Wild Tales by Graham Nash

Four Seasons, Gene Pitney, Sam Cooke, Dion, Nat King Cole, the Impressions, Jackie Wilson, the Beatles … It was a musical banquet, and we gorged ourselves on it all the way into the city.
    We barely had time to check in to the hotel before soundcheck, but my head was spinning from the glitzy cityscape. Walking along Broadway gave me the chills. It was just like in the movies. The lights and the people were
insane.
I couldn’t take my eyes off the Camel billboard that blew gigantic smoke rings into the air. And right across from it, just north of Times Square: the Paramount, in all its gaudy glory. This wasn’t some shithole in Hoboken. It was the big time, and cavernous: 3,500 seats, with marble columns, a crystal chandelier like they had on the
Titanic
, a grand staircase, and balconies layered one on top of the other like a New York skyscraper. I immediately climbed to the top of the theater, the very last seat in the last row of the house, and stared down at that empty stage, contemplating who had played on it and how I had gotten there. I thought: If only my parents could see where I was sitting. They’d never even made it to London, and here I was, about to play the Paramount in New York.
    The gig was the Soupy Sales 1965 Easter Show, with one of those Caravan of Stars–type lineups—the Hollies and eleven other groups. Half of the acts were less than forgettable, just schlock tacked on to pad the bill. But there was enough starpower to keep us interested: Shirley Ellis, Dee Dee Warwick, the Exciters, and King Curtis and the Kingpins.Bobby Elliott, a stone-cold jazz fan, was thrilled to meet Ray Lucas, who was King Curtis’s drummer. But for me the payoff was playing opposite the headliner,Little Richard. That fucker was one of the greats, up there in the pantheon. I’d cut my teeth on “Long Tall Sally” and “Lucille” and “Good Golly, MissMolly.” They were twenty-four-carat rock ’n’ roll hits. Fifty years later, I still get off on them. Richard hadn’t had a hit in seven or eight years, but no one gave a shit; he and his band still brought down the house.
    The Hollies were ready to show America our stuff. I remember telling the stage manager, Bob Levine, “Our show is about forty-five minutes,” and he went, “Yeah, well, that’s not happening.”
What?
“You’re gonna do two songs.”
What?
“That’s right, two songs—for five shows a day.”
What?
“That’s the long and short of it, baby.” They packed those screaming teenagers in there, trotted us out like beauty-pageant contestants, then right out the revolving door again—five times a day. The first show was at 10:30 in the morning. Try getting it up at that time of day. We played “Stay” and “Mickey’s Monkey” over and over and over and over. And we didn’t finish until nine at night, so when we walked out of the Paramount onto the street, Times Square was lit up like a Roman candle. We’d be rubbing our eyes just to get ’em to focus.
What?
    Even with all that, doing the show wasn’t a grind. We were thrilled to be there, especially watching the master, Little Richard, five times a day. The guy was unreal. An incredible showman. He’d pound that piano as if it were a tough piece of meat and throw his head back and wail. And that band of his kicked ass, especially his guitar player, a young, skinny kid with fingers out to there. One night I was standing in the wings as Richard came off the stage and he was livid, his eyes bugging out like a madman, screaming like a motherfucker at that poor kid.
“Don’t you ever do that again! Don’t you ever upstage Little Richard!”
They got in the elevator, slammed the gate, and I could still hear him ten floors above, taking this kid’s head off.
“You hear me, motherfucker! Fuck you—playing your guitar with your teeth!”
He was called Jimmy James then, but you don’t need me to tell you it wasJimi Hendrix. Probably the only guy who could steal the spotlight from