Detroit Rock City by Steve Miller Page B

found. They broke it open, the safe, and there was $200 to $300 worth of change in there. Everyone was happy.
    VC Lamont Veasey: The Soul Agents had had a show in Lima, Ohio, and afterward we got a bus back to Detroit, and then a cab back to my house on Wisconsin near 6 Mile. At the foot of my street was a tank, with the turret pointed down my street. I walked in, and we watched it all on TV. It was wild to see this all happening, and it’s right down the street. We went out during the day, but at night it was martial law. Our neighbors were coming home with new TVs and appliances, but we sure didn’t. My mom set that straight right away.
    Greg Errico ( Sly and the Family Stone, drummer ): We were on the road, taking turns driving, and it was the middle of the night and we needed gas. We happened to be passing through Detroit on the highway, and so we innocently pulled off, you know, and we happened to be downtown at two or three in the morning, and it looked like a ghost town—we were in a warehouse area. All of a sudden, we’re surrounded by Army jeeps, which pulled us over, and within moments we were up against a brick building with our hands up and our legs spread. These were guys with machine guns. They saw us—black, white, male, female, dressed funny. We said, you know, “What is this?” and they said the city was under martial law and there was a curfew. They couldn’t figure out what we were up to. Sly responded with a knee-jerk reaction—you know, at first you gotta react—and that didn’t go down well. But when they realized who we were and that we weren’t aware of the situation and we eventually walked. We got out of there.
    Peter Rivera ( Rare Earth, drummer ): Gil Bridges, our saxophonist, had a pilot’s license, so we went up and flew over the city. We saw the smoke pouring out of the burning buildings, where they were burning down. And I was thinking to myself, “You know, a high-powered rifle could reach this high easily. Maybe this isn’t a good idea.” . . . Yeah, we did that once, saw the riots from up above.
    Jimmy Recca: I lived on the west side at a drug house. We hunkered down and watched the armored personnel carrier go between Greenfield and 7 Mile. I had friends who worked at the Chrysler plant near there, including this guy T Bone. He was a drug dealer, and he had a house in Redford Township. He was a gypsy biker, and during the height of it all they were torching an area by Livernois, and we were watching it on this little TV. They showed all these people looting, and T Bone said, “Look at that, I don’t want them to get all the shit,” and next thing we hear him firing up his chopper and off he goes—it’s curfew, after dark, and you could see the half tracks going down 7 Mile, but you hear that bike sound out all the way down Livernois and 7 Mile. He comes back the same way, and we hear the guys on bullhorns shouting at him, “Pull over.” Then we hear the bike coming around the corner. He’s got his lights off and he’s got forty to fifty really nice suits—Gaslight-era suits, these old, cool, pimp-styled things—thrown over the gas tank, which is completely covered, and you can hardly see him.
    Johnny Badanjek: We lived in the same area, some of us. I was on Hall Street, and we all piled into a car and went down to see the bullet holes in the Howard Johnson. That was down by the GM and Fisher Building.
    Robin Seymour: We were doing a show, Swinging Time , at the Fox Theater with Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, and it was packed when things started. This was about 1:30 in the afternoon. The theater owners came in and told us we’d have to stop. Martha got up and explained to the kids, told them be quiet, to relax, that there was a problem and not to go running around.
    Then we walked onto Woodward Avenue and looked up in the air, and you could see the smoke from the fires; it was