From Jimi Hendrix to the Dalai Lama: A Journey Through Times Past

Author

Chapter One

Milwaukee and Chicago

Let me set the story for you. It is Chicago, 1968. I’m sitting in my office looking out at the construction of the Hancock Tower when all of a sudden my secretary rushes in looking quite pale.

Sidney, she says, there’s a guy on the phone foaming at the mouth. He says he’s Jimi Hendrix’s lawyer.

What I had done to Jimi and subsequently to his lawyer and manager wasn’t a hundred percent kosher, but you’d have to understand where I was coming from. You see there was this guy in Milwaukee who ran everything: the prostitution, the gambling, the clubs, and most of the city’s politicians. Since he is a public figure and in the public record I will mention his name: Frank Balistrari; Frank was a throwback from the Al Capone days. He was short; he had steel-blue eyes and an entourage that was Mafia to the core. His main man was Jimmy Vincente. Jimmy was responsible for at least twelve people’s disappearances, including Frank’s ex-girlfriend, whom no one seemed to miss very much.

What was I to do surrounded by these boys? I was young and happy in those days and felt like life was all a joke. Now and then I asked Frank for some money. He’d reached in his pocket pull out a few hundred bucks and say, Here, kid. So I sold the Jimi Hendrix dates to Frank.

I picked up the phone. I had never spoken to this guy before; his name was David Markowitz, and he was a New York city lawyer with connections. Mike Jeffries, Jimmy Hendrix’s manager, was probably giving this guy half of Jimmy’s profits. Anyway, after I said hello, the conversation bottomed out after the first sentence which went like this, Who the fuck do you think you’re dealing with? Did you see the price on that May weekend in Milwaukee? It’s $7500 for a weekend? We’re making $15,000 a night!

We are not playing those dates, so just pull ’em.

It won’t be necessary for me to go into a lot more detail about what Dave called me or the names he used to describe me; but I guess you all can imagine.

Well, I said, we’re three weeks away from playing a whole tour in the Midwest, and those dates anchor the whole tour. I know we got less money, but it covers our transportation costs for the entire tour. I always had myself covered.

We are not playing those fucking dates. End of story. I don’t care if we have to pull the whole tour. That is final!

Listen, I said as a last resort, these dates have been promised to Frank Balistrari of Milwaukee. You just cannot pull the dates a few weeks before the engagement and expect that he will like it, because he won’t!

I don’t give a shit about him! Fuck ’im! Who the fuck cares who this guy is and what horse he rode in on, we are not playing those dates. I couldn’t give a shit if he was the fucking mayor.

I said, Okay, but before you do anything drastic, please check out Frank because I can tell you definitely that I will not call him to break the engagement. If you are refusing to do the dates then you call him and tell him. But first check him out.

It was Monday at noon, 2:00 p.m. in New York. I didn’t hear anything from Dave the next day or the day after, so there was no need to take any action; so I didn’t.

That Friday he called, and I will try to repeat verbatim what was said as it was a long time ago. Hi Sid, the voice said, very contrite from the last conversation. I didn’t know who Frank Balistrari was. I can see the difficulty, so let’s not pull the dates. My friends gave me the low down on the guy, no problem. You didn’t call him, did you?

No, I told you I wouldn’t.

Good. So here is what you tell Frank. Tell him we are doing the dates at a much-reduced rate for him, but in return we want Jimmy taken care of first class. Got it?

Yes, no problem. I will tell Frank what you’ve said. I’m sure he’ll do that, and I’m sure he’ll be very grateful you changed your mind. No problem.

Now I know Dave the lawyer was scared shitless at the name of Frank Balistrari—everyone knew Frank had a long arm. Dave was so nice I didn’t rub it in as I would usually do. I let it ride. Why rock the boat? We had the dates, and my life was spared so be happy, which I was.

I put a call in to Frank, and in two days he called me back. The scenario was like this. Hey kid, I donna talk to nobody except you, and sometimes I gotta be outta town for awhile so I can’t be reached. But you just call, and I’ll get back to you, okay?

Yeah Frank, no problem. Listen, I had a big hassle with those dates I sold you. I told you how cheap they were … well, the lawyer for Jimi blew a fuse when they finally realized how much you were paying. He threatened to pull the dates. I saved them, but they have a request.

There was one thing about Frank: He always knew what he was getting. When I told him the dates were cheap he knew that Jimi was getting $15,000 per night and he had him for two nights at $7,500. When I told him he needed to do something for Jimi, he was all for it.

Kid, what does he want? Girls, booze, drugs? Anything he needs, I get it. You just let me know.

Okay, Frank, I will let you know. Now I’m thinking: What can we do with the offer of booze? Nothing. What about the drugs? Nothing, besides being too risky, and Jimi probably had all of those that he needed. The girls? A party? Okay, I had a brilliant idea: Let’s get the girls and have a party! After all, it was Milwaukee and it was rock and roll, so why not?

Jimi came to Milwaukee that weekend and played like the great master rock and roller legend that he was to become. But my story isn’t about that. So, after the gig Saturday night—in those days for Jimi’s kind of music you only really had a Friday and Saturday night; you could hardly get people out during the weeknights to listen to his kind of rock and roll, especially in the Midwest—Frank, true to his word, set up a party for me, bassist Noel Redding, and drummer Mitch Mitchell, and the guest of honor Jimi Hendrix. It was to be given in my hotel room, which I didn’t mind one bit. The idea was right: a few girls, the band, and me—no problem. The issue was Frank invited himself and Jimmy Vincente to the party.

Just imagine: It’s 1968. You’re in a motel room with the soon-to-be rock legend of all time. There are four beautiful girls sitting under a tacky oil painting that looks like it came out of a Midwest nightmare of the kind Dorothy had in the Wizard of Oz. This isn’t Kansas anymore! In any case here we are sitting across from these really beautiful girls and I mean beautiful! On a scale of one to ten the five of these girls were high eights on average, so think about that. On my bed there sits Noel Redding, Mitch Mitchell, and Jimi. However, if you look off to your right on three chairs there sits the Don, Frankie Balistrari, and Jimmy Vincente and this other character who looked like and sounded like Mumbles in Dick Tracy.

Before the festivities began Frank had taken me aside and said, Sid, you see this is a friend of mine, Vinny? He needs a place to stay tonight, so I got him a key for your place and would like to ask you if he could stay the night after the party.

Frank, if you got him a key to my room it’s not exactly like you’re asking, now is it?

Well, I took the liberty because I knew you wouldn’t refuse me.

Boy was he right about that! This guy was looking over his shoulders and twitching and looking quite nervous. He looked like he was dodging bullets. Frank said, Look: Vinny will be going really early in the morning. You won’t even hear him leave.

I thought to myself, Never mind hearing him leave, I don’t think we will ever be seeing or hearing from Vinny again. At least that is the impression I got. Especially when Frank told me his favorite line, I’m gonna take good care of Vinny, he won’t be a problem for you, Sid. You kind of get the impression that Vinny is never gonna be a problem for anyone—ever. Frank was scary!

Back to my scene in the bedroom: Now Frank is sitting on the left with Jimmy Vincente and Vinny. Jimmy Vincente chimes in, Hey Frank, how come you never throw no parties like this for me?

The stare he got back was palpable. Those stoned blue eyes were cold, man. Then Frank just grinned and said, Your name may be Jimmy, but you don’t know how to sing—and I’m glad about that. He may have been smiling but his eyes were cold.

Now Hendrix was tripping on the scene and whispered to me, This is really cool, man. We should do this more often.

Frank says, Jimi, whaddya think? Why don’t you take one of the girls in the bathroom and piss on ’em? They like that.

Well, that was it for me. That little conversation was not in our program of hippies and flower power and the rest.

That was the level of mentality I had been dealing with. Jimi would have been stunned if he wasn’t so intent on the blond who was five foot eight and very young and beautiful. We all wanted to get down with these women, but the problem was how to get rid of Frank, Jimmy, and Vinny. I needed to make a move.

To my amazement after that wonderful suggestion, Frank decided to get up and leave. I don’t think Vincente or Vinny were happy about it. But there was no choice for them other than to leave with Frank.

After their departure things started immediately. Jimi took the blond into the bathroom, and I don’t know if he followed Frank’s advice or not. Noel Redding, Mitch, and I got it on in my hotel room with the other girls, and a good time was had by all. I will skip the sordid details, as I am not writing a sex exposé on Jimi and me. I know you wouldn’t want to be bothered by those details.

Chapter Two

Five Years Earlier

You see I was just another kid playing pool at Barney’s poolroom on 16th street and Kings Highway in Brooklyn when it all hit me. Here I was, eighteen years old, no job, no college, no rich Daddy or Mommy, no particular place to go, no particular skills, no Daddy and Mommy living together in perfect harmony as they had divorced five years before, direction unknown. This was it, staring me in the face: my life! The long winding road (not written yet by the Beatles). What to do?

Now I was surrounded by the usual suspects, cartoon characters. My friends were The Doc, Jungle, BB, The Fink, and then there were some minor players like The Duck, Skins, Spider, Bah (like in bah, bah black sheep, have you any wool). The year was 1963. Now anyone reading this as a young person may want to know why am I writing this old stuff. Why read about this story that happened so many years ago? I hope to answer that the only way I can: by writing it; and the only way you will know what’s in this for me is to read it. I promise not to disappoint you.

So here I am at Barney’s poolroom with all this madness running through my head when in walks the Fink, smiling as usual, he was always smiling even in the face of death, which he may have sensed, or not, nobody ever knew because he was always smiling.

Steve was a big boy; he was one hundred eighty-five pounds and solid; he played football for James Madison High School and was made all the more tough by a psychotic coach named big Al Caruso. That man would be in jail today for the way he treated his players, including me. How’s about walking into the locker room and getting thrown into the lockers with the force of a bull, as big Al was two hundred twenty pounds of muscle and nasty and mean as all get out. Or being hung on the locker room door and asked where does the shoulder hurt, and you tell him, and then he starts punching you right on the place you just showed him. Or being punched in the face because he said you weren’t treating girls nicely—though there may have been some truth in that.

But you never quit on big Al even though he tortured you. Why? Why? you ask. Because it was Brooklyn, and once you started something with a guy like that you had to show him that you were better than he was, that you could last no matter what he threw at you, no matter if it was hell week, kicks, punches, getting berated and stomped on—no matter! You couldn’t surrender. Somehow you just couldn’t surrender—and few did.

So in comes Fink and me we’re playing a game of pool, and in walks Barry Shank a known Brooklyn bad guy. Some people believed he looked a little like Dr. Praetorious in the The Bride of Frankenstein, but personally I think he looked like Frankenstein himself, —what an ugly human being. Not only his looks but also his manners and presence were atrocious. He looked a little like a bad characterization of Howdy Doody as he had freckles all over his face; we liked to think he was standing behind a screen and someone threw shit at him and that’s how he got those freakles (that’s what they were on him freakles). In any case he was a belligerent, mean, nasty son of a bitch. He started to talk to me and the Fink. Now we know with guys like this as soon as you start talking to them you could have a problem depending where the conversation went. Well, as conversations go and always did in those days, he started telling us about this fight he had with this guy from Avenue X, his description was vivid … and then I took the can opener and ripped his eye out! Yeah okay, just do us a favor and let us finish our game. He for some reason today did not like Fink’s smile. so he started on Steve first. He threw a cue ball at Fink, and then another one. Fink was ducking a lot and smiling, hiding behind the pool tables and trying not to get hit by those flying pool balls.

Now Fink could have probably ripped this guy in two, but he decided to run instead, and he did as pool balls started coming faster and faster, as Shank got bolder seeing that Steve was not going to challenge him. This was always the first lesson of the schoolyard (or poolroom) : You could never let a bully boy get the best of you as they will torture you forever if you don’t dispatch them sooner then later. But this time Fink let it go and ran; he knew that Shank knew that he if pushed again at a later date it might be curtains for Shank. So that day it just happened to end like that.

Now let me digress and tell another Brooklyn story before getting back to me and Steve. It’s about my best friend Jungle. Why Jungle? Because he foamed at the mouth when he went off on somebody. He was bad, known on at least on ten avenue blocks—avenue blocks were very long in Brooklyn as they are in Manhattan. You just didn’t fuck with Jungle. Now having Jungle as my best friend helped me get by in our neighborhood ’cause everyone knew he had my back.

Our friend Artie had this apartment for himself on Ocean Ave and Ave W. His parents were in Florida for some time and they left him the apartment while they were gone. So we had some girls over and had a little party, some booze, some pot and other assorted drugs. Billy Storace and Alfred the Jungle and myself. It was, as it would turn out, a bad idea to have those girls over as they were Ave J girls, and we didn’t mix with Ave J. We were Highwaymen from Kings Highway and Ave U as well, because Jungle lived on Ave U. But lines were drawn in those days, as I am sure they are now. You just didn’t mess with other Avenue girls, and you definitely didn’t go out of your allotted neighborhood area—at least not without a few of your boys, and I preferred to have Jungle with me when venturing outside our comfort zones.

Now Jungle was about five foot seven, very muscular, quick-tempered, and never but never pat him on the back if you didn’t want to lose some teeth. He had a thing about people coming up on him and patting him on the back; his usual reaction was to turn around and hit the guy who was stupid enough to do that. It didn’t take but once to get that message. He looked a little like the teenage idol Fabian who was really popular at the time. Jungle was a good-looking boy. His insanity can well be explained by his mother who told him stories about the Ukraine during the revolution of how her sisters and brothers and mother and father were hacked to death by the Cossacks as she watched while hidden in the barn where it took place.

When we walked into her house it was like walking into a mausoleum. You could imagine sixteen and seventeen year olds seeing everything in an apartment with sheets over it: chairs, couches, tables—it was so freaking bizarre. We had to figure she was just nuts; we couldn’t wear our shoes in the house, and couldn’t touch anything she was a dust freak and cleaned everything all the time. In any case it was a strange house my friend grew up in. His brother was gay, and his sister Dolly was as strange as the mother. Now having a gay brother in those days was really hard to take for a young boy like Jungle because you always figure in Brooklyn that your older brother is there to protect your ass if you ever needed him. In any case that scenario drove a lot of the aggression and craziness of my friend Jungle.

The girls went back to Ave J and spun a tail of lies and intrigue; they told their boys that we robbed them of their money, molested them, and in general were just disrespectful. All lies! But the Ave J boys bought it hook line and sinker, and they were out for revenge. When Spyder, Joe Cuz, and Joe Violence came calling on Artie’s house, Jungle was there, and he was called out to the street. Now Joe V and Spyder grabbed Jungle and punched him around a little, threw him into the side of a car, and roughed him up.

In normal circumstances Jungle would have gone at it against these guys—even being outnumbered—and would do some damage. But these guys were years older then we, and they were bad and tough. They slammed Jungle into a parked car and grabbed him by the neck and said, You and your friends better come up with five hundred dollars or this little roughing up will seem like we were playing patty cake with you. We’re coming back and going to burn this place down if we don’t get the money! And then they left.

I was working in the city with the Doc (Alfred) at Ashley Famous Agency when a panicked Jungle called us at work. He said, We gotta do something. These guys are serious!

The Doc said, Hold on, Jungle. What guys? What’s happening? So after hearing Jungle’s tale of woe he told him, Let me talk to Dennis and see if he can help. Dennis Stein was a character, a classic New Yorker with connections. He hung out sometimes with Sinatra and Sammy Davis and Jilly Rizzo and knew a lot of people. He eventually went out with Elizabeth Taylor and was engaged to be married to her but she called it off, and they split amicably. So the Doc told Dennis what happened and asked him if he could help. Dennis said, Let me make a call, and tell Jungle to call back in an hour.

Jungle called back and the Doc put Dennis on the phone. Dennis says to Jungle, Listen, when these guys come back tomorrow and ask for the money, before anything happens just tell them that Larry Pistone from Mermaid Avenue says it’s cool.

Jungle, who truly wasn’t the brightest light in the shed, says to Dennis. , What happens if they don’t know who Larry Pistone is?

Dennis, without skipping a beat, says, Did they ever hear of Adolph Hitler?

Jungle hesitated for a moment and thought about that and figured yeah, they must of heard of Adolph Hitler. So that’s how it went.

The next day, Joe Violence and Spyder and Cuz came by along with the Bruin Brothers who all had big reputations. Jungle goes out to meet them, and they are just about to go up on him when he says, Listen, guys! Larry Pistone from Mermaid Avenue says it’s cool.

Now that stops the J boys for a moment, and they look at each other and almost in unison say, Who the fuck is Larry Pistone? You can tell Larry Pistone that he can suck on our balls! And they grabbed their balls to make the point.

Then they punched and slammed Jungle into the parked cars and beat him up a little and said, We’re giving you till Saturday to get the money, or else.

Now Jungle and I knew one thing for sure: We could never give in to these guys and give them the money—about this we all agreed. We were never going to let these guys extort money from us no matter what, because if you gave in they would be in your face forever, and it was still our neighborhood, and if we gave in the word would get out, and we would never be safe in our own ’hood. But the big question was what could we do about this? Jungle said we got a rifle at Artie’s, but that wasn’t a great idea. They could get guns, too.

It came to pass that Dennis heard from Alfred what happened. He jumped up and said, They said what? Now I’m angry at such disrespect. In a few hours Dennis came to Alfred and me and said, You tell Jungle to come into New York City and meet me and Larry at PJ Clarke’s at nine on Thursday night. P.J’s was a famous saloon and hamburger joint on 3rd Avenue and 55th Street with a storied history of celebrities hanging out. Frank Sinatra booked table #20 and had it every time he came in. Jackie O, Nat King Cole, Woody Allen, and so many others frequented the place. In any case Jungle had to come into the city, and Alfred and I would stick around the city until 9:00 p.m.

The hour arrived and Jungle, Alfred, and I walked up Third Avenue across 54th Street, and as we crossed over 54th we saw a big limo stretch pull up. Two guys jumped out and ran around to open the door for the boss. He was wearing a chesterfield coat and even from as far away as we were we could see his diamond pinky ring. We knew it must be Pistone, and Jungle was freakin’ nervous. I said, Jungle, don’t worry. Dennis is backing us up, so just do whatever he says, okay? Jungle nodded.

When