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Rick James: Superfreak Is an Understatement · DISGRACELAND

0:00
Speaker 1: Disgraceland as a production of Double Elvis. A quick head's
0:07
Speaker 1: up for those who may be triggered by tales of
0:08
Speaker 1: sexual abuse and violence. This episode of Disgraceland depicts both
0:24
Speaker 1: the stories about funk superstar Rick James are insane. He
0:28
Speaker 1: was heavily addicted to crack cocaine. He ran drugs for
0:32
Speaker 1: the Colombian cartel. He escaped from prison and was then
0:36
Speaker 1: released early for fear he would get away with it again.
0:39
Speaker 1: He was in a band with Neil Young Neil Young.
0:42
Speaker 1: Rick James may have been born into a life of crime,
0:45
Speaker 1: but he was determined to make his way in life
0:47
Speaker 1: through music. He intimidated George Clinton, inspired Prince and more
0:52
Speaker 1: than likely saved Jim Morrison's life. Rick James was rock
0:56
Speaker 1: and roll zelig. He was also sex crazed ands but
1:01
Speaker 1: Rick James put a hurt on the funk. He made
1:04
Speaker 1: great music. That music you heard at the top of
1:07
Speaker 1: the show that wasn't great music. That was a preset
1:10
Speaker 1: loop for my melotron called slow Waltz Guitar Low MK two.
1:16
Speaker 1: I played you that loop because I can't afford the
1:19
Speaker 1: rights to End of the Road by Boys to Men,
1:22
Speaker 1: And why would I play you that specific slice of
1:24
Speaker 1: Motown Philly Cheese, could I afford it? Because that was
1:28
Speaker 1: the number one song in America on November fifth, nineteen
1:32
Speaker 1: ninety two, and that was the day that Rick James
1:34
Speaker 1: turned himself in for the kidnapping and torture of not one,
1:38
Speaker 1: but two different women. On this episode, heavy Funk, Crack, Cocaine,
1:44
Speaker 1: Motown Philly Cheese, and Rick James, I'm Jake Brennan.
1:49
Speaker 2: In this this Disgraceland.
2:04
Speaker 1: Professional recording studios are hive like workspaces where serious minded
2:09
Speaker 1: crafts men and women turn the sounds and emotions soiling
2:12
Speaker 1: around in their heads into stone cold hits. But the
2:16
Speaker 1: best studios are also clubhouses, helmed by talented producers with
2:21
Speaker 1: expansive rolodexes who surround themselves with established and up and
2:25
Speaker 1: coming rock stars. A session players, groupies, and hangers on,
2:29
Speaker 1: not to mention drug dealers, to make sure there is
2:31
Speaker 1: an ample supply of weed, coke, uppers, downers, booze, and
2:35
Speaker 1: anything else needed to fuel a recording session. Historically, from
2:39
Speaker 1: the seventies to the present, most recording studios have operated
2:43
Speaker 1: under an unspoken anything goes so long as the work
2:46
Speaker 1: gets done and the cops don't show up mandate. This is,
2:50
Speaker 1: after all, the music business, not IBM, and definitely not
2:53
Speaker 1: fucking we work. Even the most serious sessions operate under
2:56
Speaker 1: a cloud of smoke, despite being intense affairs with taskmaster
3:00
Speaker 1: producers obsessing over take after take. Most sessions, though, are
3:05
Speaker 1: the opposite, loose affairs where music is made when the
3:08
Speaker 1: muse appears. But of course some are flat out parties
3:12
Speaker 1: where a producer sits at the console amidst the rager,
3:15
Speaker 1: yet somehow manages to concentrate on the musician tracking in
3:18
Speaker 1: the booth. There's a lot of socializing and a lot
3:21
Speaker 1: of hanging around waiting to record, and because of the
3:23
Speaker 1: well connected studio owners and rockstar clientele, you never know
3:27
Speaker 1: who you're going to run into in a studio. I,
3:30
Speaker 1: for one, was once kicked out of a studio by
3:32
Speaker 1: James Taylor for simply sitting next to him while he
3:35
Speaker 1: ate his burrito in the studio lounge. My friend Bill
3:38
Speaker 1: Janovitz from the indie band Buffalo Tom, has a great
3:40
Speaker 1: picture of his bandmate Chris Colburn sitting in the lounge
3:44
Speaker 1: at LA's Cherokee Studios watching the finale to the television
3:47
Speaker 1: show cheers with none other than Rick James himself, and
3:51
Speaker 1: in his autobiography, Rick James tells the story of Stephen
3:55
Speaker 1: Tyler of Arrowsmith poking his head into an early session
3:58
Speaker 1: of Rick's, sharing a coup lines of coke and telling
4:01
Speaker 1: Rick he could hear his star in the making. There
4:04
Speaker 1: are a million stories like these, but no doubt the
4:07
Speaker 1: most insane one also involves Rick James, a motherfucker of
4:11
Speaker 1: a musician for sure, But this story doesn't illustrate Rick
4:15
Speaker 1: stone cold musicianship. It illustrates that Rick James was a
4:19
Speaker 1: stone cold criminal. Rick James, like a lot of musicians,
4:24
Speaker 1: was a bit of a studio rat. He liked the action.
4:27
Speaker 1: Even when he wasn't recording, He'd hang out at Cherokee
4:29
Speaker 1: Studios in Hollywood to kill time. His buddy Rod Stewart
4:33
Speaker 1: had practically made Cherokee a second home. Bowie recorded there
4:37
Speaker 1: Petty Steely Dan. In the early nineties, while Rick's career
4:41
Speaker 1: was at an all time low, and while in the
4:43
Speaker 1: throes of a heavy addiction to crack, Cherokee was also
4:46
Speaker 1: hosting Evan Dando of the Lemonheads, who at the time
4:50
Speaker 1: was breaking hearts all over Alternative Nation with his arresting
4:54
Speaker 1: good looks and chesty, emotional raw vocals, Dando and Rick
4:58
Speaker 1: made for an odd couple, Rick with his highly stylized,
5:02
Speaker 1: over sexed punk funk and Dando with his ditsy, pretty
5:06
Speaker 1: boy vibe and indifferent alt rock. Despite the different music
5:10
Speaker 1: they played in different images they portrayed they shared one
5:13
Speaker 1: strong bond, a love of hard drugs. So in the
5:18
Speaker 1: spring of nineteen ninety two, while Rick hung out in
5:21
Speaker 1: the lounge and watched TV and while Dando worked on
5:24
Speaker 1: single Edits for is about to be released breakthrough album,
5:27
Speaker 1: It's a Shame About Ray, and started setting up shop
5:30
Speaker 1: for his follow up smash Come On Field the Lemonheads.
5:34
Speaker 1: When not recording, the two got down to the business
5:37
Speaker 1: of getting high Rick James style. And it was all
5:40
Speaker 1: good until it wasn't. The news came fast, first over
5:48
Speaker 1: the television, then by word of mouth from studio visitors.
5:52
Speaker 1: Los Angeles was on fire. It started in south central
5:56
Speaker 1: Normandy and seventy first, just east of Englewood. Kid threw
6:00
Speaker 1: a rock at a cruiser. Then they pulled a long
6:02
Speaker 1: hair from his truck and bashed him in the head
6:04
Speaker 1: with a brick, and then the looting began. South Central
6:09
Speaker 1: LA was pissed Rodney King's assailants the LAPD had gotten
6:13
Speaker 1: off without so much as a blemish on any of
6:16
Speaker 1: the officer's records. The anger had been building for years,
6:19
Speaker 1: and on April twenty ninth, nineteen ninety two, the pressure
6:23
Speaker 1: blew the motherfucking roof off. The Sucker riots unlike anything
6:27
Speaker 1: America had seen since Watts back in sixty five. But
6:30
Speaker 1: this was different. La in ninety two had a lawlessness
6:34
Speaker 1: to it, a violence that was hyper real. Maybe it
6:38
Speaker 1: was that now the anger ran that much deeper. Maybe
6:41
Speaker 1: it was that now it was all televised twenty four
6:43
Speaker 1: to seven on cable news. Whatever the reason, the La
6:46
Speaker 1: riots were very real, and very scary, and spreading with
6:50
Speaker 1: no end in sight. Day one turned to day two,
6:54
Speaker 1: and the looting, beatings, and fires spread from South Central
6:58
Speaker 1: north to downtown and then back west the Hollywood Boulevard,
7:03
Speaker 1: and by now Rick James, Evan Dando, and the rest
7:05
Speaker 1: of the crew at Cherokee were in full lockdown. They
7:08
Speaker 1: could see the violins spreading straight to their Hollywood location
7:11
Speaker 1: on the television, and luckily they were armed. For whatever reason,
7:15
Speaker 1: most likely cocaine fuel paranoia, The studio housed the small
7:19
Speaker 1: arsenal of weapons, fully automatic AK forty seven's, semi automatic blocks,
7:25
Speaker 1: and of course a police caliber thirty two with a
7:27
Speaker 1: double action revolver as old school as the custom tried
7:31
Speaker 1: in a range mixing console in Cherokee's control room. Rick
7:36
Speaker 1: grabbed an AK and headed to the roof. The rest
7:38
Speaker 1: of the studio regulars mounted up and followed the super
7:41
Speaker 1: freak up the stairs. Dando grabbed a glock and brought
7:44
Speaker 1: up the rear. When they get to the roof and
7:46
Speaker 1: looked east, they could see the smoke stretching out over
7:49
Speaker 1: the low slung storefronts and spreading into the Fairfax neighborhood.
7:53
Speaker 1: They dug in. The sun started to fall, the smoke
7:56
Speaker 1: continued to rise. Cops nowhere in sight, turns in the
8:00
Speaker 1: distance helicopters a mile or so north, hovering above Hollywood Boulevard,
8:05
Speaker 1: and then the voices, the screams, yells, banjees in the street,
8:10
Speaker 1: broken glass, more smoke and flames rising up in the
8:13
Speaker 1: near distance. Fuck this makes some noise, shoot the moon
8:17
Speaker 1: let the whoode looters know that Cherokee was armed, not
8:20
Speaker 1: to be fucked with from if they made it down
8:22
Speaker 1: to seven fifty one Fairfax. They'd best move on down
8:24
Speaker 1: the line to seven fifty three lest they want to
8:27
Speaker 1: catch some lead. The regulars fired to the sky were
8:30
Speaker 1: abandon letting out drunken war cries. Evan Dando by now
8:34
Speaker 1: had his hands on an AK, making for quite the
8:37
Speaker 1: sight the stone nouveaux hippie dippy alternative firing an automatic
8:41
Speaker 1: weapon with reckless abandon into the sky only in Hollywood.
8:46
Speaker 1: The sound of helicopters in the distance, the sound of sirens,
8:49
Speaker 1: the yelling from the roof, from the street, it was
8:52
Speaker 1: pure fucking chaos. Dando could feel his heart racing. He
8:56
Speaker 1: lowered his weapon, took a second. Where was Rick?
8:59
Speaker 2: He thought?
9:00
Speaker 1: He turned around and looked to the northeast side of
9:02
Speaker 1: the roof, and there alone, crouched military style on one knee,
9:06
Speaker 1: with his eye fixed down the scope of his AK
9:09
Speaker 1: forty seven, Rick James could be seen not firing warning
9:12
Speaker 1: shots off into the air like everyone else, but instead
9:16
Speaker 1: firing shots off into the streets with the precision of
9:20
Speaker 1: a dispassionate assassin. Rick James led a life of crime. Literally.
9:42
Speaker 1: It's hard to imagine now given his status as an entertainer,
9:45
Speaker 1: but there is no doubt Rick James, from his childhood
9:49
Speaker 1: to his grave, led a criminal life. Rick James also,
9:52
Speaker 1: of course, led a musical life. His story is peppered
9:56
Speaker 1: by encounters with some of rock and roll's biggest personalities.
10:00
Speaker 1: Miles Davis and Eda James, along with a slew of
10:02
Speaker 1: other great entertainers from back in the day, were seen
10:05
Speaker 1: up close and personal while little Ricky James ran hipside
10:08
Speaker 1: his mom, who ran numbers for the mob back in
10:11
Speaker 1: Buffalo nightclubs where she collected bets and debts. And this
10:15
Speaker 1: upbringing also afforded Rick a view into how to make
10:18
Speaker 1: it out in the margin society, just like his mom,
10:21
Speaker 1: by any means necessary. As a fifteen year old, Rick
10:25
Speaker 1: got hooked on heroin and started pulling small time robberies
10:29
Speaker 1: to finance his habit. At sixteen, he went a wall
10:32
Speaker 1: from the Navy. How does a sixteen year old even
10:35
Speaker 1: end up in the Navy? Rick lied about his age
10:38
Speaker 1: and joined the Navy Reserve as a means to avoid
10:40
Speaker 1: being drafted into the Vietnam War. It was a serious mistake.
10:45
Speaker 1: Military life didn't take, and so Rick took off away
10:49
Speaker 1: without leave and over the border to Toronto to skip
10:51
Speaker 1: out on the navy and out on the war completely.
10:57
Speaker 1: Upon entering Toronto, three Canadian meats, big squares with crew
11:01
Speaker 1: cuts and shitty tattoos, barreled toward him from around a corner,
11:05
Speaker 1: and they were drunk but still able to identify Rick
11:08
Speaker 1: for what he was, an American draft dodger, there to
11:11
Speaker 1: drink their beer and screw their women. And they were
11:15
Speaker 1: ontumn fast raining down punches. Rick was used to holding
11:18
Speaker 1: his own with his fist, but three on one it
11:20
Speaker 1: was too much. Then suddenly the punches stopped, but there
11:25
Speaker 1: was still more commotion. Others had joined in the melee
11:28
Speaker 1: and were fighting off the meatheads. Rick was quick to
11:31
Speaker 1: his feet and they soon had the drunken squares in
11:33
Speaker 1: the run. And Rick James dusted himself off and looked
11:36
Speaker 1: up to the two dudes who had just saved his ass.
11:38
Speaker 1: Weird looking, skinny dudes. It kind of looked like the
11:41
Speaker 1: greasers who'd beat on Rick back in Buffalo, except these
11:44
Speaker 1: guys had some weirdo hippie farmer vibe going on too.
11:47
Speaker 1: Didn't matter, they were all right with Rick. The two
11:50
Speaker 1: introduced themselves as Levonne and Garth told Rick they were musicians.
11:54
Speaker 1: They hated the squares and knew the beating was unjust,
11:58
Speaker 1: and they informed Rick they played in a rock billy
12:00
Speaker 1: band called the Hawks, and asked him if he'd heard
12:02
Speaker 1: of their band leader, Ronnie Hawkins. He hadn't, but Rick
12:06
Speaker 1: told them he too was a musician and was there
12:08
Speaker 1: in Toronto to get his music going, so they set
12:11
Speaker 1: him off to a coffee shop to get stoned. Toronto
12:17
Speaker 1: in the mid sixties was a wild place to a
12:20
Speaker 1: young black man who loved R and B and rock
12:22
Speaker 1: and roll, Toronto was a dream. The culture was permissive.
12:26
Speaker 1: Drugs were everywhere, hot coke, acid, and so were the hippies.
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Speaker 1: And these weren't bandwagon esqu hippies. These were the real deal,
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Speaker 1: tune in, drop out, dress however you want, sleep with
12:38
Speaker 1: whoever you want, and listen to whatever you want type
12:40
Speaker 1: of hippies at a time when squares still ruled the roost.
12:44
Speaker 1: It was a time when it was legitimately subversive and
12:47
Speaker 1: not yet trendy to be hicky, and this felt right
12:50
Speaker 1: to Rick, especially coming out of the lips of Joni Mitchell,
12:53
Speaker 1: a young Canadian songstress who Rick met through a friend.
12:57
Speaker 1: Joni was the shit. She'd got music she dug on
13:01
Speaker 1: rock and roll, jazz, folk, and like everyone else in
13:04
Speaker 1: Toronto at the time, R and B. She turned Rick
13:07
Speaker 1: on to Mose Allison and they both sat up together
13:10
Speaker 1: night after night dissecting Miles Davis's sketches of Spain. So
13:14
Speaker 1: when Rick needed a guitar player for his new band,
13:16
Speaker 1: The Minor Birds, and Jony recommended her friend Neil. Rick
13:20
Speaker 1: didn't that we think about it twice. If this Neil
13:23
Speaker 1: cat was all right with Joni, then Rick was in.
13:27
Speaker 1: But first Rick needed some new duds, so he pulled
13:30
Speaker 1: a job with a guy he'd met in the nightclubs.
13:32
Speaker 1: It was a little boutique that featured all the high
13:35
Speaker 1: end hippie fashion items of the time, Denham fringes, beads
13:38
Speaker 1: and bengals, that sort of thing. And Rick's guy had
13:41
Speaker 1: a guy, so fencing the goods wouldn't be a problem.
13:44
Speaker 1: And it wasn't, and they were in and out in
13:46
Speaker 1: no time, and Rick was flush again and able to
13:48
Speaker 1: focus on putting his band together and of course looking
13:52
Speaker 1: good in the process. Neil Young could give a shit
13:55
Speaker 1: about looking good. Neil Young was too concerned with tearing
13:59
Speaker 1: the paper off of the horsehair walls inside of Toronto's nightclubs.
14:02
Speaker 1: With his gut wrenching, emotionally chaotic guitar playing, Jony was right.
14:07
Speaker 1: The dude knew his shit, and Jony Mitchell never lies.
14:10
Speaker 1: Neil dug on Black R and B in Motown more
14:13
Speaker 1: than most of the black kids Rick tried playing with
14:15
Speaker 1: back in Buffalo. Neil was a student, a fucking assassin
14:19
Speaker 1: with that guitar. So in nineteen sixty six, with Neil
14:23
Speaker 1: Young now in Rick James's band, the Minor Birds headed
14:26
Speaker 1: to Detroit to score a deal with the most happening
14:28
Speaker 1: record label in the world at the time, Motown Records,
14:32
Speaker 1: and label president Barry Gordy didn't get to be Barry
14:36
Speaker 1: Gordy by not being able to identify immense talent, so
14:39
Speaker 1: of course the Minor Birds were signed to Motown. They
14:43
Speaker 1: quickly recorded a single called It's My Time and endeavored
14:47
Speaker 1: to become the next big thing. But next big things
14:51
Speaker 1: need more than talent to become next big things. They
14:54
Speaker 1: need all the little things to fall into place. And
14:57
Speaker 1: when your singer is a criminal and a wall from
14:59
Speaker 1: the Navy and the middle of a war, it's hard
15:01
Speaker 1: to conquer the charts. Once the Motown advance came through.
15:05
Speaker 1: Rick's manager ratted him out to keep the bread to himself,
15:09
Speaker 1: and when Motown got winned, they dropped the minor birds.
15:12
Speaker 1: And worse than that, the FBI turned up the heat
15:15
Speaker 1: on Rick. They heard about the Motown deal and put
15:17
Speaker 1: the word out to every record label that Rick James
15:20
Speaker 1: was a fugitive and he was not to be signed.
15:23
Speaker 1: Rick was sunk. He did the only thing he could do.
15:27
Speaker 1: Put Ray Charles on the turntable, rolled the joint, took
15:30
Speaker 1: a big hit and turned it up. Then he turned
15:34
Speaker 1: himself in.
15:36
Speaker 2: We'll be right back after this word word word.
15:42
Speaker 1: Rick was dreaming. The past few years had been intense.
15:46
Speaker 1: He'd gone from hanging with his Motown heroes Marvin Gay
15:49
Speaker 1: and Stevie Wonder to being locked up in the brig
15:52
Speaker 1: for desertion, and then he broke out a prison, a
15:55
Speaker 1: legit jail break. The excitement of that moment never left
15:58
Speaker 1: him when her dream came. It was the prison break
16:02
Speaker 1: that jazzed him the most. He could still taste the
16:05
Speaker 1: adrenaline even now a year later, in his sleep. It
16:08
Speaker 1: got his dick hard, and it was so powerful. Not
16:11
Speaker 1: that Rick James needed help getting his dick hard before
16:15
Speaker 1: and after prison. He'd been on a tear through the
16:17
Speaker 1: new era of free love, and free love was one thing,
16:20
Speaker 1: freedom was another. Rick may have escaped the brig, but
16:24
Speaker 1: he wasn't free. His boys back in Toronto got their
16:27
Speaker 1: shit together without Rick. Neil was in a band with
16:30
Speaker 1: that Stephen Stills cat Buffalo Springfield and they were legit
16:33
Speaker 1: rock stars. And Joni had her thing Garth and Levon
16:37
Speaker 1: backed Bob fucking Dylan and started the band. And here
16:40
Speaker 1: was Rick James, dodging g men and dealing coke to
16:43
Speaker 1: get by in his dream though he was free, free
16:47
Speaker 1: on stage anyway, whipping through Stevie's fingertips, with Hendrix next
16:51
Speaker 1: to him on stage and Miles looking on approvingly from
16:54
Speaker 1: the audience. It made no sense. But then again it
16:57
Speaker 1: made total sense. Rick was a fucking star and he
17:01
Speaker 1: knew it. He knew he had the same talent running
17:03
Speaker 1: through him that Jimmy, Stevie and Miles had. But the
17:06
Speaker 1: truth ratchet it up the anxiety. The truth was that
17:09
Speaker 1: he wasn't a musician like Jimmy, Stevie or Miles. He
17:12
Speaker 1: was a fucking criminal, common ordinary and definitely not free.
17:16
Speaker 1: The g men were on his tail, hell hounds, white devils.
17:20
Speaker 1: The heat got to be too hot, and this is
17:22
Speaker 1: where the dream usually went from fever pitch to hyper real.
17:26
Speaker 1: Rick's heart raced as his brain called back to when
17:28
Speaker 1: he turned himself in that second time, not for going
17:32
Speaker 1: a wall, but for breaking out of the brig and
17:34
Speaker 1: he was received by the other prisoners as a conquering hero.
17:37
Speaker 1: But the guards had a different opinion. Fuck this guy.
17:41
Speaker 1: The beatings were merciless, and the brass must have known
17:43
Speaker 1: Rick was going to bounce a third time and embarrass
17:46
Speaker 1: them further, so they ended up settling with his attorney
17:48
Speaker 1: and processing him out of his court martial on a technicality,
17:52
Speaker 1: something about enlisting as a minor. And this is usually
17:55
Speaker 1: when Rick would awake, buoyed by freedom, his dick rock hard,
17:59
Speaker 1: his eyes winting through the late morning California sunshine, and
18:02
Speaker 1: his head weighed down in the morass of last night's party,
18:07
Speaker 1: Rick got up off the couch, careful not to step
18:09
Speaker 1: on the half naked bodies sleeping on the floor. Empty
18:12
Speaker 1: wine bottles and overflowing ashtrays were everywhere, and the air
18:16
Speaker 1: stank of grass, and Rick had to piss bad. He
18:20
Speaker 1: couldn't remember where the nearest bathroom was. This place was huge.
18:23
Speaker 1: Stephen Stills had too much house whatever. Stills was a
18:27
Speaker 1: rock star. He could afford it. Plus Stills through gray
18:30
Speaker 1: parties and was cool enough to let Rick crash while
18:33
Speaker 1: getting his shit together, Rick Duck walked through the kitchen,
18:36
Speaker 1: careful not to wake anyone there the first floor bathroom.
18:40
Speaker 1: Thank god. Rick came to a passway between the kitchen
18:43
Speaker 1: and the bathroom and stopped dead in his tracks. The
18:46
Speaker 1: blood was everywhere and flowing fast. The hippie was still
18:49
Speaker 1: conscious despite the blood torrenting from his forearms, and he
18:53
Speaker 1: was mumbling. Wait was he mumbling or doing something else?
18:56
Speaker 1: The motherfucker was chanting and bleeding profusely from his self
19:00
Speaker 1: inflicted wounds. Rick freaked out, started screaming and ran straight
19:04
Speaker 1: for Stills's bedroom. Stills was already on his feet, fastening
19:07
Speaker 1: the belt of his robe and shaking his head. Shit,
19:10
Speaker 1: he's done it again, hasn't he. He's cutting himself right,
19:14
Speaker 1: Still's some stone. Dude is bleeding out in your hallway.
19:17
Speaker 1: Still's hurried toward his kitchen. Rick followed. The blood had
19:20
Speaker 1: now formed a sizeable puddle on the floor around the hippie.
19:23
Speaker 1: Stills pulled the belt of his robe, grabbed a dish
19:26
Speaker 1: rag hanging from the oven, and quickly fashioned two makeshift
19:28
Speaker 1: tourniquets around the cross legged hippie's arms to stop the
19:31
Speaker 1: deluge's blood. And through it all, the hippie kept slowly
19:34
Speaker 1: rocking his shoulders and chanting. The Stills gave him a
19:37
Speaker 1: couple of hard slaps on the cheek to snap him
19:39
Speaker 1: out of it. Jim, Jim, Wake up, Jim. The bleeding stopped,
19:44
Speaker 1: and the hippies slowly opened his eyes and they were beautiful,
19:48
Speaker 1: if not distant. They found their way to Rick, who
19:50
Speaker 1: was looking on in shock, and the hippie opened his mouth.
19:55
Speaker 2: Hey brother, it's a beautiful morning, isn't it.
20:00
Speaker 1: I had no idea what the fuck was going on.
20:02
Speaker 1: Stephen Stills took a step back, let out a sigh
20:05
Speaker 1: of relief, and said, Rick James, meet Jim Morrison. Fucking Hollywood.
20:13
Speaker 1: You couldn't take a piss without running into somebody. So
20:16
Speaker 1: Rick James used his Hollywood connections to get his music
20:18
Speaker 1: career off of the ground, but it was slow going,
20:21
Speaker 1: one false start after another, and Rick, frustrated with the momentum,
20:25
Speaker 1: his friends had found in the music business and the
20:27
Speaker 1: had eluded him. Said fuck it, a man's going to eat,
20:31
Speaker 1: and if the music business wasn't going to provide, then
20:33
Speaker 1: Rick was going to make it happen by any means necessary,
20:36
Speaker 1: just like his mama had done with the mob back
20:38
Speaker 1: in Buffalo. Cocaine was fast becoming the drug of choice
20:42
Speaker 1: as the sixties turned into the seventies, and of course
20:45
Speaker 1: Rick knew a guy, and that guy knew a guy,
20:47
Speaker 1: and before Rick knew it, he was in Columbia, squirreling
20:50
Speaker 1: away fifteen grams of cartel cocaine into his luggage. The
20:54
Speaker 1: flight to Canada, where Rick had planned on unloading the coke,
20:58
Speaker 1: was first class, but upon landing things went south. Who
21:02
Speaker 1: was a sharp dressed black American with a stickpin and
21:05
Speaker 1: expensive luggage. Rick was braced by airport security and thoroughly searched,
21:10
Speaker 1: but not thoroughly enough. He made it through with the
21:12
Speaker 1: blow undetected, but was rattled enough to give up drug
21:15
Speaker 1: dealing and give the music business one more shot. And finally,
21:20
Speaker 1: his timing was right on. Rick's vision of creating an aggressive,
21:23
Speaker 1: sexy new form of music that combined the best of
21:26
Speaker 1: R and B and rock and roll suddenly had a
21:28
Speaker 1: chance in a decade where disco, punk, rock, and theatrical
21:32
Speaker 1: funk and heavy metal were all in vogue. Rick, for
21:35
Speaker 1: the first time in his life, disciplined himself. He pulled
21:38
Speaker 1: together some serious musicians from back home in Buffalo, away
21:42
Speaker 1: from the party scene in Hollywood, dubbed them the Stone
21:45
Speaker 1: City Band, and set about to make his mark on
21:47
Speaker 1: music history, just like Jimmy Miles.
21:50
Speaker 2: And Stevie before him.
21:51
Speaker 1: And that's exactly what he did. Rick james first few
21:54
Speaker 1: seventies records, Come and Get It, Bustin out of l
21:57
Speaker 1: seven in nineteen eighty one, Streets Off are in a word,
22:01
Speaker 1: unfucking believably good is not a word. It doesn't matter.
22:05
Speaker 1: Rick James put a new kind of herd on the phone.
22:07
Speaker 1: It was George Clinton without the bad acid trip. It
22:10
Speaker 1: was Sly Stone without the mannek insanity. It was Kisses
22:13
Speaker 1: heavy metal but with musicians who could play. It was
22:16
Speaker 1: Marvin Gaye but with a sense of humor. It was
22:18
Speaker 1: James Brown without the preachy's social consciousness. It was disco
22:22
Speaker 1: without the cheese. It was disco rock dudes could get into.
22:25
Speaker 1: It was a party. It was all of these things.
22:28
Speaker 2: It was huge.
22:32
Speaker 1: You and I Mary Jane, come and get it. Give
22:35
Speaker 1: it to me, baby, super freak. Put those songs on now,
22:38
Speaker 1: even now, and try not to move, Try not to
22:40
Speaker 1: crack that second bottle of wine, try not to get lead.
22:43
Speaker 1: Those songs are infectious, undeniable hits, and when Rick James
22:47
Speaker 1: unleashed them on the world, the world loved them. And
22:50
Speaker 1: Rick loved the world right back. It was his time,
22:53
Speaker 1: and he'd be damned if he weren't going to enjoy himself.
22:57
Speaker 1: Rick was suddenly involved in high demand, suddenly brought his heroes,
23:01
Speaker 1: The Temptations back from the dead with Standing on the Top,
23:04
Speaker 1: a song he penned and produced for them as a
23:06
Speaker 1: favor for Barry Gordy. And Rick had taken his friend
23:09
Speaker 1: actor Eddie Murphy all the way to number two in
23:11
Speaker 1: the charts with Party All the Time, another track he'd
23:14
Speaker 1: written and produced. With success, the party grew more wild. Sex,
23:19
Speaker 1: always a thing that was available to with James whenever
23:22
Speaker 1: he wanted. It soon became sex with two women at
23:25
Speaker 1: a time, then three women, and then the orgy started
23:28
Speaker 1: with regularity. Rick moved through a succession of high profile
23:33
Speaker 1: relationships with beautiful women Linda Blair from the Exorcists, the
23:37
Speaker 1: Duce of Hazard's Katherine Bach, Marvin Gay's wife, jan Hunter,
23:41
Speaker 1: Johnny Carson's girlfriend, Kelly Patterson, and eventually a young Elizabeth
23:45
Speaker 1: Shut all the while his drug use got more serious.
23:50
Speaker 1: His cocaine use ratcheted up about ten notches in the
23:53
Speaker 1: nineteen eighties, just like it did for the rest of
23:55
Speaker 1: the entertainment business. But Rick, criminal minded as ever, took
23:59
Speaker 1: it to another level and began freebasing, or as he
24:03
Speaker 1: put it, sucking the devil's dick, and by the early nineties,
24:22
Speaker 1: Rick James had fallen into the funk. Rick was high
24:26
Speaker 1: all the time, heavily addicted to crack, and depressed over
24:30
Speaker 1: the state of his career, which was at a new low.
24:33
Speaker 1: Despite receiving a songwriting credit and winning a Grammy for
24:36
Speaker 1: mc hammers You Can't Touch This, a monster hit that
24:40
Speaker 1: relied on a sample of Rick Super Freak. It was
24:43
Speaker 1: his first Grammy, and the original version scored a nomination
24:47
Speaker 1: in nineteen eighty two for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance,
24:50
Speaker 1: but lost out to Jesse's Girl and Fuck Rick Springsteen
24:53
Speaker 1: or Whoever. Didn't matter. Rick couldn't spend his new money
24:56
Speaker 1: fast enough, he was spinning off of the face of
24:59
Speaker 1: the earth. The only thing keeping him grounded, he thought,
25:02
Speaker 1: was the sex. And that's what was going through his mind.
25:05
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety one. When the prostitute walked into his crackdown,
25:10
Speaker 1: it was hard to see her. Rick had blackened out
25:12
Speaker 1: the room by covering the windows with a tinfoil, and
25:15
Speaker 1: a dense fog of weed, crack and cigarette smoke hung
25:18
Speaker 1: just below the ceiling. Rick's girlfriend, Tanya, brought her in, ah,
25:23
Speaker 1: Rick thought, a gift. She'll never let your spirits down.
25:27
Speaker 1: And once you get her off the street, she's all right.
25:30
Speaker 1: And they get down to a quick fucking and sucking
25:33
Speaker 1: right there in the middle of Rick James's own circle
25:35
Speaker 1: of madness. Rick, his girlfriend the prostitute would fuck, smoke, crack, fuck, smoke, crack,
25:41
Speaker 1: fuck some more, and then smoke some more crack. And
25:43
Speaker 1: when the prostitute would get out of line, Rick would
25:46
Speaker 1: smack her around and get her back on the pipe
25:48
Speaker 1: and then back on her back, and if that failed,
25:51
Speaker 1: Rick would hold her down, take the hot end of
25:53
Speaker 1: the crack pipe and give her skin a little sine
25:55
Speaker 1: to let her know who was boss. And this went
25:58
Speaker 1: on for two weeks until the split, and when she
26:01
Speaker 1: made it back to her pimp without any money for
26:03
Speaker 1: her two weeks sabbatical to funky Town, the pimp beat
26:06
Speaker 1: her mercilessly, and without anywhere to go, she returned to
26:10
Speaker 1: Rix with fresh bruises. Tania took her to the hospital
26:13
Speaker 1: on Rix Jaguar. The er workers, after dressing her wounds,
26:16
Speaker 1: called the cops and told them what was up. Later
26:19
Speaker 1: that night, thirty of LA's finest busted down the door
26:22
Speaker 1: at Ricks and arrested him and Tanya for assault. They
26:25
Speaker 1: had it wrong. Rick told him it didn't matter. His
26:28
Speaker 1: bail was set for a million dollars and he was
26:32
Speaker 1: locked up for a week. He could do that time
26:35
Speaker 1: standing on his head. He was used to it and
26:37
Speaker 1: it wasn't all that bad. The time and lockup allowed
26:40
Speaker 1: him to clean up off the crack, but it didn't last.
26:45
Speaker 1: His trial was coming up. Despite being out on bail,
26:48
Speaker 1: Rick was tense. He and Tanya hit argyle on Yuga
26:51
Speaker 1: down in Hollywood to score. Rick bought eight rocks for
26:54
Speaker 1: eight bucks. Shit, no wonder people lost their mind on crack.
26:58
Speaker 1: It was practically Freak appeared to cocaine just then before
27:02
Speaker 1: Rick could get the crack into his pocket. Two playing
27:05
Speaker 1: cost cops with guns out pointing straight at Rick and
27:07
Speaker 1: Tanya behind the windshield of their jag started coming for
27:11
Speaker 1: Rick freaked out, popped all eight rocks into his mouth
27:14
Speaker 1: and swallowed hard. The cops tore the car apart and
27:17
Speaker 1: in the end and found nothing. But Rick James was
27:20
Speaker 1: off to the races, feeling of liberation swept over. Fucked
27:25
Speaker 1: the police. My girl wants to party all the time,
27:28
Speaker 1: and this reason to celebrate. Tani was pregnant with Rick's baby.
27:31
Speaker 1: Let's get high one more time. The two rented the
27:34
Speaker 1: suite at the Saint James on Sunset and waited on
27:37
Speaker 1: their dealer front to show up. More crack was always needed.
27:41
Speaker 1: The dealer arrived, Rick had no idea who he was,
27:44
Speaker 1: but let him in any way, Half convinced that he
27:46
Speaker 1: was the devil himself. Rick was gonna suck his dick.
27:49
Speaker 1: But when he passed Rick the pipe, a halo appeared
27:52
Speaker 1: over his head. Shit, this wasn't the devil, the sweet
27:56
Speaker 1: man was an angel. But then the horn started growing
27:59
Speaker 1: for over his head. Rick was super freaked out. Something happened.
28:04
Speaker 1: The dealer split, and Rick and Tanya set about destroying
28:07
Speaker 1: your luxurious suite, tossing the sofa cushions, up ending the tables,
28:11
Speaker 1: throwing wineglasses against the wall, pulling the stuffing out of
28:14
Speaker 1: the pillows, frisbeeing room service placed to the ceiling, and
28:17
Speaker 1: kicking the television over. It was a much needed release
28:21
Speaker 1: to the pressure of the impending trial. And once they
28:24
Speaker 1: were done, they sat on the floor, had sex and
28:26
Speaker 1: got high. This cycle went on for days, sex, cracked, violence, repeat,
28:31
Speaker 1: And then she showed up Lady M, the music business
28:35
Speaker 1: colleague of Rick's, who towed the line between a supportive
28:38
Speaker 1: friend and world class nag. Lady M had a message
28:42
Speaker 1: for Rick. Get your shit together now, right now, or
28:46
Speaker 1: you're done. Ain't no record label going to put your
28:48
Speaker 1: music out if all you do is smoke crack, beat
28:50
Speaker 1: on women in trash hotel rooms. Oh yeah, Rick thought an.
28:55
Speaker 2: Unleash on Lady M.
28:57
Speaker 1: He beat her senses and when he was done, he
28:59
Speaker 1: looked down at her, crumpled on the floor, bleeding, crying, shivering,
29:04
Speaker 1: her eyes black. He did the only thing he knew
29:06
Speaker 1: how to comfort her, offered her crack for her paint.
29:10
Speaker 1: She accepted and hit the pipe, and from then on
29:13
Speaker 1: it was like the beating never happened, crack cocaine as
29:17
Speaker 1: a hell of a drug. After a couple of days,
29:21
Speaker 1: Lady m split and not soon after decided fuck Rick James,
29:25
Speaker 1: bitch and went to the police. Rick awoke soon after
29:29
Speaker 1: to the news blasting back at him from the television
29:32
Speaker 1: that he was being sought by police for the kidnapping
29:34
Speaker 1: and torture of a West Hollywood woman. While being out
29:37
Speaker 1: on bail for kidnapping and torture charges for another woman.
29:41
Speaker 1: Rick thought of running, but he was too old for
29:43
Speaker 1: that shit. He knew what to do. He'd done it
29:46
Speaker 1: before when he was a wall from the Navy, and
29:48
Speaker 1: after that when he'd escaped from the brig A good
29:52
Speaker 1: criminal knows when he's caught, just like a good musician
29:54
Speaker 1: knows when it's time to step off the stage. Rick
29:58
Speaker 1: James the musician, James the draft dodger, Rick James the
30:02
Speaker 1: coke dealer, Rick James the crackhead, Rick James, the weak minded,
30:07
Speaker 1: physically abusive creek tortured women for the kicks. Rick James
30:12
Speaker 1: the criminal, turn himself in such a disgrace, I'm Jake Brennan.
30:18
Speaker 2: Yes, this disgrace, sand.
30:33
Speaker 1: Disgraceland was created by Yours Truly and is produced in
30:35
Speaker 1: partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be
30:39
Speaker 1: found on the show notes page at disgracelampod dot com.
30:42
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Speaker 2: The bed Don Man