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MOTHER TUCKERS YELLOW DUCK
Part 10 - Continued excerpt from the
beginning of the book, 'Listen Carefully to Everything he Says, Then Ignore
it Completely', by C. Livingstone.
(See here about the Book)
MTYD -- Part 10
My entire time in the world of psychedelics, from the very start until its
abrupt conclusion, had always been in the way of observer rather than
tripper. I was in it but not of it as they say. Much in the same way that
Aldus Huxley always turned on only to see what tuned in, rather than like
Ken Kesey who always wanted to tune in to see what he could tune out.
In fact Kesey was the originator of the Electric Cool Aid Acid Test,
travelling around the country in a rickety old bus all decked out like a
smoking joint with a neon paper.
The seven of us sat down one evening and smoked up a whole kilo of high
quality weed in about four hours. This one time was my one and only
condescension to the Kesey side of things. Thank goodness. Close call. I
suddenly got the hiccups. In the middle of my brain.
It was like my diaphragm had moved right up into the middle of my skull
and had been stretched tight horizontally over my brain cavity like
Saran Wrap covering a salad. And it was hiccupping. I thought I had
bought it.
I hit the sack and woke up the next morning like I had been roller
coastered fifteen times in both directions. Otherwise, thankfully, I was
none the worse for wear. I was always a little more moderate in my
proclivities after that, but doubled my intake of normal butts in
compensation.
The other incident involved a guy at Rochdale. Friday nights were party
night at the big R. That was a little bit like saying Wednesday
afternoon was ski day at a ski resort. For some though it was true. One
in particular was a German fellow in his late twenties.
Hans lived on the fourteenth floor and was a very career oriented
individual. He would leave every morning in suite, tie, and briefcase.
He would return every night in time for dinner. Friday night was his
night to boogie. As soon as he got home from work he would drop some
acid then settle down to romp into whatever adventure managed to sidle
up beside him on that particular evening.
LSD is not everything it is let out to be. No one should ever have to
hallucinate for sixteen hours. It can also sometimes lead you off into
directions you weren’t expecting.
Hans did his acid trip every Friday night as regular as clock work.
Germans are known for their faithfulness to routine.
We would see him in the cafeteria the next morning, who would gush
excitedly about the night before. He was really into this whole partying
side of psychedelics. I saw him one Saturday morning and he looked like
he had been hit by a truck.
Putting two and three together as one became quickly accustomed to doing
in environments like these, I said, “Bad trip eh”. “Yeah” was his only
response. “What happened”, I ask curiously, the only thing being more
interesting than someone’s good trip was sometimes their bad trip.
“Things were going fine”, he said, “Then I decided to take a bath”.
Knowing from the past recounts of many that sitting in a bathtub full of
water can sometimes trigger the wrong kind of thoughts, I said, “Ah, so
you thought you were going to drown”. “No, no” he said quietly, “It
wasn’t that, the bath was fine”. “But suddenly the building was gone and
there I was sitting naked in a bathtub full of water at the very top end
of a fourteen story high length of quivering spaghetti thin drain pipe”.
LSD sometimes reflects an amazing fidelity to reality.
I broke out in laughter at this absolutely compelling piece of imagery
and said, “So that’s when you freaked out then”. “No, no, it wasn’t
that”, he said with an almost pained expression on his face, “It was
when the wind started to blow.”
I eventually made my return to Vancouver in early March of 1970. I
knocked around Vancouver for a year with no special motivations in mind
and none forthcoming. Basically it was just a cooling-out period from
the previous four years of half world illusion.
Despite the passage of time, the incident with the MYTD band’s stolen
equipment and implied implication that I had done it, still weighed
heavy on my mind. Like an irritating bit of unfinished business, I would
have liked to have closure but what can you do?
One day in the late Spring I had been hitch hiking along Broadway
Avenue, Vancouver’s main east-west corridor. The Toronto area was
pushing over two million people at the time and Vancouver almost a
million. A big white Econo van full of people picked me up. One of the
passengers asked me immediately if I knew where Main Street was.
Main Street is one of Vancouver’s most prominent north south streets, so
I reckoned right off they weren’t from Vancouver. Turns out they hadn’t
even been in town half an hour off the freeway. “Where are you from”, I
asked. “Toronto”, they said. “Neato”, I said, “I just got back from
Toronto a while ago. I used to manage Mother Tuckers Yellow Duck”.
“Far out”, piped the driver, “A friend of mine ripped off all their
equipment last year”. My eyebrows went right over my forehead. If that
wasn’t the most astounding ‘what are the odds’ in the history of the
planet, you tell me. I mean just try and do the math, two million times
one million for starters. Then factor in the factor of the band times
again.
I pressed him immediately for details. I was compelled to know because
don’t forget, until this moment, I was still number one on the FBI’s
most wanted list for this crime and wanted off the hot seat. Apparently,
the guy’s friend had presumed that since the band was one of Toronto’s
top groups they would be fully insured so wouldn’t even notice the loss.
Bad call.
I had never updated the band’s insurance policy from the year before. We
had upgraded everything from our original simple set up after the
Yardbird’s show, to near top of the line. Neither had it occurred to the
equipment manager to upgrade the insurance. Bad call all around.
Therefore the band was only able to claim for less than a fifth of the
cost of the stuff that had been swiped. Yet another miscue that my
Peter’s style of management had produced. My bad.
It turned out that the doer of the deed had been a Toronto musician who
was flat broke. His girl friend was pregnant and wanted to return to the
states so he had stolen the equipment to pay for the fare. End of story.
The whole thing had been so well orchestrated that the equipment had
crossed the border and had gone into New York State within twenty-four
hours. Fate sealed. Once the stuff had left the practice room there was
no way the band could ever have traced it out or gotten it back.
As for the band, because of the bad call insurance, the damage was done.
It was yet another bad blow in the band’s quickly declining career.
Worse. The band had lost its sizzle. In fact, the band came to Vancouver
for a concert later that Spring but the spark was gone.
They no longer had the unique finesse and drive that had made them so
popular before. Within half a year after that, they disbanded and Donnie
ended up with the Guess Who as rhythm guitar and backup vocalist
replacing Randy Bachman who had left. Bachman eventually returned to the
Guess Who as an additional tour de force some twenty five years later,
and the Guess Who still show up from time to time still as a tour de
force.
At the MTYD concert in Vancouver I told the band about the theft. They
just shrugged. Probably not really believing my story or maybe not even
remembering what theft. To my own satisfaction at least, the little tick
in the back of my brain was gone because I had been granted my day in
court and had cleared my name. In other words, I finally had closure.
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