Just Kids

innocence. Or maybe I was seeing a little too clearly.

As we walked down the boulevard Montparnasse I saw a headline that filled me with sorrow: Jimi Hendrix est mort. 27 ans. I knew what the words meant.

Jimi Hendrix would never have the chance to return to Woodstock to create a universal language. He would never again record at Electric Lady. I felt that we had all lost a friend. I pictured his back, the embroidered vest, and his long legs as he went up the stairs and out into the world for the last time.

Steve Paul sent a car for Robert and me to see Johnny Winter at the Fillmore East on October 3. Johnny was at the Chelsea for a few days. After his concert, we all met back in his room. He had played at Jimi Hendrix’s wake, and together we mourned the loss of our guitar poet, finding comfort in talking of him together.

But the next night we would meet in Johnny’s room to console one another again. I wrote but two words in my diary: Janis Joplin. For she had died of an overdose in room 105 of the Landmark Hotel in Los Angeles, twenty- seven years old.

Johnny plunged. Brian Jones. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin. He immediately made the J connection, as fear and grief merged. He was highly superstitious and worried that he would be next. Robert tried to calm him but said to me, “I can’t blame him. It’s pretty freaky,” and he suggested I read Johnny’s cards, which I did. His tarot suggested a swirl of contradicting forces, but spoke of no imminent danger. Cards or no cards, Johnny didn’t have death in his face. There was something about him. Johnny was mercurial. Even as he fretted over the deaths of the J-club, frenetically pacing the room, it was as if he could never sit still long enough to die.

* * *

I was both scattered and stymied, surrounded by unfinished songs and abandoned poems. I would go as far as I could and hit a wall, my own imagined limitations. And then I met a fellow who gave me his secret, and it was pretty simple. When you hit a wall, just kick it in.

Todd Rundgren took me to the Village Gate to hear a band called the Holy Modal Rounders. Todd had made his own album, Runt, and was on the lookout for interesting things he could produce. Big acts like Nina Simone and Miles Davis would play upstairs at the Gate, while the more underground bands were booked in the basement. I had never heard the Holy Modal Rounders, whose “Bird Song” was featured in Easy Rider, but knew it would be interesting because Todd usually gravitated toward the unusual.

It was like being at an Arabian hoedown with a band of psychedelic hillbillies. I fixed on the drummer, who seemed as if he was on the lam and had slid behind the drums while the cops looked elsewhere. Toward the end of their set he sang a song called “Blind Rage,” and as he slammed the drums, I thought, This guy truly embodies the heart and soul of rock and roll. He had beauty, energy, animal magnetism.

I was introduced to the drummer when we went backstage. He said his name was Slim Shadow. I said, “Glad to meet you, Slim.” I mentioned to him that I wrote for a rock magazine called Crawdaddy and that I wanted to write an article about him. Slim seemed entertained by this idea. He just nodded while I started my pitch, telling him about his potential, how “rock and roll needs you.”

“Well, I never really thought about that,” was his laconic reply.

I was sure Crawdaddy would accept a piece on this future salvation of rock and roll, and Slim agreed to come over to Twenty-third Street for an interview. He was amused by my mess, and sprawled out on my mat and told me about himself. He said he was born in a trailer and spun quite a yarn for me. Slim was a good talker. In a happy role reversal, it was he who was the storyteller. It was possible his tales were even taller than mine. He had an infectious laugh and was rugged, smart, and intuitive. In my mind, he was the fellow with the cowboy mouth.

In the following evenings he would appear late at night at my door with his shy and appealing grin and I would grab my coat and we would take a walk. We never strayed far from the Chelsea yet it seemed as if the city had dissolved into sagebrush and the stray debris rolling in the wind transformed as tumbleweeds.

A cold front passed over New York City in October. I developed a bad cough. The heating was erratic in our loft spaces. They were not meant to live in and were cold at night. Robert often stayed at David’s, and I would pile up all our blankets and stay awake till quite late reading Little Lulu comics and listening to Bob Dylan. I had wisdom teeth trouble and was run down. My doctor said I was anemic and told me to have red meat and drink porter, advice given to Baudelaire when he trudged through a winter in Brussels sick and alone.

I was a bit more resourceful than poor Baudelaire. I donned an old plaid coat with deep pockets and lifted two small steaks from Gristede’s, planning to fry them in my grandmother’s cast-iron pan over my hot plate. I was surprised to run into Slim on the street and we took our first non-nocturnal walk. Worrying the meat would go bad, I finally had to admit to him I had two raw steaks in my pocket. He looked at me, trying to detect if I was telling the truth, then slid his hand in my pocket and pulled a steak out in the middle of Seventh Avenue. He shook his head in mock admonishment, saying, “Okay, sugar, let’s eat.”

We went upstairs and I fired up the hot plate. We ate the steaks out of the pan. After that, Slim was concerned whether I was eating enough. A few nights later he came by and asked me if I liked the lobster at Max’s. I said I never tried it. He seemed shocked.

“You never had the lobster there?”

“No, I never had any meal there.”

“What? Get your coat. We’re getting some grub.”

We got a cab to Max’s. He had no qualms about sauntering into the back room, but we didn’t sit at the round table. Then he ordered for me. “Bring her the biggest lobster you have.” I realized that everyone was staring at us. It occurred to me that I had never been to Max’s with any fellow save Robert, and Slim was a really good-looking guy. And when my giant lobster with drawn butter arrived, it also occurred to me that this handsome hillbilly might not have the money to pay the check.

While I was eating, I noticed Jackie Curtis giving me hand signals. I figured she wanted some of my lobster, which was fine with me. I wrapped a meaty claw in a napkin and followed her into the ladies’ room. Jackie immediately started grilling me.

“What are you doing with Sam Shepard?” she blurted.

“Sam Shepard?” I said. “Oh, no, this guy’s name is Slim.”

“Honey, you don’t know who he is?”

“He’s the drummer for the Holy Modal Rounders.”

She rummaged frantically in her purse, polluting the air with face powder. “He’s the biggest playwright off- Broadway. He had a play at Lincoln Center. He won five Obies!” she rattled off, penciling her eyebrows. I stared at her incredulously. The revelation seemed like a plot twist in some Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney musical. “Well, that doesn’t mean much to me,” I said.

“Don’t be a fool,” she said, gripping me dramatically. “He can take you right to Broadway.” Jackie had a way of transporting any random interaction into a B movie scene.

Jackie passed on the lobster claw. “No, thanks, honey, I’m after bigger game. Why don’t you bring him over to my table, I’d love to say hello.”

Well, I didn’t have my eyes on Broadway and I wasn’t going to drag him around like some male trophy, but I figured if nothing else he was sure to have the money to pick up the check.

I went back to the table and looked at him hard. “Is your name Sam?” I asked.

“Oh, yes, so it is,” he drawled like W. C. Fields. But at that moment dessert arrived, a vanilla sundae with chocolate sauce.

“Sam is a good name,” I said. “It will work.”

He said, “Eat your ice cream, Patti Lee.”

* * *

I felt increasingly out of place in Robert’s social whirl. He escorted me to teas, dinners, and an occasional party. We sat at tables where a single setting had more forks and spoons than needed for a family of five. I could never understand why we had to separate at dinner, or why I had to engage in discussions with people I didn’t know. I just sat in a state of internal misery waiting for the next course. No one seemed as impatient as I. Yet I had to admire Robert as I watched him interact with an ease I hadn’t seen before, lighting another’s cigarette and holding their eye as he spoke.

He was beginning to penetrate higher society. In some ways his social shift was harder to surmount than his