Christmas eve somewhere west of Paris. Wells had bought a Jaguar Mark VI from the Belgian Embassy. We’d been in town and were coming back to Orgeval where we lived, 30 miles out of Paris on the autoroute to the west. He was warned to put some oil in the Jag but that didn’t happen and he went screaming down the road to Orgeval. He managed to attract the attention of the police and he outran them for a while until the Jag blew up. Out of oil and he had to pull over.
We were following at a leisurely pace in the Mercedes bus left with us by Dale Metcalf, fresh from hanging out with the Merry Pranskers and Kesey and all those guys and touring Europe with a beautiful Swedish girl. Another story. I once drove that bus to the Haute Savoie in winter with no brakes for the gig in Megeve. Another story. We used the slow drive in the Merc to smoke a a couple of hash joints, from Novak’s trip to Lebanon. Another story. And came upon Wells’ smoking Jag and the police everywhere. So being charitable, we pulled over to give him a ride home or pick him up at the police station. As I recall we followed the cops to the station and it being Christmas Eve, they were pretty easy on us. We had an old French tenor banjo, given to me by Jacques Higelin, and a guitar. Another story. And went inside and sang some Christmas songs for the cops and all had a pretty good yuk and they eventually cut us loose without too much drama. But the Jag never rose again.
As an afterthought Novakus I was counting the places we played in Europe, France, the Army bases in Germany with Nancy Holloway (another story), Amsterdam with Chicago Beau and Julio Finn, and on the way back Julio stole a CD of Shaft from a truckstop and we played it in the van all the way to the French border where we were pulled over by the CRS, Thus ensued being surrounded by little French cops with machine guns. They recognized the Ohio license plate and the truckstop guy called it in. In the end Julio pocketed the stolen tape, 8 track, and stowed it in the toiled cistern at the police station at the border. We were waiting under surveillance and spotlights when Julio came out and asked around us derelicts
huddling in the van for 50 francs which we found and he gave it to the cops and we went on. Don’t know how he did it. He was a silver tongued devil. But we got to the gig we had at the American Center about two hours late and we had to force ourselves to play out of pride. Do you remember any of this shit? Also we played a great gig at the Aviano army base in northern Italy. Had to drive under a mountain to get there. I did Spain with Sammy Gaha, Tony Cahill and David Montgomery, and Steve Leach was down there then too. He’s now Seasick Steve. Another story. You played Teheran. That story about you hitting on the Shah’s daughter at the hotel pool and the one eyebrow bodyguards came and separated you. Classic. Eduardo
