Life [2]
In the meantime we’re trying to get rid of all this stuff. We’re festooned. In the ’70s I was flying high as a kite on pure, pure Merck cocaine, the fluffy pharmaceutical blow. Freddie Sessler and I went to the john, we weren’t even escorted down there. “Jesuschrist,” the phrase that preceded everything with Freddie, “I’m loaded.” He’s got bottles full of Tuinal. And he’s so nervous about flushing them down that he loses the bottle and all the fucking turquoise-and-red pills are rolling everywhere and meanwhile he’s trying to flush down coke. I popped the hash down and the weed, flushed it, the fucking thing won’t flush, there’s too much weed, I’m flushing and flushing and then suddenly these pills come rolling there under the cubicle. And I’m trying to pick ’em up and fling ’em in and everything, but I can’t because there’s another cubicle in between the one Freddie’s in and the one I’m in, so there’s fifty pills lying stranded on the floor in the middle cubicle. “Jesuschrist, Keith.” “Keep your cool, Freddie, I’ve got all the ones out of mine, have you got all the ones out of yours?” “I think so, I think so.” “OK, let’s go in the middle one and get rid of them.” It was just raining with fucking shit. It was unbelievable, every pocket or place you looked… I never knew I had that much coke in my life!
The sleeper was Freddie’s briefcase, which was in the trunk of the car, as yet unopened and we knew he had cocaine in there. They couldn’t fail to find it. Freddie and I decided we should disown Freddie strategically for that afternoon and say he was a hitchhiker, but one to whom we were happy to extend the powers of our legal adviser, if need be, when he finally appeared on the scene.
Where was Carter? It took some time to marshal our forces, while the population of Fordyce was swelling to riot-size proportions. People from Mississippi, Texas, Tennessee—all coming in to watch the fun. Nothing would happen until Carter was located, and he was on the tour, he wasn’t far away, just having a deserved day off. So there was time to reflect how I had dropped my guard and forgotten the rules. Don’t break the law and get pulled over. Cops everywhere, and certainly in the South, have a whole range of quasi-legal tricks to bust you if they feel like it. And they could put you away for ninety days then, no problem. That’s why Carter told us to stick to the interstate. The Bible Belt was a lot tighter in those days.
We did many miles on the ground in those early tours. Roadhouses were always an interesting gamble. And you better get ready for it—and be ready for it. You try going to a truck stop in 1964 or ’65 or ’66 down south or in Texas. It felt much more dangerous than anything in the city. You’d walk in and there’s the good ol’ boys and slowly you realize that you’re not going to have a very comfortable meal in there, with these truckers with crew cuts and tattoos. You nervously peck away—“Oh, I’ll have that to go, please.” They’d call us girls because of the long hair. “How you doing, girls? Dance with me?” Hair… the little things that you wouldn’t think about that changed whole cultures. The way they reacted to our looks in certain parts of London then was not much different from the way they reacted to us in the South. “Hello, darling,” and all that shit.
When you look back it was relentless confrontation, but you’re not thinking about it at the time. First off these were all new experiences and you were really not aware of the effects it might or might not have on you. You were gradually growing into it. I just found in those situations that if they saw the guitars and knew you were musicians,