Dig it!  For better or worse we were decided on a California trip, and even then it took months to get away.  Each time we announced the current show as the last in Texas, we were offered those deals no band should refuse.  We even considered not going after all because we were getting so much attention over it, but we figured it would be dishonest of us at this point not to go.  So after about six "last gigs in Texas" we finally decided on one more Dallas engagement.  We figured there might be some folks in town for the much-trumpeted Dallas Rock fest who might want an opportunity to see us, and vice versa; so I booked us into the End of Cole Street for four nights just previous to the beginning of the three-day festival.  We were, however, still determined on leaving for San Francisco right after finishing the gig.  We would attempt the trip in a crazy van we got a hold of through friends.  It was and old 1949 milk truck with an extra body welded onto it, making it forty feet long.  It was eight feet wide and high inside so you could stand up and walk around in it.  We, rather Jerry, had constructed a wall across the van about eight feet from the rear end, making a compartment for our equipment and personal effects.  

Practically upon hitting town the Dallas fuzz just had to peek inside; to our repressed glee they didn't even knock off the rear compartment, which was good because I had fifteen pounds or so of hemp in there, too.  This was some years before the primacy of California homegrown.  The folks out there smoked crap and we were going to be prepared.  We crashed with the band at my folks' house in North Dallas and started our four day gig, which was unusual for us; we seldom played more than two day gigs and actually supported the whole group on playing weekend shows around the state with an occasional concert or party; we also played a good number of benefit shows.  At that time we ran with four players and didn't have a regular guitar player, which meant we could have a guitar jam in without it becoming a sonic war.  We had finished our opening set when a fellow named Robin appeared wanting to jam; he was one of the people putting on the festival and had done the major planning and booking, so he claimed.  He wound up jamming with us a few times during the gig and wanted us to come out to the festival to do a guest set.  He was very excited about the band and said he wanted to become our guitar player some time in the near future.  He gave me a vendor's pass which would get us in and backstage.  We were to show up and do a surprise guest set on the first day.  We pulled in to the grounds about noon the next day; first day of the fest, and set ourselves up a camping spot backstage around the van-beast.  We ran into Robin and he said it would have to be the next day before we could do our set.  So we got down to some serious relaxing.  I had some opium in a form that it could be worked into long wormy shapes so you could roll them into a joint; I think it had been sent from Cali, and I had some lovely skunky, lime-green hemp, and an ounce of only-from-Austin old time mescaline sulfate crystals.

The festival was actually not in Dallas, but in the small community of Lewisville up near Lake Dallas with festival grounds near I35E not far from Denton, where I had lived and attended NTSU from 61 to 64.  According to Robin they, the promoters, had invited the local town officials to a big spaghetti dinner to cement the deal to do the festival.  Some several ounces of weed were added to the sauce, and, after or during the meal the guests were informed of this special culinary addition.  Apparently they were ok with this, probably because they were quite smashed and happy with the results.  So we were just laying back by the campsite.  I pulled a mattress out of the van, got down in the shade, got out a half-pound bag and the opium and prepared for some serious rolling and smoking.  I had two or three rolled and was concentrating on my task when I became aware of a horseman coming right up; I didn't have time for evidence hiding or even double takes, it was a deputy sheriff and he was saying, "Does your little girl like horses?  She can ride with us if it's ok with you.  We'll take good care of her and bring her back after a while."  I still had a half-rolled rocket in my hands and quite frankly I was relieved that I wasn't in trouble.  So I yelled for Tiva (our first kid, Sativa, was 23 months old but very precocious and totally verbal) hey, did she want to ride the horses, and of course she did.  She wound up riding fence with the Denton Co. deputies for all three days.  It was remarkable, especially for the times, that the law folks let so much pass; however, over one hundred indictments came down in Denton a few months later on many folks who thought this was an occasion for getting away with major dealing in the open.  You know, it's not so much what you do, but where and how and with whom it is done.  

A little later on we ran into Billy Lee, who had won a Pulitzer Prize for writing the Gay Place.  He had been an LBJ aid in Austin; he recounted how he and other political workers traded joints and pills with the capitol cops after office hours.  Don't you just love Texas?  Anyway, Billy's sixth sense told him I must been holding mescaline, a substance near and dear to his heart.  I could give him some, I said, but needed to keep most of it together for our trip.  He was wearing this bright orange baseball cap, which I commented on.  He told me to look around at the crowd; the occasional orange hat was an FBI agent.
Some of his agent-friends really wanted to try some mescaline; so I gave him enough for four or five people.

I heard later that they had enjoyed it immensely.  Hey, the only good cop is a stoned cop.  About that time we got the word that we'd have to wait for the third day to make an appearance because one of the main acts wouldn't stop when they were supposed to on the first night, causing an earlier shutdown on the second day to pacify the locals.  There were 30 great acts to see like some of my favorites, James Cotton, Sam and Dave, Crosby Stills Nash and Young.  In the movie made about the Fest Suzy and Tiva and I appear several times sitting at side stage.  And we were all so high, mostly because acid had been dumped in everything and anything liquid, and because you had to keep drinking in the 100-degree plus heat.  We really needed to bathe and to cool off some and some folks had gone skinny-dipping in the lake, so we went over to the free stage where some people were swimming.  It was wild to consider as nude bathers and some nude in the crowd within eyeshot of the straightest people in the world.  Some people in boats came in toward shore to get a better look, got hung up on sandbars, and wound up being helped by nude bathers who pushed their boats back into navigable water for them.  We were out there with our daughter and Kenny and Becky.  I guess we got a lot of attention because we had the only nude women.  We got out when I realized that all the band money for the trip, about $700, was in my shorts lying on the shore.  We returned to our backstage camp to find that we were scheduled to open on the main stage the next day.  Since we weren't playing that day, I rolled a dozen numbers and went out on stage between acts and threw them to people in the audience.

Freddie King played a set later that day.  I've always loved his music, and when I started the AWHQ one year later he was one of the main acts I wanted to play there, which he did to wonderful results.  Anyway, Freddie was a drinker mostly, and he really didn't want any acid, so he carefully declined any liquids, which might be spiked, but he did make the mistake of wiping his brow with water from melting ice in the beer cooler; which had, of course, been heavily dosed.  And then so was he.  Some time later we would be doing a talk show at Pacifica in Houston and the host, Thorne, would ask him what happened at the festival.
"Well", Freddie quipped,” everything was going ok and then all of a sudden everybody turned into a monkey!” 

Anyone who knows me knows how I like to burn one early in the morning, which is my favorite time of day
to play music and write.  So I was sitting on the main stage apron in the morning of the third day when suddenly the gates were opened and 50,000 running, screaming rock fans came running right at me, tripping and losing gear, trying to get a position close to the stage.  I watched them coming at me across the 300-yard expanse as I smoked it down; it was really something.  Still in reverie, Robin, or someone else in charge, told me our set would be happening on the main stage instead of the free one by the lake.  Shawn, the keyboard man, had gone in to spend the night in Dallas, so he didn't know about the change.  I decided to take the van-beast and wait to catch him on the interstate.  I parked on the shoulder, but a state cop said I should drive up the grassy embankment to the service road.  It really looked too muddy to me, but I was very stoned and not about to argue with rangers; besides, the heat had been exceptionally nice, surprisingly so; and I didn't want to break the charm, Texas being Texas.  So I started the beast up the embankment and was soon mired in muck and immovable under my own power.  So six or seven assorted state cops began pushing me through the mud, wheels spinning and cops slipping.  I started to see half-page headlines in my head.  I could just see the Dallas morning prejudice, as we called it in the Movement, gleefully bannering: Hippie kills six lawmen, gets six concurrent death sentences!!  However, even with my monumental freak out I was able, with constabulary aid, to get the beast up the hill to the service road.  I was afraid we wouldn't be able to catch him at the greater distance from the hiway, but, as fate would have it, he spotted us and we headed back to the grounds, and our campsite, which was right behind the main stage anyway.  We got set up on stage, and Robin appeared, ready to jam with us.  The sound guys decided to run the violin through the main pa speakers, a 60,000-watt system. I'm sure every cow inside five miles was scared right out of her milk.

People were still coming in as we started our set at noon; the sound of the fiddle through the pa seemed to make them even more anxious for the show.  So we finished and the people were happy with it and we went back to our campsite.  Johnny Winter, who had opened for us a number of times at the Vulcan, was due to play one of the last, if not the last, set of the fest.  I had carefully saved a few hits of mescaline to lay on him before he played, so he came over to our camp to get it and to visit for a while.  I laid it on him, and to my surprise he did both hits; I expected him to give one to Tommy and uncle John but he ate them both.  It turns out that he had already done one hit of acid; and then, on our way up to the stage, a girl-fan ran over and gave him a kiss; she also pushed another hit of acid into his mouth at the same time.  So goes the world of rock'n'roll! So after Johnny's set I’m back at camp and I get the word that I am invited to jam with him and B.B. King on the free stage as a show-closer.  I guess I got a ride with someone because I didn't want to maneuver the beast through campsites.  So we jammed for a few hours and had a great time; a lot of my Denton and Dallas fans were there and were thrilled to see me on stage with two blues monsters.  I had seven or eight joints on the amp, but I never did get BB to smoke; probably blew his mind a little.  

To see smoking on stage and naked folks in the audience was even radical for California; so how about the same in 1969 north Texas?  I'll tell you what; it even blew my mind.  So, after all was over, I realized I didn't have a ride back to the main stage camp.  Johnny was going to Dallas, and all his bus could do was to let me off by the interstate.  Well, I really didn't want to walk in sandals, in high grass, in July, in Texas; get real.  So I commandeered some punk kids looking for something to do.  I got them high, and with my vendor's pass, I had them drop me off behind the stage.  I don't know what they did after that, but I don't think they did any harm.  The roadies had things broken down and were packing it all back in the trucks.  At that point, a conflict of the heart arose.  My brother, at seventeen, had dropped out of school and was determined to go with us to California, but then we got the word that our dad was sick.  He had TB, something completely unexpected.  You don't expect that in middle-class America.  Peter wound up going back home and, at seventeen, took on the burden of running our dad's business; which was the sales end of the ready-to-wear business.  He did a much better job then I could have at that time.  I was committed to running the band, and we were on our way to California.  This would be the second time we took the band out west, and we hoped it would work out better than the first time.  In the summer of 68 we had gone out to Frisco with the original five-piece group.  I found a room in a flat in the Haight for my family, and the rest of the band shared an apartment in the Fillmore area.  We wound up practicing every day in an Episcopal church in the neighborhood.  The Diggers, a group of folks who fed others for free, gave out big bowls of oatmeal to the stream of kids coming from everywhere to be part of the Frisco scene.  They would eat their meal while gathered in a circle around us as we rehearsed.  An interesting side effect of this setup was that we could not argue and be rude to each other over how to do the music; you just don't want to make a scene in front of a hundred hungry people.  We were so innocent about things that we stored our equipment in an unlocked closet in the church; however, we never lost a thing.  It seemed that each time it looked like we would start to get good bookings there would be some kind of public disturbance to set us back.   One day the morning paper had a headline that read 'Hippies warn cops’; there being a concern about all the youngsters headed to Frisco and their well being.  In response, the afternoon paper headlined 'Cops warn hippies'.  

A few days later, I observed a large ambulance-like vehicle circling in the area; something was up.  A few people I now believe to have been governmental agents-provocateurs turned over a public trash bin and set it on fire.  Out of the 'ambulance' then came two dozen cops in riot gear.  They formed one line across Haight Street; they were all white except for one black guy on each end of the line; the black guys had M14 rifles and kept them pointed toward the roofs of the buildings.  They then proceeded to goose-step down Haight toward Golden Gate Park.  Suzy and I watch from the corner of Haight and Masonic along with the priest from the church we rehearsed at.  I regular beat cop was near us; he turned and said, "I've never even seen marijuana and I could care less about all this.  It's wrong."  He went walking down the street; enraged kids across the street were throwing bottles and things his way; he had no riot gear and no protection.  This, I thought, was not fair, so I walked beside him to try to give him some protection.  After a block or so he said I better get out of there before I got hurt; so I went back to the corner.  We were watching again when the cops stopped at the intersection down the street; they started running toward us.  We looked around to find that we were the only ones there.  One cop shouted 'you better not be there when we get there' so we got back to our flat and got inside.  People caught in the open or unable to get into their own homes were being beaten with riot sticks.  The cops were taking people to the park and beating them.  That'll teach'um to be pacifists!  It was then that we realized what 'consent of the governed' meant.  No police force, no army, can rule people who will not be ruled.  Eventually they crack; eventually they fall.  Chicago was coming!  Shortly after, we moved ourselves across the bay to Berkley; BT and Jack stayed with us in the basement of Kitty's house; right across from her club, the New Orleans house.  The others stayed in a place in Oakland.  We had some bookings there coming up, also.  A few days after moving in I discovered Doug Sahm and his band smoking a joint on the street in front of the club.  So I got them inside and out of public view; we had known him for several years at that time.  By the time our gig-dates came around it was time for more riots, so was life in Beserkley! 

Only about 35 hearty Texans made it through the Cali craziness to our gig.  However, it blew Kitty's mind when they all ordered a pitcher of beer.  When asked how many glasses they would need they would stare back blankly and say 'one'.  Beer is a Texas drug.  I think it was on this trip that we played the Avalon ballroom on two shows with new bands in the Frisco scene, and with the lightshow from the Vulcan from Austin.  The lineup included Santana, It's a Beautiful Day, the Sir Douglas Quintet, Black Pearl, and Shiva's Headband.  I also wound up sitting in on bass for Doug when he did a second set.  Apparently we did too well for someone's comfort; we were subsequently bumped from shows that Beautiful Day was booked for.  David Laflame would not take the stage if I played on the show!  Can you say 'pussy'?  I later found out that the promoters were claiming that we were booked and just didn't show; they even put us in their ads! Can you say 'it's a dirty business'?  That sojourn came to an end when we learned that our 45, Kaleidescoptic, was doing very well on local radio; and we could command a better wage back home.  A letter from Angela Strehli, telling us that someone wanted to get us signed, didn't get to me until we had headed for home. A fellow named Eliot Kellman, who had worked for William Morris, wanted to talk about our act. He had recently helped Big Mama Thornton get her professional and personal life back together.

In fact, we were going out in 69 to play gigs Eliot had booked.  He had come to Austin a few months earlier and was going to be our manager and my publishing partner.  So now, after the Dallas craziness, we were on our way west in the van-beast.  It turned out to be a trip we almost didn't make.  Even though we had worked on the vehicle and thought it was tight, it really wasn't.  Several times we turned around because it didn't seem the beast would make it, and each time we recovered our resolve to continue westward.  It wouldn't start without a little push; I mean any movement at all, with its weight, would get it cranking.  I could start it myself by backing off a half-block and running full-speed splat into the rear; it would move just enough for me to run jump into the driver's seat and pop the clutch and off we'd go.  It could only take hills at 5 or 10 miles an hour and it was possible to jump off going up a hill and trot alongside and jump back in; it was also possible, for guys, to pee out the open door; if it was a quick pee, you could pull it off while driving.  It took ten days, and that many tire changes, to get to Monterrey.  We had booked two weeks at the Bull's Eye, owned by our friend, John Smithback; and he wasn't happy that we were four days late.  We had played our last week in 68 there, with Monterrey Pop going on down the road.  We had made just enough dough to get on the road back home.  On the last night a fellow put his beer on our old RCA pa amp; it had spilled into the amp and blew it up.  I had forgotten my peaceful ways and grabbed the guy by the collar and was in the process of pulling him up off the floor so I could do I knew not what.  That's when I realized he was wearing biker colors, just like the other hundred guys jammed into the tiny club, and the jackets all said 'Hell's Angels'.  Well, I figured, that's fucking that!  I got an apology and a courtesy card, but no money.

I had enough money to buy 6 or 7 ounces of red Leb back in Frisco.  The band would drive the beast back to Texas, and I would fly back in a few days.  But, as the bard said, the best laid plans 'aften gang aglay'. Just as I was going for the door after making the purchase, I got the call.  The beast had gasped it's last in Paso Robles, where it wound up staying forever.  I heard some folks made a home of it.  The band members had had enough, and they demanded that I fly everyone home.  I had to sell back all but one ounce, and then only if I took a bus back to Austin.  So that's what I did.  They flew back with the equipment, and I crawled back on the greyhound, smoking hash in the pay toilets at every rest stop, and bitching.  Before this trip, we had put out a self-produced single called 'Take me to the Mountains'; I had also provided money for Angela and Lewis to do a single at Robinhood Brian's studio in Tyler.  We had done this country rock thing kind of as a spoof, and I thought the blues tune on the other side, 'Lose the Blues', would get the attention.  But something struck a chord with folks and we inadvertently launched the cosmic country movement.  Now we returned home with this single getting good airplay around the state.  Then we began to get offers from major labels.  Shiva's was two years old and already was getting a national reputation.  My first experience with regional labels had been weird.  The Love street crowd would try to get me to sign with International in Houston between sets, but they would never come across with any cash, and I wasn't going to it for nothing.  They had the Elevators, and I was right there when the Bubble Puppy signed much to my private chagrin.  Then there was Karma Records in Dallas.  They had American Blues, which was Rocky Hill and Dusty Hill's band; and they had a pretty good LP out with 'If I was a house carpenter' included.  One of our first gigs had been at the Dallas train station in 67, when trains were almost dead in America, before Amtrak.

We had gone for a ride between sets and returned to find the Hill's band jamming up a storm on our equipment, it was almost like early punk-speed-rap, but it was nothing like the blues.  Sam Coplin sent Rocky down to Austin to talk to me about recording for them; this sounded a little more real.  Rocky would drive me to Dallas to meet with Coplin.  We would talk and then, they said, would get me to a hotel room, which they would pay for.  In the middle of our talk, in walks Freddie King, whose music I already liked a lot; those 'positive' blues he blew, and his signature tune, 'Hideaway'.  Turned out Coplin was his manager. Coplin was telling Freddie that he had booked him in two local towns on the same night!  He was to arrive early in Lancaster, then claim he had to get back to his 'poor sick mom", and get his money, then drive the 45 or so miles to Corsicana, claim having had a flat tire, play late, and 'you better get paid by both gigs because you'll have to pay us no matter what.'  If they would treat a genuine blues great like that, how would they treat me?  I found out soon enough. Not only was there no ride; there was no hotel room, and basically the bum's rush.  It was bad karma they had.  I was somewhat gratified to hear that he eventually went down for his bullshit.  So I was left in the embarrassing position of having to call on my folks for help; I didn't even have much money with me because I wasn't supposed to need it.  My mom picked me up and I spent the night in big D.  A few weeks later we drag-ass back into Austin from some south Texas gig and get the message that I need to get to Houston pronto at the behest of one Bill Ham.  He was part of a Houston distribution crowd, and he was a big Shiva's fan and wanted to find a way to work with us.  I was beat and really didn't want to be back on the road, but here was opportunity knocking, so our manager, Jack, drove the two of us to Houston.  We met in a room at the Holiday Inn on South Main.  When we arrived, Bill introduced us to Del Hawkins, who wrote the song 'Suzie Q'.  Sitting in his shorts on the bed, and quietly observing the conversation was one of my TV heroes from the fifties, Lloyd Bridges!  Right off the bat Del launched into a big spiel about how he was going to make me a big man in my hometown, and how many women, and all that crap with, of course, no mention of money.  He had written out a letter addressed to him that I was to sign.  It gave him all rights over me, the act, publishing, and down to nose blowing.

I told him I was born in New York, and I already had everything I needed in that department, and if this was what I came tired down the road for he could keep his deal.  And if this were what I came down the road for than I would see them around.  Bill came after me; I don't think he expected Del's bull, and he still wanted to work with me.  We would meet later, he claimed, with Hank William's widow, Audrey, who was just chosen Dallas businesswoman of the year.  Unfortunately, or maybe not, before our meeting date, she had a slight legal problem.  She had been popped coming across the border at Laredo with a large amount of cocaine.  At that point of my life, I hadn't ever even seen coke, much less tried it, and it made me hesitate about working with this crowd.  In Bill's defense I will say I don't think he had anything to do with it.  We talked a few more times, but never got anything going.  Of course, in the coming few years he would achieve immense success with ZZ Top; and later in this narrative I’ll tell you how I helped them secure that success.

The next deal we were offered was from Electra, who had just released the Doors.  The president off the company, Russ Miller, was coming down to see us play and to talk.  Suzy and I went to the airport to pick him up the day he arrived.  It was overcast with a very light rain.  We had an international harvest pickup truck that we bought from the city at a public sale.  It was a cool monster but could only seat two adults.  Suzy couldn't drive yet so she was going to ride in the back, which was standard practice in these parts.  Russ was horrified that this obviously pregnant girl (with our second child) was going to ride in the truck bed so he could ride inside.  Well, he couldn't drive standard shift; so he insisted that he ride in the back.  I think he really enjoyed it; he had brought 'western' clothes with him and could hardly wait to change into them.  He watched our set later that night at the Vulcan, and wanted to sign us soon as possible.  But there was no advance money for us.  After all, he reasoned, the Doors had just 'walked in off the street' and had recorded for the session fees, but no more.  I could appreciate that, but we could not travel to Detroit without advance money; so, even though we parted friends, there was no deal.  The next deal we would try to do was with Columbia.  Elliot Kellman had gotten Larry Cohn, pres of Columbia, and the pres of their sub-label, Epic.  They saw about fifteen minutes of our set, liked us, would talk later that night, but were anxious to get back to their hotel room.  Seems they had some girl from the Nashville BMI office with them and they wanted to 'party'.  They were staying at the then new round Holiday Inn on Town Lake.  Elliot and I came over to meet after the show to meet with Larry and Chuck Gregory; I guess they had finished 'partying' by then.  They really liked the band and wanted to sign us, and asked what we wanted.  In a panic, Elliot drew me aside and whispered, "What do we want?”  I had thought he had his shit together, and in a humorous note I said, "I guess we want a million".  In half a second Eliot wheeled about and blurted, "we want a million dollars!” There was a startled moment and then some laughter.  They could start us with fifteen thousand and we could take it from there.  This was, at least, a real offer from a major player.  Before they left town, they were visiting us at our little duplex apartment on West Lynn over in Clarksville.  I was burning a j with them and Larry wanted to know if I had a little weed he could latch onto.  Sure, I said; do you want green or gold; and I opened the adjacent closet door to reveal my wares.  In this closet I had two "costales," which are large bags, canvass usually, with about 15 pounds of lime-green in one, and maybe 10 of bright solid gold "mota."  I got it, as I told them, for $45 a pound, in front, and delivered; which is a whole other story.  It came up on trains from central Mexico, and then was crossed over in the car trunks of Mexican federal agents.  I had an opportunity soon to share in the purchase of a ton for $14,000 and how much would they like.  You could say that this was one of my blunders of 'Homeric proportions.' 

A few hours later Elliot calls freaking out about how I scared those guys and how they only want to give me 8 grand before we record, and then the other 7 because they are convinced that I will buy the whole ton with the 15 and maybe blow it and fall and perhaps cause Columbia some amount of scandal.  And at this moment Elliot chooses to inform me that Larry Cohen was an FBI narc for ten years!  Now I was pissed.  How dare they think I would buy a ton with our advance?  I was only getting a hundred for $1400. Big deal!  So when the contract arrived, I didn't sign it.  I would hold out for a better deal.  Fine, Larry said, he was working up something bigger for us Soon I was presented with what looked like a sweetheart deal We would record an album for Epic, and furthermore, I was to produce 16 albums over the next two years I was also to remain the bandleader and play tours.  The whole deal was for $100,000.  Apparently they had been led to believe that I was another Huey Meaux, who discovered Hank Snow and Doug Sahm.  They thought I already had a pile of material, which I didn't.  To produce 16 full-length LPs in the two year span would have meant completing a record every 6 or 7 weeks.  I realized this would be improbable, and that I would wind up with little or nothing in the end.  As I was considering this deal I got another offer.  I got a call from one Brian Rohan, lawyer and power player in the pop music world.  He and his partner, Stepanian, had handled drug bust problems for the Dead.  When the band needed legal advice for business they turned to the law partners for help.  Rohan had taken up representing musicians to major labels; then became part of a group with Jerry Rubenstien, Bill Graham, Fred Catero, and several others.  He wanted me to meet him at the airport in San Antonio in a few days, and we could discuss deals during his one-hour layover.  We sat on a concrete bench at the airport and he showed me three deals I could choose among.  One was the Capitol deal I did wind up signing.  In the next twenty minutes he had rushed off to catch his plane.  Now, one thing I hadn't mentioned to Brian was that everyone had quit the band.  For one reason or another, each member of the moment decided that we weren't going anywhere, or al least not where they wanted to go.  For a minute I toyed with the idea of recording the whole thing myself, a la Sandy Bull.  Instead I waited for the mail.  The contract came soon and here comes another trip.  This contract was for $100,000 with a similar amount for promotion.  I had asked for a dollar for dollar promotional backup, but was told it was never done.  Then I noticed the artist management line read, Eliot Mazer, who was a big player, but not with me.  I turned the pages to the artist signature line.  Underneath was the name, Linda Ronstadt.  I called LA the bitch about why didn't I get similar treatment, as if I didn't know!  I played with them a little and threatened to sign her contract, and they begged me not to, which of course even I wouldn't do.  So I sent it back and they sent the right one. the one for $27,000 in advance and no promise of backup.  To be honest, I couldn't be anything but happy; besides, we were dead broke and living in a great house, but one in the path of the new Mopac freeway.  Now; to get the band back together!