Birth of the Blue Missile

I want to say if you are ever in Atlanta look Barry up on the internet and go hear him play. When you do, say hello for me.


While in jail I read one book ‘Papillion’, which was strangely appropriate for the location, and played a two day long game of ‘Risk’ with a few of the other prisoners. One of whom was Leon Russell’s base player Ebo Walker. He was in for drug possession, but he was reasonably sure it would come to nothing because the ‘narcs’ that busted him continually beat him up all the way down in the elevator. You would say so what. Unfortunately for them, this was the glass elevator at the Atlanta Hyatt and there were all sorts of witnesses on every floor. There was also a guy who was a professor with some sort of a master’s degree in for missing alimony payments. This was quite a diverse collection of people. Once Monday came around and the banks opened, I called back home and explained to my parents what had happened and had them wire the money for my bail. Since I had money in my bank account, and they still had access to it they used my money, so it was not as big a deal.

After I got out, I contacted NORMAL’s Atlanta office and hired an attorney. When I got to his office and met him he was a fully bearded, pipe smoking, plaid suit wearing child of the sixties. For the record I don’t think he was smoking tobacco in his pipe. He pulled the arrest report and told me that in his opinion it would come to nothing because it was an unlawful search and seizure. The cop had sited that they had found a marijuana seed on my seat by looking through the window with a flashlight. Because it was in plain site it constituted just cause. My lawyer told me to gather a sample of as many seeds that looked like pot seeds and put them in Baggies with labels folded in half. I was also to include some real seeds in a bag as well. I did as I was told, and when the trial came around, which was only a week later I found out why.

While we were In Atlanta hanging out waiting for the trial we went to visit a friend that Larry and I used to play music with, Barry Richman. Larry is an accomplished drummer who, when John Bonham was doing it, also figured out how to roll his base peddle. When I say that I played, I was playing Latin percussion things, nothing to really speak of. We did do a bunch of Santana but Barry loved Zeppelin and Hendrix. To date I have never heard any other guitarist play with such a range of talent and such abilities.

A quick Barry tale:
While he was still living in South Florida some time in 74, I had a chance to take him to a club I had been jamming at. I would bring my harps and the band would let me sit in and play. This was at a club called Art Stocks Playpen in Lauderdale. The club had three or four stages all in different rooms with the appropriate bar in front of the stage. There was a closed circuit television system in every room that would let you see what was going on in all of the other rooms at once.
So I brought Barry there with his guitar to meet the band. Let me describe the band. It was a two-piece band with a guitar player that also played the keyboard, which had a bunch of tunes he had programmed in it. There was also a drummer who would play the drums with one hand and play the trumpet with the other. Actually he was quite amazing.

When we arrived they anxiously said hey are you gonna come up and jam. I said no. I have something better and introduced them to Barry. They said cool come on up. They asked what kind of music does he play? I jokingly asked if they knew any Hendrix? With out skipping a beat they broke into Voodoo Child and Barry was off. He did things I had never seen him do before, like play the guitar behind his back and with his teeth. I can’t explain to you how expertly he ripped them a musical new one. These amazing sights and amazing sounds went on for twenty minutes or so. Before he had a chance to quit the manager of the club approached me and asked “Is he with you?” I said “Yes, why?” He said “Could you ask him to stop playing?” I asked “Why” in a very puzzled fashion? He said “Since he has been playing we’ve not sold a single drink in the entire club!” Remember the closed circuit TV? Well it was a short night for Barry, we left and went back to Miami.

Back to the road trip next time
Andrew