jane” and did a long interview with Dick Clark, who he remembers as “one of the nicest cats I’d ever met.” The only problem: James had done so much blow backstage, his nose started running profusely. James made his national TV debut on American Bandstand. Which is how Rick James met Jim Morrison. While staying at Stephen Stills’ place circa 1966, James woke up to find a young guy sitting cross-legged on the floor, “stoned as a motherfucker,” watching blood drip from his wrist, “saying things like ‘Isn’t the blood beautiful? Isn’t that the deepest red you’ve ever seen?'” Alarmed, James woke up Stills, who said, “Oh, fuck, he’s doing it again,” and bandaged the young man up. How he remembered getting busted in Toronto on an old charge of breaking and entering a clothing boutique: “A few seconds ago, my life was perfect - the perfect bitch, the perfect financier, the perfect backup band, the perfect connections to the perfect music scene in L.A. James scuffled on the periphery of the music business for many years before breaking through, watching friends become famous, making money however he could (including drug smuggling from India and Colombia) and periodically ending up in jail. Some of the women James reported liaisons with: Linda Blair (The Exorcist), Elisabeth Shue (Leaving Las Vegas), Catherine Bach (The Dukes of Hazzard TV show), Ola Ray (the video for Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”), Iman (the supermodel), Teena Marie (his protégée), Jan Gaye (the wife of his friend and mentor, Marvin Gaye). The Kind of Girls You Don’t Take Home to Mother armed forces caught up with James for going AWOL and threw him in the brig.Ģ.
They got signed to Motown and were ready to release a single - but it got shelved when the U.S. He also became friendly with Joni Mitchell (they would stay up all night listening to jazz), and she recommended Neil Young, who joined James in a band called the Mynah Birds. “A trio of three other white guys saw what was happening and came running to my aid.” Two of those three: Garth Hudson and Levon Helm, then playing backup for Ronnie Hawkins, later Bob Dylan collaborators in the Band. But as soon as he got into Toronto, three drunk white guys tried to beat him up for going AWOL. James dodged the Vietnam War draft by heading across the Canadian border from his hometown of Buffalo, New York.
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