| The Savvy Stories by Steve Jones (continued) |
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Chapter Five – Winding Down the 70's On September 16, 1979, I did my first McDonald's TV commercial. It was a promotional spot hyping the upcoming SMU – TCU football game. We shot it at KTVT on the West side of Ft. Worth off Interstate 30 near the Woodhaven apartments. I was a little nervous, but it went well for my first time. "Dear Diary: I’m losing my mind! Lilly is causing me much turmoil! We fight way too much." That was an entry in my journal posted the day after taping the spot at KTVT. My personal life with Lilly was still wild and out of control -- a roller coaster ride to which I seemed hopelessly addicted. Just when it seemed we had gone our own ways, we found ourselves in each other's arms, and the next thing we knew we'd be fighting again. In contrast to the chaos at home, things at the club were going great. Likewise, I was really enjoying my adventures with the McDonald's gig too. I got to perform on the field at half time of the SMU – TCU game. Later in the month I performed at the Thelma Boston home for disabled kids. That would be my first experience with entertaining for an audience who, for the most part, had to be strapped to their wheelchairs with duct tape and wore protective helmets to keep them safe from their own self-inflicted beatings. Thank God for balloon animals! I went in expecting to completely bomb. At first glance it looked like nobody was home behind the eyes of those kids. But once I started twisting the long, colorful balloons into shapes of wiener dogs, flowers, and hats, I could see their eyes light up as they became very animated, happy, and excited. That gig ended up being a very touching and emotional experience for me. I discovered on that day that many people - young and old - who might be overlooked as not being able to think a single thought, are actually completely normal when it comes to thought. They are simply prisoners to bodies that don't respond to the most basic mental commands that the rest of us take for granted each moment of every day; breathing, smiling, speaking, blinking, speaking, and on and on. And I vowed never to make fun of anyone twisting balloon animals again. Mom made a wonderful hand-sewn quilt for me to go with my new waterbed. She had no idea how great of a gift that would turn out to be. She stitched the following words in one corner of the quilt: "September 1980 – To Jay Steven Jones, born 2/6/55. Love, Mom." [I still sleep with that quilt to this very day!] Dad built the radio controlled model airplane I bought him, and he asked me to make a small model of Ronald McDonald that could fit inside the cockpit and look like the pilot. I made one out of a toy action figure that looked pretty darn close to the real thing. Dad enjoyed flying that plane for years. We had a great ZOO FREE SUNDAY promotion at Savvy’s, put on by KZEW FM radio station. (KZEW was simply referred to as "THE ZOO".) Every rock-and-roller in North Texas was hearing about Savvy and Savvy’s nightclub over the airwaves and the payoff was huge! Almost overnight, the club was packed to capacity night after night! We started seeing more and more people from Dallas and surrounding areas becoming "regulars". Both Savvy and Savvy's Nightclub were becoming overnight sensations. A fan base was evolving and our most requested songs were our originals. Around this time, Ricky came in with a new original for us to work up called "When the Lights Go Out at Midnight." Nick, my predecessor in clown-face, did one of his final "RON" appearances in DFW for a TV public service ad for Multiple Sclerosis. Dad went to Nashville to visit his brother - my Uncle Okie. While he was gone, mom came to see me perform one of my "corporate clown" shows. RJ’s house on Lakewood (with Kenny and Chris) was in shambles! It didn’t take them long to bring the place down. That’s what happens when the party never stops long enough to clean up. In what seemed to be a very strange move at first, the owners of Savvy’s Nightclub decided to bring in male dancers from the La Bare Ladies Club on Tuesday nights. But it didn't take long for us to realize the benefits! The male dancers did their thing mostly from Happy Hour up until time for the band to start. That meant that by the time we came to work, the place was packed with wild, screaming, sexually worked-up women! (We just had to get used to sharing our dressing room with muscle bound guys walking around in leopard skin jock straps and bowties.) One night after the gig, a girl wearing a cast on one leg came limping back to the dressing room. She was very pretty (she looked like a young Barbara Hershey) and wanted to talk to me. She asked if she could come over and hang out together after the gig and I obliged. Lilly and I were temporarily split up again and I was still living at the single bedroom apartment around the back at Meadowbrook Place. We were at the apartment for over an hour before she explained who she was. I never previously knew her, but knew of her. She had been married to an ex schoolmate. Their torrid romance and marriage had been legendary. This revelation made things even more exciting, and things got a little hot and heavy on the couch. But after a while I started to get nervous about the possibility of Lilly showing up and making a scene, so I eventually shooed her away without as much as signing the cast. Lilly never showed. I saw Suzanne Miller on TV. (I don’t recall what she was doing.) Then things took a very strange turn, considering the rocky events of the past several months. Lilly stopped by and convinced me that we could afford a much nicer apartment over in Woodhaven if we moved in together and shared the rent. Yes, she had the claws dug back into me, and I loved every agonizing moment. I still had feelings for her, but I was also intrigued with the notion of stepping up to a much nicer apartment. Quail Hollow Apartments were in the Woodhaven Complex (where I caught Lilly with her ex boyfriend Mike.) It was a new area built around Woodhaven Country Club Golf Course. To me, it was the lap of luxury! Like the Jeffersons, I was moving on up to the East Side! Between my two gigs, I was making good money. One day Ricky came to me and asked if I would loan him $60 for a dog. I was happy to help him out. The salt and pepper miniature schnauzer’s name was Nigel, and would be a great pet and companion to Ricky for many years to come. My brother Chris moved out from RJ and Kenny’s house and into an apartment with RJ’s ex girlfriend, Angie. We’d met Angie back at the Hungry I. To Chris’ disappointment, they were only plutonic roommates. [Chris and I ran into Angie at a local club in 2003 and she still looked amazing! She recognized Chris the minute he walked in the door.] Savvy finally got around to hiring a soundman. His name was J. Martin Warren, or "Marty" as he preferred to be called. We also had a friend who ran lights for us named Kyle. On Christmas Eve, Lilly threw a major fit because she claimed I was late picking her up from work. She was really rude and gave me the silent treatment the entire time we were at a holiday function at my Aunt’s house. I had family visiting from all over the country that night, as well as all the folks from around here: My aunt Iris and Uncle Don, Aunt Bettie and Uncle J.C., Uncle Okie and Aunt Madelyn, Aunt Grace, lots of cousins, plus my mom and dad. (My brother Chris now lives in that house and I believe that a video tape of the event still exists in a shoebox, in a closet somewhere.) Lilly would continue to be short with me until she saw what I got her for Christmas. (Okay, I was a dumb ass.) We were living at 6124 Sparrow Wood Lane at the Quail Hollow Apartments. Lilly had grown up in luxury surroundings and was used to having things that I considered utterly useless. The day we moved into the new apartment, she started in on me about wanting a fancy china cabinet, along with a dining table and chairs that cost more than my 2-year-old car! She was relentless. But I was doing okay financially, and the new apartment was awesome, so I fell for it. The next thing I knew, we were accepting a delivery from LEVITZ FURNITURE WAREHOUSE, and I was writing a humongous check. The apartment was beginning to look like a museum, but it calmed Lilly down for a while and that was the main thing. I loved the apartment and Lilly and I were really great friends who were trying to be more than that. We both wanted it to work out, but neither of us knew what to do to make things better. More girls from the Playboy Club became regulars at Savvy’s. Ilene and Thressa were gorgeous blonde sisters. They had recently appeared in a Playboy layout with Suzanne Miller! It was a hot tub scene if I remember correctly. Ilene and Thressa had another friend who would become a close friend of the band. Her name was Judy, and before long, Judy was waiting tables at the Dallas Playboy club wearing bunny ears and a fluffy tail too. Rick and Thressa seemed to become an item fairly quickly, while Ilene and Judy both locked their gazes towards Ricky. (With a Rick, Ricky, Richard, and Rich in the band, it got confusing sometimes.) The old movie dubbing tradition cranked back up over at RJ’s place, and because business had been so good for the club, the band started receiving a percentage of the door. The guys from the popular band Phrenz stopped in and partied with us at Savvy’s one night. Danny Brandt, their lead guitar player, had known RJ back in their garage band days around the Diamond Hill and Castleberry areas. Ricky came up with another original song. This one was long, intricate, and not your normal rock song. It was called Love Technique. The band got geared up to go into the studio and start laying down some of our original material. Between juggling both the McDonald's and Savvy gigs, November was incredibly busy for me. Then in December I took some time off from clowning. Pat Kempf and his wife invited me to party with them at a great club near SMU called Up Your Alley. The house band, Bowley & Wilson, played bawdy bar songs like, "Waitress Oh Waitress Come Sit On My Face" and "SMU Sorority Bitch." They had a wet T-shirt contest that night and one of the girls in our group won! Later in the month, Pat Kempf and his wife came out to Savvy’s and had fun watching me jump around in my rock and roll band garb. [I’ve seen Pat many times over the years and we always have a big laugh over all the great history we had together in those days. I hope he knows how much I've learned from him about marketing, advertising, and even more importantly, the importance of being a creative thinker. ] I bought Lilly some new China to go in her new China cabinet. In return, she began talking a lot about how it wasn’t working between us. I'd always known that we were both difficult to live with, but this was getting ridiculous. She already wanted to move out after only a month of living there! Moving there had been HER idea, hadn't it? But wait! Then she wanted to get married! No, wait again. If we didn’t get married she was going to move out. By that time I was enjoying every moment of my life as a member of Savvy so much that the tumultuous Lilly stuff was almost overshadowed by the good times with the band. But over time, the radical gap between the good and bad parts of my life began to show up again. It snowed on New Year’s Eve. Snow is such a rare thing in my part of the land that it is never around long enough for the brain to get used to seeing it. I grabbed my Polaroid camera and went for a walk, hoping to get some good photos of the white landscape. It would be another photo taken during that walk that would sum things up better than any poem or song lyrics I could write. It was a photo looking back at the apartment. You can see Lilly in her robe looking out the window at me. It wasn't a "loving" look, but rather one might see on the face of a prisoner looking out from a cell. That’s how the 70’s ended for me: walking alone in the snow and trying to remain comfortably numb. The 80’s couldn’t get here fast enough! I just knew it was going to be a banner year for Savvy!
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SAVVY STORY INDEX
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