Richard.
New York, New York. I was in love with the place, and it kicked off my lifelong romance with the States. Every night, after the lastshow, the guys and I would head out onto the street, not knowing what to expect out there. It was a different town in those days, still something of an asphalt jungle. None of us ever went anywhere on our own. The Hollies stuck together out of camaraderie—and for protection. If anything were going to happen, you’d have to fuck with the five of us. The first day I got to New York, I’d opened the newspapers and there were like eight fresh murders on the front page. I remember reading about one guy who had been killed
for a fucking quarter!
So we were pretty cautious out there on our own. Walked all over Times Square, past all the girlie shows and tittie bars. There was a great record store on Forty-second Street where I bought Lord Buckley records and Lenny Bruce records andMiles Davis records. We didn’t have access to that kind of edgy stuff in London, and that store was like hitting the jackpot. It was an adventure just walking into that place. Afterward, we’d lug all the shit we bought over to Tad’s Steaks for a great dinner—$1.98 for a steak and a baked potato. Right around the corner from the Paramount was a little coffee shop, which was the first time I ever had corned beef hash with an egg on top. And if we felt flush, we headed to Jack Dempsey’s bar for a bowl of Hungarian goulash. Just fantastic!
We were getting the royal treatment. We stayed at the Abbey Victoria on Seventh Avenue and it was the first time we each had our own room. Very posh. I couldn’t get over how the taps turned on in the bathroom and hearing the phone ring like it did in the American movies and getting take-out food.
Take-out food!
There was no such thing in England, not even a hamburger stand. There was a black-and-white TV in the room and I watched Johnny Carson every night.
That is, if I wasn’t already otherwise engaged. I have to hand it to American girls: They taught me a few things about sex that were outside of my advancing experience. It was obvious that American girls liked to fuck much more than their English counterparts. They were freer spirits and more experimental. English girls were shy.You know that play
No Sex Please, We’re British
? Well, that about sums it up. Trust me, it was a lot of work to get an English girl’s knickers off. So I was a willing and dedicated student. My education started withGoldie and the Gingerbreads, the first all-female rock ’n’ roll band signed to a major American label. They had a nice little groove. A lead singer with a big, throaty voice—Goldie Zelkowitz, who later changed her name to Genya Ravan and fronted Ten Wheel Drive. But I only had eyes for Ginger, the drummer, a fabulous creature who had all the right moves. She showed me what English women had only hinted at. Ginger couldn’t wait to get her knickers off for me. And talk about playing rim shots! Yeah, there was a lot to learn about American women.
One night, before we wrapped up the gig,Morris Levy decided to take us out to dinner. He’d caught our show a few times and obviously liked what he’d heard because he’d staked us to a few hours in a New York recording studio, where we laid down demos for about twenty-five Hollies songs. I suspected it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart (a muscle insiders claimed had been left out of Morris’s body), and that something else was going on. He had something up his sleeve. Now, at dinner, he was laying it on thick. We went to a pretty posh place, the Roundtable, a Turkish restaurant with a tasty little belly dancer with a bare midriff down to there, whom we later wrote “Stop! Stop! Stop!” about. Nothing like a little navel-gazing to soften us up. Somewhere between dessert and coffee, Morris played his card. In an effort to expand his business interests, Levy offered us $75,000 for our music publishing. Now, in
New York, New York. I was in love with the place, and it kicked off my lifelong romance with the States. Every night, after the lastshow, the guys and I would head out onto the street, not knowing what to expect out there. It was a different town in those days, still something of an asphalt jungle. None of us ever went anywhere on our own. The Hollies stuck together out of camaraderie—and for protection. If anything were going to happen, you’d have to fuck with the five of us. The first day I got to New York, I’d opened the newspapers and there were like eight fresh murders on the front page. I remember reading about one guy who had been killed
for a fucking quarter!
So we were pretty cautious out there on our own. Walked all over Times Square, past all the girlie shows and tittie bars. There was a great record store on Forty-second Street where I bought Lord Buckley records and Lenny Bruce records andMiles Davis records. We didn’t have access to that kind of edgy stuff in London, and that store was like hitting the jackpot. It was an adventure just walking into that place. Afterward, we’d lug all the shit we bought over to Tad’s Steaks for a great dinner—$1.98 for a steak and a baked potato. Right around the corner from the Paramount was a little coffee shop, which was the first time I ever had corned beef hash with an egg on top. And if we felt flush, we headed to Jack Dempsey’s bar for a bowl of Hungarian goulash. Just fantastic!
We were getting the royal treatment. We stayed at the Abbey Victoria on Seventh Avenue and it was the first time we each had our own room. Very posh. I couldn’t get over how the taps turned on in the bathroom and hearing the phone ring like it did in the American movies and getting take-out food.
Take-out food!
There was no such thing in England, not even a hamburger stand. There was a black-and-white TV in the room and I watched Johnny Carson every night.
That is, if I wasn’t already otherwise engaged. I have to hand it to American girls: They taught me a few things about sex that were outside of my advancing experience. It was obvious that American girls liked to fuck much more than their English counterparts. They were freer spirits and more experimental. English girls were shy.You know that play
No Sex Please, We’re British
? Well, that about sums it up. Trust me, it was a lot of work to get an English girl’s knickers off. So I was a willing and dedicated student. My education started withGoldie and the Gingerbreads, the first all-female rock ’n’ roll band signed to a major American label. They had a nice little groove. A lead singer with a big, throaty voice—Goldie Zelkowitz, who later changed her name to Genya Ravan and fronted Ten Wheel Drive. But I only had eyes for Ginger, the drummer, a fabulous creature who had all the right moves. She showed me what English women had only hinted at. Ginger couldn’t wait to get her knickers off for me. And talk about playing rim shots! Yeah, there was a lot to learn about American women.
One night, before we wrapped up the gig,Morris Levy decided to take us out to dinner. He’d caught our show a few times and obviously liked what he’d heard because he’d staked us to a few hours in a New York recording studio, where we laid down demos for about twenty-five Hollies songs. I suspected it wasn’t out of the goodness of his heart (a muscle insiders claimed had been left out of Morris’s body), and that something else was going on. He had something up his sleeve. Now, at dinner, he was laying it on thick. We went to a pretty posh place, the Roundtable, a Turkish restaurant with a tasty little belly dancer with a bare midriff down to there, whom we later wrote “Stop! Stop! Stop!” about. Nothing like a little navel-gazing to soften us up. Somewhere between dessert and coffee, Morris played his card. In an effort to expand his business interests, Levy offered us $75,000 for our music publishing. Now, in
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