A Stray Cat Struts (28 page)

About an hour or so into the flight, my wrist really started to hurt. The broken bones had still not been set, and as the doctor had warned, the air pressure caused a little extra pain. They had given me a couple of painkillers at the hospital and encouraged me to take them while I was there in the emergency room. I had kind of forgotten I had taken them. The first batch was beginning to wear off, and the pain started to well up. I'm a sober guy, but this was an extraordinary situation, and it was doctor's orders. I popped the last one and washed it down with a nice cup of tea. Twenty years ago, I would have boozed it up a bit, too, but now the drinking doesn't ever really enter into it.

I started to get a little goofy before falling asleep. There was a Colin Farrell movie playing on the screen. I don't know if it was a coincidence or maybe they show Irish actors on Aer Lingus, or maybe he has a deal with them. I saw him on-screen and started to say out loud, “Hey, man, you're in the movie!” I was busting his balls just a little. He asked me to not draw attention to us, and I stopped right away. I fell asleep five minutes later and woke up for breakfast. Colin and I talked a lot about regular stuff. He's a big punk rock fan, and I told him a few Captain Sensible and Steve Jones stories with good rock value.

When we landed, he was very helpful. He carried my carry-on bag and went with me to the baggage carousel and waited for my luggage to come off. He got my stuff off, loaded it onto a cart, and wheeled it all the way through. The paparazzi were waiting for him. He made a big deal out of telling them to leave me alone, to give me my space and respect my moment of privacy. It was really him they wanted the whole time, but he played it well and got himself off the hook at the same time. I never saw him again. He's a genuinely cool guy, and I thank him for being a positive part of this story.

Cherie was waiting for me, and I went straight to a hospital in Marina del Rey, where I went through a two-hour operation, which rebuilt my wrist. The doctor put in fifteen pins, one-sixteenth of an inch apart. They put a new cast on that went from my fingertips all the way up to and over my elbow and almost up under my armpit. It must have weighed twenty pounds and had to stay on for the next ten weeks. I went back to my house, sat on the couch, and thought a lot.

Cherie and I had met a few years before and lived in a house we'd bought together in a good part of town. It was the farthest away I had ever been from my beloved Sunset Strip, and I still miss my grand old flat on Doheny Drive. I thought TJ would benefit from a more normal environment. Cherie had a daughter, Madison, who was four years old when I met her. She would become my daughter, and I love her more than words can express. We have a very deep connection and have always loved the same things and each other's company. She is thriving now at an ivy-walled university back in New York.

As the weeks went by, my arm must've been healing up under the giant cast, but the inside of my skull and my soul felt broken. When I hit the floor in London, it was a big financial drag for all of us. Without getting too much into the economics of the rock-and-roll business, the last four or five shows of a tour pay for the expenses of the first twenty and are also where the band's profit comes from. Especially with the Stray Cats, where much of the profit for the band comes from the sale of T-shirts and other merchandise. We have historically done very well from this part of the biz. The Cats' head logo and overall imagery of the band has always been a unique and strong part of our whole game. Because of my accident, we missed out on four or five very lucrative merchandising nights. That would have been a good chunk of our profit on that tour. Everyone else had to still be paid. Trucking costs, crew, equipment being moved all over the world, hotel and air fares are but just a few of the dozens of expenses on any good-sized rock-and-roll tour. The cancellation insurance pays for that stuff but does not pay the band for lost income. The other two were very understanding on this issue, and neither of them ever said a cross word to me regarding my costly misstep. I appreciated that, because I was sitting on that couch, beating myself up over it, rerunning the incident over and over in my head until I thought I'd lose it. The “what might have beens” and “if onlys” were a constant companion in my throbbing head. I couldn't drive, I couldn't have a shower, and I certainly couldn't play. It was my right wrist that was broken, and I'm a funny type of ambidextrous. It's called cross-dominance. Certain things I do left-handed, like play drums, throw a baseball, or play tennis. Certain things like handwriting, brushing my teeth, and changing the channel, I do with my right hand.

There wasn't much I could do except sit there and think. About six or seven weeks into it, I had a big day out on the town, when I went back to the same hospital in Marina del Rey for a doctor's visit. After an x-ray that told him my bones had healed perfectly, he took the cast off, knocked me out again, removed the pins, and put a new, even bigger cast back on. Good news on the bone-healing part, but a further six weeks or so with a different giant cast lay ahead. I got better at life with a thirty-five-pound right arm with no fingers. I fashioned a functioning sling out of a big old pirate scarf with skulls and crossbones, so I did make it my own.

The whole time this recuperation was going on, the house we lived in was under major construction. The roof had been removed from a whole section of the house, and a new staircase was being built, along with an addition of two new rooms. It was a job that had been planned for months and in a case of perfectly bad timing started just as I was a prisoner in my own home. Every day, there was a different team of workers there, making all different sorts of deafening noise with heavy machinery. Drilling, banging, hammering, and dust that started every day at 8:00
A.M.
were my daily visitors. I would have been on tour for another week or so, and I had planned on staying in Dublin with Madison for another week after the tour. I usually would've at least been able to drive to the Cat Club and kill time in the office or on Sunset Plaza with my gang every day, but in this new routine, I didn't go anywhere, and—understandably—no one really wanted to visit me in a construction site with a couch in the middle. My head was off to the races with the first nail being driven each day, and I knew that when it was over, I wouldn't be able stay in the house any longer. The accident caused a loss of funds on the tour, and escalating construction costs combined with the financial crash and housing debacle in 2008 really got me down. The bank had canceled the line of credit attached to the house, and we had to start paying for the whole thing directly out of pocket. I had to get out from under the house and all the panic and despair that went along with it.

Meanwhile, the U.S. insurance company would call me constantly to question the treatment and charges that were fully covered by the tour and extra workmen's compensation insurance that I had personally taken out on myself, as is the norm on a tour of this size. All sorts of people would call and ask trick questions about the accident details. I kept calm and told them that I had five thousand witnesses and that it was all on film. They just didn't like having to pay out. Never mentioned was the fact I've had every type of premium, platinum insurance since I was twenty-two years old on cars, health, and touring. I never took one penny off them for over twenty-five years. I had the feeling a few times that someone was watching me to make sure I hadn't been faking this injury. I never saw a bill, but I've been told by a few people in the know that the whole thing cost the insurance company over $300,000. A few hundred grand versus a new arm for a drummer—it still boils my blood that they put a price tag on it and made a hard time even harder.

In the face of all this, Cherie and I broke up. It was sad in the moment, but it was over on both sides. I moved into a small house in Beverly Hills and stayed virtually by myself for a year. I went about my business, did gigs, and tried to hustle up a living. We sold the house in the middle of the housing bust and took a bath. During this time, I didn't use the club to pull a lot of girls and without thinking too much went into monk mode. I stayed in touch with all my true pals, but on the whole, I didn't want to talk to anyone, and nobody pushed advice, which is part of why someone is a true pal in the first place. I stayed close with Madison, and we worked out a way for everyone to get along.

During this self-imposed quiet time, I did do quite a few other things. When the cast came off, I did twice-a-week hand therapy and reacted well to it. I started to practice the drums and felt no pain with that type of motion. I had a few gigs with Head Cat, which were perfect warm-ups for the bigger tour that the Cats had coming up later in the year in Australia. Lemmy was very supportive, and in his own way, he admonished me by telling me, “The drummer shouldn't have been in the front of the stage, anyway!” I played the gigs with him and had no pain. Turning a doorknob or getting the gas cap open caused more distress than playing the drums. I can live with that. As long as I can play the drums, carry the luggage, and type, I stand a chance; none of the necessary activities were affected in a long-term way by my accident. Having said all this, I can say it still aches but has never stopped me from doing anything since.

In October 2009, with the Love Hope Strength charity crew, I did climb and peak Mount Kilimanjaro. By that time, my arm had healed up just nicely and didn't prevent me from doing any physical activity. We all reached the summit, Uhuru, the local Swahili name for the mountaintop. Another true pal joined on this one: I shared a tent and toothpaste with Robin Wilson of the Gin Blossoms. He was a positive and helpful tent mate, and we had a gas climbing and singing the whole way up Kilimanjaro. In accordance with tradition, I can now call it Kili. The local legend and pro mountain climber code mandates you cannot use this nickname unless you've peaked it. It fulfilled a longtime wish of mine to go to Africa.

I visited the cancer and children's hospitals in Arusha in Tanzania. I brought a bunch of swag, and there are now kids in Arusha wearing Slim Jim T-shirts, and one lucky one is sporting a Yankees baseball cap with a World Series patch on it. We stopped in villages and clinics all along the way. I enjoyed hanging out with locals and always get gratitude shots when I see kids who are happy with what we think is so little. I have a lot of respect and admiration for Shannon Foley Henn, who was the head of the charity at the time. She has since moved to Arusha full-time to help with the newly built cancer ward and really deserves a more than honorable mention in the charitable sections of my story. I really dug the whole African experience and on one day was especially glad to be a vegetarian when the big chief of one the villages served roasted goat for lunch. No matter what anyone may say now, nobody liked it then.

We went on a once-in-a-lifetime safari, too. I had been telling our excellent guide James for two weeks that I had better see a rhino on the safari or I'd be very upset. It became a running joke. I made out I was serious, and the guides gently insisted that rhino sightings in that part of the country were rare and almost unheard of. At the end of the breathtaking safari where we saw every possible animal except the elusive rhino, the joke was on me. We rode the safari in open-topped Range Rovers and just saw nature at its finest. Actually seeing the lion take down an antelope is spectacular, frightening, awe-inspiring, sad, brutal, and vicious all at once. It was really right out of the
Wild Kingdom
show we watched as kids and could never imagine it would ever really happen in front of us. The only way I have ever been able to travel anywhere is when there is a gig attached at the other end, and a gig in this locale is unlikely for anyone. So this opportunity was even more special, because I knew it was a one-off chance to see some things I had never seen before and may never have the chance to see again.

Near the end of a long day in the sun, while we were driving over an immense open plain, heading back to the final camp, the guide guys were looking at me with disappointed long faces. I was almost ready to shrug and tell them it was all a gag and a coping mechanism for the last two weeks, when someone in the lead car cried out while they circled back to us and handed me his high-powered binoculars. Off in the distance, sitting by himself, was a huge black rhino. The tour guides and locals were amazed, and a few of them had never seen one before. With the special binoculars I could see him vividly, could count the wrinkles in his massive neck, see the flies getting swatted off by his tail, and look right in his eyes. He just sat there, motionless, and everyone was patient with me while I just stared at him through the field glasses. Although I was captivated and would have stayed a little longer, I could feel the group unease and knew everyone wanted to get going. I understood that not everybody was as into the whole rhino thing as I was. We had a nice base camp waiting, but it was still a few more hours' drive from there.

Even among the wonder of nature, a five-hour drive in a Land Rover with five people per vehicle is a tough one. As the convoy was getting ready to start pushing on, my rhino stood up, shook himself off in a big dirt cloud, and started running around, stopping, turning, and starting again. He was putting on a show that everybody was surprised by and enjoyed. After a few passes, he ran off past the horizon. I've read everything that Hemingway ever wrote but proudly admit that I never even once thought about shooting him. I'd kept up the act that I was confident and knew my rhino would turn up. The trekkers who were along with me and even the guides and locals couldn't help but wonder if I hadn't summoned up this beast through sheer will.

When I got back from this adventure, I went back to regular life. A few months later, I had another short, fun series of dates with Lemmy; we were doing some easy ones up and down the coast in California. I was not looking for it, but I found another rarely spotted wonder of nature. There are not many six-foot-tall, super-gorgeous, twenty-two-year-old, rockabilly-loving true California blondes out there. I saw one and didn't let her get away. I met Christy Lynn Nelson at our gig in San José. She was a platonic friend of Danny Harvey's and was coming to visit him. I saw her in the audience and knew I couldn't miss this chance. I was introduced to her after the show and was just honest about my feelings. She started to visit me on my home turf, and the rest is history. We are still together, and she's my girl. Another example of how if you are open and let it come to you, the extremely rare things in life can happen.