chapter seven “A FLOURISH OF DRAMA”
Opal Robinson arrived in New York City via bus in July 1970—the same month and year Funkadelic dropped that fierce edict to “Free Your Mind… and Your Ass Will Follow.” She lugged to the taxi stand at Port Authority two duffel bags—one of them bursting with brand-new fabrics, sewing supplies, and paperbacks; the other stuffed with an assortment of shoes for every season and cheap synthetic wigs. (As for the fluffy Afro wig that would not fit into her luggage, she wore that during her travels.) In her jeans pocket was a slip of paper with the address for her new home in Harlem. She had found the room listed in the classifieds of the Amsterdam News and arranged to rent it via phone from her station at Michigan Bell, after the other accounts-payable girls had gone home. She gave the address to the hack, and from the back seat of his cab, Opal absorbed her new environs. In this city of nearly eight million people, she was completely anonymous. No one she knew, neither relative nor acquaintance, could say her exact whereabouts.
OPAL JEWEL:
I’m an old chick now and I like my quiet, but when I first came to New York I was twenty-one years old. I could feel the energy of that place jolt through my body as soon as I stepped off the bus. At first you just notice the nastiness: You know, everything was so extra—extra hot, extra funky, extra loud. But sitting in the back of that yellow cab, I was like an astronaut in a shell traveling through space, pressed up against the window and taking in the stars. There were businessmen in brown and blue suits looking clean and sharp, Teflon dons on those dirty-ass streets. I saw swarms of moving people, people who knew rules I didn’t yet know, and in the swarm you could pick out gray-haired society ladies and Hispanic workmen and Hasids in their outfits, the curls and hats and coats, even in that summer heat. And then we drove alongside Central Park, and I saw a fully grown sister on roller skates. In a plaid sundress and cornrows, hollering at folks to get out the way and rumbling down the sidewalk like it was the most natural thing in the world. And I thought, Oh my God—my people! [Laughs]
Rosemary Salducci had sent me a sublease for some other place Rivington had found for me, I don’t even remember where it was supposed to be, but I was adamant about being in Harlem, so I never signed those papers. I had lived among Black people my whole life, and I didn’t know a lot about New York except the things I saw secondhand. Harlem seemed to be a place where Negroes congregated but sometimes of their own volition, and it was a place that inspired so much creativity. So that’s where I wanted to stay—somewhere I could start my own personal renaissance.
The place I found ended up being a room on the parlor level of the brownstone you saw. At the time, the house was owned by a widow named Miss Ernestine. Sweet as she wanted to be, and from deep country Georgia, where they’d hang a nigger for whistling in the wrong key. But Miss Ernestine had migrated up north with her husband years before, and when she was ready to go back home we bought it off her for a fair price.
Before we opened it up, there were two other units in the house. Right below was a young family that could barely get by because the daddy was in and out of work, but the two little girls were kept cute and clean in their plaits and dresses, and on the first of the month their mother would come up with a bubbling hot casserole instead of the rent. Miss Ernestine would just sigh and say, “Thank you, baby.” I imagine she opened up the second bedroom in her own apartment to make up for that loss.
And at the tip-top of the house, as you know, was my darling, my dearest, Monsieur Virgil LaFleur.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR, OPAL JEWEL’S BEST FRIEND AND LONGTIME STYLIST:I
I had been living up in Harlem for about seven years by the time I first encountered Mad [LaFleur’s nickname for Opal, short for “Mademoiselle”]. My apartment was on the third floor, so I could see her arrive from my window—she was dragging those bags up the stoop and looking every bit the tortured hot mess. I suppose I was somewhere in the upper twenties by then…. But do take note, s’il vous plaît, that I had the physique and nerve of a nineteen-year-old. Let me remember… 1970… My God, I would rather not, but all right: Earlier in the year I was an understudy for the role of Othello—[in a rumbling baritone] you see, I had Shakespearean training, therefore and thou art… ’tis I, the Moor of Venice, jealousy, rage, murder, murrrr-derrrrr!—but the actor they cast had the part locked down, and the gentleman was going through the whole run without so much as a sniffle. That winter season all the rest of us, even the director and the girl who played Desdemona, had bad head colds. It was so upsetting that I had a shameful moment once backstage, while Othello Un was doing the seven o’clock show. I crept into his dressing room and dropped my used tissue into his coat pocket, in the hopes it would fell him. Of course, it only seemed to make him stronger. The lesson being that desperation is most unflattering.
When it came to my thespian career… c’est la vie. The biggest thing that ever happened to me, in the time before your Opal, was that I played a degenerate named Turpentine in an off-Broadway monstrosity called Bad Willie’s Juju. Musical comedy, mais comme c’est tragique. I was not aware then, but that July day, Mad was like an angel falling into my world. [Pause] A raggedy angel. [Pause] Emphasis on raggedy.
OPAL JEWEL:
Miss Ernestine and I were in the living room—she was showing me around the place, and how to get a clear signal on the television—when here comes Virgil, waltzing down the stairs in silk paisley pajamas, talking ’bout “Ma cherie, enchantée!” That’s what he said to me, and he took a bow and held out his hand in a funny way, not like a handshake but some other gesture I didn’t recognize. I looked at Miss Ernestine and she smiled and said, “Go on, baby, give him your hand,” and so I did and he pulled it to his lips and gave it a mwah, a little kiss. You could’ve knocked me over with a feather.
Now, I already was a skeptical person, I guess you could say, and I’d come to New York with the words of the Michigan Bell girls in my head. Don’t look nobody in the eye, they said, and don’t trust nobody, because the city is a web of dark alleys infested with druggies and pickpockets and rapists. I was expecting to have to fight people off, or at least run away fast enough if they came at me, and instead I’m in this Victorian scene, inside a beautiful old house with a sugar-sweet elderly roommate and Virgil acting the damn gentleman.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
She was this shapeless thing before I got hold of her, she’ll even confess—could have used a toasted oat as a Hula-Hoop, but this is beside the point. When I say shapeless, chère, I mean more that she had no remarkable flair, certainly none by New York standards, no je ne sais quoi. She didn’t know how to accentuate her attributes, and that led her to force her wild strangeness into whatever limited styles happened to be en vogue. That is fine if you are rich and can afford all the things, the finest fabrics and accoutrements, so that the look becomes passable. But this was Harlem in 1970, and when one is not rich one must get creative. One must show out.
OPAL JEWEL:
I had never met anybody like him before. Not just gay, because we had a lot of that where I’m from… But I mean, so big with himself. He didn’t talk; Virgil purred, honey. No, I mean literally purred—some of his people were Haitian, so he could speak some pretty French, and the other half might as well have been Eartha Kitt. His fingers were long and elegant, the nails filed and buffed smooth and shiny. It’s thinning out now, but he used to have what folks called “good hair”—the kind that just naturally leans back and waves—and his head was giant as a lion’s. I could see he was trim and fit under the pajamas, and he had these big hazel eyes and a smooth caramel coloring. He was a specimen! And he was the first true friend I ever had.
Virgil was my introduction to New York, and you better believe he loved playing My Fair Lady. He knew all kinds of interesting people who worked all kinds of places. Busboys on the Upper East Side, costume assistants on Broadway—if there was a back door, we just had to knock to get a meal, or a spot in the rafters to watch a show. Every day back then was like a new adventure. Cattle calls and house parties; up in the morning with caffeine, down at night with cabernet. Making meals out of whatever scraps we could get from Virgil’s actor-slash-dancer-slash-waiter friends—knishes, garlic knots, curries, all kinds of exotic stuff I was tasting for the first time. I thought maybe he had some star quality just waiting to bust out, because everybody seemed to be smitten with him.
But also Virgil sold reefer. Everybody loves the reefer man.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
I styled ladies’ hair. That’s how I paid my bills. I don’t know what she’s told you.
NEV CHARLES:
I’d hoped Opal arriving early meant we could get a jump on rehearsing vocals for the songs I’d finished writing, but even when she was living a couple miles away she might as well’ve been on Alpha Centauri. To that point she had not heard very much except the raw version of “Girl in Gold,” and I started to worry that even the week we’d originally planned to meet wouldn’t be enough. I rang and rang the number Pearl gave me with no response at all. Later, when I got the address, I snuck up there to make inquiries. I say snuck because I couldn’t let word reach Howie that Opal had pulled this disappearing act.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
Mad was coy; she did not reveal details about why she had come to New York, and whenever I tried to inquire? Attitude maximal. Our proprietress must have known, but she was also tight-lipped—that is a key characteristic, bien sûr, of African Americans from our southern regions. So I did not become aware until early one morning, when we were eating toast and jam in our pajamas, watching the Today show on Miss Ernestine’s television—I adored Barbara Walters, whenever they allowed her to grace the air—and someone started pounding on the door and calling for Opal. The way she scurried back to her bedroom, I thought perhaps she owed a debt.
NEV CHARLES:
I’d been jotting the songs for the album in this spiral notebook, not just the lyrics but the music itself, plus the actual notation for the guitar parts, which mostly informed the melodies. It was full of edits and scratch-throughs and my hideous handwriting, which I doubt anyone could make out, and it was the most personal and precious thing I owned, although maybe back then that wasn’t saying much. But after I went to Harlem looking for her and she wasn’t there, in sort of a daze I left the notebook with this Virgil character [laughs], who was a stranger to me then, and I trusted him to give it to her because what else could I do? The songs had to be learned—that’s the most essential thing, isn’t it, when your plan is to put them on record?
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
I opened the door and there he was: the young Neville Charles. They say he’s strange-looking, but darling, I was… enchanté! I adore an accent.
OPAL JEWEL:
Virgil told you I hid? Really? Okay. I don’t remember that, but I guess it might be true.
Scared? Aw, wasn’t nobody scared. I just wasn’t ready. I hadn’t fully worked out what I was doing yet.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
After Neville left, I went back to Mad’s bedroom to give her this mystery notebook—well, perhaps I flipped through a few pages, but it was gibberish to me—and the child had thrown herself across the bed like a true and proper drama queen. She had her face pressed into the pillow but when I called her name she turned toward me and I could see her tears making a mess of it. “Well, come now, ma petite, what is the matter?” And at first she said nothing, but then when I put the notebook beside her and she looked at it, the chest heaving commenced. [Imitating sobs very dramatically] “Virgil, I’m a pho-oh-oh-oh-nyyyyy!” [Laughs] I sat beside her on the duvet and was quiet until finally she came out with the whole business. She told me about the contract, how she had played la diva and now she feared she could not deliver. She did not know how to read music; she had never sung a note with anyone but the half sister. I asked her how much time remained before she had to make an appearance at Rivington Records. [Sobs] “Less than a weee-eeee-k!” So I said, “Well, then, we will have our work cut out for us, won’t we?”
OPAL JEWEL:
A customer of Virgil’s lived near Columbia, a middle-aged white guy with long hair who had all kinds of musical instruments lying around his apartment. He might have had a damn didgeridoo, I don’t know. The apartment, by the way, was filthy—dirty clothes piled up in corners, and there was an upright piano that had glasses and cups sitting on the top of it, most of them half-filled with scummy water and cigarette butts. I remember thinking Mama would kill me for leaving water rings on her good furniture. Anyway, Virgil gave him a brick of weed, and this man spent a few hours over the next couple days smoking it up and teaching me the melodies of what was in Nev’s notebook. Not how to actually read music, though, which is what I needed. At first he tried to explain how to do it, but he was talking in circles and his head was clouded from the weed, and I got frustrated because time was running out. So I said, “Forget it, man—just sing it like it’s supposed to go, and I’ll copy it after you.”
Nev Charles, meanwhile, was staring down his studio date with no word whatsoever from the young woman he’d chosen as his featured collaborator. In isolation, he vacillated between mild worry and full-blown anxiety.
NEV CHARLES:
I didn’t tell Hizey; I was horrified at the thought that he was already pulling together the players and calling me chuffed about the progress of it, and I could hear his hungry little baby wailing in the background, and there I was without this girl singer who was supposed to make the pieces fit. Well, I was lying quite egregiously when he’d ask how she was getting on. “Oh, lovely, she’s settled in, we had a working dinner last night, chicken à la king, Mum’s old recipe…. I’m sorry? Meet her today? Oh no, that’s impossible because insert imaginary reasons.” Besides that, I had given my notebook away to Virgil, so I was trying to reconstruct everything from memory—for that I had to play the role of the perfectionist artist and tell Hizey that I wasn’t ready to [using air quotes] “share the work.” Total bollocks.
BOB HIZE:
I had to have a sense of the music before booking the bassist and the rhythm guitar, but I always knew that I wanted your dad to be behind the drums. Jimmy was probably the busiest and most versatile percussionist in the city at the time. I had seen him play in different groups, everything from jazz to rock to R&B to that Latin-based sound Carlos Santana was popularizing. So no matter what Nev would come back with, your dad would adapt to it and make it better.
What Jimmy would not do, at least until Opal came into his life, was deal with interpersonal dramas. He was a very serious man, almost arrogant—the kind of fellow often accused of having a chip on his shoulder. But he was simply deep into his work and protective of his time, and clear that it was not to be wasted. I had enticed him to come in to Rivington by letting drop that we had an extraordinary, dynamic Black girl singing rock-and-roll music—mind you, at this point I had not even met Opal. I was only going by what Nev had said and embellished on that. It really was the nuttiest gamble.
JIMMY CURTIS [EXCERPTED FROM “CLASS IS IN SESSION,” DOWNBEAT, JUNE 8, 1967]:II
Sometimes you go into a job and it’s like you’re the only one who knows how to act. I never had any formal training, not a lot of black cats my age really did. Once I picked up the drumsticks, though, that became my profession, and I treat it as such—professionally. But the ones who get chosen to be the biggest stars… To tell you the truth, they have a whole lot else going on besides the music. Listen, man, I walk into situations where I have to play behind speed junkies, needle fiends, winos, wife beaters, beaten wives, egomaniacs, grown men who wear diapers under their getups. All that shit is good for a party, if you get down like that. In the studio, though? Man, just hurry up and cut me my check.
Between the hazy lessons from Virgil’s friend and what she could remember from her late-night phone conversations with Nev, Opal learned the notebook tunes well enough for the first recording session. That she still could not read music, however, nagged at her. She worried about adjusting to Nev’s improvisations or to other sudden, unfamiliar changes in direction, and feared that the players backing her—all of whom, she rightly assumed, would be men—would dismiss her as dizzy and helpless if her inexperience was exposed. She had pushed her musical abilities as far as they could go; the next step was simply to turn up. How she decided to do so is one of the most colorful stories in rock history.
OPAL JEWEL:
The transformation was partly Virgil’s idea and partly mine. I had been practicing the songs for a few days and they were all right, some of them were pretty good, but he kept telling me he wasn’t feeling it. [Imitating Virgil] “Not moved, chère, I am just not moved.” I kept singing them different, and I thought better and more interesting, riffing and all that, but he still had this skeptical attitude. Then he seemed to be getting bored with me, or annoyed with this whole project that he probably thought was a go-nowhere deal, and at that point I was willing to try anything to keep my ass off the next bus to Detroit.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
Her big day called for a flourish of drama. And perhaps a bit of distraction… illusion. Because the secret to understanding Mad is that she is not the most brilliant vocalist. But she is an excellent, magical performer.
I pictured her in a caftan, a gauzy and ethereal garment that would float on her and go [sighing noise] whenever she moved. It had to be airy enough to show shadows of her underneath it writhing, dancing, gliding… yes! I was dressing her for the stage, for all who interacted with her to be thrilled and intimidated by her magnificence. All the different colors were her vision.
OPAL JEWEL:
Polychrome. That was the theme.
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
We started with a bright yellow organza, which was très, très sheer, so we had to get enough to layer it, and we got a Butterick Fast & Easy pattern that I nearly tore to shreds for it being so difficult. We pieced it together in a circle shape, because when she stretched her arms out she had to look as if she had glorious wings. Then we put it on her and she looked like a raving old madame.
OPAL JEWEL:
He started going at it with the scissors, edging it up—he cut the shoulders out, which looked good. Then he took some material in the other colors, the red and the green and blue, and he put strips of it on. Vertical down the front and the back, circle around the cuffs and along the bottom. Then we went in with the makeup—aquamarine eyeshadow and a bright magenta lip…. It was wild. But then we tried it with some of the wigs I’d carried with me from Detroit, and no matter which one, the Supremes bouffant or the Afro or that Pocahontas mess, it didn’t go. None of them was right.
And I remembered Nev already knew about my condition, so who the hell cared anymore? I was sick of hiding it anyway. I was so frustrated I could have ripped out what hair was left, straight from the root. I asked Virgil, “You know where we can get some big earrings? I’m about to need them.”
VIRGIL LAFLEUR:
I located the clippers I used on some of my more hirsute clientele, and voilà! Instant avant-garde. Cheekbones, drama, élégance.
OPAL JEWEL:
I looked in the mirror and saw a different person. I couldn’t stop staring. I couldn’t stop turning every which way, couldn’t stop wondering: Who is this girl? How does this girl sing? Not like a church girl, or like an open-mic act, or even like Rose Stone, much as I loved her. This other girl was something else.
I. LaFleur, exact age undisclosed, showed me around his consignment boutique on New York’s Upper East Side. Its walls are decorated with some of Opal Jewel’s more elaborate costumes, headdresses, and gowns, displayed in museum-quality shadow boxes; according to placards posted next to each in red ink, they are emphatically “NOT FOR SALE!”
II. My father, who gave the percussive drive to Opal & Nev’s debut album, died in November 1971, beaten to death by members of a biker gang in the chaos of Rivington Showcase. He was 32 years old. Because he features so prominently in the duo’s trajectory, this oral history includes his voice and perspective on music via a 1967 published interview with the industry’s best session musicians.